DATE:
January 18th, 2014 - 11:30 a.m.
LOCATION:
SUCCESS Choi Hall, 28 West Pender Street, Vancouver, British Columbia
SUBJECT:
Minister of Employment and Social Development Jason Kenney will make an announcement.
Hon. Jason Kenney: Thank you very much. Why don’t you guys come up and stand over here, behind me here. Yes, stand behind me, sure, that would be great, because I’m going to be introducing you whether you know it or not. Thank you very much and thank you Queenie and thank you to the chairman of SUCCESS, Doug, for your warm welcome. I feel like I’m back home at SUCCESS having been here so many times and having had such a great relationship with SUCCESS, both in my capacity as Minister for Immigration, Minister for Multiculturalism and now happily as Minister for Employment.
So thank you to the board, volunteers, donors and staff of SUCCESS for all of the great work that you do, not just here in Chinatown in Vancouver, but all across British Columbia and indeed around the world. I’m in fact happy that we support SUCCESS’s pre-arrival orientation sessions for economic immigrants for example in Taipei and in Seoul and these are important projects that you’ve been involved in all around the world and SUCCESS is a model for settlement services and other social services to newcomers in our broader community all across Canada. You should be very proud and I’m proud as an Albertan that Queenie came from Edmonton to help SUCCESS continue to move forward, opening doors of opportunity for new Canadians.
Friends, I’m here today to make an exciting announcement about our efforts to ensure the success of newcomers to Canada. As you know, our government has been maintaining the highest sustained levels of immigration in Canadian history, receiving over a quarter of a million new permanent residents every year and that is more or less the highest level of immigration per capita in the developed world.
We’re doing that because our population is aging and we need the talents and hard work of newcomers to fuel our future prosperity, but we all know that too many newcomers have struggled upon arriving in Canada, struggled to work in the fields for which they were educated and trained, struggled to realize their potential and so many newcomers have felt disappointed and sometimes even depressed that they ended up being underemployed, below their skill level and this is a tragedy. I think, I’ve always said, I think it’s immoral for Canada to invite highly educated, capable people here only to find themselves being underemployed, not realizing their potential and too many of the people end up going back to their home country because of the frustration. I’ve met so many people who have felt a sense of great disappointment and even embarrassment in front of their families, that they came here to face underemployment.
We all know that if there was one simple easy solution to the problem of credential recognition and underemployment of immigrants, that we would have found it and implemented it a long time ago. Unfortunately the problem is a really complicated one and most of the challenge, most of the issues are at the provincial level. We the federal government select most of the immigrants and then it’s the provincial bodies like the regulatory bodies for the certified professions and trades that then decide who gets recognition of their credentials so they can work in Canada. So there is a certain lack of coordination there, but we’ve been doing a lot to try to address these issues.
For example, our government has invested $50 million in projects with the provinces to simplify and speed up credential recognition for foreign trained professionals through a national framework where we bring together all the different professional bodies, different tranches, different groups, to hammer out a common Canadian standard for the assessment of credentials to improve labour mobility within the regulated professions and trades within Canada and to streamline credential recognition for foreign trained professionals like the people standing behind me here this morning.
And we’re making progress. Prime Minister Harper had the premiers agree in 2009, they signed a document agreeing that they would get the professional regulatory bodies to provide people with an answer on their application for certification within a year, at the very least, even if the answer is no or a conditional yes. People deserve to know what the answer is on their application for licensure within a reasonable amount of time. So if necessary, they can take supplementary education or go perhaps to a different occupation or maybe start a small business, but leading people on in an endless bureaucratic process isn’t fair to them and it’s not right for Canada. So that’s why we’ve made that investment. We started it pre-arrival orientation, that I mentioned, that SUCCESS is delivering in some places and the Association of Community Colleges is delivering and others and are spending tens of millions of dollars of providing counselling and advice and orientation to help people apply for jobs before they get here, apply for credential recognition before they arrive, figure out in which provinces they might have an easier chance of getting certification and employment.
We have the internationally educated health professionals initiative led by Health Canada. We have the foreign credential recognition program where my Minister provides funding to organizations, including the licensing bodies to work through some of these difficult issues, simplify and streamline their procedures and you’ve heard me make announcement about that, but one of the more recent things we’ve done to help foreign trained professionals work at their skill level in Canada, get their certification, get to work, realize their potential and fully contribute to Canada is the Micro Loan pilot project for foreign credential recognition.
During the last election campaign, 2011, right here in Vancouver, I announced our commitment to launch a national pilot project to support small loans for foreign trained professionals to help them finance additional education in Canada, to help pay for certification exams and other related costs, including the ability to actually have a bit of an income. One of the problems we find is that many of the bright people, like those behind me, who arrive in Canada, find out they need to take additional course, or they need to pay for expensive certification exams and yet, they have to work in their survival jobs in order to put food on the family for their table—for their family, food on the table for their family. This is the problem that many people have, that they can’t afford to take time off work to do the extra education in Canada necessary to get their certification, it’s a trap that they find themselves in and furthermore, many new immigrants have a hard time getting credit in Canada. They’ve depleted their savings in the process of moving here. So many feel trapped and many in that trap just end stuck in their survival jobs as their skills atrophy and they get further away from credential recognition.
So a few years ago, some philanthropists and charitable organizations, especially in Alberta, called the Alberta Immigrant Access Fund began addressing specifically this problem and brought together philanthropists who guaranteed loans on preferential terms from certain financial institutions and then through a non-profit organization, advertised for foreign trained professionals who needed a bit of help, a bit of a hand up like this and said, “Look we can provide you some preferential financing at low interest rates where you can also offset your basic living costs to go back to school if necessary, to pay for your certification exams, to get your licence so you can work in your profession,” and they found that the results were phenomenal. People were able to take that time off their survival job in order to go back to school, in order to study for their certification exams, in order to pay those tuition costs, pay the exam costs and get their licence to practise and we saw people—we saw people going from minimum wage jobs to making very healthy incomes as a result of this little financing, up to $10,000 that was being provided by the foreign—these loans.
And so I thought this is a brilliant practical way to help many foreign trained professionals who are underemployed get over that barrier, which is why we announced our intention in the election to create this program. So today, I’m here to announce very happily that with the roll-out of the foreign credential recognition loans pilot project launched in 2012, that as of today, just two years later, we’ve issued 1,000 micro loans to foreign trained professionals. That means over 1,000 skilled newcomers have received help from the Government of Canada, with the cost of having their credentials recognized. It means more than 1,000 skilled newcomers can put their skills and experience to work faster, and that more than 1,000 openings for skilled jobs can be filled sooner, helping our economy.
This is great news for internationally trained workers, for employers for Canada’s economy and I want to thank SUCCESS as one of the organizations who help us to deliver the foreign credential recognition loans, connecting the newcomers with the financing companies and helping to make this happen.
Some of you might say, well 1,000 is not a lot of people, but I remind you this was a pilot program. We wanted to see what the results were, make an evaluation and if the results ultimately are positive as we believe they’ll be, we will look at expanding this, working with non-profit organizations like SUCCESS and financial institutions to provide that kind of financing and this isn’t just about numbers. It’s not about theory. It’s about real people and they’re standing behind me.
So we have Dr. Bin Xie, an internationally trained dentist from China who has taken time off from his patients. He’s offered to squeeze me into his clinic later today. I’ve got a sore tooth. He—Dr. Bin received his education from Harbin Medical University in China and soon after was hired as a dentist in a hospital there. After working as a dentist for ten years, Dr. Xie moved to Canada as a skilled immigrant in 2006. However his time here was short, due to the high cost of living and obtaining his credentials and so he gave up on his goal to become a dentist in Canada very sadly, but he returned to Vancouver, a very determined man, he returned to Vancouver in 2011 and worked as a dental technician and you know, this is often what happens, he continued forward with his accreditation process by excelling in each of his examinations and in July of 2012, Dr. Xie received an FCR loan which helped him complete the accreditation process. After a year of hard work and determination, Dr. Xie is now a recognized and licensed dentist of British Columbia. Congratulations.
(Applause)
I’m always so excited to hear success stories at SUCCESS especially. And then Mr. Prem Giri (ph), yes, Mr. Prem, is an internationally educated physiotherapist from Nepal. He has a bachelor of physiotherapy degree from India and has five years of work experience as a sports physiotherapist from Nepal. When Mr. Giri first came to Canada, he was unsure how to return to his profession. He obtained a foreign credential recognition loan in October 2012 which allowed him to move forward with the accreditation process. He’s attended the professional communication for internationally educated health professional program and has completed an online course for internationally educated physiotherapists. He’s currently preparing for his first examination in the spring of 2014 and is looking forward to becoming a physiotherapist by the end of the year. We wish you luck, Mr. Giri.
(Applause)
And then we have Sama Hosseini-Montazeri, Dr., there you are, cheers. She’s an international pharmacy graduate from Iran. She obtained her doctorate of pharmacy in 2006 and worked for six years as a pharmacist. Since coming to Canada in 2012, you’re very recent in Canada, yes? Dr. Hosseini-Montazeri has been working as a pharmacy assistant while pursuing her licence as a pharmacist. In April of last year, she received an FCR loan. She later registered with the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia and has recently passed her last examinations, practical training through the University of British Columbia’s continuing education program. Dr. Hosseini-Montazeri has now been hired as a pharmacist and is just waiting for her licence to be issued. Congratulations.
(Applause)
And finally, Mr. Rico Pria (ph), Rico, where are you? Mr. Rico Pria is an internationally trained engineer from—originally from the Philippines. He completed his bachelor of sciences in mechanical engineering in 2007 and, shortly after, was a registered mechanical engineer through the Philippines Regulator Commission. He worked as an instructor of mechanical engineers in southern State University until 2012. He began his accreditation process with the help of a FCR loan in January of last year, a year ago. He’s currently working as a mechanical assembler while studying part-time at the B.C. Institute of Technology. Rico is learning the Canadian engineering standards and is on the path to obtaining his engineering designation through the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia. So congratulations, we wish you luck as well.
(Applause)
So I would just like to say a few words in French. This means that we have solid proof that this approach works, this funding to help new immigrants who need a little help to succeed in Canada and to help us continue to improve the Canadian economy. So thank you to all of you for coming out today but, more importantly, thank you for believing in Canada. You took a chance on this country and it hasn’t been easy. You will have a lot of hurdles to overcome, but I hope you realize that we as a country believe in you, we believe in your potential and we know that through your hard work and determination that you will succeed and realize your dreams here in Canada. So thank you very much, God bless you and I look forward when we’re done to taking questions. Thank you.
(Applause)
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