Speaking notes by the Honourable Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P. Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism at the 12^th National Metropolis Conference

Pre-conference Session: Foreign Credential Recognition in Canada and Abroad

Montréal, Québec, March 18, 2010

As Delivered

Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure for me to join you on behalf of the government for this opening workshop on foreign credential recognition that will kick off the Metropolis Conference.

The government plays a key role in establishing an immigration system that is fair, flexible and future‑oriented. That said, academics, decision‑makers, non‑governmental organizations, industry stakeholders and Canadian citizens also have roles to play.

As the basis for policy and programs, your additional knowledge and information help us to see how various factors influence each other. I respect the collective experience in this room and look forward to hearing your views over the course of this conference.

As a parliamentarian, and someone who spends every single weekend, as Minister responsible for multiculturalism, visiting with Canada’s diverse cultural communities, with new Canadians, I am very intimately aware of the fact that the number-one policy preoccupation for most new Canadians is overcoming the barriers to economic integration and success. And for so many of them, first and foremost among those barriers is foreign credential recognition.

One of the reasons we’re talking about this, why provincial governments have become so active, and why professional agencies have become so engaged is a reflection of the anxiety of newcomers who arrive and too often find themselves unable to participate at the level that they would like, and for which they are trained. And I often say, with respect to this issue of credential recognition, that we have a moral obligation to get this right for people.

I say that because we invite people from all over the world to come here with their abilities, their education and their professional experience. In fact, we invite them because of their experience and their education. Those are the immigration system’s criteria for selecting skilled workers from other countries. But too often, when these people arrive in Canada, they encounter barriers to employment and recognition of their credentials.

And people come to me and say, “Minister, why did you recognize my post-graduate degree for purposes of immigration when I can’t actually use it to work in Canada? Why did you give me points for my professional experience in my country of origin when the credentialing agency in Canada says it’s not worth anything in this country? How do I get past the Canadian experience paradox? The employers tell me I can’t work here if I don’t have Canadian experience, but I can’t get Canadian experience if I don’t get work here.”

I can tell you I know this predicament very closely. A few years ago, I helped a friend of mine from India immigrate to Canada. [He and his family] had spent several years in Dubai. He had an advanced degree from an Indian university in financial management. He worked in Dubai as a CFO for a large multi-million dollar college, of which my father was the President. It’s how we got to know them. Wonderful family. Classic, tremendous immigrants, exactly the sort of people who we want to build the future of Canada.

So, he and his family decided to come here to Canada. They stayed at my place because I’m not home in Calgary very much. I said you can stay at my place until you get settled. So they were living in my townhouse in Calgary for the first year of their time in Calgary so they could get a head start. I really profited from the experience because I got to see firsthand through their eyes the travails and the challenges of newcomers as they try to make their way through the many hurdles to integration in Canada. And it was a tremendous learning experience.

My house still has a slight curry smell from the experience and my palate became more tolerable for hot cuisine, but one thing that really I found was tragic was that while my friend had worked as a CFO of a multi-million dollar institution in Dubai, his foreign experience, his Indian degree, and his foreign credentials were essentially meaningless in the hot Calgary job market. Here was a man who went from being a fairly senior executive in Dubai to struggling to get any employment in the hottest labour market in Canada. And we know that experience is repeated tens of thousands of times every year.

All of us have an obligation to work together to put an end to that so that those who arrive in this country every day can make the contribution they want to, which is to work hard.

I think there’s a moral dimension to this as well. The reason I think this issue has a moral dimension is that I believe it is unethical for us, as stakeholders in governments, licensing bodies and professional associations, not to allow people to work when, in making the decision to approve their immigration to Canada, we have, in effect, made a commitment. We also have a responsibility to create economic opportunities for these people. So, how can we do that? Obviously, there are a great many things we must do.

And let’s be honest. I know there is a feeling among many newcomers that certain professional agencies in particular have been reluctant in opening up transparent and clear ways towards professional credential recognition. There is a feeling among many new Canadians and many in the settlement sector that some professional agencies have kept a closed door towards the applications of many newcomers. Now, I often remind newcomers that the professional agencies also have a responsibility to maintain their standards and Canadian standards.

I always say that there is no guarantee that individuals who come to Canada will have their foreign credentials recognized without exception. That isn’t possible; it isn’t a realistic objective because our professional associations must always maintain standards.

But what I think we can, and must, do is give people a clear and straightforward, honest shot at getting their credentials recognized in a reasonable period of time. We need to make sure that people are recognized as engineers in Canada, who know how to build bridges and roads to meet Canadian standards. We need to make sure that doctors who practise in our hospitals know how to practise with Canadian patients at Canadian standards in the mode of the Canadian health care system. But we also cannot allow people who make these applications to find themselves tied up in red tape, endlessly doing test after test without any clear process, and a process that sometimes lasts years.

Two years ago, I was in Edmonton to make an announcement for one of our foreign diploma recognition programs; it was a program to help physicians trained abroad to become paramedics here in Canada, so that they could continue to work in the health care field. There I met a physician, an obstetrician from Syria, who had come to Canada six years previously, hoping to practise medicine. She arrived in Vancouver; she applied for recognition of her skills and training; she entered a Byzantine process that, for her, has led nowhere.

This woman had been trained at one of the best medical schools in the Middle East and had performed hundreds of operations but, when I met her two years ago, she was a maid cleaning hotel rooms.

Now she was in tears telling me about her story. And this just brought to mind the human dimension of this. We often look at this issue in a technocratic way. When I try to explain to newcomers the complexity of this, I see people’s eyes glaze over. I start talking about how each province has 45 different licensing bodies, there are 10 provinces, there are nearly 450 licensing bodies, they all have different standards, and it’s a matter principally of provincial jurisdiction. They say, “You didn’t tell me about separation of powers and constitutional jurisdictions when you accepted my medical degree for purposes of immigration to come to Canada.”

And that’s what that woman said to me. And we owe it to her, to that doctor, so that one day she might have the reasonable prospect of practising. And yes, it is true that perhaps her training and her background are not up to the standard of the Alberta College in that instance. And perhaps she does have to do additional and supplementary training, but we owe it to her to give her that information first of all before she gets here so she knows what she’s getting into. We need to help her develop a plan so that she can get that additional training as soon as possible so that she can work in the medical field as we’re now doing through this particular program so that she can then contribute fully to our health and to our economy.

So, what have we done at the federal level? Well, I’ll tell you a lot has been done. Of course, for several years—since 2002, I think—at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, there has been the Foreign Credential Recognition Program, which provides grants and contributions to organizations involved in the process of facilitating that recognition. And, of course, in 2006, at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the government created the Foreign Credentials Referral Office (FCRO).

At that time the FCRO had a budget of more than $30 million over several years. As you know, the FCRO was created on the basis of a number of consultations; the idea was to begin by providing information to newcomers before they arrived in Canada.

Our visa officers often point out that there’s no guarantee that they’ll get their credentials recognized, and it may, in fact, never happen in Canada. But they tell me the newcomer’s response is always, “Well, I’ll take my chances. I’ll try anyway.”

So there is that desire to come, that entrepreneurial drive, that pioneer spirit. And so we need to accommodate that.

The idea is to make use of the time after we make a decision about the immigration of a permanent resident. We’ve set up programs at a number of Canadian missions in other countries to prepare immigrants before they arrive in Canada, by informing them about a number of aspects of integration, especially labour-market entry and credential recognition. We’ve done it with the Canadian Orientation Abroad program.

We’ve done it with our offices through the Canadian Immigration and Integration Project, our partnership with the Canadian Association of Community Colleges, and we’ve recently announced an expansion of that program. We’re now, of course, making these free two-day seminars available to all of the selected permanent residents, federal skilled workers and provincial nominees who are selected in the Philippines, China, India, the Gulf States, in Scandinavia and in Britain, through the opening of our new office in London. In addition, we are partnering with S.U.C.C.E.S.S. through our innovation fund to do similar work in our offices in Seoul, Korea and Taipei.

As a result of these programs, some 80 percent of the permanent residents who were selected for economic immigration to Canada are eligible to receive counselling and two-day orientation seminars on what it will take to get integrated here in Canada and to begin the process of applying, if possible, for their credentials from abroad. I’ve talked to the clients who’ve gone through the program. I’m delighted to see many had managed to establish prearranged employment because of it, and many of them found out they needed to backfill their education before they came while they’re waiting for their final screening before coming to Canada, and I think that’s a very significant step forward.

I am still concerned that most immigrants from these countries do not make use of the programs we’ve set up. I don’t know what the problem is, but I do know that we need to raise the visibility of these programs, because I believe that everyone should be taking advantage of these briefing sessions before leaving for Canada.

Of course, at the FCRO, we’ve created the Working in Canada Web Portal, which is a great tool where people can, as you know, go online, enter their profession, the province they’ll be working in, and, immediately from abroad, they can see what the process is, what is required, and they can mentally prepare themselves for that. They can begin to put together their paperwork, if they need to go back to one of their universities or colleges or employers and get additional information. It’s much easier for them to do so in their country of origin than after they’ve arrived in Canada. These are all important areas of progress.

And I should also recognize we’re working with employers through the FCRO. Last year, we unveiled the Employer’s Roadmap to Hiring and Retaining Internationally Trained Workers. That is a tool we developed in cooperation with industry, with industrial sector councils, to provide practical information for employers. I think many employers are well intentioned and want to hire and employ immigrants; this tool helps them understand how to recruit newcomers and recognize their qualifications, which is helpful, practical information.

As well, both levels of government reached an extremely important agreement at the January 2009 first ministers’ meeting, where Prime Minister Harper suggested for the first time that the issue of foreign credential recognition be put on the agenda.  A welcome agreement was reached between the federal government and provincial governments to create a common, accelerated approach to foreign credential recognition.

And that work was supported by a $50 million contribution in Canada’s Economic Action Plan in the 2009 budget, which is continuing this year, to work out the details of a common national approach to accelerated and streamlined credential recognition. And many of you will know that Minister Finley and I, together with the provincial Ministers, announced in November last year the culmination of that very important federal-provincial agreement in the publication of the pan-Canadian framework for the assessment and recognition of foreign qualifications.

That agreement was reached by all the labour ministers of all the provinces. As you know, it will motivate the professional associations to create clear, transparent processes and to provide responses to requests for recognition within one year. That really is progress; I don’t have to tell you that there are times when even getting a response takes years.

Granted, there are over 40 professional associations and they cannot all do all that work at once. That said, although we started with eight of them for the first stage of this initiative, our purpose is clear—to ensure that all professional associations in all parts of Canada have similar transparent processes for providing clear responses within one year.

So this is a huge step forward because part of the problem of credential recognition has been bound up in provinces jealously guarding their own distinctive regulations over the professions. And now, together with the agreement for common labour-market regulation standards across the country, we have a rationalization that the provinces have committed to and a growing number of professional agencies have committed to as well.

So, these are some of the initiatives we have taken. I must also acknowledge the efforts of the provinces. Ontario has created the position of Fairness Commissioner, and the Honourable Jean Augustine is doing a fine job of overseeing the efforts of the professional associations. Québec has reached an interesting agreement with France on reciprocal credential recognition that may serve as an example for agreements between other countries and other provinces.

I would also like to salute the progress made by a number of professional associations. I want to recognize as well that for all the criticism they take, there are many professional bodies that have been making really solid efforts in the past several years to streamline the process and to get with the game.

I want to thank everyone who is participating in this conference. I really believe that with all of these efforts, we’re getting to a critical mass. We’re getting some momentum with the pan-Canadian framework, and with the various programs that we’re rolling out. It’s always been a vexatious, complicated problem.

I want to encourage you at this Conference. It is so important to share best practices and good ideas. I can honestly tell you that our officials are doing a great job; at the same time, we are open to new ideas because we have made new investments.

I would add that we are making more investments: we have tripled the federal investment in language training services for newcomers. I want to make sure that these investments produce concrete results. So, give us your ideas about how we in government can do more and do better.

And I really hope that we’ll get some of those good ideas at this conference and that my successor can come back to this conference in two or three years and say, “Working together, we got the job done.” Foreign-trained professionals are able to work in Canada without waiting forever, and this country truly is realizing its special vocation as a land of opportunity for the people around the world.

Thank you very much.