News
"2010 Minister's Apprenticeship Employer Recognition Awards"
Ontario Government hosts the Minister’s Apprenticeship Employer Recognition Awards each year to salute the work of employers training apprentices. The event recognizes 16 employers – from each of the four regions - for their excellence in Apprenticeship training. Four of these employers are further recognized with a trophy at a regional recognition ceremony to honour their exceptional contribution to apprenticeship training and the apprenticeship system.
Please see below websites for your region
"The Recognition of Immigration Skills: A Search for Best Practices"
We are all aware of the difficulties that immigrants face finding good jobs in Canada. What can we do about it?
In effort to spur some movement forward on this front, Peel Halton Workforce Development Group commissioned an exploratory research project to identify "best practices" in other provinces that enable skilled and regulated professionals to work in their professions. In particular we focused on provinces that are highly motivated to attract and retain immigrants and that have implemented Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs). Practices from Australia, which has comparable immigration, were also included.
We found several very specific "best practices," most of which were designed to fill a particular skilled labour shortage:
Health Match BC screens internationally trained nurses, physicians and midwives and assists in becoming licensed in their professions.
Philippines Nursing Recognition Initiative, Manitoba, brings in nurses as temporary foreign workers, then provides extensive settlement supports and preparation for the licensing exam.
Internationally Educated Engineer's Qualification Program, University of Manitoba, provides academic upgrading and paid work placement experience, leading to more rapid licensing.
Manitoba Credentials Recognition Program provides financial assistance to immigrants working toward licensure and offers wage assistance to employers who provide program clients with full-time professional or technical work related to their educational background.
In these and other programs, governments and employers are motivated. As such, accreditation is moving forward more quickly that on the federal level. The newest federal program promises that by the end of 2010, internationally-educated workers in certain professions will be able to find out whether their qualifications will be recognized by licensing bodies, but the process will take as long as a year for each applicant. In our rapidly changing job market and economy, one year is too long to wait for credentials recognition alone.
Just as significantly as the best practices identified, this research uncovered a fundamental and largely unnoticed shift in Canadian immigration policy toward temporary workers and provincial nominees. For example, PNPs are rapidly growing and made up 9% of the immigration flow to Canada in 2008. This growth of new streams of immigration devolves responsibility for credential recognition from the federal government altogether. Instead, provinces, employers, universities, regulatory bodies, and third parties such as immigration lawyers and consultants are assessing the credentials of new immigrants.
Most of the successful programs above do not depend on credentials assessments alone but rather on providing a range of supports to newcomers. On its own, foreign credentials recognition cannot be a solution to the labour market challenges faced by newcomers to Canada.
Please find attached the complete report.
Labour Market Information
The PHDWG functions as a neutral broker of research, disseminator of information and facilitator of collaborative partnership development. The PHWDG works with the community to identify trends and opportunities in the labour market environment which impact our workforce. We then establish and work to nurture new ideas which address these issues and help prepare our community to thrive in our local economy. View Publication >>
A Newcomer's Guide to Services in Peel and Halton
Workforce Today: Mode of Transportation to Work
Trends Regarding Youth Employment in Ontario and in the Central Region Training Board Areas: 1996-2006
PHWD in the News:
Press Releases:
