EXPRESS ENTRY and ONTARIO

My job is to try and match my trades employers’ staffing needs with government policy.

The difference between what my employer clients need and what Canada can supply should logically be covered by foreign workers, whether temporary or immigrant.

My job should be pretty simple.

And in light of Ottawa’s policy to use “Express Entry” in a self professed bold attempt to  turn economic immigration from the  “supply” side to the “demand” side, my job should be getting easier. After all, it worked in Australia.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that I have no idea how Ottawa determines:

• If there are “demand” sides in any specific skills sets in Ontario
• How the Ontario “skills sets” demand sides ,if any, are established and calculated
• How it can run an Express Entry program based on alleged “demand side” considerations when there is no indication of any such consideration.

Specifically, there is no indication as to how bureaucrats will dip into the Express Entry “pool” and select successful worker candidates. The federal bureaucrats are not selecting on the basis of any known:

a)    Skills set target or quota

b)    Labour Market Information (LMI)

c)    Provincial requests

d)    Any other known benchmark

My concerns with the integrity of Ottawa’s “demand side” intentions are exacerbated with Ottawa’s May 2014 – December 2014 management of the “demand side” trades quotas of the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) and the Federal Skilled Worker Program (FSTP) .

In getting ready for Express Entry, Ottawa put a quota of 200 for each NOC code job description under the CEC program. Ottawa also put a quota on each NOC job description under the FSTP program. One would assume that the quotas reflected some empirical “demand side” logic.

The outcomes for the May –December 2014 quotas are distressing.

Ottawa refuses to release the numbers for the FSTP program.

The CEC “trades relevant” number of applications received between May –November 2014, but not yet approved, for the entire nation are as follows:

• Tile setters… 4
• Construction supervisors …2
• Upholsterers … 0
• Tailor , dressmaker… 1
• Chef …27
• Butcher …4
• Welder …3
• Concrete finisher… 11
• Roofers …10
• Crane operators …1
• Auto body technicians …3
• Bricklayers …6
• Electrical mechanics …0
• Carpenters …29

The above numbers, together with the lack of any related Express Entry skills selection relevant data, raise the following questions being asked by my Ontario employers, all of whom come to the table with a clear “demand side” interest in legalizing their existing workers:

• Why are the above CEC numbers so pitiful?
• Why the FSTP are numbers a state secret?

·         Does Ottawa have a secret “demand side” list of preferred occupations?

·         Does Ottawa have a secret “demand side” list of preferred source jurisdictions?

• Does Ottawa have any clue, and does it even care, as to how Express Entry priorities are established or disclosed?
• Does Ontario have any clue as to how Express Entry priorities are established?
• Does Ontario have any clue as to impact of Express Entry on the Ontario economy?

I’m pretty sure as to the answers for the first 5 questions. Ottawa is historically consistent in its byzantine “command –control –mislead –deflect” modus operandi. 

The answer to last two questions are distressingly simple:

• Ontario’s former Deputy Minister of Immigration had no clue what he was doing when he forced the province’s employers to swallow Express Entry
• Ontario’s Minister of Immigration had even less clue, or interest, than his Deputy
• The Premier‘s office was otherwise occupied

As a result of Queen’s Park being in La La land on this file, Ontario was not put on the path to a common sense foreign trades worker policy, let alone a common sense immigration policy of any kind.

Common sense tells me that determining the “demand” for skilled trades workers in Ontario should be a no brainer:

First, you ask the provinces for their projected short falls for each skills set on both a short term and long term basis. You make public all of your Labour Market Information for each individual skills set.  

Second, you speak with existing “Sectoral Councils” in order to get the national lay of the land for each skills set on both a short term and long term basis .You come to terms with mobility of Canadian workers in each skills set

Third, you eliminate the significant distortion of hundreds of thousands of illegal workers by telling employers and unions to get the illegals into either the work permit or permanent residency streams depending on the projected long term or short term need. You do not stand in the way of turning qualified illegal’s into legals. You do enforce against recalcitrant employers and unions.   

Fourth, you never, never, never allow a company to bring in a skilled worker as a landed immigrant unless he/she has already proven himself/herself by working and paying taxes for a period of time.

But here we are in Ontario:

• No federal LMI

• No provincial LMI

• Employers of existing legal workers being ignored

• Hundreds of thousands of illegal workers. More coming in every day 

• The provincial tax base being salvaged

• Provincial growth being compromised  

• No apparent provincial interest in salvaging Ontario’s largest industrial sectors

• Clearly no interest in Ottawa to take Ontario seriously

• Clearly, no interest in Ontario to take itself seriously

Who but Ottawa, along with provincial incompetence of biblical proportions, could have written such a script? 

As for my employer clients?

They don’t respect any government of any stripe.

This is why we’re in Court. 

And this is why we are going to succeed. 

Richard Boraks, 5 January 2015