Human Resources Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2011

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

One of the questions asked of our witnesses on Tuesday was similar to what you said about ensuring that people coming to this country have knowledge of the expectations. Coming from a provincial jurisdiction, are you doing that? Or are you leaving it to Immigration to give people information about what the expectations are, or even doing some testing in their countries, like the model they have in Australia.

Go ahead, Mrs. Munoz.

[Ximena Munoz]

In Manitoba, the government reorganized things a few years ago, so all of those areas are actually within one department, which has been very helpful. From pre-immigration information to support when people get here to gap training programs to all of the supports for the regulators, it's all done within the same department. It allows for a very dynamic, coherent, and more effective service.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, and thank you for that time.

We will move now to Mr. Cuzner. Of course, you can't necessarily share your time, but you can quit early if you like. You have seven minutes.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thanks very much.

Listen, I wouldn't dare take on the duties of the analysts here, because they do such a great job, but I think we can sum up what we've learned to date. If we can get people to get involved in the process before they get to the country, that's a benefit. If we can get a true assessment as to what their skill levels are, what their language skills are, that's of benefit. If we can get them access to language training, especially in their particular discipline, that's of benefit. Mentorship is a benefit. Bridging is a benefit. Internship is a benefit.

So we see the path to success, but from witness after witness we continually hear about the frustration. I am working on a file, and everybody around the table probably has similar experiences, as Mr. Butt indicated. I have 500 feet of water frontage on Gabarus Lake, and I have three provincial departments and two federal departments and nobody wants to own it. If we could figure out who owns it, then we can go about straightening out or addressing the problem.

I can't imagine someone coming in from Manila and trying to navigate these waters. It is certainly quite a chore and a task. We know from the vast majority of people who come before a parliamentary committee, when the ask goes out, the answer is usually more money. Whether you are talking health care, transportation, security, or science, it's always more money. Let's take the money out of it and find the way through here.

No, let's throw the money back in. If the federal government were able to say, “Okay, we're going to give you guys this, if your association can get its stuff together and can pull these two or three things in line”, what makes it easier to get through the system? If you're looking for money from the federal government, what are the two things you guys can do? I like the idea of the success story of bringing 23 regulators together and coming up with some kind of cohesive assessment tool. That's what we want to find out.

So what are the two or three things you can do to make it easier on everybody, so we can understand the system more thoroughly and advance through the system more readily?

Take it away, girls.

[Suzanne Gordon]

More money helps, but I would advise the federal government to be very clear about the outcomes that you want. If you want tools for assessment in the regulatory bodies, then I'd be specific that you want all of them to participate and you want them to agree on one tool and implement it. If you're not specific, you will get 23 bodies together and they will have 23 different tools.

I would say, on the money part again, that one of the reasons bridge training programs exist.... And in our programs in Ontario, mentorship and internship can be part of that program, that whole continuum of service. They exist because short-term, flexible, intensive training of adults is not what post-secondary education was designed to do. That's why some of the programs aren't eligible for the loans either. So you could have an adaptation of the part-time Canada student loan to make it apply to short-term, intensive, flexible, adult, work-oriented training. And you might help more than just internationally trained individuals: you might help some other people who are facing career shifts.

I thought the idea of a graduated internship was interesting, and the challenge that poses is language. The message to our skilled newcomers has to be that language and communication are so fundamental. So let's encourage people to take the language courses, and let's come up with some innovations for a slightly lower level language qualification like level 5 and 6, and bring those together with our employment services and some work orientation and with meeting employers. That might lead to your graduated internship, which could be an initiative that you could encourage and which could provide other opportunities for the alternative careers we talked about for those who need that option. That's really what we're talking about—language.

The federal government could fund the tools overseas to do a little web test: where is my language if I want to be a nurse? The language might be fine for meeting your neighbours, but it might not be fine in the operating room. So that specialized language and assessment overseas is an information component that I think will be very helpful and might be a role for the federal government to take.

[Ximena Munoz]

For me, the issue is determining what we need to know from these people to be able to feel comfortable that they have the competencies we require to do the job.

I think we're spending a lot of time asking for things that may not be necessary. When I meet with immigrants, they want to show me what they can do. They want to show you what they know. I asked a group of immigrants what they would do if they were the fairness commissioner. Every single group I met with said that they would create a way for someone to show people what they could do. Immigrants say, “Can you look at what I have and tell me what I don't have? I have to meet 10 things and maybe I have only eight. Tell me what I don't have, and tell me what to do to get it”.

Right now we spend a lot of time on things such as good character, including on criminal records checks, for example. Everybody who goes through immigration has to go through a criminal record check. If people are here as landed immigrants, they have already done that, yet many regulators ask people to do that—not in Canada but back in their home country. That costs some people $800 and takes about eight months. So if you are a nurse and you do that, it takes you eight months of time that you have to be recognized.

Then you write the English exam and you meet the requirement, but guess what? The English exam is valid for only two years, and if the results are already two years old, you go back. By then you have all the other papers they have asked you for and now they say, “Sorry, that exam is already two years old. You have to go back and take that test again”.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you. Your time is well up.

I trust you did place all your recommendations before the committee. Have you completed all the recommendations you wanted us to hear? There is nothing left. Do you have any others?

[Ximena Munoz]

No. I guess I just wanted to go back to the basics and to help, which is what we're trying to do in Manitoba. I work with 31 regulators. I meet with them on a regular basis. We're doing a lot of work.

The challenge is really determining what you need to know in order to feel that these people are competent. I think that's the problem. There are systems that have been in place for a long time. They don't even know why they are asking for certain things.

As I said, when I came in, that was what was being done, so I'm doing it now.

We could strip a lot out of it. The pan-Canadian framework put in a timeline of a year, but it's a year from the time you present the completed application. It takes people three years to get all the documents needed for a completed application.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

I appreciate some of the difficulties we experience.

Thank you, in any event, for your informative presentation.

The meeting is adjourned.