Parliament’s new legislative agenda is all too silent on one important area of reform for this country’s long term economic success: the settlement and integration of new Canadians into our workforce and society. The reality is, since the Conservatives took office in 2006, very little has been done to improve how new immigrants integrate into our economy, and for how their prospects can achieve true parity with the expectations, skills and talents they have brought to Canada. At a time when immigrants are over-represented in the poverty, unemployment and under-employment rates of this country, it is critical that we abandon political gamesmanship, engage in effective and meaningful dialogue, and get down to work on the substantive policy changes. Language proficiency is the number one barrier to upward economic mobility for newly arriving Canadians. Assisting new Canadians with general and job specific language skills is one of the most effective ways of ensuring equality of opportunity. Yet for some inexplicable reason, the Conservative government has mismanaged this file by lapsing on essential funding. In fact, more than one third of the money allocated in the 2008-2009 fiscal year was not used to provide much needed language training for immigrants. Lack of foreign credential recognition is costing Canada more than $2.6 billion per year in lost productivity alone. A recent announcement for existing overseas programs of accreditation in China, India and Great Britain was a welcome step in the right direction. But we need to go further to recognize foreign credentials. By working with Canadian and overseas educational institutions, provinces and territories and the appropriate regulatory bodies, we can develop bridging courses in target countries where we have opened up offices and allocated resources, so upgrading can begin before new Canadians arrive in Canada. In 2009 the Conservative government promised to deal with the problem of unscrupulous immigration consultants. Yet stories about such abuses continue to surface in the headlines. We saw no action at the federal level to deal with this problem; now provinces like Quebec are taking the initiative to deal with this issue alone. There is also mounting evidence that Canada urgently needs comprehensive refugee reform. While Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has talked about the need to overhaul our refugee system, we have yet to see any changes. Instead, his government’s delays have resulted in a ballooning backlog of 62,000 refugee claims as well as slower processing times and longer wait periods of up to seventeen months for persons claiming refugee status. In the Minister’s own words, that “the system is broken.” If and when a refugee reform package is finally tabled, Liberals will insist that it meets our standards of procedural fairness: it must be reasonable, fast and efficient and it must not undermine the trust placed in the system. Why is this so important? Immigration will represent all of Canada’s net labour growth by 2011 and all net population growth within the next 25 years. Yet new Canadians are over-qualified and underpaid in far greater numbers than native born Canadians. In 2008, if you were a newcomer in your prime earning years with a university degree, you could expect to make on average five dollars less per hour than a Canadian born worker with the same education and qualifications. You would also likely have much less job security than if you were born here. In 2008 the number of newcomers working in temporary positions – 16 percent – was nearly double that of their Canadian-born counterparts. These are significant challenges that we must deal with in a thoughtful and comprehensive way. I recently hosted a roundtable in Ottawa to kick start the public policy debate on the immigrant success gap. And in just a few weeks time, Liberals will also host a wider discussion on these issues – and more – at our Canada 150 Conference in Montreal. Ultimately, if we want to realize the full potential of our country, we must maximize its human resources. Canada can’t achieve that by leaving immigrants behind.
Author: Maurizio Bevilacqua is the Liberal Critic for Citizenship and Immigration and the Member of Parliament for Vaughn.
