Proposed Ban on ‘Canadian Experience’ Condition Will New Law Bring Immigrants Better Job Opportunities in Canada?
In 2023, according to Canadian authorities, 526,000 new ‘permanent residents’ or new residents, who are not yet citizens, came to the country of 38 million people.
By comparison, the US, with ten times its population, welcomed only about a million new people in 2023.
But even after arriving in Canada, these individuals may face disappointment when they apply for jobs based on their educational qualifications.
Canada’s immigration system revolves largely around a skill-based ‘points’ system that favors those who come from abroad with advanced degrees, but researchers and newcomers alike are consistently finding that some immigrants The natives are not getting the opportunities they deserve and are instead forced into low-wage jobs that may disappear at any time.
Izumi Sakamoto, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, studies immigrants.
“The story is, you have good experience and education, but if you don’t have experience working in Canada in your area of expertise, we can’t hire you,” she says..
In November 2023, the government of Ontario, the country’s largest province by population, took a bold step. He introduced Bill 149, a law that would ban employers from placing a ‘Canadian experience’ requirement on job advertisements.
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The bill also obliges 30 professional associations, regulatory bodies, to end the Canadian experience policy. These associations and institutions decide who can work in fields such as medicine and education.
Experts say that the bill will be passed in the coming months, but according to them, it will be an important development that will help skilled immigrants.
These people continue to face discrimination and disqualification based on where their degrees are and whether they have work experience in Canada.
Izumi says it’s difficult to prove that discrimination has occurred. “Recruitment practices are behind closed doors,” she says. We are not usually told the reason for not hiring some people.
Most immigrants to Canada want to work. Half of the people coming to Canada in the next three years could be considered ‘economic migrants’, meaning they left their country because they thought they would have better job opportunities in Canada.
They tend to be better educated than their Canadian-born counterparts.
However, according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, some employers expressly require Canadian work experience or will not hire applicants with credentials or experience from abroad.
Izumi points out that Professional Engineers Ontario, Ontario’s engineering sector association, called for work experience in Canada by 2023, while Canada currently has a shortage of skilled workers in many fields, from doctors to other fields.
According to Labor Minister David Pacini, there are 300,000 vacant jobs in Ontario. “For too long, too many people arriving in Canada have been lured into dead-end jobs (jobs that are low-wage and non-progressive),” he said in a statement last November. We need to ensure that these people can work in well-paid and rewarding careers that will help address the labor shortage.”
The situation is particularly bad for immigrants in the fields of medicine, dentistry, and veterinary medicine. 4.5 percent of Canadians with these degrees are not working in their fields, compared to 30 percent for immigrants.
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, there were approximately 13,000 internationally trained doctors in Ontario who were not practicing, according to Health Force Ontario statistics.
“Some of them decide to become nurses or even support workers,” says recruitment specialist Carlos Martins, who works with migrant jobseekers at the social services organization Luther Wood.
But that’s not the story for all immigrants, says Carlos, “Software engineers find it easier to get a job than doctors, dentists and even lawyers.”
For the past decade, Izumi and organizations representing newcomers have pressured the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) to do something about the Canadian work experience issue.
In 2013, the HRC, which looks into human rights complaints, announced in a policy paper that it considered requiring Canadian visas for job applicants to be discriminatory.
Ten years later, the Ontario government has promulgated legislation that legalizes this opinion.
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“Hard and Soft Skills”
Both Izumi and Carlos believe that given the discrimination that newcomers face in getting jobs, Bill 149 is a good step forward, however, to establish that an employer can only hire an applicant with Canadian education or Canadian experience. Wants, is difficult.
Even if this law is passed, there are certain things that are difficult to prove but can make it difficult for an immigrant applicant to get a job.
Izumi Sakamoto says that according to his research, the Canadian ‘work experience’ consists of two parts.
‘Hard skills’ that appear on your application such as where the applicant received their education, professional certifications or their work.
She hopes that Bill 149 will protect people from discrimination based on ‘hard skills’.
However, soft skills are also important for hiring managers to see whether an applicant will ‘fit’ into their organization’s environment.
Izumi says soft skills can refer to a variety of attributes, such as the ability to fit into an industry’s work environment and communicate with colleagues at work and generally work in a Canadian office.
Unlike hard skills, the applicant cannot prove that he has soft skills through diplomas and certificates. These skills are mostly acquired by spending many hours in office gossip and boardrooms.
Izumi says employers in Canada and around the world are increasingly relying on soft skills to recruit. It also provides a way to reject the application of new immigrants on this basis despite having excellent experience.
The real reason for not hiring could be that the employer didn’t like the applicant’s tone of voice or they didn’t like the lunch they brought, but that doesn’t need to be discussed.
Carlos himself is one of the newcomers to the country. He came here from Brazil a decade ago. Their experience and that of their clients is that employers do not openly ask for Canadian work experience.
But still I applied for many jobs in the past but I didn’t get them, he says. Any reason can be given. I cannot just say that I am not hired because I am new in the country.
Similar measures are being taken in other provinces, for example, a similar bill was introduced in the western province of British Columbia, Canada. This province has a large number of newcomers to the country. If it becomes law, it would have a larger impact on Canada’s workforce than the rest of North America due to its large immigrant presence.
Izumi hopes the bill becomes law in Ontario and hopes employers won’t demand soft skills for jobs in Canada.
She says that employers should welcome newcomers wholeheartedly, and that’s something that banning discrimination can’t do.
“Until the desire to discriminate against immigrants ends, other forms of discrimination will persist,” says Izumi.
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Why has the number of visas been reduced in Canada’s new student visa policy?
Furqan is one of the hundreds of Pakistani students who have moved to Canada for higher education. When he arrived in Canada in 2023, like thousands of other foreign students there, the biggest problem he faced was accommodation.
“The biggest challenge I faced when I came here was that I couldn’t find a place to stay,” Furqan says.
Furqan was forced to use Airbnb, where he had to pay 80 to 100 Canadian dollars a day for rent, which quickly drained him of the money he had.
Finally, they saw a ray of hope in the form of a local mosque.
Furqan says he went to the mosque and networked with people there. “Then he got me to rent a room in a Pakistani’s house through his reference.”
Furkan is not alone, there are thousands of foreign students like him in Canada who are worried about housing. Citing housing shortages and rising rents, the Canadian government has announced a reduction in the number of visas issued to foreign students this year.
At the beginning of this week, Canada’s Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship announced on Monday that student visas will be issued to approximately 360,000 foreign students this year (year 2024). According to official data, this number of visas is 35% less than last year.
What is Canada’s new policy?
The Canadian government says study permit limits are set for all provinces, states and territories based on population. As a result of this move, there will be a significant reduction in the number of students in those provinces where the number of international students had exceeded the limit.
The government has directed provincial and state authorities to make a clear procedure for distribution of permits to various universities and colleges.
According to the Canadian government, these temporary measures will be in place for two years and the policy will be reviewed before the issuance of study permits in 2025.
According to the policy, from September 1, 2024, all international students who are studying under the Curriculum Licensing Program will not be eligible for a Post Graduation Work Permit after graduation. Under the Curriculum Licensing Program, private colleges are allowed to deliver the curriculum of the corresponding public college.
Officials say these colleges have less oversight than government colleges, and people take advantage of this to try to get post-graduation work permits.
Under the new policy, graduates of masters and other short graduate-level programs will soon be eligible to apply for a three-year work permit. Under the existing policy, the duration of the Post Graduation Work Permit was dependent on the duration of the student’s program of study. This made it difficult for Masters graduates to gain work experience and possibly gain permanent residency in Canada.
In the coming weeks, open work permits will only be available to spouses of international students in master’s and doctoral programs. Spouses of international students enrolled in undergraduate and college programs will no longer be eligible for an open work permit.
Shahzeb Rais runs a consultancy firm in Karachi that provides consultancy to students who wish to study abroad.
According to him, the rate of approval of Pakistani students’ visa applications in Canada is more than 60%, which is the highest after the United Kingdom. This is the reason why Pakistani students go to Canada in large numbers.
Shahzeb Furqan agrees that the biggest problem for Pakistani students going to Canada is accommodation because not only is there a lack of proper accommodation, but the rents are also very high.
“There is an increase in rent almost on a quarterly basis,” he added, adding that another problem faced by the students living there is that many students are living in one apartment, against the law. and this often leads to raids by the authorities.
Canada’s Immigration Minister Mark Miller says it is the government’s responsibility to ensure international students have access to the resources they need to have an enriching educational experience.
Miller said international students are an asset to Canadian society, but the program has become so popular that it is being misused, so action has been taken.
He said that the purpose of the new policy is to prevent these actions and ensure the integrity of the Canadian immigration system.