| Submitted by Ontario’s Liberal Government (A Foreword to this submission by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper –
Before I express a few concerns about this new provincial government initiative to attract skilled immigrants to Ontario, I want to make something crystal clearAs someone who proudly traces his family roots back to ancestors who arrived in Canada from the British Iles, Europe and the United States, I welcome new immigrants to this wonderful land. What concerns me is any new initiative by our federal or provincial governments to bring in quote-unquote ‘skilled labour’ to make up for the lack of skilled labours these same governments claim we don’t have here. What Ontario’s government is now proposing to do here sounds dangerously close to the federal Harper government’s foreign worker program where cheaper labour was brought in by some of our wealthy banks, etc. to replace, and in some cases even be trained, by higher-paid skill labour we already have. So what is this latest business from the Ontario Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne all about, and why do we need to import so-called “skilled labour” when we have hundreds of thousands of our own young people going into debt around tuition and books around post-secondary colleges and university degrees for what? For jobs that don’t exist? To acquire skills that are not in line with the skills needed to introduce them to a future in Ontario’s workforce? In a region of Niagara, Ontario and rest of the province where the unemployment rate for young people under the age of 30 is as high as 17 per cent, and where many of them are parking their university and college degrees in a box under their beds in their parents basements, why are we looking at importing “skilled workers” from other countries? Is it because the businesses in tis province would rather higher immigrants for a lower price than our own children? Is it because our colleges and universities are doing a poor job of steering young people into the skills they need? Or is it a combination of these two and other things, including the narrow interest of companies that don’t give a shit if we have a middle class with any hope for our children’s future anymore? On those points, here is the announcement from the Ontario government on welcoming “skilled immigrants” into this province for jobs here.) Queen’s Park, February 19th, 2014 – Ontario is taking steps to strengthen its role in immigrant selection by introducing legislation today that would, if passed, help meet the province’s future labour market needs and support economic growth. Building on the government’s Immigration Strategy, the proposed Ontario Immigration Act would, if passed, assist the province in working with the federal government to maximize the social, cultural and economic benefits of immigration by:
The province will also redesign the Provincial Nominee Program to help facilitate expected increases in the federal government’s allocation of economic immigrants. Ontario has called for an increase in its provincial-nominees allocation from 1,300 to 5,000 to support the province’s highly-skilled workforce. Strengthening immigration in Ontario to help build our knowledge economy is part of the government’s economic plan that is creating jobs for today and tomorrow. The comprehensive plan and its six priorities focus on Ontario’s greatest strengths — its people and strategic partnerships. |
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(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
You have it absolutely correct Doug.
We blindly throw money at our secondary institutions that fail us.
These institutions operate with little or no oversight of accountability.
Now the truth is out and it is right that you call all of our governments on this travesty.
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Goverrnment does not “blindly throw money at our secondary institutions”. It directs how the money is spent for political purposes. Money should be directed to developing and implementing curriculum not the “political niceties” the government requires.
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Doug, would it be better to import the obviously superior educators and while we’re at it we could also import better political leaders?
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The Wynne programme and the Hudak programme have the same goal. Take advantage of the worker; more profit for the employer.
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Better skilled immigrants than unskilled or illegal freeloaders BUT there are many Canadians without jobs who have degrees & diplomas but no jobs. It would certainly be preferable to do whatever little retraining is necessary to keep our own citizens employed before bringing in immigrants. First come, first served…that is our own youth & even 30 & 40 somethings who have suddenly lost employment in uncertain economic times. Bringing in others while our own people are jobless would be like feeding the neighbour’s kids while your own starve, stupid.
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I totally agree with your concerns Doug. These so-called jobs need to go to Canadians…… PERIOD! If these resources don’t exist… develop them! In the meantime those smart enough to take up these trades in demand can enjoy the fruits of their foresight and effort.,
As with any migrant labor solution if you want to call it that, the objective is simply designed to drive down the prices of labor here at home!
As we all know this occurred as well in the tech sector with 1000’s of jobs subbed out to places like India. Call centers, development, tech support….. anything that could be shipped overseas was shipped overseas! Our banks the biggest of the offenders!
In a Greg world these forms of importation would be taxed and taxed quite heavily!!!!
Everybody knows (hopefully) that Harpers objective wrt. immigration is just simply to buy votes with citizenship eh! He’s taking a page out of Trudeau’s (Pierre) playbook. How do you think the Lib’s enjoyed so much loyalty over the years?
In a Greg world immigration would crawl to a halt allowing all of our students to take the jobs immigrants are filling, the post-secondary students taking all the jobs that are going to cheaper offshore or immigrated labor and basically all of those other immigrants that are taxing our education and health systems
Now before all of you start freaking out at me for being anti-immigrant, know that I am a Heinz 57. Something I call someone who is of hugely mixed blood despite having a lineage here in Canada that goes beyond 2 world wars and 10 generations (atleast on one side of the family). I JUST THINK IMPORTING 250K PEOPLE PER YEAR IS RIDICULOUS!!!!!! A LITTLE OVER THE TOP NO? WELL NOT IF YOU WANT TO WIN ELECTIONS!!!!
How about 50k!!!! Guess that doesn’t represent enough votes!
Just sayin….
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I’m with you Doug. The only reason to bring in immigrants at a time when there is an all time high unemployment is to lower the wages to those who have found jobs. I know that there are a lot of immigrant farm workers but the main reason this occurs is that the pay is minuscule with no benefits or pensions not to mention it’s seasonal work. Given Harper’s changes to EI, you wouldn’t even get to collect this either. This is a wrong policy.
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I am an immigrant.
My father, mother, brother and I emigrated to Canada from Scotland in 1948 – when Canada needed immigrants.
My two sisters were born here. We all worked – hard. And then we saw our own children unable to find suitable employment.
Canada MUST find employment for those already here. There must be no more exporting of jobs. Canadian jobs should be for Canadian residents FIRST.
Bill Doyle put if very succinctly and clearly in his comment above. Immigration nowadays is about providing cheap labour for big multinational corporations. The corporations that don’t give a rats ass about the people who work for them …. the corporations that don’t even care about the countries where they operate … the corporations that buy and sell politicians (Hudak, Harper, Trudeau, Wynne, McGuinty, Clark [BC premier]).
To paraphrase a line from Gordon Lightfoot — There was a time in this fair land when companies cared —
Those days are gone. The companies that cared are no longer Canadian.
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Unionized Construction Skilled Trades have been Training the best Tradesmen for over 115 Years . As well they Have been fighting for an industrial strategy for the same length of time to be able to predict the ups and downs of Industry to their need of the amount of tradesmen . Not only in the numbers needed but in the required training for the new technoligies that evolve . This push to bring in offshore skilled trades when Canadian Youth are wanting comes from the very corporations who refuse to invest in the training of Homegrown Skilled Tradesmen . For Our Government to bow to these giants at the expense of our youth is shameful .
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Conservates and Liberals rely on corporate funding. These politcal parties must pay the price. Do you recall that the day after Wynne attended a fund raising event she cancelled a project by a public industry (cannot hold fund raising for political parties) in favour of the private industry?
Hudak promotes lower corporate taxes. These companies do little, if any, investment in Ontario.
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More young people need to go into skilled trades. Today university degrees don’t do much to attain a job because so many have taken that path. How many here have had retired tradesmen do a lot of work for them under the table thus saving money, depriving the government of their share (yahoo) & helping augment the retirement of labourers? Wish I had a trade that I could employ in my retirement for a few extra bucks in the underground economy.
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The need for university degrees is, in many cases, to reduce the number of interviews by HR. As well, many of the positions that require university degrees are sent off shore. As a result we have a large number of people with university degrees without work.
Politics took trades from the schools. Various shops were in elementary schools as well as secondary schools _ where are they now?
Shops in secondary schools are gradually disappearing as well.
Students, as a result, do not have the opportunity in school to develop an interest in the trades. Politicians determine the curriculum to be delivered and dictate how the funds are to be spent.
Politicians and school boards are phasing out teachers in the trades in favour of the academics. School Administrators, on the instructions of School Boards, advise the trade teachers that funds are not available to deliver the programmes; they (the teachers) will have limited time in the shops. These same Administrators advise students who signed for the trade option that it is not available. Conclusion? Potential teachers of the various trades look elsewhere for employment and students lose out on the opportunity to develop interest in a trade.
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Bill. I tend to agree with your synopsis but politicians have very little to do with curriculum. What you find available in schools is a combination of social and business needs combined with educator’s professional perception of the needs that will be important. For instance, languages and maths have a lot to do with brain development (brain plasticity). The idea is to provide students with a well rounded base to be self learning. Elementary schools give the basics while secondary schools build on those basics. In the last six or seven years there has been an emphasis on interest driven curriculum’s allowing different paths using external businesses. The unfortunate issues are 1) business disinterest in providing such avenues and 2) the cost of machinery for schools. There were schools that attempted to run their own business in certain area in an attempt to teach students not only the nuts and bolts of the labour required but the actual experience of doing so. The result? Businesses bitched to boards that they were competing with them and therefore to cease and desist.
The idea of education is not just to provide little automatons for business but to instill a love of learning within each student, knowing that changes will occur in the future. The issue in North America is that we have an adversarial system where business thinks all the education will be provided by the educational system and labour thinking that these students will take some of their jobs. I know this government has looked at the German model but their has been much resistance from industry since they do not want to spend any money training and they do not want to pay any taxes. The problem is much bigger than what you think.
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My beef is that we promise people from foreign lands , people who have Medical Doctor’s or a Medical, scientific or Engineering background, we will not let them get a license to practise, they end up delivering pizza or driving taxis, why can’t we let them work as medical aides in our hospitals, so they know our ropes and have the money to get the qualifications that they need to practice, The system is stacked against them, the moment they get off the plane.!!!
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The medical field is a closed shop. Locals only need apply. A friend of mine earned his dentistry in Egypt and practiced in Paris France for ten years before coming to Canada. In order for him to practice dentistry he had to redo the complete dentistry programme in Toronto. He was fortunate because his wife was in a position to support him while he repeated his studies in Toronto.
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