Minister: Immigration Bill Designed To Limit Immigration Applications To Canada
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080428/national/tory_immigration_bill
Mon Apr 28, 7:17 PM
By Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - Sweeping immigration reforms now before the House of Commons were designed to limit the number of immigration applications Canada gets each year, the minister responsible said Monday. The frank assessment came from Immigration Minister Diane Finley, who said controlling the number of applications to Canada will help reduce future immigration backlogs and waiting times.

The minister defended the contentious legislation against a hostile opposition at the Commons finance committee. She said the changes are necessary to process papers faster for the skilled workers the country desperately needs. Finley was asked why the government simply couldn't speed up processing times by pouring more cash resources into its immigration operations.

She replied that the current system is broken, and that spending cash without making structural changes would be like throwing money into a black hole. This year's federal budget has included $109 million to help reduce immigration wait times. Finley was later asked what specific flaws with the system would result in any additional money going down the drain.

She replied that spending more money on immigration services would actually lead to more applicants seeking to come to Canada - and she indicated that the government wants to do the opposite. "Throwing more money at the problem would not limit the number of applications that we would have to receive and process in any given point in time," Finley said to reporters.

"And the faster we got at processing, the more money we threw at it, the more applications we'd get. It becomes a spiral. "What we need to do is be able to control ... like other countries, the United Kingdom, Australia, we need to be able to manage the number of applications."

The government has included its immigration changes in a wide-ranging budget implementation bill.

They would allow the government to:

• produce a list of skills that Canada desperately needs, and then fast-track applicants who have those skills; and

• limit the number of applications Canada looks at in any given year.

The government has offered some strong hints about some of the workers they intend to fast-track, with doctors high on the list. But it has been far more cagey when asked to elaborate on which prospective immigrants could see themselves shut out as a result of the changes. New Democrat MP Olivia Chow asked the minister: "If you have winners, you're going to have losers. ... Who are the losers?"

The government has avoided answering that question.

It has also avoided another opposition demand - that it split the measures from the budget bill, a confidence measure that the election-shy Liberals appear willing to let pass. Finley said the measures belong in the budget bill because they're key to the national economy. She said the government's objective is "to help business stay in business." That was just about the only thing the NDP agreed with. "I'm not surprised that this is at the finance committee because the Conservative Harper government sees immigrants as economic units - as basically here to work and provide cheap labour," Chow said.

"They see immigrants as economic units rather than human beings." She said that such logic would have barred the parents of ex-Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson and of Tommy Douglas, the founder of the NDP and of medicare, from entering Canada.

The Liberals accused the minister of misleading Parliament. Finley and other Conservatives have repeatedly claimed that the country is letting in a record number of "new Canadians." In fact, the number of landed immigrants has dipped slightly in both years since the Conservatives took office. What has increased is the overall number of foreigners in Canada - including temporary and seasonal workers, as well as international students. Finley was non-committal when asked what impact the legislation would have on family reunification.

"Family class could actually, conceivably, be made one of the priorities," she replied. But when asked whether that was a specific promise, she demurred. "We're not committing to anything. The only thing we're committing to do is get this legislation through Parliament, so that we can get on with it and clean up with the mess the Liberals left us.

Young People Entering Workforce Still Earning Less Than Parents Did: Census
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jxrx2J7HwJlSrRPjeAAV6B5hVz1A

TORONTO — Young people entering the job market today may be better educated, but they're earning less money than their parents did a generation ago, according to new census data released Thursday by Statistics Canada. In fact, it's a trend that began a quarter century ago and doesn't appear to be slowing down - especially for young men entering the workforce.

Across all age groups, median salaries for full-time workers have changed little in 25 years. Workers today make, on average, a mere $53 more than they did in 1980, when adjusted for inflation, according to the census. That stagnation mainly afflicted the middle class. The top earners in Canada saw their wages increase 16.4 per cent since 1980, while the bottom rung saw a 20-per-cent decrease.

For the 25-to 29-year-old group, it's also a story of decreasing fortunes.

In 1980, median earnings for full-time male workers in that age group - the time when people are generally starting their careers - were the equivalent of $43,767 in 2005 wages. By the year 2000, they dipped to $38,110 and in 2005 they stood at $37,680.

While women have traditionally earned less than men, the year-over-year drop has proven far less dramatic. In 1980, young women made $32,813 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Their median salaries dropped a mere $234 by 2000 and in 2005 they were $32,104.

"When people reach the age of 30 or 35, many of them have accumulated less money than their counterparts did in the mid 1970s," Statistics Canada analyst Rene Morissette said.

He attributes the trend to the fact young people are staying in school longer, young men seem less likely to find full-time work once out of school and that those who do tend to be paid lower wages. The trend towards reduced wages for young males is one that emerged in the early 1980s in many economically developed countries, Morissette said, noting economists speculated new technologies were pushing out young workers.

Others believed the recession during that time may have prompted employers to try to cut labour costs by reducing the wages of fresh hires in order to avoid seriously harming morale and productivity among senior workers. "In 2008, it's fair to say we still don't have a good understanding of why wages of young men fell back then," he said, adding there are some more plausible explanations.

The decline of the manufacturing sector in Ontario and Quebec - exacerbated in recent years by the loss of many automotive jobs and outsourcing to countries with cheap labour costs - has resulted in a 20-per-cent reduction in the number of blue collar union jobs, as well as lower wages for those who remain, Morissette said.

"We know unionized jobs pay usually 10-to 15-per-cent higher wages than non-unionized jobs and that has certainly contributed to reducing the wages of young men during that period," he said. According to the latest census data, the salaries of blue-collar labourers in processing, manufacturing and utilities, for example, fell four per cent between 2000 and 2005, while machine operators and fabric, fur and leather product manufacturers dropped more than seven per cent.

Even though unemployment is low in Canada, there's been a shift towards a service-based economy - sometimes referred to as the Wal-Martization of the workforce. Often paired with lower salaries, Morissette suggested it's responsible for about 15 per cent of the decline in young people's wages. Still, resource-driven areas like Alberta have been debunking the trend in recent years as those in the oil fields pull in six-figure incomes, University of Western Ontario sociology professor Wolfgang Lehmann cautioned.

In fact, the latest census data shows median salaries for full-time managers in the oil and gas sectors soared more than 33 per cent to more than $97,000 between 2000 and 2005 - the fastest increase of all occupations. Meanwhile, supervisors in the mining, oil and gas sectors saw earnings rise 17.5 per cent, while mine service workers and those in oil and gas drilling saw their salaries rise by nearly 16 per cent.

Lehmann suggested skilled trades people including plumbers, electricians, welders and carpenters, are also in high demand right across the country and can stand to make very comfortable incomes. These areas were historically filled by skilled European immigrants, Lehmann said, noting both today's immigrant and Canadian born populations have gravitated more towards academic fields rather than skilled trades.

Highly Educated Immigrants Still Lagging In Earnings: Latest Census
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jw21Hp5BZBANUB5QXoQtTcIzwltQ

TORONTO — Piloting his cab through the congested streets of Toronto, Ifzal Ahmad is looking forward to the day when he can come up with $35,000 for a course that should allow him to again become a mechanical engineer. Despite 15 years in his profession in India, the 47-year-old married father of three - like so many other new arrivals to Canada - has found himself in a relatively low-skilled job because his qualifications aren't recognized here. The latest data on income and earnings from the 2006 census released Thursday by Statistics Canada shows that highly skilled immigrants - the country's preferred newcomer - have a long row to hoe once they arrive, and it shows in the amount of money they earn.

The past quarter century has seen the earnings gap between recent immigrant workers and Canadian-born ones widen dramatically. In 1980, recent immigrant men earned 85 cents for every dollar of their Canadian-born counterparts. In 2005, that number plummeted to 63 cents. The drop was even more pronounced for immigrant women, who went from earning 85 cents by comparison in 1980 to only 56 cents in 2005. Having a university degree didn't help either.

Recent immigrant men holding a degree earned only 48 cents for each dollar their university educated, Canadian-born counterparts did. Some 30 per cent of male immigrants with a university degree worked in jobs that required no more than a high-school education - more than twice the rate of those born in Canada.

The gap was actually less for non-university educated immigrants, who earned 61 cents to every dollar earned by their Canadian-born counterparts. "That's not right because when you apply for immigration, they check all your degrees and send all your degrees to Canada for verification," Ahmad said after dropping off his latest fare. The lack of recognition of his qualifications or experience in a textiles factory managing 2,000 people, he said, came as a huge blow, as did the dilemma of trying to get Canadian experience when no one will give him work.

"Wherever you apply for a job, they say, 'Do you have Canadian education? Do you have Canadian experience?"' The reason for the dramatic divide, Statistics Canada reported Thursday, was the decline in the information and communication technologies sector between 2000 and 2004. A disproportionately high share of those workers were trained in computer sciences and engineering, the agency said.

Rene Morissette, lead analyst with Statistics Canada, said it is well documented that foreign experience has been increasingly undervalued. The trend started in 1980, when immigrants began to see their earnings level fall even though their educational levels "grew remarkably" compared to those of Canadian-born workers. "The group of people that were hit the most were the older recent immigrants," Morissette said.

"This amount of experience in your (home) country is no longer rewarded the way it used to be, if it has any rewards at all." Analysts have put forward several explanations for the disparity. Employers may simply not appreciate or trust the quality of higher education in a country with which they are unfamiliar. It can also be challenging for employers faced with the usual issue of orienting new employees to deal with the added problem of taking on someone with different language skills or cultural values. Others wonder if there aren't simply too many newcomers for the labour market to absorb. Then, there is perhaps the most sensitive issue.
"There might also simply be discrimination," said Morissette. "But this is awfully hard to test empirically."

The new census data do show the earnings gap for recent arrivals aged between 25 and 34 who completed the final phase of their higher education in Canada also fare worse than their Canadian-born counterparts, suggesting something beyond credential recognition is an issue.
Ernie Lightman, an economist at the University Toronto, is convinced employer discrimination is the real reason many immigrants struggle.

Lightman did a study in 2006 of former welfare recipients in Toronto that found the foreign-born, despite having relatively superior education levels, fared worse than their Canadian-born cohort, even when moving onto a second post-welfare job. The study also found immigrants were actually worse off financially after leaving welfare. "Clearly, their education was not useful or usable in Canada," Lightman said. "The only explanation I can come up with is discrimination or racism or barriers in the workforce." Lightman does concede that other issues, such as language skills may explain at least some of the discrepancy, but notes the earnings gap widened at the same time as immigrants became increasingly non-white.

"I cannot prove racism or discrimination, but I have no problem believing that's what's going on here for lack of a better explanation," Lightman said. Politicians across the country have recognized the significant barriers skilled foreigners face in landing on their feet in the workplace once they arrive in Canada. Ontario, for example, legislated an independent agency a year ago to ensure skilled newcomers have fair access to 34 self-regulating professions with penalties of up to $100,000 for mistreatment.

Across the country, some self-regulating bodies have made a concerted effort to streamline their recognition procedures. For others, the process remains slow and painful. "This is a Goliath and we're nibbling at its toes," Timothy Welsh, of the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance, said from Vancouver. "What we're seeing is a lot more collective will (but) whether that's making a difference for everybody right now is less clear because it's such a complex issue."

Part of the problem relates to Canada's devolved federal system itself in which rules differ from province to province and, within that system, self-regulating bodies set their own rules for qualifications and standards of practice. In all, there are about 400 licensing bodies in Canada - just for the various professions.

Last year, the federal government committed $30 million over five years to the new Foreign Credentials Referral Office, which is designed to help those trained abroad get their credentials assessed and recognized more quickly. "Too many newcomers can't get jobs they have been trained for," Immigration Minister Diane Finley said at the time. "That's a terrible waste, for them - and for the country."

But Welsh, whose organization represents 450 immigrant and refugee service agencies across Canada, said while the office can provide information and general leadership, its scope remains limited as a federal body dealing with various provincial governments and provincially mandated agencies.

One area that needs to be looked at, he said, is whether Ottawa's focus on recruiting skilled professionals abroad even makes sense given, for example, the need for trades and unskilled labour in provinces such as B.C.

In the interim, Ahmad plans to apply soon for a provincial loan that will help him pay for a course he hopes will lead him back to the kind of career he believes he should be pursuing.
"If we get the opportunities, we can prove our worth," Ahmad said.

Ontario Bound For Have-Not Status: Report
Would be bad news for federal government, economists warn
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/internships/index.html

David Akin-
The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Savvy bargaining for oil revenues has helped secure Newfoundland and Labrador's future prosperity, one economist says.
CREDIT: Greg Locke, Reuters
Savvy bargaining for oil revenues has helped secure Newfoundland and Labrador's future prosperity, one economist says.

Newfoundland and Labrador is set to shed its status as one of Confederation's have-not provinces in two years, but its spot in the have-not club could be quickly filled by Ontario, according to an analysis released yesterday by the Toronto Dominion Bank.

The prospect of Ontario receiving more than a billion dollars in equalization payments from the federal government has some broad implications, threatening to derail an already delicately balanced federal budget and raising the spectre of renewed federal-provincial squabbles to fine-tune the country's equalization formula. The TD report, co-authored by the bank's chief economist, Don Drummond, and its director of economic studies, Derek Burleton, says Ontario will qualify for as much as $400 million in equalization payments by 2011 and $1.3 billion by 2012.

Mr. Drummond and other economists had already predicted the federal government could find itself in a deficit position within two years -- before accounting for the possibility of equalization payments going to the most populous province. Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty did not address those budget implications yesterday; instead he exhorted Ontario to do more to encourage economic growth by cutting taxes.

"The equalization system was never designed to have the two largest provinces receiving equalization," said Mr. Flaherty. "I would be less concerned about the formula and more concerned about the quality of life and the standard of living in the province of Ontario." Premier Dalton McGuinty, a Liberal, has been feuding with Mr. Flaherty about the federal role in Ontario's economy.

"How is it that we can be a have-not if we're sending $20 billion annually to the rest of the country? I think that tells us something about the formula," Mr. McGuinty said in the legislature yesterday. It was Mr. Flaherty, who was once Ontario's finance minister, who amended the equalization formula in his 2007 federal budget that may now allow Ontario to qualify for equalization for the first time since 1983.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

Ontario set to receive payments under the federal equalization program

• Based on TD Economics’ economic and revenue projections, Ontario is projected to qualify or equalization payments of $400 million in FY 10-11 and $1.3 billion in FY 11-12 Weakness in Ontario’s economy is only part of the story; economic growth in the west and the switch to a 10 province standard have driven up the equalization base

• The province’s have-not status could prove fleeting if the economy turns in a strong economic recovery in 2010 and 2011.

Ontario could get equalization payments within 2 years: TD
New equalization formula cited
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
CBC News : http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/04/29/equaliztion.html

Ontario could qualify for equalization payments by 2010 as the booming west leaves Canada's biggest province comparatively poor, a new report by TD economists says. The startling turnaround in the fortunes of Ontario is largely due to soaring commodity prices and a new equalization formula that takes into account non-renewable resource revenues, according to the report's authors.

"We calculate that the province stands to collect as much as $400 million in fiscal 2010-11 and $1.3 billion in fiscal 2011-12," say TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond and the bank's director of economic studies, Derek Burleton. Payments could start as early as next year if the province's economy deteriorates further, the report says. TD is already projecting that Ontario will barely manage to skirt a recession this year.

The report notes that last year's change to the equalization formula from a five-province to a 10-province standard "brought Alberta into the picture and their soaring resource revenues" have driven up the base upon which equalization payments are based. The federal equalization program is designed to compensate "have-not" provinces so that their residents can have the same level of services as richer provinces. In the 2008-09 fiscal year, six provinces — the four in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Manitoba — will receive more than $13.6 billion in equalization payments.

The authors say Ontario's relative decline is "not so much a story of Ontario weakness as it is of booming economic strength in Canada's commodity-based economies." Since Ontario is a net importer of commodities, its economic performance relative to the west has been hurt.
Parallels to the 1970s

If Ontario does receive equalization payments, it would parallel the situation in the 1970s and early 80s. Back then, soaring energy prices and the recession in the early 80s made Ontario an equalization recipient from 1977 to 1982, the report noted. But Ontario was retroactively excluded from receiving payments when the federal government brought in a rule change to prevent any province from getting payments if its per-capita income topped the national average.

In 2007, the TD economists say Ontario's per capita GDP had fallen to two per cent below the national average — placing it in fourth place among the provinces. But even if Ontario does end up receiving equalization payments, the authors say it could be "fleeting if the economy turns in a strong economic recovery in 2010 and 2011."
Time to rework equalization formula?

The authors also say that Ontario is still a net contributor to federal coffers and likely will be in the future. Based on the most recent 2005 data, they say Ontario residents contributed $21 billion more to Ottawa than they got back in federal spending.  So if Ontario does end up getting equalization payments, "Ontario residents will, in effect, be paying the equalization tab with their own money," according to Drummond and Burleton.

The authors suggest that it may be time to take another look at the equalization formula, even though the new formula has been in place for just a year. "Ontario's transformation into an equalization-receiving province underscores the impact of the inclusion of 50 per cent of non-renewable resource revenues for all provinces in the formula at a time of soaring energy prices," they write.

"Is it heresy to ask whether once again the standard for equalization is not appropriate?"

COLLAPSING HOUSE PRICES

At the root of the problems in the US economy is the collapse of the housing market as foreclosed properties and unsold new build homes flood the market.

Toronto Catholic school board has highest expenses: investigation
Last Updated: Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The Canadian Press

A government report has slammed Toronto Catholic District School Board trustees for spending $1 million on personal expenses. The investigation, commissioned by the province, found the Toronto Catholic board spends more money on itself than any other board in Ontario.

Although trustees only get a $5,000 honorarium, the report found the board is spending an average of $100,000 per elected official for things like a car allowance and health benefits. The report recommends the board bring in tougher rules when it comes to trustee expenses. Education Minister Kathleen Wynne says the province has "no patience" for abuse of taxpayer dollars. She says she will be working with the Toronto Catholic board to implement the report's recommendations and expects all boards will take a closer look at their own expenses.

Wilson Coelho - a frontline leader among Goans in Kuwait
Wed May 7 11:25:01 PDT 2008
http://www.goanet.org/post.php?name=News&list=goanet&info=2008

The article below appeared in Kuwait's Arab Times dated May 07, 2008 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gulf-goans/message/19256

By Gasper Crasto / Kuwait
Picture from: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gulf-goans/message/19256

Wilson with wife Sheela, son Shane and daughter Sheena

Excerpts..

Kuwait: Alex Wilson Coelho, President of Goan Welfare Society (GWS), aleader in his own right, and a well-known personality among Indians inKuwait, who was presented with the NRI Community Service Leadership Award bythe Goa State Government at the ‘Conference on Indian Expatriates in theGulf Countries’ held recently at Hotel Mandovi, Panaji – Goa, will be laudedfor his great achievement by the Goan Welfare Society at its Annual GrandEvent – The May Ball to be held at the grand Istiqlal Ballroom, Hotel Ramada Riggae, on 8th May, 2008.

Although Wilson holds Canadian citizenship (Overseas Citizen of India) and his family migrated to Canada, he continues to work in Kuwait and manages acolossal portfolio as Unit Head of International Lending & Contracting Unitof Burgan Bank - Kuwait.

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