FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 4, 2012

Immigrant Talents VS Labour Shortages
S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Presents at The House of Commons

Vancouver, BC – Today Thomas Tam, CEO of S.U.C.C.E.S.S. was invited to provide testimony at The Standing Committee (The Committee) on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities for its two new studies:  “Fixing the Skills Gap: Addressing Existing Labour Shortages in High Demand Occupations” and “Understanding Labour Shortages: Addressing Barriers to Filling Low-Skilled Jobs”.

Bringing talents from immigration to fill high demand occupations, particularly in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, digital skills, health and skilled trades mostly require a Foreign Credential Recognition (FCR) Process or a Certification Process in Canada. These are complex and enormous processes crossing jurisdictions and regulatory bodies or professions.

“This is the bottle neck for Canada to access the full benefits of immigrant talents to fill labour shortages in time and raise our productivity. If we fix the bottle neck, we fix most of the problems,” said Thomas Tam, CEO of S.U.C.C.E.S.S.

Highlights of the testimony from S.U.C .C.E.S.S. include:

1. To shorten the FCR process, it is critical to get all stakeholders, especially both federal and provincial governments, sector councils, professional regulatory bodies, unions, immigrant services agencies and employers, to be on the same page and each doing their own jobs to make the FCR process successful. It would be futile for the immigrant agencies to keep preparing the immigrant workers while expectations of the regulatory bodies and the readiness of employer to embrace them are not necessarily in step with the agency efforts on the supply side.

2. Pre-arrival supports are effective means to securing early labour market integration for newcomers.

3. Whether it is for low skilled or for high skilled jobs, Literacy and Essential Skills (LES) are the foundation skills of Canada’s multicultural and diverse workplace today. This is especially so for immigrants and low-skilled workers in order to improve their employability and to advance.

4.    Inter-cultural competency should be a new additional element of LES designed to effectuate the workplace now and into the future. Employers would have a stake to embrace it in order to help them to address their skill shortage issues by improving employee retention, performance and productivity. S.U.C.C.E.S.S. is convinced that Inter-cultural workplace supports shall be provided to employers on hiring and workplace transition of internationally educated professionals.

S.U.C.C.E.S.S. has a long history in assisting Canadian employers to understand and be connected with the immigrant community. The organization is convinced that addressing the demand side of the equation is an effective solution, and a timely one, in order to fix Canada’s skills gaps and to transform Canada’s increasingly multicultural workplace to our competitive advantage for the long-term.

At today’s session at the Westin Bayshore, Vancouver, S.U.C.C.E.S.S. was the only immigration service agency invited to do the presentation.

The two studies undertaken by the Committee seek to identify and report on the skills shortages that are currently being experienced in the Canadian labour market, as well as those that will be in future demand, and on the challenges facing Canadian businesses. Because labour shortages are not experienced in the same fashion in every industry and region, the Committee is travelling across Canada in the hopes to have meaningful discussions with different industry leaders and stakeholders.

Established in 1973, S.U.C.C.E.S.S. is one of the largest social service agencies in British Columbia. It is a charitable organization providing services in settlement, language training, employment, family and youth counselling, business and economic development, health care, housing and community development. For more details, please visit: www.success.bc.ca

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Contact:
Thomas Tam
CEO, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.
Tel: 604-408-7272
Cell: 604-808-6812