Speaking Notes - The Honourable Monte Solberg, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, to the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties Fall Convention 2006

Edmonton, Alberta, November 15, 2006

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Good morning/afternoon, and thank you for the very kind introduction.

It’s always a pleasure to come home to Alberta, and to bring greetings from Prime Minister Harper and Canada’s new government.

These are exciting times in Alberta.

Never in Canada’s history has a province experienced the kind of growth that we’re seeing here.

The numbers are amazing. Total investment in the province this year is expected to be more than $65 billion. More than $139 billion worth of capital projects are in progress or being planned.

The economy of this province grew by 4.5 percent last year. This year, growth is forecast to 5.6 percent, and more than 4 percent again next year.

The problem is, how are we going to keep up with ourselves?

I know a lot of people look at this province and assume the labour and skills shortages are all around the oilsands — and certainly there’s a desperate need for people there that has to be addressed. But what people don’t always think of is the ripple effect of that development.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone in this room that the labour shortage extends well beyond the oilsands. As someone was telling me the other day, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in Camrose or Calgary, Edson or Edmonton, from the signs on the streets you’d think that the biggest franchise operation in the province was “help wanted.”

And the oilsands aren’t the only competition. I was in Whistler, B.C. this summer. Business owners there told me they’re short 3,500 workers. Managers are cleaning hotel rooms. They’re afraid they won’t have enough people to run the ski-lifts this winter. With the Olympics coming, and more than $100 billion in major infrastructure projects either underway or being planned in the province, you know the competition for labour and skills is going to stay tight.

Addressing this problem successfully is going to take a lot of effort and innovative thinking from everyone involved — governments at every level and the private sector as well. There’s a lot of long-term planning involved in that effort, but in the meantime, we have to meet some immediate needs.

The Temporary Foreign Workers Program is helping. We admit about 100,000 temporary workers to Canada each year. Thanks to a concerted effort, three-quarters of visa applications, including those for temporary workers who need them, are processed in less than a month. One-third are processed within a matter of days.

Issuing visas is just one part of the process of hiring a temporary foreign worker. But we are working with our partners to make this program even more responsive. Back in July, I announced that we were creating new Temporary Foreign Worker Units — one in Vancouver and a second in Calgary — to make it easier for employers to access this program. Within days I received a letter of thanks from Synenco Energy saying that the unit in Calgary had helped them quickly — and successfully.

Since then, my colleague the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development and I have been working with our counterparts here in Alberta, in B.C., and in other provinces to identify what else we could do.

Today, on behalf of Minister Finley and myself, I am very pleased to announce a series of additional measures that will allow employers to make even greater use of this program — while continuing to protect the access of Canadian workers to the labour market:

• We will create regional lists of occupations under pressure. For the occupations where a labour shortage has been identified, employers will be able to reduce how far they have to advertise available jobs before they are eligible to apply to hire a foreign worker. It will save them time and money.
• We have created new federal-provincial working groups in both B.C. and Alberta to speed the identification of existing and emerging skill shortages, and determine the best ways the foreign worker program can help address these shortages.
• We’ve completed a new suite of information products that offer practical, step-by-step guidance to employers interested in hiring temporary foreign workers.

What we’re doing is improving the Temporary Foreign Worker Program so that it is easier to understand and more user-friendly. The improvements are also expected to reduce overall costs and time spent by employers who need to hire foreign workers.

I’m pleased that we’re launching these changes here in Alberta and in B.C., where the need is unquestionably the greatest.

Now, when temporary workers arrive, they are getting Canadian work experience. They are learning our languages and adapting to the Canadian way of life. In other words, they are acquiring all the ingredients for success in this country, and just when they’re getting settled here, we send them home. I have made no secret of my intention to look at ways to have Temporary Foreign Workers stay in Canada permanently — let’s give them the opportunity to call Canada home.

What else can we do? Consider that there are some 150,000 international students in Canada right now. They too are becoming more skilled in our languages, they’re adapting to Canadian society, and they are earning Canadian qualifications.

In May, we changed the rules so that these international students can take off-campus jobs while they are in Canada — and since then, we’ve awarded more than 7,000 work permits under this program. That move alone is going to help alleviate some of the stress in our service and tourism industries, but there’s a potential longer-term advantage as well.

These are young, motivated people with Canadian qualifications and now, potentially, Canadian work experience — and we send them home when their student visa expires. Many of these young people may wish to stay and accept jobs in Canada. I want to look at giving them that opportunity.

When smaller communities and rural districts are almost begging for doctors and other health care professionals, we simply cannot afford to overlook this opportunity to use our immigration system to help address those needs.

That is one of the reasons we have committed $18 million to work with our partners in the provinces on ways to streamline the recognition of foreign credentials. These are the skilled and professional people we work hard to attract to Canada. We want them to reach their full potential here as soon as possible — because if newcomers don’t have the opportunity to reach their full potential, Canada cannot reach its full potential. I am working closely with my colleague Diane Finley, the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, to make progress on this issue.

We have to recognize, however, that immigration alone is not the answer to our labour and skill shortages, nor can immigration alone secure our future prosperity.

We need to work together to train Canadians for the jobs of today and tomorrow. The commitment our Budget made to apprenticeship is one example. We need to look not only at training and education, but also issues such as workforce mobility, and how to bring under-represented groups such as women and native Canadians into the workforce.

All of these initiatives are part of ensuring Canada has a strong, competitive economy. Strengthening our economy for the long haul is one of the four pillars of the fall agenda for Canada’s new government. We’re also working to improve accountability; we’re better protecting Canadians by toughening laws and putting more police officers on our streets and strengthening border security; and through stricter environmental standards and proper enforcement we’re going to improve our air quality by way of the new Clean Air Act.

While immigration is not the only answer to keeping our economy moving, it has an important role to play. Immigration has always been fundamental to the economic, social and cultural development of this province and this country.

My ancestors moved to Canada from Norway via the U.S. slightly more than 100 years ago and settled in what is now north central Alberta. They came for the free land, and they were allowed to set up their schools and churches. However they were also expected to be good citizens. They were expected to help build the country. A few years ago I wandered into the foyer of Augustana University in Camrose, Alberta near where my family settled. On the wall was a ledger that listed the donors to the original college, founded in 1910. There on the ledger were the names of my great grandfather Nils and my great uncle Matt. They certainly weren’t wealthy, but they understood what it means to be a citizen, and as you can probably tell I’m pretty proud of my immigrant ancestors.

Like many families, mine had to adjust to a new language, new cultures, and new ways of doing things. But also like many families at the time, mine prospered thanks in part to a strong local network of friends, family, churches and schools. All told those millions of individual contributions have helped to forge a great nation.

The role of immigration will be just as important in the years ahead. In fact, it’s expected that within 10 years, immigration will account for all net growth in our workforce. Not just here in Alberta, but across Canada.

I can assure you Canada’s new government will continue to work to ensure the economic future of this province and this country is not held back for a lack of skilled hands to keep the wheels turning.

Thank you.