Groundbreaking Changes for Skilled Newcomers in Ontario

The Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development in Ontario has announced its efforts to help internationally-trained immigrants to work in fields of their expertise. Professionals who have studied and trained in other countries will begin to be considered qualified to work in Ontario.

Studies from the Ministry of Labour have indicated that only 25% of immigrants in Ontario are working in their trained profession. Professional testing, however, has shown that newcomers are able to pass their professional licensing exams and equivalency tests in Canada. The barrier for newcomers to get a job in their profession, is often the requirement for them to have Canadian work experience.

In Canada, over 300,000 jobs remain unfulfilled, despite the thousands of newcomers who have the appropriate training, experience or expertise to fill the positions.

In the field of engineering, over 60% of job applicants are internationally trained engineers.

Following this legislation, Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) became the first regulated profession to remove the barrier of requiring Canadian work experience as a criterion for their application. PEO’s approach to eliminating the Canadian experience requirement aims to help Ontario reverse the loss of productivity in engineering.

These efforts made Ontario the first province in Canada to ban unfair or discriminatory Canadian work experience requirements to help newcomers work in professions they are trained for. Many industries that are suffering labour shortages may consider following in PEO’s footsteps and creating barrier-free opportunities for newcomers.