By Robert Vineberg
In the Province, Toronto Star
Dec. 12, 2013
On November 8, the federal government quietly made major changes to its Canadian Experience Class immigration program. These changes are unfortunate and will undermine Canada’s ability to find and keep the skilled workers it desperately needs.
The Canadian Experience Class was originally designed to allow temporary foreign workers and foreign graduates of Canadian post-secondary institutions the opportunity to apply for permanent residence from within Canada. In this way, it helped overcome the problem of immigrants arriving with no Canadian job experience or limited exposure to life in Canada.
In fact, just eleven days before the changes were announced, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander tabled the Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration in which the Canadian Experience Class was described in glowing terms:“The Canadian Experience Class is the fastest-growing immigration stream and, in 2012, a record 9,359 people were admitted as permanent residents in this program. The program allows highly skilled temporary foreign workers and international student graduates with at least one year of fulltime work experience to stay in Canada permanently. Applicants must also provide the results of a language test to demonstrate that they have the ability to read, write and speak English or French at a certain level of proficiency.”
The program has always been limited to skill levels requiring formal qualifications. Now the Minister is imposing an annual cap on the program of 12,000 applications per year and a sub-cap of just 200 applications for key occupational groups – including jobs in the skilled trades.
Furthermore, persons in six occupations (cooks, food service supervisors, administrative officers, administrative assistants, accounting technicians, bookkeepers and retail sales supervisors) will be excluded from applying for the program altogether. These changes parallel measures already in place for persons applying for immigration from outside Canada.
The beauty of the Canadian Experience Class program is that the people applying are already here, already working and, presumably, wanted by their employers. The whole purpose of the program was to encourage people with the Canadian experience that employers find so critical to stay in Canada.
Foreign graduates were included in the program explicitly to make study in Canada more attractive for international students by offering the opportunity to stay as a permanent resident after graduation. Now, suddenly, the rules are changed and a foreign graduate, who may have graduated with a business degree and wants to work in management but is gaining experience as a retail sales supervisor, suddenly finds him or herself ineligible for this program. Is this fair? Of course not.
After all, how many Canadians are able to land the perfect job immediately after graduation? Many of us have worked, for years, as waiters or waitresses, bartenders or couriers, while waiting to get into our chosen profession. We consider this natural for Canadians, who already have networks in Canada, but we expect foreign graduates to land the perfect job and work in it for twelve months within three years of graduation. This is not going to encourage foreign students to stay in Canada permanently after graduation. It will, instead, discourage them from even trying.
The changes were put into effect on November 9 and there was no transition provision for persons already working in the previously eligible occupations. This decision is arbitrary and grossly unfair to people already in Canada who chose to work in occupations that, until November 9, would have allowed them to apply for the Canadian Experience Class.
It is one thing to limit applications from people outside Canada on the grounds that their occupation is not needed in Canada. It is quite another to prevent people who already here and working for an employer willing to offer them a permanent job from applying to stay.
Ask any university president in Canada and they will tell you that universities have been working hard to create a Canadian brand to attract more foreign students. The same is true for employers who need skilled workers.
This decision to limit eligibility to the Canadian Experience Class will do untold damage to the Canadian brand and ought to be immediately reconsidered.
Robert Vineberg is a Senior Fellow at the Canada West Foundation. He was, formerly, Director General of Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Prairies and Northern Territories Region. The Canada West Foundation exclusively focuses on policies that shape the quality of life in western Canada.