Nick Noorani Website

Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, tabled Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s 2009 Annual Report today in Parliament.

“While other countries have cut back immigration levels as a short-term response to the global economic downturn, our government is actually maintaining its immigration levels to meet the country’s medium- to long-term economic needs,” said Minister Kenney.

“Canada plans to welcome between 240,000 and 265,000 new permanent residents in 2010, the same number of immigrants as in recent years. In 2010, Canada will again welcome more new permanent residents than the average annual intake during the 1990s,” said Minister Kenney. “The focus of the 2010 plan is on economic immigration to support Canada’s economy during and beyond the current economic recovery.”

In particular, the admission ranges for immigrants nominated by the provinces and territories have been increased. Provinces and territories are in the best position to understand how Canada’s immigration intake can be aligned to their labour market needs. Second, by increasing the admission ranges in the Provincial Nominee Program, the Government of Canada is helping to ensure that the benefits of immigration are distributed across this country. Canada and the provinces will work together to manage growth in the provincial nominee program. Increasing the total number of immigrants processed under the economic category will also allow CIC to continue reducing the backlog of federal skilled worker applicants as part of the Action Plan for Faster Immigration.

Although the Action Plan has been in place for less than a year, early indications are that it is paying off. “People applying now under the federal skilled worker program can expect to receive a decision within six to twelve months, compared to up to six years under the old system,” said Minister Kenney. “We’ve also brought the backlog of federal skilled worker applicants down from over 630,000 to 425,000-a reduction of more than 30%.”

The backlog consists of people who applied before February 27, 2008, the date the Action Plan took effect. Since then, almost 240,000 people have applied to the new federal skilled worker program under the Action Plan. But even with those additional applicants, the total number of people currently awaiting a decision on their application is still 12% lower than when the Action Plan took effect.

“Before we changed the system, we had to process every application received. Since many more people applied every year than could be accepted, a backlog was created,” said Minister Kenney. “Now that we are processing only those applications that meet specified criteria, our Government is making significant progress in reducing the backlog.”

Improving the federal skilled worker program is part of the Government of Canada’s overall commitment to modernizing the immigration system to maximize its contribution to our overall economic growth.

“The Government of Canada will continue to work with provinces, territories and stakeholders to make sure immigration meets the needs of communities, employers and families now and in the future,” concluded the Minister.

An immigration company here has been asked by the consumer forum to refund, along with the cost of litigation, the processing fees it charged a customer for securing a Canadian work permit.
The district consumer disputes redressal forum Tuesday directed the city-based Canadian 4UR Immigration Services to refund Rs.322,340 and pay Rs.5,000 as litigation cost to Satvir Tandon, a resident of Ropar town in Punjab who had approached the company for securing a Canadian work permit.

“I had applied for a Canadian work permit through this company in March 2007 and paid over Rs.300,000 that included retainer fees, approval fees and embassy fees,” Tandon told IANS here Wednesday.

“However, the company told me in May 2008 that it had converted my case to permanent immigration case. I had willingly not applied for permanent immigration as it is complicated and time consuming,” he added.

Tandon, who holds a diploma in electrical engineering, said that after finding the consultants were not authorised to work as an immigration service provider, he approached the consumer forum.

Nobody from the company appeared at the hearing.

The forum, apart from directing Canadian 4UR to refund all processing fees and pay litigation cost to Tandon, also observed that the company was not competent to function as an immigration company.

Canadian 4UR, however, denied there was anything wrong in the services it provided.

“The applicant was hiding many facts from us and had submitted fake documents of his work experience and due to this his case was rejected,” the company’s administration manager Jagdeep Singh Sangha told IANS.

“We have all the proof and documents substantiating our point,” Sangha said.

I was invited last month to speak at the University of Ottawa on the topic of leveraging immigrant talent. There I met Dr. Linda Manning, who has done an incredible job in creating a free, interactive, computer-based training program for small and medium-sized enterprises called Leveraging Immigrant Talent to Strengthen Canadian Business.

The training modules are designed to help managers better understand their own talent management practices, recognize high-potential employees — in particular their immigrant employees, and create a pool of qualified management candidates. (Check out her website leadershipdiversity.ca for more.)

I also sat in on Dr. Lionel Laroche’s workshop presentation, which discussed one part of my favourite career-related subjects — soft skills for immigrants. Laroche explained so well that immigrants come to Canada with an abundance of technical skills — almost 90 per cent versus 10 per cent of soft skills, whilst the average Canadian worker has 60 per cent soft skills and 40 per cent technical. This latter ratio tends to mirror what most Canadian employers actually seek!

Yet so many immigrants do not recognize their lack of soft skills. And because they keep hearing “no Canadian experience” at interviews, they heap on more technical skills on top of their existing ones, but don’t account more for soft skills such as:

• time management
• interpersonal skills
• presentation skills
• written skills
• public speaking
• listening skills
• conflict resolution
• anger management
• business etiquette

The importance of each of these soft skills obviously depends on the job function. Someone in sales would need more interpersonal and presentation skills than someone in IT, for example. But it’s generally understood among hiring managers that while you can train someone to upgrade their technical skills, it’s very difficult to change someone’s demeanour.

While many readers may insist they have these skills and have used them in their home country, the fact is that there may be a huge difference in the way those skills are applied in Canada!

I continue to be amazed by immigrants who send me emails that make no sense. One person wrote: “I immigrate want but father problem. Please help.” Another was an email from a highly qualified immigrant who wrote to me asking for a job in ALL CAPS! I receive many emails with no body text but resumés attached. I feel for them. They are using the styles they were accustomed to in their home country where a person would look for their technical skills and overlook the way they present those skills.

Many immigrants feel insulted and get defensive when told they lack soft skills and respond by talking of their technical aptitude. Of course, unconsciously, over a few years, they do develop them. But how much easier would their journey be if they worked on developing these skills earlier on! Many immigrants don’t learn them at all and stay in jobs that are far below their skill-set and bemoan the unfairness of it all!

My suggestion — recognize the need for these soft skills and start working on them and you will see how your career will take off!

Let me tell you about a bright young lady who walked up to me at an event and introduced herself. She has been in Canada for five years and has been an avid reader of Canadian Immigrant, having read every single issue. She stated that she wanted to connect with networking groups and with other immigrants! Additionally, she volunteers with a leadership mentoring program that has helped her grow! This is where she’s going to nurture her soft skills and learn to adapt to the Canadian workplace environment. Most important perhaps is the positive way in which she’s approaching her journey.

Technical skills may help you get the job, but it is the soft skills and attitude that will help you retain the job and grow!

A week of marathon immigration detention hearings for 76 men apprehended on a rusty ship off Vancouver Island was expected to conclude Friday night with most ordered to remain behind bars — at least until the Canadian government is satisfied they are who they say they are.

The men are reportedly all ethnic Tamils from Sri Lanka, an island off the coast of India that is emerging from three decades of civil war between government forces and the defeated Tamil Tigers rebels.

Their unusual arrival on a mysterious migrant ship last Saturday prompted a flood of national attention, with opinions on the high-profile case ranging all over the map.

Federal politicians weighed in early on with tough talk about deporting the would-be refugees.

“We obviously don’t want to encourage people to get into rickety boats, pay thousands of dollars, cross the oceans and come to Canada illegally,” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said in an interview Tuesday.

Kenney said he viewed the case as one of human smuggling, something Canada and other countries must try to combat.

Human rights groups and Canadian Tamils, meanwhile, urged compassion for the men and called for a broader public understanding of the complex political situation in Sri Lanka.

“These men have fled murder and abduction, which is very rampant in Sri Lanka … and they are seeking a refuge where they will be safe and that, to them, is Canada,” said Sue Nathan of the Canadian Tamil Congress in a media conference outside the Citizenship and Immigration Canada offices in Vancouver.

As of Friday, only one man was offered release.

The rest are expected to remain locked up in the Fraser Regional Correctional Centre for at least another week as lawyers and immigration officials sort through each case.

Government officials say they need time to establish the true identities of the men and determine whether they pose a threat to national security.

In particular, authorities are worried about possible associations to the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — LLTE — a registered terrorist organization in Canada.

Indeed, information leaked to a national media outlet this week has uncovered that one man is the subject of an Interpol notice issued by Sri Lankan authorities for an unspecified terrorism offence.

Supporters in the case, however, question the source of the information.

“In my view, anything that comes from the government of Sri Lanka, at this point, has no credibility,” said Lorne Waldman, a Toronto immigration lawyer representing six of the 76 men.

“This is a government that has engaged in behaviour that, in my view, is tantamount to crimes against humanity,” he said, adding, to his knowledge, the vast majority of the men involved in the case have no ties to the Tigers.

“That is just my preliminary information. Obviously, we are going to have to wait and see what what Canada finds out,” he said.

Waldman said five of his clients have family in Canada and have been able to provide Canadian authorities with original identification documents.

He’s hopeful that will be enough to allow their release from detention as early as next week.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) chief executive Steve Ballmer has a little advice for Canada’s businesses and governments: Be careful not to let a battered and weakened economy frighten you away from vigorously investing in tech sector innovation.

Ballmer told business leaders during a speech in Toronto on Wednesday that the technology industry must be focused on driving growth – and not just cutting costs – even as it deals with the impact of revenue declines that came with the recession.

“You cut costs because you have to and the money you have left you invest smartly for growth,” the 53-year-old CEO of the software superpower told business executives at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

“Now is not a time to be conservative, in my opinion, about those topics. Now is the time to make those bets that will drive innovation, that will drive your growth and growth in the economy.”

Ballmer drew parallels between the Great Depression and the current economic crisis, saying that many successful business and technological innovations can be born during economic turmoil.

Since the dot-com bubble burst in the early part of the decade, telecom, software, hardware and other technology companies have cut jobs, streamlined operations or consolidated. Many simply went out of business as revenues dried up and financing became harder and harder to get.

Insolvent technology giant Nortel Networks – once the poster child for Canadian technology know-how and achievement – has been selling off its operations piece by piece and winding down its business, while others have lopped thousands of workers out of slow-growth business divisions.

Ballmer said the presence of Nortel enhanced the country’s international clout in the tech sector, but he was reluctant to characterize the impact its absence will have on Canada’s reputation within the industry.

“I don’t think it has to be terrible, but it can’t be helpful to not have quite the strength that has been present before through Nortel,” he said.

“There’s no question that having a few big, successful tech companies breeds more tech companies. You see that in Silicon Valley.”

He added later that Canada will find growth through small startup companies, as larger corporations scoop them up and place their stake in certain regions.

“If you acquire something of some size, oftentimes you’ll end up anchoring,” he said.

“That tends to go with where there are startups and businesses to be purchased.”

A recent study by IDC Canada suggests the technology sector will create more than 1,000 new businesses in Canada by the end of 2013.

“The question is, will some of those companies wind up being of interest to the business strategies we’re pursuing? It’s quite possible,” Ballmer said, referring to the study.

“We don’t look to acquire in a country, we look to have business strategies, and if an acquisition can help us anywhere in the world, we will do it.”

While some technology companies such as Nortel have been unable to weather the burst of the high-tech bubble, others have harnessed new ideas and prospered.

Since Nortel’s downfall, BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion Ltd. (TSX:RIM) has become Canada’s top technology company with the huge growth in sales of its mobile devices around the world, while computer company Apple Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL) has hit a home run with its iPhone smartphone.

Microsoft, which is sitting on billions of dollars in cash, has developed new technology every few years to run the world’s computers as it fights off other software rivals.

However, the Redmond, Wash.-based company has generated mixed results in its expansion into the Internet search business, failing to acquire Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) in an effort intended to compete more effectively with web search giant Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG).

The company has also tried to lure iPod loyalists with its Zune music player and launched an effort to grow in the rapidly expanding social media business, both which have delivered mixed results so far.

Microsoft’s cash-rich position has allowed it to make some business fumbles, rework some of its future plans and push ahead with projects it believes in better than most smaller companies during the recession.

Last year the company opened its first Canadian development centre in Vancouver, which added 300 jobs to the area.

Shortly afterwards, the economy hit a landmine, and Microsoft responded by slashing 5,000 jobs, or about five per cent of its total workforce.

In Vancouver, the company responded by pulling back on its growth plans.

“Now everything’s a little slower,” he said.

“Our pace of accelerating our workforce was higher when we got this thing started, but we’ve continued to grow.”

Still, earlier this year, Microsoft bought Vancouver-based game developer BigPark Inc., which was seen as a major commitment to the video game industry.

Balmer said he believes Microsoft will prevail despite its challenges because the company aims to be dynamic, branching out from PCs to enterprise businesses and other consumer products.

“If want to view yourself as static, you will be static. If you view yourselves are static, so will your customers,” he said.

“Being narrow in your view is probably a formula for extinction in our business because at the end of the day, the tech business is dynamic. You either move forward, or you die.”

Ballmer’s comments came a day before Microsoft releases the Windows 7 operating system to consumers. The new system is the follow-up to Windows Vista, which was poorly received by both critics and the market when it was released over two years ago.

Some users complained that Vista was incompatible with certain software and had too many security prompts which made it frustrating to operate. The negative reception appeared to slow down the adoption of Vista with many consumers, while others chose to stick it out with the previous Windows XP operating system.

However, Microsoft has been quick to move past Vista’s reputation by offering numerous software updates, as well as the new Windows 7. At this point, it seems Win7 is off to a better start, receiving favourable reviews from some critics and a relatively smooth launch with business consumers earlier this summer.

Ballmer also added that governments should play a role by increasing supporting for education in science and technology at high schools and universities. He complimented Canada’s immigration initiative, which allows foreigners with needed technology and other skills to move to Canada more quickly.

“The Canadian government is more welcoming of getting the best and the brightest from around the world than the U.S. government,” he said.

“I think that’s just a great asset for a country to have.”

Ballmer took over the role of CEO from Bill Gates when he stepped down from the position almost 10 years ago.

Since then, has built a reputation as one of Microsoft’s most exuberant and aggressive public personas, known for delivering public speeches more akin to pep rallies than corporate board rooms.

Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.