Federal immigration policies give Ontario fewer skilled workers, McGuinty says

Do the American states have powers like this, or agitate for powers like this?

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ontario-demands-more-immigration-powers-to-compete-with-manitoba-quebec-bc/article1992729/

KAREN HOWLETT AND LAURA CONRAD
Globe and Mail Update
Published Wednesday, Apr. 20, 2011 11:23AM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Apr. 20, 2011 8:58PM EDT

Ontario is seeking a new deal on immigration that would give the province more autonomy over selecting talented newcomers and designing programs to integrate them into Canadian society.

The top-down approach to immigration dictated by the federal government is leaving Canada’s most populous province at a competitive disadvantage, Premier Dalton McGuinty said on Wednesday. At a time when Ontario is attempting to rebuild its economy, it is losing highly skilled immigrants with the best prospects of landing good jobs to other provinces.

This is not a new problem for Ontario. But Mr. McGuinty has chosen to raise it now, less than two weeks before the federal election, because he said the campaign provides an ideal opportunity to address his concerns. Last week, he called on the federal party leaders to put health care and the need for a new 10-year funding accord on the agenda and said he was pleased that it has since become a bigger topic of discussion.

On immigration, Mr. McGuinty’s main complaint is that three other provinces – British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec – have been given more control over designing and administering settlement and language training programs. Quebec has the broadest powers, allowing it to select which immigrants become residents.

“The reality is, right now, we’re being held back by an uneven playing field,” Mr. McGuinty told reporters.

But his pleas likely will fall on deaf ears. Successive federal governments have used immigration policies and funding for settlement services as tools to help them make inroads into ethnic communities.

Former Liberal governments led by both Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin used these programs to boost their support in the Greater Toronto Area. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, Stephen Harper’s point man on ethnic politics, has done the same for the Conservatives, said Matthew Mendelsohn, director of the Mowat Centre, a public-policy research group, and a former top Ontario government bureaucrat.

“The federal government doesn’t want to give up the power to go into community centres from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds with a $200,000 cheque,” Mr. Mendelsohn said in an interview. “They don’t want to give up the power of political patronage.”

Ontario was at one time the destination of choice for the highly skilled worker. But immigration policies introduced by the Conservative government have tilted the playing field in favour of the resource-rich Western provinces, leaving Ontario with a shrinking share of highly skilled workers from other countries.

Ontario remains a magnet for immigrants. Every year, the province attracts the highest share of newcomers to Canada. But only 18 per cent of Ontario’s immigrants were so-called economic-class workers in 2010, ranking the province below the national average. In 2001, by comparison, Ontario ranked second highest in Canada, with 25 per cent of immigrants in the economic class.

Eric Hoskins, Ontario Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, said new federal rules introduced in 2008 make it easier for a global pool of resource-sector workers to move to the top of the queue.

In the past, Canada typically brought in the lion’s share of its immigrants under the federal skilled worker program, which rated applicants with points for things such as university degrees, job experience and whether they spoke English or French. But in 2008, the Conservatives limited the processing of applications under that category to 38 job descriptions.

The list, which has subsequently been cut to 29 descriptions, is out of step with Ontario’s economic priorities, Dr. Hoskins said. Ontario, which can no longer count on manufacturing for its prosperity, is trying to build a knowledge-based economy.

“There are very few jobs on that list that reflect the future of the Ontario economy,” Dr. Hoskins said in an interview.

As well, he said, if Ontario was able to design and administer its own immigration programs, it could offer one-stop-shopping services to newcomers more efficiently and for less than what Ottawa spends.

In Vancouver, Guastavo Herrera said his wife was able to take advantage of the services British Columbia offers to newcomers when they moved to the city from Mexico in 2007.

“When we came here, my wife didn’t speak any English. … I was working so it was impossible for my wife to go to school,” said Mr. Herrera, who has a degree in veterinary medicine, as well as a master’s in business administration, and is the owner of a restaurant in downtown Vancouver called Laguna Blu.

His wife found a social-service provider in Surrey, where she was able to study English as well as learn about Canadian laws and customs while receiving free childcare for the couple’s two children. The organization, known as S.U.C.C.E.S.S., provides a variety of services to immigrants in British Columbia.

“If we didn’t find S.U.C.C.E.S.S. things would have been a lot harder,” Mr. Herrera said.


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