Newcomers need more support to succeed in the Canadian job market

Talent shortages are causing more Canadian businesses to look at newcomers as a badly needed source of labour – but some say the strategy may replicate past problems with funneling high-skilled migrants into lower-skilled jobs if key changes aren’t made.

“Right now, about half of newcomers to Canada are economic migrants,” says Pedro Barata, executive director of Future Skills Centre, a skills innovation and policy think tank launched by Blueprint, Toronto Metropolitan University and The Conference Board of Canada. “The target is 60 per cent by 2025.”

To help meet its goals – 465,000 new permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025 – the federal government redesigned Express Entry program. Launched in May, the program is designed to bring in workers with specific types of experience.

Over the summer, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) invited applicants with experience in skilled trades, health care, manufacturing and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). More recently, IRCC opened invitations to people with experience in the transportation, agriculture and agri-food industries.

By mid-October, IRCC had issued nearly 90,000 invitations to apply for Express Entry permanent residency in 2023 – almost double the 45,115 candidates invited in 2022.

It’s Canada’s most direct, strategic response yet to aligning labour market needs with economic migration, says Mr. Barata, adding that it’s a promising divergence from Canada’s historically “elite approach” to economic migration requiring university education, language skills and other conditions. Still, he wonders if it’s doing enough.

Source: THE GLOBE AND MAIL

72 total views, 1 today