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Immigration minister hopes to persuade out-of-country Canadians to come home
Published on: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 20:14:00 GMT
The federal government is about to fight back against countries trying to poach highly skilled expatriate workers from Canada and mount a campaign to persuade Canadians who have left to return home. Those moves are among proposals Immigration Minister Joe Volpe will soon take to cabinet to deal with burgeoning labour shortages. "It's part of the notion of changing what we do from being a much more passive receiver of applications into more of a recruiting arm for Canada," said a government source.
The plan, aimed at dramatically increasing immigration numbers, would also involve forming partnerships with foreign universities to ensure employers recognize the credentials of people emigrating to Canada, said the source who didn't want to be identified.
Scotland, Ireland and New Zealand are just a few of the countries actively urging expatriates to return home.
"Ireland and Scotland are extremely aggressive in this regard, even the French," Volpe said recently after meeting his provincial counterparts.
"However, we are going to go and poach in their pond as well," he said.
"We're anxious to make sure that other countries are not successful in repatriating their former nationals. We want them here, we want to keep them."
"Not only that, but we want some of the (Canadians) that they're looking after as well."
A report in March by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed roughly seven per cent of Canada's most highly educated workers living abroad. That translates to nearly 500,000 people, the fourth largest number among OECD nations behind Sweden, France and Mexico.
However, Canada also benefits from one of the highest number of skilled immigrants.
More than one million people with higher education from other countries reside in Canada, according to the OECD study.
Many of those people, including doctors and other skilled professionals, toil in menial jobs, their credentials unrecognized by Canada.
The repatriation campaign would target skilled trades where there are significant shortages, including computer software engineers.
Government officials point to British Columbia as an example of where specialized workers are urgently needed.
Some games manufacturers in that province say they're desperate to attract upwards of 1,000 computer software engineers skilled in graphics software.
In that case, Canada could try to recruit using gaming publications.
"You might then look at advertising in something like PC Game magazine or something like that, on the benefits of Canada," said a government official.
Volpe also wants Canadian universities to work more closely with post-secondary institutions abroad, linking resources so foreign-educated people can work in Canada, sources say.
"Many of our schools (in Canada) are already engaged in a process of partnering with those universities overseas to see if they can find ways where they provide two years of the education in Canada and somebody gets their first and final two years in their home university," said a government official.
"These kind of partnerships between universities in Canada and overseas could be one of the ways of filling that gap before people come."
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