For example, the Ottawa-based company’s chief technical officer is a Russian by birth and well respected in his field, especially in his home country, says Paul Vallée, Founder and Executive Chairman of Pythian. As a result, Mr. Vallée says other leading minds from Russia want to work for Pythian, which was also recognized by Hire Immigrants Ottawa with a 2012 Employer Excellence Award.

Watch the video below to hear more about how skilled immigrants can be a magnet for top talent.

By Tobi Cohen, Postmedia News (published in the Vancouver Sun)

Trying to make sense of Canada’s complicated and seemingly ever-changing immigration system can be a taxing exercise.

From legislative amendments to regulatory changes, from proposals to studies, from ministerial instructions to pilot projects, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has promised “transformational change” but has released details of the government’s plan piecemeal, muddying the waters even further.

With sweeping new refugee legislation set to pass at the end of June and plans introduced in the budget to do away with a burdensome backlog of old skilled-worker applications, Postmedia News has attempted to dissect just what’s in store in the weeks, months and years to come for the approximately 250,000 newcomers who arrive in Canada annually, and why Canadians should care.

Read more here

By Geoffrey Cameron and Ian Goldin, The Globe and Mail

More than a century ago, the debate about migration in the West was largely settled. Migration was seen to be a boon to the economic fortunes of countries, and many states eliminated unnecessary obstacles to movement such as passports and visas. Britain, after calling for the use of passports in its 1836 Aliens Restrictions Act, later eliminated them in 1872.

The argument was simple, according to Giovanni Bolis, a late-19th-century Italian legal commentator: Passports should be eliminated “not merely as a homage to the civility of the times … but as a measure of great importance for economic relations, favouring commerce, industry and progress, facilitating the relations among the various countries, and liberating travellers from harassment and hindrances.”

Such a view would be considered radical by today’s standards, but the 19th-century insight that immigration and economic growth go hand-in-hand has returned to conventional thinking in Canada. The evidence is certainly strong. A recent OECD study found that increased immigration is accompanied by increases in total employment and GDP growth. In the United States, studies find that migration increases the rate of invention, and in Canada, first-generation immigrants are 20 per cent more likely to have started a business.

Read more here

New immigrants to Canada face a challenging Catch-22 when trying to find jobs commensurate with their skills and experiences: They can’t get a job without Canadian experience but they can’t get that experience without a Canadian job.

The City of Montreal, which is the largest employer in Montreal and the surrounding suburbs with more than 25,000 employees, recognized this barrier was preventing many bright and talented individuals from fully participating in the Quebec labour force.

To help newcomers, as well as recent graduates, overcome that barrier and help the City be more reflective of the population it serves, the City launched an internship program — the Professional Sponsorship Program (Programme de parrainage professionnel) — in 2006.

Since then, 262 people have participated in the program. Of those, 142 have found permanent jobs after their internships, of which 108 were with the City of Montreal.

How the Program Works

The program includes a six-month paid internship with the City of Montreal and aims to increase the workforce integration of ethnic and visible minorities, who account for nearly 85 per cent of participants. To be eligible for the program, applicants must have a post-secondary degree or diploma and less than one year of work experience in Quebec in a field related to their education.

The work placements include a wide variety of positions and give participants the opportunity to develop their skills in a stimulating job related to the field in which they trained.

One foreign-trained engineer was hired as a trainee building inspector intern and was paired with a City employee who mentored him. After several weeks of coaching and on-the-job training, the intern was able to work successfully on his own and then was hired on a permanent basis after the internship.

The Key to Success

The mentoring and training component of the internship program are key to its success. Not only do new entrants to the Canadian workforce need to learn the technical ins and outs of the job, but they must also learn to adapt to a new workplace culture.

To that end, mentors and interns both receive diversity and interpersonal communication training. The training helps them become more aware of their own perception of cultural differences and better understand where the other person is coming from. It also teaches them to communicate using negotiation, mediation and problem solving.

“This program promotes intercultural and intergenerational understanding while promoting careers in Montreal’s public service,” said Mary Deros, a member of the City’s executive committee responsible for diverse communities, at the launch of the sixth and most recent internship cohort in September 2011.

In addition, the program promotes the exchange of expertise, meets the needs of the workforce and prepares a new generation for skilled, in-demand jobs, she said.

The program is funded by Emploi Québec, which provides a wage subsidy equivalent to the provincial minimum wage, the City of Montreal, which tops up the wage to the job-appropriate compensation level, and Quebec’s Department of Immigration and Cultural Communities, which finances an annual evaluation as well as training for mentors and mentees.

Tips for Employers

• Pair new hires, be they interns or permanent employees, with a mentor to help them learn the ins and outs of the job and the workplace culture.
• Focus employment programs on under-represented groups — new immigrants, visible minorities, youth — to tap into new talent, expertise and ideas that will strengthen your organization.
• Tap into government programs and funding to reduce the financial burden on your organization.

The co-op program, which offers 9 to 12-week-long work placements, has evolved to become an essential recruitment strategy for Maxxam and helps the company address skill shortages.

The program is also one of the reasons the company won the Toronto Star Award for Excellence in Workplace Integration as part of the 2011 Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council’s Immigrant Success (IS) Awards.

Watch the video below to learn more about the program and the value skilled immigrants bring to Maxxam. You can also read more about Maxxam and IS Awards.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada

Minister Jason Kenney attends the graduation ceremony for the Federal Internship for Newcomers (FIN) Program in Ottawa.

Ottawa — The Government of Canada is expanding its internship program for newcomers to include private sector companies, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney announced today.

CGI Group Inc., a leading provider of information technology and business process services, and CIBC, a leading Canadian-based financial institution, will partner with CIC to hire newcomers through the Federal Internship for Newcomers (FIN) Program.

Delivered in partnership with regional immigrant serving organizations and hiring departments and agencies, the FIN Program is a Citizenship and Immigration-led initiative that offers newcomers to Canada the opportunity to gain valuable temporary work experience.

“Lack of Canadian work experience can prevent many newcomers from successfully integrating into the labour market,” said Minister Kenney. “This program is an excellent example of the federal government’s leadership role in helping immigrants enter the Canadian workforce.”

“We hope these new partnerships serve as a model for other private sector companies who are eager to tap into the strong talent pool of newcomers this program provides,” he added.

Through the FIN Program, CIC will provide CGI and CIBC access to newcomers who have been screened for employment readiness to fill temporary and permanent positions in their companies.

“As a global company, we recognize the richness that the diversity of professionals from the FIN program can bring to the company and our clients,” said Alain Brisson, Senior Vice-President, National Capital Region, CGI. “CGI gives its professionals the freedom to innovate, to be entrepreneurial, to achieve their full potential and to chart their own career.”

“At CIBC our workforce needs to continue to mirror the diversity we see within our communities, and we want to recruit the best people,” said Sharon Wingfelder, Vice-President, Diversity and Resourcing. “CIBC is proud to partner with the Federal Internship for Newcomers Program to help immigrants establish a strong new start.”

Since September 2010, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has provided work placements for more than 130 newcomers in 20 federal departments and agencies. For more information on FIN, visit the website.

Full press release

By Julia Johnson, The Financial Post

As money across the country pours into building everything from navy ships in Halifax to condos in Toronto to oil upgraders in northern Alberta, Canadians will have to ditch the traditional, cliché image of the North American construction worker.

Economists for the Construction Sector Council predict that Canada will create 111,000 new construction jobs by 2019, while 208,000 workers will retire, creating “unprecedented demand” on the labour workforce, says the president of the national construction association.

“We’ve got, sort of, two waves in a perfect storm here,” said Michael Atkinson, president of the Canadian Construction Association.

The traditional Canadian labour pool has dried up and construction firms will have to tap into non-traditional labour sources such as youth, women, Aboriginal people, workers with similar skill sets in other industries and new immigrants, said Construction Sector Council economist Bob Collins.

Projects initiated and slated across the country driving demand include resource-based projects in British Columbia, shipyard construction in Nova Scotia, mining and offshore developments in Newfoundland, potash production in Saskatchewan and utilities infrastructure investments in Ontario.

John Beck, chairman and chief executive of construction heavyweight Aecon Group Inc., said it will have gaps to fill in positions at every level.

In addition to relying on its existing labour base and unions, Aecon is working to increase its percentage of Aboriginal and female employees, Mr. Beck said.

The Construction Sector Council forecasts suggest half of the new workers will have to come from outside Canada to meet the demand.

Read more here

The Globe and Mail

Human resources manager Lorna Willner made a decision to be open-minded to new Canadians from around the world with little or no domestic experience when recruiting.

She says the fresh perspectives and new techniques are a reflection of Canada’s diversity.

Watch the video

By Tavia Grant, The Globe and Mail

Fred Morley spearheaded a simple solution to a problem that has plagued Nova Scotia for generations: losing too many of its best and brightest to other parts of Canada.

Retaining young people and newcomers has long been a provincial priority, so Mr. Morley, as chief economist of Greater Halifax’s economic development agency, decided to create networks dedicated to helping immigrants find good jobs in their field.

The initial plan three years ago was to recruit 50 employers for a program that has immigrants meet over coffee with professionals so they can ask questions and come away with the names of three other people they can speak with. Twice that number answered the call, and now 360 well-connected volunteers take part.

Read more here.

The Globe and Mail is publishing an in-depth two-week series on why Canada needs to increase immigration and how to do it. In the first article, Joe Friesen talks about the need to radically increase immigration to fill labour shortages.

Joe Friesen, The Globe and Mail

Between now and 2021, a million jobs are expected to go unfilled across Canada. Ottawa is making reforms to the immigration system but isn’t going far enough. We need to radically boost immigration numbers. With the right people, Canada can be an innovative world power. Without them, we’ll drain away our potential.

1. The Manitoba experiment

Arriving into Steinbach, Man., an hour southeast of Winnipeg, you find a quiet, conservative community, the kind of place that has twice as many churches (22) as traffic lights (11). But continue on and you see some sights you might not expect in a prairie hamlet of 13,500: a Paraguayan food store; two Filipina-run nail salons; and, when you reach the western edge, a 25-acre soccer complex that has become the hub of local life.

As an outpost of the global game in the geographic centre of the nation of hockey, the soccer arena is a symbol of the transformation that has swept through Steinbach in the new millennium – one that could be a lesson to the whole country.

Not long ago, in the late 1990s, Steinbach feared that it might join rural Canada’s casualty list. Young people were leaving for opportunities in Winnipeg or Calgary, and even businesses that were thriving, such as a window manufacturer, could not find enough skilled workers to keep up with demand.

Read more here.