Finance committee  I absolutely share your point of view. It is incredibly difficult to get your credentials recognized, and this is typically a provincial issue, but I know there has been some work at the federal labour market minister's level to try to bring some cohesion across the provinces on how we might work, not just within the province but so that we don't have separate credential recognition systems across 13 jurisdictions.

Finance committee  That's a great question. At the moment, we cobble together funding in order to promote and support the program. Employers tend to donate the time of the mentor, so that adds up to over $1 million in support to our program alone each year. The federal government has given a small amount of funding to our mentoring program and contributes to some mentoring programs across the country.

Finance committee  Thank you very much and thank you for having me here to speak. Thank you to the wonderful panellists. I really enjoyed hearing from all of you. I am here to discuss the important role that immigrants play in our national economic prosperity. Immigrants bring skills, innovation, new perspectives, and international business knowledge to Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Only about 80% of jobs are ever advertised, so we all rely on our personal networks in order to get that next job or promotion. Immigrants can arrive with all of the qualifications, credentials, and work experience, but unless they have an entry through an individual to their actual sector, oftentimes they find they cannot take advantage of it.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's a very interesting question. If you're making a big life change and deciding to come to a different country, there is absolutely an onus on you to research and find out what you're coming to. I think part of the issue around that is that the information is widely distributed.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I would echo that. I absolutely agree that creating the welcoming community is so important. Robert mentioned earlier this idea that you must settle the whole family, not just the principal applicant or the person with the job. One of the things we heard from one of the cities that we visited, which shall remain nameless, is that they were very good about bringing people in but they couldn't keep them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our work does not particularly address refugees, except that we know that many refugees in fact are skilled immigrants. Just because you're coming with that sort of status doesn't mean you are not a skilled worker, so we certainly see refugees through our work. They face many more barriers, though, especially if they have been victims of trauma, and integrating their whole family into Canadian society, including getting them a job, can sometimes be even harder, and so we really rely on the settlement agencies that work primarily with refugees to help them get job ready.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Rob and I both sat on this panel, which Kim Allen was on as well. One of the areas we looked at was foreign credential recognition. This was also brought up by previous panel members, this idea that every province is responsible for licensure of their particular profession. Some licensures have become national, pan-Canadian.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's a great question. In Ontario there were 2,000 internationally educated doctors who came to try to get licensure. Oftentimes they find their path. They can get their licence, but the piece they can't get is residency. There are only 200 positions in residency for Ontario doctors, yet we know that Ontario needs more doctors.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely. If we look at the path that immigrants of the last 10 to 20 years have experienced versus that for immigrants from 50 or 100 years ago, we know that immigrants coming from Europe and Australia have had a much easier time than have immigrants coming from our key countries right now, which are India, China, and the Philippines.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. One of our partners, Scotiabank, considers itself to be the most international of banks. It has locations in 55 countries around the world. It is interested in participating in our mentoring partnership primarily, for example, because it wants to give its staff the opportunity to work with people from other cultures.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, Richmond Hill is one of the most diverse areas, and our reach extends out into that York region. It's a pleasure to serve. In the mentoring partnership, we have 20 employer partners. We have RBC, Scotiabank, and Bank of Montreal. We're just adding Sun Life, Manulife, KPMG, and Deloitte.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There was a very interesting question earlier about racism. I think one of the biggest issues is to try to get at what we're now calling hidden bias, or unconscious bias, this idea that we all have biases. In a very interesting study done by a Harvard professor recently, she's come up with a way of measuring bias.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be here before you today. I'm the executive director of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, or TRIEC. As you heard from Kelly earlier today, immigrant employment councils were set up around the country to address the problem of the internationally educated doctor driving a cab.