Human Resources committee  The short answer is yes, we like to think the work we're doing is making a difference. Some of the stats we have demonstrate it.

Human Resources committee  I should add that in the mentoring partnership, the initial seed funding to start the program came from TD and that we currently also have sponsorship from Manulife Financial, which is supporting the program. We are looking at models that would increase employer sponsorship of th

Human Resources committee  Yes, this idea of Canadian experience, of employers requiring Canadian experience, is very common. As I said in my presentation, it's kind of a proxy or a euphemism. If you look at what people really mean by Canadian experience, it's usually a combination of issues that make empl

Human Resources committee  A lot of the work we've done at TRIEC is developing resources. We have some training videos that follow a skilled immigrant through the recruitment process and the integration process with an employer. We have a set of workshops for employers looking at managing cross-cultural te

Human Resources committee  TRIEC actually doesn't work in the trades. We've been working particularly in the white collar skilled professions. As regulated professions, the trades have some similar issues to the other professions we were talking about, engineering and health care, in the sense that there i

Human Resources committee  TRIEC is funded in part by CIC. In the mentoring partnership, all the employment services and the services to the mentees are funded by the Employment Ontario program, which is the Ontario government's employment services program delivered through community-based agencies. The T

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  No, there really isn't funding available from the City of Toronto for this kind of program, but the City of Toronto has been a very active participant in, for instance, the mentoring partnership and the career bridge program by engaging as an employer by providing mentors.

Human Resources committee  We're really focusing on the employer engagement side of the equation. TRIEC's work is primarily employer-facing. There's a wealth of organizations in Toronto that are immigrant-serving organizations. We're focused primarily on employers, and we're really working now with players

Human Resources committee  In Toronto, there's an organization called Career Edge, which was actually established to create youth internships and internships for people with disabilities. When TRIEC started work, we partnered with them to create an internship stream for skilled immigrants, and together we'

Human Resources committee  It's the vast majority. We don't serve clients directly, but I would say of all the immigrants approaching services in the city of Toronto like we're doing through the mentoring partnership, just in terms of mentoring about 1,200 mentoring matches a year, if you think about the n

Human Resources committee  As we heard from the previous panel, the greatest challenges are in the regulated professions, absolutely, because of the licensure issues and the access to assessments, to bridging training, and in the health professions in particular to the clinical residencies that are require

Human Resources committee  I said mentoring is difficult to get, but our model has actually been very successful in getting mentors because we pooled all of those small mentoring programs in Toronto, and TRIEC, as an organization, is quite well leveraged with large employers. In our case as well, the City

Human Resources committee  There are a number of volunteer placement programs. As Mr. Tam said, there are challenges with that, in terms of whether people can get enough work experience that way. A paid internship is obviously more effective if you're trying to support a family. But there are a number of p

Human Resources committee  In Ontario we have a provincial nominee program, but the number is very small--it's in the hundreds. In Ontario most immigrants are not coming through a provincial nominee program. Nationally, something around 17% of all immigrants are actually the principal applicants selected u