ARCHIVED – Speaking notes for The Honourable Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P. Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism

At the Annual Conference of the Canadian Network of National Association of Regulators

Ottawa, Ontario
November 8, 2012

As delivered

Good afternoon, everyone.

Especially to those of you who’ve travelled far and wide to join us here in Ottawa.

We thank your association for having considered the important issue of recognizing the foreign credentials of new Canadians. This is something that I am obviously very concerned about and it is a priority for my department and for our government.

You may have noticed, if you read the newspapers and follow these things, that we’ve been fairly busy at Citizenship and Immigration Canada in the past couple of years, actually implementing what amounts to an agenda of transformational change in Canada’s immigration system.

Because, for too many years, we’ve seen economic results for newcomers on the decline. We have seen a certain level of poverty, low incomes and economic integration problems among newcomers for far too long.

And here’s the paradox. Canada is this amazingly open and welcoming country. In fact, for the past several years, we have been maintaining the highest sustained levels of immigration in our country’s history and the highest per capita levels in the developed world. I often point out that ours is the only western liberal democracy I can think of that really has no organized political voice of xenophobia or anti-immigrant sentiment and we certainly want to keep it that way. So that’s the positive side of the story.

But, regrettably, the reality for too many newcomers has been one of struggling to succeed. You know, why is it that economic immigrants choose to come to Canada? Well, obviously, it’s to pursue economic opportunity, it’s to realize their potential. It’s with the expectation and hope that they will be able to work at their skill level, realizing their potential and that’s really what everyone is driven to do: it’s to realize their potential.

And yet, I hope you know as well as I do, the stories of so many tens and hundreds of thousands of newcomers who left the high social economic status, often, of their developing countries, only to come to Canada and find themselves locked in the bottom of our labour market, struggling in survival jobs to get by, to put food on the table for their families and losing a sense of hope.

I can’t tell you how many of these new Canadians I have met who have broken down in front of me in tears as they express their frustration, waiting for years to get an answer, a final answer on their application for licensure in their particular profession.

A few months ago, I was in Vancouver and met a physician from Iran who had many years of experience in her country of origin, was highly trained and said, after three or four years waiting in Canada, she was so frustrated that she couldn’t get a clear answer on a pathway towards her licensure that she was going to go back to Iran, so she could at least make an income to pay for her son to go through UBC and hopefully get his medical degree in Canada.

When we talk about this problem, this challenge, I want to remind you it’s not just a theoretical problem. We have to think about this beyond just the normal kind of narrow confines of the bureaucratic regulatory process. We have to think about this, as well, in human and, even, I invite you to think about this perhaps in moral terms. Are we really discharging our moral responsibility as a country, if we invite people here with this expectation and promise that they will be able to work at their skill level and then they find that they are stuck in the bottom of the labour market, frustrated and often embarrassed and ashamed that they brought their families to face this humiliation in Canada?

I think there is a moral imperative on all of us, on all levels of government, on provincial governments that are responsible for training and the oversight of the self-governing regulatory bodies, on the part of those bodies themselves and, yes, on the part of the federal government.

I’m going to describe to you what we are trying to do at our level to radically turn this around, because you know the statistics. The level of unemployment amongst newcomers is twice as high as it is for the general Canadian population.

The unemployment rate for immigrants with university degrees is four times higher than for Canadian-born university graduates. For the last 30 years, there has been a decline in the economic results among immigrants.

You know that, 35 years ago, immigrants on average were earning 90 percent of what the average Canadian earned and that’s now down closer to 60 percent. So we’ve been living a three-decade decline in economic results for newcomers. This is not acceptable. We must all pick up the pace to realize Canada’s special calling as a land of opportunity for newcomers. And we need them.

And here’s another paradox: we are facing large and growing labour shortages in many regions and industries and yet we’re bringing in many newcomers who face chronic unemployment or underemployment. This makes precisely no sense. And that explains why we’ve undertaken transformational change in our immigration system.

The changes we’re making will ensure that newcomers, those we welcome to Canada, are those the best equipped for success. We know, for example, from the data, from the research that those immigrants selected for their human capital, those with pre-arranged offers of employment, those with Canadian education and experience obviously do much better than those without.

Now that’s why we’ve expanded our Canadian Experience Class, a new program that we introduced in 2008. It provides a pathway to permanent residence for international students who have completed their studies in Canada and high-skilled temporary foreign workers who have done at least one year of work in Canada. A one-year benchmark comes in this January.

These people have Canadian work experience and, in many of the cases of the students, degrees and diplomas that will be recognized by Canadian employers. They’ve perfected or radically improved their English or French language proficiency and they are set for success.

In 2013, we’ll welcome a record of up to 10,000 new permanent residents through this program. This is a huge increase from the 2,500 we welcomed when we began the program three years ago.

We’re also making huge improvements to our Federal Skilled Worker Program. Of course, that’s our points system that you know about. We will soon introduce a new points grid beginning in 2013 to emphasize areas that the research and data tell us are essential to an immigrant’s success, including and particularly, their language ability and youth. Younger newcomers do better over their lifetime and, of course, those with higher levels of official language proficiency also do well.

Applicants will also need to provide in their applications under this new points grid an assessment of their foreign education credentials. This means that, before we accept them, applicants would be required to have their educational credentials assessed by an organization designated by my ministry to determine their value in Canada.

And, you know, this is one of those reforms that we’re making when you just look it and you say: ‘why the heck weren’t we doing this a long time ago?’

You know in the current points grid that we’re now transitioning away from, we have been allocating the same level of points for a degree from a Harvard or an Oxford or an Indian Institute of Technology as we have from the dodgiest degree mills. It makes no sense. We have assessed education based on its quantity on paper rather than its quality or relevance to Canada and our labour market. This is, you know, one of the definitions of insanity: to keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome. Well, we kept doing the same thing for 30 years and maybe that helps to explain the decline in economic results for newcomers.

The newcomers who apply would then only be eligible to be processed if their foreign educational credentials are equivalent to Canadian educational credentials.

Because points would be awarded according to how an applicant’s foreign education compares to standards in Canada, we’ll be able to more effectively screen out applications without the necessary educational credentials and those with formal educational credentials that have no equivalency to a Canadian degree, diploma or certificate. I should also add that this will help us in combating fraud because, you won’t be surprised to learn, we get a lot of fraudulent university and college transcripts. This process will help us to verify in a hundred percent of cases their veracity. We’ll also be able to provide better assurance to our officials that these applications are bona fide.

Now, I need to stress, that the process I’m describing is separate from the more in-depth assessments that regulatory bodies will subsequently use to license professionals coming from other countries, of course.

We understand the importance of this licensing and we recognize that, although the educational credential assessments will help us to better ensure the success of skilled immigrants, they will not guarantee automatic employment or licensing in any particular occupation. And so this is not an obligation on licensing bodies – to license people – but it will ensure that, in the future, the pool of new Canadians whose applications you receive as licensing bodies will be of higher quality and more relevant to the Canadian standards which should be helpful to everyone.

In an ideal world, applicants would come to Canada with their qualifications fully assessed and recognized or, at least, well on the way to licensure by provincial or territorial licensing bodies. Our hope is that, over time, more profession-specific bodies could become designated by CIC to better assess educational credentials for regulated professions. This would mean that the same assessment used for immigration application purposes could then also be used towards an immigrant’s licensure. By assessing educational credentials upfront, we’re getting closer to that ideal.

We will therefore be able to provide some reassurance to immigrants before they arrive in Canada, so that they can form realistic expectations. We can therefore ensure that people entering the country have the tools they need to succeed.

So, building on all of the changes to our Skilled Worker Program, the points grid, we’ll also introduce a new application management system. Instead of a slow, rigid, supply-driven immigration system that passively accepts applications, we are moving to a fast, flexible, demand-driven system because our experience, our data, tells us that newcomers with pre-arranged jobs do massively better than those without – it just stands to reason. On average, after the third year in Canada, a skilled worker who arrived with a pre-arranged job is earning twice as much as one who arrives without.

You will see, as a result of our reforms, a growing percentage of economic immigrants who arrive, having been already been selected by an employer. And that employer’s selection decision is a very good indication or substitute for credential and education recognition, because the employer is willing to invest in the person. They’ve done their due diligence and they’re confident that they’ll be able to get their Red Seal certification or quickly obtain their licensure, if they’re in a regulated profession, or be able to get to work at their skill level if they’re in a non-regulated occupation.

The system will allow us to more actively match the best qualified applicants with employers and the jobs that are available, rather than just taking those who are first in line and dropping them into the general labour market to sink or swim, in which case too many are struggling to keep their head above waters in the current system.

So our new system – it will eventually be called the Expression of Interest System for Skilled Workers – would essentially be a pool of applicants who are prequalified.

They’ve done a mandatory third-party assessed language test, which is a relative new feature of our system, if you can believe it. They’ll have done the educational assessment. They will, based on the new points grid, be typically younger with higher levels of language proficiency. And they will be going into this pool of pre-qualified applicants.

We are working with employers, sectors and provinces to figure out how to give employers limited access to that pool of applicants – of course, respecting people’s privacy rights – so that they can identify people who are ready and willing to come to Canada, and who are pre-qualified. They will offer them jobs after they’ve done their due diligence and are satisfied that they can work at their skill level. And then we will bring those people into Canada within a matter of months.

So that’s the system of the future, as opposed to the system of the past, which was someone getting in line whose education may have been completely irrelevant to Canada’s labour market, with perhaps mediocre official language skills, waiting in the queue for eight years to come here without a pre-arranged job and then struggling once they got here.

Under the new system, applicants would submit an expression of interest to immigrate to Canada. They would then be pre-screened, as I’ve said, and enter that pool.

So this is predicated on having a partnership. We need regulatory bodies and stakeholders, such as you, to be actively engaged in this process because, together, we all recognize the importance of immigration to our prosperity. We all value the contribution of immigrants, who add to our international competitiveness and we’re all committed to facilitating the arrival of the best and brightest to our country now and in the future.

Now, as you know, we have also done a great deal of work helping those who are already in Canada through the often byzantine process of credential recognition. A good example of the progress we’re making was the creation of the Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications. Of course, we gave a byzantine name to a byzantine problem.

I know many of you have worked to successfully implement the principles of this framework and, for those occupational-regulated occupations who have worked with us in the context of the framework, I want to thank you. By helping various government and stakeholders make progress together on the recognition of foreign credentials, the framework has been a major improvement. But much more can and should be done.

We can now communicate assessment and recognition decisions faster to applicants. There are now processes in place for eight regulated occupations to let individuals know, within one year, whether their qualifications will be recognized or not. In 2010, this included architects, pharmacists, physiotherapists, registered nurses, engineers, financial auditors and accountants, medical laboratory technologists and occupational therapists. By the end of this year, we expect to add six more regulated occupations to that list. This will include dentists, licensed practical nurses, medical radiation technologists, physicians, engineering technicians and teachers. So it’ll be up to about 15 and we’ll have 25 more to go.

Earlier this year, I also announced with my colleague, Minister Diane Finley, another major step to help improve FCR. We announced the launch of a three-year pilot project that will develop and test innovative projects, to provide financial assistance commonly known as micro-loans to internationally-trained professionals. This could include helping them with the cost of licensing, exams, training and skills upgrading – all of which present significant barriers to credential recognition.

I think you know the problem. Many of those folks I talked about who come here get stuck in survival jobs. They have depleted their savings coming to Canada. They’re working with a minimal income to put food on the table. They are relatively new to Canada and often have difficulty getting credit, but they find out that, to get the licensure, they may need to take some additional courses or they have to pay perhaps thousands of dollars for certification exams. They just don’t have the cash.

And so here’s a good example of how just a little help from a partnership of civil society, non-profit organizations, the financial institutions and the government, can get them that little bit of financing that will pay for additional courses or certification exams.

I met a fellow in Calgary who was an accountant in Dubai. He came to Canada and ended up working at a Mac’s Milk for minimum wage for a couple of years. He found out about this program run by the Alberta Immigrant Access Fund, where philanthropists are backstopping loans and the government is – my ministry – is providing some funding to facilitate all of this. This fellow got the $6,000 loan he needed to take additional courses in Canadian accounting and he managed to get hired by a small gas company. He’s now making $80,000 a year. From Mac’s Milk, to actually realizing his potential. This is the kind of program that has very positive deliverables.

Now, to date, Human Resources Canada has signed agreements with nine organizations across the country to pilot various delivery methods for these micro-loans. CIC is supporting it through a contribution, as I’ve mentioned, to the Immigrant Access Fund of Alberta totalling half a million dollars.

In addition to the more recent initiatives that I just highlighted, I know you’re aware that our government created the Foreign Credentials Referral Office back in 2007 in my ministry with, I think, a $32 million commitment. This office, which is being run by Corinne St-Amand – merci, Corinne, for your great work – is providing information to selected newcomers and prospective economic immigrants on how to begin the process of credential recognition in Canada before they arrive.

I just met with a bunch of these folks in London, England – immigrants from the Middle East and Britain, ready to come to Canada who have benefited from this program, and feel a much greater level of confidence about their integration plan and their potential credential recognition because of the information we’ve given them.

So far, it’s helped over two million internationally-trained individuals through its online tools, information products and in-person services, both in Canada and overseas. It’s invested, I mentioned for example, in the Canadian Immigration Integration Project, which provides free seminars and some personalized counselling to selected immigrants before they get here. That particular program has helped over 19,000 professionals, particularly out of India, China, the Phillippines and Europe and the Middle East, Gulf states.

We’re now offering 80 percent of the economic immigrants to Canada access to these pre-arrival orientation services.

And the FCRO has developed tools to assist both newcomers and employers including — here’s my show-and-tell — both the Planning to Work in Canada module and the Employer’s Roadmap on Hiring and Retaining Internationally-Trained Workers. These products are available at the back.

Of course, I haven’t mentioned that at HRSDC they continue to provide funding to organizations, including many of yours, to help with the challenges of credential recognition. For example, training of foreign-trained physicians to become paramedics, at least so they can keep their medical skills current.

Further to our 2012 Economic Action Plan, both my ministry and Human Resources will continue this work, adding more occupations to our work plan.

Again, I cannot stress enough how much we see this as a collaborative partnership. We all want newcomers to contribute to our economy and realize their potential. The government’s making every effort to reform our immigration system so that newcomers have the best possible chance to succeed.

That being said, we need an immigration system which allows newcomers that we select to put their skills to use upon arrival. If immigrants cannot work in their regulated fields in which they are trained then, at least, they need to know what Plan B is as soon as possible. And that is our commitment.

So, again, to sum up, a lot of work is being done at the federal level, although we are not directly responsible, of course, for the licensed professions. But we believe that provinces and regulators must move more quickly as well, because most of the changes I’ve outlined will be helpful to immigrants of the future and, I know, will result in higher levels of employment, income satisfaction, economic productivity from all of those who will come in the future.

But we still have hundreds of thousands of people who have arrived here who are struggling. And we owe it to them to do better. To do more. We look forward to working with all of you to achieve that end, so that we can realize Canada’s potential and that of these brilliant men and women who have joined us from every corner of the Earth.

Thank you very much.

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