OECD applauds Canada’s labour migration policy

Toronto, August 13, 2019—The Honourable Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, issued the following statement:

“We know that immigration spurs economic growth, helps address the challenges, in particular labour shortages, our country faces with an ageing population, and plays a crucial role in attracting highly-skilled talent to keep our country at the forefront of the global economy.

Canada is a proud member of the OECD and our Government welcomes the OECD’s latest report, Recruiting Immigrant Workers: Canada.

I am honoured that the OECD identifies Canada as a role model for successful migration management and as a benchmark for other countries. The report also highlights some of the keys to our success, most notably our holistic approach to attraction, selection, retention, and settlement and integration, as well as our commitment to continual testing and monitoring.

Over the course of the last four years, we have made much progress in attracting the immigrant workers to fill the jobs of today and tomorrow. Through new programs such as the Atlantic Immigration Pilot and the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot and most recently our Agri-food Immigration Pilot, we have been able to attract people from around the world to fill jobs to support our Canadian way of life.

Since 2017, our Global Skills Strategy has attracted more than 40,000 highly skilled individuals to fill critical positions, helping 1,100 Canadian companies grow and create 60,000 new jobs in the process. In addition, we have cut the wait times from 7 months to as little as 10 days, so that employers can meet their needs faster to keep their businesses moving.

We also made changes to Express Entry so that international students with Canadian education and highly skilled individuals with family already in Canada are scored higher on their application to enter Canada.

Immigration is a central pillar of this country’s future economic success and our Government will continue to support immigration policies and programs that enhance the economic, social and demographic vitality of communities across Canada.”