Human Resources Committee on Oct. 25th, 2011

[Thomas Tam]

In B.C. through the payment transfer, most of the employment funding comes from federal transfers to the province. But when the province develops its own employment services, it's according to their own policy and direction. For the foreign credential recognition, sometimes this does not match. So HRSDC may have to develop a program geared to the success of the foreign credential recognition process, including mentoring or internship and placement programs.

[Joan Atlin]

I would echo the same. In our experience, it's internships and mentoring, the programs that get people into the workplace. It gets people past that initial risk aversion of employers and the initial concerns of employers that people aren't going to be able to meet their needs. It gets them into the workplace, either in a paid or unpaid internship capacity or through a mentoring relationship that often gets people over the hurdle.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

We'll now move to the second round. Mr. Butt.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to both of you for being here.

During the Thanksgiving week, members had time in their constituencies. I had a town hall meeting in my riding in Mississauga on foreign credentials. I had many people come in and talk about their experiences. One of the interesting things that came up, and it was probably the funniest part of the evening, was a line of mine. I said that we have the e-harmonies of the world, that it's easier to get a couple together over a website than it is to get an employer and employee matched through a website system. A foreign-credentialed individual who may need some upgrades to qualify for work in Canada and an employer who is looking for people with at least 75% or 80% of the necessary skills can have a lot of trouble hooking up.

Could you share a little more about that? It sounds like both of your organizations have done a little of that kind of thing, whether you want to call it e-harmony for employment or whatever. It sounds like you've had some success doing that. From the federal government's perspective, is there any role we can play through CIC or HRSDC to support foreign credential recognition beyond what we're already doing? It sounds like you're having a lot of success on the ground in getting this done. If we can make it more national in scope, it could help a lot more people across the country. Would you share some of your experiences on that?

[Thomas Tam]

First of all, I would like to express my appreciation for the pan-Canadian FCR framework. This was a very good start a couple of years ago, and we see a lot of progress in terms of the increased motivation from the sector councils, with more efforts being paid by the regulatory bodies. We are aware of those changes from other stakeholders.

In terms of HRSDC's role, we are now working with HRSDC Ottawa on a proposed loan program for a foreign credential recognition process. I think this is a unique role. The federal government can work with organizations to enhance our capacity to provide financial support to those people who want to go through all those processes, which are sometimes very costly. This is one thing.

The other thing is to develop some more long-term and very targeted programs. Again, in each of the provinces sometimes the programs are very piecemeal and sometimes it's not 100% targeting foreign credential recognition. So I would like to see HRSDC develop more long-term and systematic services or supports to us in terms of mentorship, case management, and also internship.

That's what I lay out here today.

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

Ms. Atlin.

[Joan Atlin]

To the point you made, I think the employer engagement points I spoke to--the idea that we need to be investing in the same way that we invest in a suite of services for immigrants, to help them settle and help them get employed, the kinds of services that Thomas's organization delivers.... We need to support a suite of services for employers that goes from awareness with employers—I don't know if any of you remember, those of you from Ontario, but there was an advertisement campaign that TRIEC ran a couple of years ago, where you would see a skilled immigrant going into a workplace and what the reaction was—through to employer engagement programs. Most employment services have employment counsellors, and they have job developers who are going out knocking on the doors of employers. But part of what we're trying to do is create a much more coherent system, because employers get their doors knocked on by hundreds of people, and it sometimes has the opposite impact that we want. And I think there is a role for the federal government to look at an employer engagement strategy.

We've had some very successful experiences with job matching, but not through websites. People get lost on Monster.ca and all of the other hundreds of websites that are out there. But in the IT field, for instance, we did a project last year where we worked with a number of IT employers in the GTA, and AMEX was one of them. You would think that AMEX, with the capacity that they have, could find the people they need, but they can't. They have IT shortages. We were able to work with their front-line hiring managers to create screening and recruitment events very specific to their needs. We were working with all of the employment services in Toronto to bring the right candidates to them and make those matches directly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you.

Thank you for that e-matching suggestion there, Mr. Butt.

We will go to Ms. Boutin-Sweet.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

I am sorry I am late, Mr. Chair. I am afraid that we were stuck in an elevator in the Promenade building for half an hour.

I would also like to share my question time with my colleague.

Although I was late, I heard you talk a little about mentoring, and it intrigued me. Could you tell me a bit more about it? Previously, I was part of a mentoring program, but it is certainly not the same kind of mentoring.

Who is responsible for the mentoring? Who is eligible for it? Are those eligible people paid, and, if so, for how long? What are the specific benefits of the mentoring for those who take part?

[Joan Atlin]

The mentoring program that TRIEC runs is a structured program for skilled immigrants who haven't yet had significant work experience in their field in Canada. The mentees are recruited by employment services organizations funded by Ontario's employment services program.

The unique thing about the mentoring partnership is that there were a number of small mentoring programs around Toronto that a number of different organizations were running. We brought all of those programs together so that we could go to large employers and recruit qualified mentors directly in the workplace from among their workforces.

For instance, TD, in financial services, have recruited over 800 mentors for us over the last five years--Deloitte, RBC, AMEX, CGI...-- across those services, so we've now, as I said, matched over 6,000 skilled immigrants. It's a mentoring relationship that provides 24 hours of professional mentoring over a four-month period. It's not a work experience program, and yet even with that intervention, our outcome statistics show that it's leading to a 70% success rate of people getting employed directly in their field, or related field, within six months of completing that mentoring relationship.

A large part of the need for this is that people lose their professional networks when they come to Canada. We all know that a large part of a successful job search is knowing who to talk to, having those networks, and knowing where the opportunities are. A big part of the success of those mentoring relationships is helping people to rebuild a professional network here.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

If I understand correctly, it's mostly about networking, correct?

[Joan Atlin]

It's networking. It's having a professional in their field look at their résumé, coaching them through interviews, helping them know the right websites to look for in a particular field, where the right places are, which companies in their field are growing, who are the right people to talk to, and getting exposed to the Canadian workplace. Often the mentors do mentoring in their workplace, so people get a chance to be exposed to the environment.

[Thomas Tam]

We had a similar experience in B.C. Recently we also targeted some major employers. We worked with the City of Vancouver, which is a big employer. They identify staff from four different departments—the finance department, the engineering department, and two other departments—to provide mentors for new immigrants. Sometimes we focus on certain professions, and recently we have been looking for the cooperation of major employers. We also challenge the provincial and federal government departments to provide mentors for new immigrants, because both governments are huge employers. Again, we would like to have more employer participation in providing mentoring and placement opportunities.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you.

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

Madam, a little earlier, you said that employers were not getting involved. Why?

Then you said that you were having more and more difficulty recruiting mentors. Why?

[Joan Atlin]

I said mentoring is difficult to get, but our model has actually been very successful in getting mentors because we pooled all of those small mentoring programs in Toronto, and TRIEC, as an organization, is quite well leveraged with large employers. In our case as well, the City of Toronto, for instance, is one of our employer partners in the mentoring partnership program and they've provided hundreds of mentors to the program in all different departments, in the same way that the City of Vancouver has.

Part of the benefit of scaling up a program like this is that it gives you the leverage to go to large employers, to really structure the program to make it easy for them to participate and provide the orientation for their mentors, provide the structure and support they need to be effective mentors. Through that, we've been able to recruit thousands of mentors in the GTA.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you, Mr. Patry. Your time is up.

We'll move to Mr. Daniel.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

I think you've hit the nail on the head with regard to the mentoring program helping to get people into the workplace. Clearly, it's a situation where people need to get some work experience to get into the workplace.

One of the things I've been working on is assisting people to do volunteer work for some of the charitable organizations. Usually I don't hear from them because they've been there a month or two and they've then been recruited because their skills are known and they've got some experience.

Have you actually worked with any of the charities or charitable organizations to be able to place people with them to get some experience?

[Thomas Tam]

Definitely. Volunteer development is part of our core services of SUCCESS. Very often people have to get a survival job for their own living, so many immigrants may not be able to afford to spend too many hours as volunteers. But it is always the case that for the first couple of months they start to do some volunteer work, but very soon they have to get into some sort of survival job. The merit of the mentoring program is that they can use flexible hours and different formats to connect and to build up their social capital.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

I was thinking that just by getting some work experience with some of the charitable organizations, they can now say they've got some Canadian experience. That then helps them step into another position that may be....

Do you have any comments?

[Joan Atlin]

There are a number of volunteer placement programs. As Mr. Tam said, there are challenges with that, in terms of whether people can get enough work experience that way. A paid internship is obviously more effective if you're trying to support a family. But there are a number of programs to help people get volunteer experience, references, and Canadian employers on their résumés.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

As time goes on, do you see that the types of immigrants coming in are changing, from the profession point of view? I know that back in the eighties and nineties a lot of engineering folks were coming in. There are probably fewer medical people coming in, given the fact that it's so difficult to break into the medical profession. What are you finding, in terms of trends or anything else like that, as far as who is coming in?

[Thomas Tam]

I am also involved on the immigration side. We see now that more and more people are coming in through the provincial nomination program. If they come through the PNP, that means they already have employers. Each province identifies their own job requirements or labour market needs. So in the long run it's not a national trend of occupations or professions among the newcomers; it's province by province. If you look at the figures, the number of PNPs is getting higher and higher. In reverse, the federal number will be less and less.

[Joan Atlin]

In Ontario we have a provincial nominee program, but the number is very small--it's in the hundreds. In Ontario most immigrants are not coming through a provincial nominee program. Nationally, something around 17% of all immigrants are actually the principal applicants selected under the point system. Then there are all of the other immigrant classes and the dependants of those people.

[Joe Daniel, Conservative, Don Valley East, ON]

Are there any specific obstacles that you feel you need to overcome to improve the process of matching these immigrants with potential jobs, and so on?