Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, certainly our partner associations, the life science industries provincially, find mentorship programs tremendously important generally, not specifically for newcomers, but generally within the biotech industry. A lot of people understand the science of biotech; a lot of peo

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have too much to add on the subject of refugees, except to echo Ms. Eaton's comments. On the subject of women, the other group that you were mentioning specifically, our statistics show that in biotech, 60% of biotechnology graduates currently in Canada are women. Employ

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The good news for us is they are. We're currently doing a project with Status of Women Canada, whereby in three major clusters across Canada, we are putting in mentoring programs and networking programs for women. The good news as well is that this is falling upon very receptiv

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think some of our research shows that we have to stop treating hiring newcomers as a charitable activity. It's a competitively advantageous activity. The issue with a lot of employers is that they've been able to employ and recruit from the monochromatic WASP community around C

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I totally agree with you. I think one of the issues that we have and one of the things that we applaud about the new express entry system is the fact that there is more onus on the newcomer to educate themselves in terms of labour market research and their destination. We hope th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We've seen some very good models. The Halifax model of the multi-stakeholder group, where you see regulators coming together with immigrant-serving agencies, coming together with employer outreach.... We've seen a huge gulf. Often the two black holes that exist within that enti

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's interesting that you say that. When we were on the panel going across Canada, we found, obviously in the less concentrated urban centres, that a lot of those services would fall to the employer to make up for the cultural community that may not be present there. Sometimes

Citizenship and Immigration committee  How many immigrants? I can say that we have more than 20,000 registered for our job board online, and the vast majority of those are immigrants. That should give you an idea of how many people want to work with us, or at least are very interested in us. Some of them are within Ca

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The barriers they face through the BioTalent system largely are, as I said, that small and medium-sized enterprises themselves aren't spending their time looking for talent, but when they are, for example, some of the labour market information we've seen says that 40% of the aver

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'd like to echo that. Last year we did a study specifically on internationally educated professionals. The majority of the companies responding that had hired or that had internationally educated professionals on staff reported enhanced innovation, access to markets, etc. I th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. As I said before, a lot of the professions within the biotech industry are not regulated, so credentialling often does not work in our industry in terms of gauging that level of talent. What we do very successfully is a process of skills mapping where we've been able to tak

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Wonderful. Thanks. On behalf of BioTalent Canada and its network of members and partners, I'd like to thank the members of the committee for the invitation and the opportunity to present to you today. BioTalent Canada is a national non-profit association that strives to ensure

Human Resources committee  That's a good question. A surplus in talent for the biotech field, I suppose you're saying, is a possibility. I haven't seen any studies that indicate that right now in terms of a direct transfer. I believe those students may be taking a look at other fields, but I'm not sure tha

Human Resources committee  No, although I think your point is quite laudable. As I mentioned about the transfer from manufacturing to biomanufacturing, let's say we were able to look across more verticals beyond just biotechnology. Some of the other sector councils could compare notes so that we could see

Human Resources committee  Currently, according to labour market information, in a lot of the lower-skilled work, specifically in biomanufacturing, that doesn't necessarily require a master's degree or a PhD in biotech or anything else, there is a direct indication that there are skills shortages. So with