According to an Ontario trade organization, Canada needs to alter its immigration system to assist fill a skilled trades labor gap caused by the retirement of thousands of present workers.
“Beginning in the mid-90s, the immigration system changed to value educational attainment and language requirements over specific, practical skill sets,” says Patrick McManus, chair of the Ontario Skilled Trades Alliance (OSTA).
“At the time, our economy was in a much different place than it is today, with much higher unemployment in the construction industry and much less public and private investment in infrastructure and land/commercial development.”
One in every five tradespeople in Ontario will have retired by 2030, which is currently just eight years away. However, the situation has changed now. The trades are already crying out for qualified labour. And the impending outflow of crafts employees as they retire threatens to exacerbate the situation.
“Economically, we have returned to a place where we are in much greater need of specific skills sets (those particularly that would fall under National Occupational Code (NOC) levels C and D in the immigration system) to fill the demand in our province, particularly for infrastructure and residential construction,” says McManus.
The OSTA has released a working document, a backgrounder, containing proposals for improvements to Canada’s immigration system in order to increase the number of tradesmen who come to the nation through immigration.
Closing the Skills Gap is a report that was submitted at the Summit on Immigration Reform to solve Ontario’s labour deficit and offers five measures. They include a request for 1,000 of the 9,000 available seats in the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) to be allocated to NOC Level D general labourers who self-attest to having construction skillsets.
The OSTA also urges Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to quadruple the cap for Provincial Nominee Programs (PNP), which would enable provinces, including Ontario, to determine the mix of journeymen and non-journeymen applications.
Provinces are already severely constrained in the number of immigrants they can nominate for their ‘experience program,’ according to the organization’s background material. Provinces, on the other hand, are better qualified to understand their own labour market needs and should be given more leeway in certain areas.
By raising the limit for Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) building public infrastructure or housing from 10% to 20%, businesses in the trading activities could have more flexibility in attempting to bring in TFWs, which is currently only granted to industries that are exempt from the cap, including food processing and agriculture, according to the organization.
The OSTA should also see the list of qualifying professions enlarged to include NOC skill level C and D positions that are in high demand within every community, as well as OINP spaces allocated on a regional rather than a provincial basis to accommodate labour market demands.
The OSTA should also see the list of qualifying professions enlarged to include NOC skill level C and D positions that are in high demand within every community, as well as OINP spaces allocated on a regional rather than a provincial basis to accommodate labour market demands.
The final recommendation of the agency is to increase the time period covered by Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIAs) so that companies are not forced to rush to fill their orders of temporary foreign workers before they lapse and require resubmission of their applications and corresponding expenses.
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