October 19, 2012

Attracting and Retaining Skilled Immigrants

Ontario is looking to develop its first ever immigration strategy. The McGuinty government is committed to an immigration strategy that will focus on how immigration can best support the province’s economic development and ensure the success of Ontario’s immigrants. It is clear that Ontario needs more skilled immigrants for the province to prosper and remain globally competitive.

Ontario’s Expert Roundtable; a group of business people, employers, academics and other experts on immigration and labour market needs prepared a report which examines how immigration can best support Ontario’s economic and labour market growth. They outlined 32 recommendations that will inform the government of the development of the first Ontario immigration Strategy.

The key to this selection is so that Ontario would be able to recruit prime candidates interested in joining Ontario’s work force. A few notable recommendations are:

• Ontario’s Provincial Nominee Program should be used to respond to specific occupational shortages and to the needs of communities, including Francophone and rural communities
• the Government of Canada should continue to honour its traditional commitment to refugee claimants, including continuing to fund the Interim Federal Health Program
• the Federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program should focus on recruiting high-skilled workers and workers in the skilled trades and facilitating the rapid filling of temporary vacancies

If you are interested in immigrating to Ontario we would be glad to assist you in your process! To learn more about immigrating to Ontario, please click here.

To view all 32 recommendations, please click here.