By Susan Mas, CBC News | Link to Article
The federal government is looking to match skilled immigrants with unfilled jobs, in what it’s calling a new “fast and flexible system of economic immigration” it intends to have in place in January 2015.
By Susan Mas, CBC News | Link to Article
The federal government is looking to match skilled immigrants with unfilled jobs, in what it’s calling a new “fast and flexible system of economic immigration” it intends to have in place in January 2015.
Under this new system, which the government has compared to “a dating site,” Ottawa would act as chief matchmaker between immigrants who want to move to Canada for work and Canadian employers looking to fill job vacancies.
“We’re looking for an economic match,” said Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander in an interview with CBC News.
Alexander is currently working to build an “expression of interest” system to manage applications for immigration to Canada.
“We are moving from defence to offence. We’re moving from a passive system to a proactive system. We’re moving from a system based on processing whatever applications showed up, to a system focused on recruitment of the people that we know we need,” Alexander said on Jan. 23.
By next year, Canada will no longer be obligated to process all applications in the order they were received.
The new system would work in two stages.
First, prospective immigrants would apply to express their interest in coming to Canada. In doing so, they would answer a series of questions about their professional skills, their education, languages spoken, etc.
In the second stage, Alexander said, those applicants would see their skills matched with labour needs identified by the provinces and territories, as well as employers.
That means provincial governments and employers alike would have access to the pool of applications — in essence, an “employment database” that did not exist before.
“We will share it with employers in a way that protects privacy,” Alexander said.
Read more at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/skilled-immigrants-to-be-matched-with-vacant-jobs-in-2015-1.2514673