Immigration increase alone won't fix labour market: experts

Need to focus on matching jobs with skill level

Experts say Canada's plan to increase immigration may ease some pressures in the labour market, but bigger changes are needed to ensure new permanent residents are matched with the jobs that most need filling.

With the unemployment rate at historic lows, many companies are “starved” for workers, and new immigrants will help fill some of the need, said Ravi Jain, principal at Jain Immigration Law and co-founder of the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association.

The federal government's new immigration plan calls for the admission of 1.45 million more new permanent residents over the next three years, beginning with 465,000 in 2023 and reaching 500,000 in 2025. That's compared with 341,000 in 2019.

According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the plan is intended to help attract labour in key sectors, including health care, skilled trades, manufacturing and technology.

“It's clear that there are real gaps, real demands, and real needs,” said Naomi Alboim, a senior policy fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University and a former Ontario deputy minister of immigration.

But upping immigration levels is just one way to begin addressing those needs, she said — the government's plan should be part of a wider initiative to address temporary workers, international students and a larger range of jobs. Change is needed to ensure new Canadians are well-matched to jobs that maximize their skills, qualifications and experience, said Alboim.

Recent immigrants are less likely to see their skills and education utilized than Canadian-born workers, Statistics Canada said, and new and recent immigrants are overrepresented in certain industries, including transportation and warehousing, and accommodation and food services.

Government policies have created a mismatch between the specific skills employers are looking for and the skills of immigrants being approved, Toronto immigration lawyer Sergio Karas said. Some of this mismatch begins with international students, said Karas. Though many international students plan to become permanent residents after they graduate, many of them aren't in programs for jobs that are in demand by immigration policies, like health care or trades, he said.

International students and temporary foreign workers (TFWs) have made up an increasingly large portion of Canada's economic immigrants, or those selected for their contribution to the economy, who made up more than half of recent immigrants in 2021, Statistics Canada said.

In 2020, 67 per cent of the country's principal applicants in the economic class were previously temporary foreign workers or international students, the agency said.

But that 67 per cent is a relatively small portion of all the temporary workers and international students in Canada, said Alboim. Canada had 777,000 TFW work permit holders in 2021, and almost 622,000 international students that year, Statistics Canada said.

Canada's dependence on temporary workers to fill long-term gaps is a huge problem, said Alboim. It creates little incentive to improve wages, conditions or supports for temporary workers, she said.

Federal immigration policy seems laser-focused on jobs requiring higher levels of training and education, said Alboim, a barrier to permanent residency for many TFWs and international students.

That's despite the fact much of Canada's labour shortage is in jobs that require lower levels of education or experience, jobs that many temporary workers and students take on, she said.

Ottawa should expand its scope to prioritize more of these kinds of jobs, she said.

DARRYL DYCK / THE CANADIAN PRESS Changes are needed to ensure new Canadians are well-matched to jobs that maximize their skills, said Naomi Alboim, former Ontario deputy minister of immigration.