International Organization for Migration (IOM)

CANADA11
vikram rai and Andrew sharpe 141
Abstract
11
Canada has an increasingly ethnically diverse population, owing to high levels
of permanent immigration. Given national concern over declining labour force
growth and shortages in some skilled professions, Canada’s immigration policy is
oriented to attract highly educated workers. At the beginning of the last decade, a
large literature developed raising concerns about declining and poor labour market
outcomes of recent, university-educated immigrants. This has resulted in measures
to improve the labour market outcomes of recent immigrants. Underlying all of this
is the system of labour market information used by employers and immigrants for
labour market matching. The goal of this report is to examine how labour market
information contributes to the resolution of challenges faced by economic migrants
and national immigration policy in Canada, and to identify good practices from
the Canadian immigration experience, which would benefit other countries.
This report makes the following observations about the Canadian immigration
context and labour market information available to employers and immigrants in
Canada:
• Canada’s population is aging and the proportion of the total population that is
aged 15 to 64 is forecast to shrink significantly over the next two decades. At the
same time, Canada’s natural resource industries are experiencing rapid growth
due to the world commodity boom, fuelling already strong demand for labour
in Canada. In this context, immigrants are welcome. The government’s current
immigration target, supported by all opposition parties and the vast majority
of stakeholders, is to accept 250,000 immigrants per year. These persons are
141 Vikram Rai is an Economist at the Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS), Ottawa and
Andrew Sharpe is Executive Director at the Centre for the Study of Living Standards. The authors
gratefully acknowledge Maria Vincenza Desiderio and Elizabeth Ruddick for their useful comments
on earlier versions of this report.
country studIes – CANADA
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