Human Resources Committee on May 26th, 2009

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

First of all, I want to say thank you for coming today.

A lot of what we've discussed isn't new to many of us, and I think it's a matter of getting on, or pulling together, and doing the job here.

I just wanted to ask a couple of things. I think, Mr. Cappon, you've mentioned this with respect to recent immigrants, and the others have as well. I know that recognition of credentials has been an issue. I'm just looking at some data here showing that 51% of recent immigrants—or those who immigrated to Canada in 2001—have earning levels so much lower than Canadians with the same education. But when I look at immigrants, even those who have had their credentials recognized are still having a horrible time finding work in their fields, or being recognized and paid decent wages. Have any of you done the studies on that?

I think I know the reasons, the issues, but maybe you can give us some additional information as to why that still persists, because it's not just the recognition of credentials that's a problem here; it's a lot more. There are many other barriers.

[Terry Anne Boyles]

Perhaps I can start, Paul.

The report that I'll be forwarding to the committee from the association is a report that we did similar to the one you have in your kit. It's on programs and services for immigrants, and in it we identify a number of the other challenges. We also speak to some of the programs that are being done by colleges and their community-based partners—again that wraparound community approach—to transition people into employment, into the workforce, as well as work being done on the barriers with national-level companies, such as the Royal Bank, which was one of our partners.

Part of it is still a question of understanding. On the issue of accents, we don't talk about accents in whichever of Canada's two official languages we're talking, but they are frequently a barrier for immigrants coming into the country.

The foreign credential recognition is a very minor part of the challenges for most positions. About 15% of the workforce need credentials in order to be accredited to work in particular fields. The challenges are much greater in some of the other areas for integration into the workforce.

We do also the information-sharing workshops within the association for member institutions, and then the member institutions work with their communities--for example, in the work of the Maytree Foundation, which you may know, and the TRIEC example in Toronto, which brings together all the community partners in industry. It is making a substantial difference. They're now working with 16 other communities across the country, and we have our colleges linked in each of those communities to address these issues in particular.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

One of the things I've suggested, because of this problem, is to have what I call a bridge to employment. Do you think we need to go that far? In other words, in order to break down the barriers between the immigrant worker and the employer, who has preconceived notions of who they are, how they talk, or how they behave, and what have you, the idea is to have what I would call a bridge to employment meeting, whereby we would subsidize part of the salary, possibly, of the immigrant for a short while to break down the barrier to having the employer at least take them on for a period of time.

Is that something you would recommend?

[Terry Anne Boyles]

It's definitely something we recommend. We find those programs very effective. Once you've broken down a barrier in one company or business, often because of the cross-sectoral work, the effectiveness of those approaches also transports over to other companies in other sectors.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I want to say to the Canadian Teachers' Federation that the data you've provided in your pages 5 and 6 on the level of education with respect to immigrants and also the Inuit and the Métis and so on is extremely valuable. It reinforces for me and I think for all of us that education is a ticket to a good job—or it opens the doors, in any case, to potentially going in other directions. When I look at these numbers, it is absolutely pathetic that we are allowing whole sections of our society in this country to go without proper education and access.

Have any of you developed or looked at an educational strategy for this? We're talking about poverty. Educational strategy is part of that. Has anyone actually done an integrative, inclusive educational strategy for the country, or looked at it? You have the data, but have there been any discussions on solutions?

[Emily Noble]

No, on our part there haven't been, but I'm going to put in a plug for the CCL to have a significant extending of their funding, because the research CCL does—this is something that basically, Dr. Cappon, you folks could coordinate—is very helpful to CTF; it's what I would call hands-on, practical research.

I just want to make a comment about the teaching of immigrants. A tremendous amount of work still needs to be done, but one of things that I think a lot of the boards of education are trying to do is say we need to have teachers who reflect the faces of the kids in the classroom. That hasn't always been the case; in fact, it's still very much a case of a white teacher and then quite a diversity of students. The boards, I think, are moving, and there's policy moving. There's a long way to go, but it's one of the things we need to move further on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Paul, do you want to finish with a last comment?

[Dr. Paul Cappon]

Just very quickly, let me say with respect to the issue of job attachment for immigrants that obviously language is the main problem. A year and a half ago, we did what we call a market segmentation study of people in Canada: adults below the international level of literacy that's required for a knowledge society. One of the big groups within that market segmentation study is immigrants. It turns out that they need different kinds of approaches to help them get to the level of literacy that's required. They may come to the country with credentials, but they may not have the language skills in English or French that are required.

We think that a lot of effort has to go on that is specific to those groups and their needs. The literacy needs of somebody from North Bay who's Canadian-born and who is below the line are very different from the needs of somebody from Bangladesh in a different generation. We need to be conscious of that when we provide programs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today. I'm sorry that we took you a little bit over time.

Thank you very much.

With that, I adjourn the meeting.