Citizenship and Immigration committee  Elizabeth mentioned the need for income support. I think that's a part that is often missed. Most of the people we're trying to attract already work maybe one or two jobs. They can't afford to go back to school to be retrained because they can't afford not to work. Without an inc

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Maybe I could start. It's correct in terms of the jurisdictional issue. I think one of the points I made was the success—at least I think it's a success—the federal government has had in encouraging the different provincially licensed bodies to come together with mutual recognit

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We would evaluate any academic document that's presented to us. We do evaluate documents that are engineering degrees or pharmacy degrees. These may not be presented to the licensing bodies, because the bodies have their own processes. Many engineers, for example, can work as eng

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Which specific qualifications?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I suppose there are a number of different ways I could answer that question. When considering the qualifications of people who come here to work and want to present their qualifications, many of the employers have never heard of the institution the person has come from, so

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What we're doing is looking at their formal qualifications, which are often seen as a proxy for skills. But there isn't a formal or consistent process for recognizing and comparing the competencies people bring with them to the competencies expected in the Canadian workplace. Tha

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We don't do that kind of assessment. What we would encourage employers to do is to hire somebody and keep them on probation; that's an assessment of their competencies, like anybody else's.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We would have said maybe five years ago that the biggest problem that immigrants faced in having their credentials assessed was lack of information. I think since that time there has been more information put on federal, provincial, municipal, and organizational websites than we

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. My name is Timothy Owen. I'm the director of World Education Services, which is involved in credential evaluation work in the province of Ontario and across Canada. I'll mention a few words about it a bit later on. I wanted to s