Human Resources Committee on Oct. 6th, 2011

[Natasha Pateman]

Absolutely. Thank you.

Yes, as I said, the Canadian immigration integration project has now been launched in four countries. It actually also covers 25 other countries through satellite and itinerant services, so that's quite a bit. Through that it covers about 75% of the federal skilled worker program and about 44% of provincial nominees. So that's quite a chunk of skilled immigrants and their families who are getting this information.

As I said, they go to an orientation session about what it's like to live and work in Canada. But we also provide more details. We bring in partners like Royal Bank and CIBC, who talk about what it means to work in the financial industry in Canada. And people, as I said, will get one-on-one counselling services and will find out that it's not easy, that they do have to go through a lot of steps, that they have to be proactive and that they do have to network. They're taught about resumés and doing interviews, and about how bridge-to-work programs could help. And then, as I mentioned, they are linked in Canada to a service where they can find out more information about some of those programs, such as bridging-to-work and getting the Canadian experience as soon as they land.

There was an evaluation done of the project when I was at HRSDC and we found that it was quite successful—which is why we made it a program. We found that people who find work within the first year have much better long-term economic outcomes. We found that 93% found work within the first year, which is very high, and a great portion of those also found work within their field—again, because they were prepared.

The immigrants themselves, when they were interviewed, said that it was an absolutely essential service. They said they felt very well prepared, that they knew the steps, they knew it was going to be tough, and actually knew what was coming. So their expectations were tempered, which was great. We also found through surveys that Canada's reputation as a place to actually come to was much improved through this program.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

The last area I'll ask about is that while they may have professional competencies, their ability to communicate effectively in either English or French is seen to be a major stumbling block to their being able even to take additional training in Canada to get to a level that would allow them to practice in their profession, and is not strong enough for them to actually work in those professions, in which communication is crucial. If you're working in a medical profession and can't communicate effectively with the people you're working with, it's clearly going to be a problem.

Are we doing some vetting or providing some help around language training so that we're making sure they have don't just have professional competency but are also able to properly and effectively communicate in English or French, depending on where they are, what their profession is, and where they plan to work?

[Brendan Walsh, Director, Foreign Qualification Recognition, Foreign Credentials Referral Office, Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada]

We're trying to address that issue from both ends, in the selection criteria that we set for immigrants and in providing language training supports for immigrants once they're here.

One of the changes CIC has recently introduced is that we're now requiring immigration applicants to have their language assessed before they arrive in Canada. We're taking the results of that language training into account in the points grid that determines their overall eligibility to immigrate to Canada. That's one of the changes we've introduced.

We still provide a substantial amount of post-arrival language training to immigrants. This can often be supplemented by the specific training they get within the profession for communicating and working in their profession.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you. Your time is up.

We'll move to Mr. Patry.

[Claude Patry, NDP, Jonquière—Alma, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have one question to ask, and I will be sharing my time with my colleague.

I am from Quebec, from the Saguenay— Lac-Saint-Jean region. When I was elected on May 2^nd I was approached by businessmen in my riding who said they would like to see a certain flexibility with regard to immigration to our region.

The reason for that is that we have a high unemployment rate. Moreover, we have a lot of dropouts and young people who haven't finished high school. People are retiring and the population is aging.

We heard a lot about physicians, dentists and nurses, but let's talk about trades first. There are plumbers, welders, steel erectors and boiler operators.

Is something being done on your side to speed this up? Because there is going to be a shortage in our area, and these are good trades.

[Jean-François LaRue]

Absolutely.

I don't often have the opportunity to answer questions in French. And so I may have to use certain acronyms in English. I am asking you to be patient with me.

The pan-Canadian framework has a very specific section. If you look at the framework you will see a list of priority occupations. We were asked to work with directors who work with people in these trades groups. In English, this is the Canadian Council of Directors of Apprenticeship, the CCDA, who work with tradespeople. Essentially, we are going to try to identify occupations which... Naturally if we can extend the mandate beyond 2012—I dare hope that we will do so—we will be discussing including these trades groups. We must absolutely dedicate our efforts to that. Because we can see very clearly, on the list of professions, that there will be labour shortages, we see that the trades are one sector where we are going to have to focus our efforts. The framework recognizes this explicitly and we have several projects at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada wherein people work directly with some of these trades groups.

These may not be exactly trades groups as you define them, but we have a sector council in the area of tourism, for instance. Naturally, I am talking about people who are chefs, cooks, servers. These are professions that may not be regulated necessarily in a very specific way but they are clearly trades where there will be needs in the future.

We shared your concerns, quite specifically.

[Claude Patry, NDP, Jonquière—Alma, QC]

If I understood your reply correctly, for the moment, nothing is being done for the trades.

[Jean-François LaRue]

No. We have a series of projects wherein we are working with trades such as the trades in the tourism sector, as I just explained. There are others. I know that the sector councils have done some work involving the construction trades. In the telecommunications sector also, welders and various other trades are needed.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you for being here with us, and congratulations on these essential services that you offer.

The purpose of my question is not to find the gaps in the services that you offer, but to perhaps find ways to improve those services.

My question is addressed to Ms. Pateman. The Canadian Immigration Integration Program delivers services in various places and also offers satellite services in some others. Would it be a good idea to have services in other countries, or in other regions that do not currently benefit from CIIP services?

[Natasha Pateman]

We have already expanded the program from the initial pilot, and when we do the evaluation of the program in 2012 we want to see whether there could be further expansions. As I mentioned, right now we're hitting about 75% of all federal skilled workers. That is quite a high percentage.

But we certainly want to see whether there are other specific groups we could expand it to, and whether there are other countries as well. But we are looking forward to having a formal evaluation of the program done to see what the results are before making any further decisions.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

You say that you can offer services to 75% of applicants, skilled workers, at the federal level. What is happening with regard to the remaining 25%? Can you not at this time provide services to all those who request them?

[Natasha Pateman]

Currently we don't do that. However, they can still access our website and other services. Some people travel to access them.

Right now, we have expanded as much as we can with the resources we have, but we're certainly looking at other ways by which we could provide services electronically to that other 25%. They can go online and fill out the workbook and call people to ask for additional help and additional services, but for the other 25% it has to be done on a virtual scale right now.

[Jean-François LaRue]

If I may, I would like to add some information. We offer the Working in Canada website. Recently, I took part in an expedition to China where we observed consultation sessions with candidates. This is a tool that is used a great deal and was developed by the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development. On this site we provide information among other things on the various local labour markets, job opportunities, salaries, and the vacancy rates for the various occupations. You can even find information on the regulations that govern certain occupations, regulations brought in by the governments in the various places where the candidates want to go. In this way, we give them as many tools as possible when they come here.

Just to give you an idea of our success rate in reaching our targets, I would say that last year, there were 3 million visits to the Working in Canada website. The site not only offers information people can read, it is also an interactive site where people can ask for information. The site can produce over 40,000 distinct, individual reports. Out of the 3 million hits, there were 2 million requests for reports, and these were delivered. For the past three years, the number of visits to the site has been increasing exponentially. This is another way for us to reach immigrants overseas and provide them with information even before they arrive here.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Once again, I want to acknowledge that these programs are very rich and they provide people with assistance that is certainly precious. That is why I wonder if you have come up with ways of doing things that might increase even more the percentage of people who could benefit from these Internet services or are aware of them. These are good services. How can we offer them to a greater number of people? Do you have any ideas to broaden their reach?

[Natasha Pateman]

It is a good question. As I said, as part of the evaluation we'll be looking at source countries and where most of the applicants are coming from. As we've said, we certainly have some different initiatives under way, such as via Google and ads and things such as those, whereby we can promote our website and our services. We are also working with our missions overseas so that, when people come in to apply or mail in their application, our program is promoted as well. So they can access it electronically.

We are trying to see what the best countries are in terms of the most applicants, including the 75% of the foreign skilled worker applicants and their spouses and working-age adults. So we are getting quite a few people that way, as well as the provincial nominees and their spouses and working-age adults.

So it is that amount of the principal applicants, as well as family members. So we are covering quite a bit, but we are looking at other electronic means to expand the program and, possibly, to other countries. But we will wait for the evaluation for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Your time is up.

We'll move now to Mr. McColeman. You may or may not be sharing your time. We'll see.

Go ahead.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

I'm interested in one of the comments that was made in regard to targeting countries. I think it was Mr. Wells who made the comment that you're targeting countries as well. Can you explain a little bit more about that, how you're targeting them and how you're determining that?

[Jonathan Wells]

It's not necessarily that we're targeting countries writ large. I think the idea is that certain professions will target countries, and I give the example of certified general accountants. Our project with the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada is investigating those countries that have education and licensing systems that are substantially equivalent to Canada's and that might be candidates for having a mutual recognition or reciprocity agreement.

It's really profession by profession; it's not Canada vis-à-vis another country writ large. The individual profession will take a look at its licensing and the standards for licensure and examine whether there's an equivalency with the standards of licensure in another jurisdiction. If those conditions are right, it could permit a full mutual recognition agreement whereby individuals can become licensed just by passing particular customized tax codes, or something like that, in the Canadian context, or where they can achieve advanced standing within the Canadian licensing and assessment process by virtue of the education or licensure they have in that country. So it's very much profession by profession, and we've investigated that issue with each of the priority occupations and are pursuing it with some of them.

[Jean-François LaRue]

If I can add to this, it's always about the state of readiness for that occupation and the direction it wishes to go.

This is a really important point, that what we have is a facilitative role. We do not impose. We where we come in is that we diagnose, we examine, we discuss, and we try to ascertain what is the best direction for an occupation, in collaboration with them. If the occupation says that according to its diagnostic, it needs to know a little bit more about this and that, that's how we facilitate the examination through the funding we have available.

In listening to your question, you seemed to be asking whether we were targeting one country versus another. No, we're not. In fact it's the regulator who tell us where it thinks we should go according to priorities. And this is also done in collaboration with the provincial governments.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

If you interpreted my question that way, I just think it's common sense to target countries and to target where the commonality is, which will make it easier for people to come to this country and work in their chosen profession.

I'm wondering is Ms. Pateman might comment on this as well, in terms of CIC's work. Are you undertaking any special initiatives or outreach efforts to particular countries around the world? You've mentioned that you're doing this up-front work. Are there particular countries that take priority because they are more aligned with us, perhaps in being English-speaking, et cetera?

I'll give you a specific example. I was in Ireland this summer, where there are a lot of highly talented engineers. Due to their economic situation and the situation that country is going through, their questions were specific: How do I make an application to Canada?

This almost moves into a recruitment mode in some ways. Is that happening at Immigration?

[Brendan Walsh]

The process at Immigration is that we don't target specific countries; we allow any immigrant who wants to come to Canada to come here. So the source countries for immigration tend to vary over the years. Right now, we see most of the applicants for immigration coming from countries like China, India, the Philippines, et cetera.

So when it comes to our work with the professions, as Jean-François said, we are trying to encourage the professions. If we know that many nurses, let's say, are coming to Canada from the Philippines, it may make sense for the regulatory bodies in Canada to study the Philippine nursing system in more detail so they can better understand how the training there relates to Canadian standards, possibly resulting in something like a mutual recognition agreement or some other form of partial agreement, so that the applicant doesn't have to go through each of the steps individually.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Let me give you another example, or come at it from a different angle. I lost my family doctor because he was recruited in Canada to go to another country. He was recruited here by them. They made an attractive offer to him to emigrate to another country, which he did.

What I'm suggesting here, and I'd like anyone on the panel to tackle this, is that if Canada needs certain professionals, be they bricklayers, talented masons, engineers, or whomever, would it not make sense for us to be proactive? I see this nice partnership working together to try to identify this, but unless you're upfront and you're out there actually targeting more aggressively.... Is that not part of the strategy you should be working towards?

[Jean-François LaRue]

I would agree with you that being competitive is extremely important. There are different ways of being competitive. One way is what you described and, certainly, I think many occupations are probably working with that kind of mindset.

For our part, a lot of the work we do at HRSDC is done on the basis of our being a fundamental pillar making sure that we have a country that is attractive for immigrants. How do we do that? We do two things. First, we're trying to streamline the foreign credential recognition process. And, second, once the immigrants are in the country, we want to make sure they can seize the opportunities wherever they are. That's the richness of our country.

Whether they come in through Ontario, Quebec, B.C., we say to them that they have full labour mobility if their skills are recognized in any given province. When you have a frame like this around the country, you're building a stronger, more vibrant economic union. What you offer to them are the opportunities they're seeking.

Obviously, this is not exactly a strategy of targeting countries, the way you're describing it, but what we try to do is to put the winning conditions there for these people to thrive in this country.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Can I just ask one last question, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Very briefly.