International Organization for Migration (IOM)

and immigrants; iii) provide pre-departure orientation and training to
immigrants on local labour market information, the legal requirements of
immigrating to and working in Canada, and English and French language
skills; iv) involve local stakeholders in the service delivery, particularly
those with an interest in serving immigrant communities; and v) maintain
policy flexibility in regards to immigration composition, by devolving some
responsibility to provincial governments, allowing demand-based levels
of entry instead of targets, and enshrining targets such that they are easily
changed, for example, by placing them in policy or ministerial instruction, as
is the status quo in Canada.
1. Introduction
How do economic immigrants obtain information about job opportunities in
their destination country? What labour market information (LMI) is available
to employers wishing to fill their labour needs with migrant workers? These are
crucial questions to answer in the implementation of immigration policy. The
advantages of immigration are numerous, and, given the legal and informational
barriers inherent in migrating to a foreign country for employment, immigration
systems that streamline these processes and provide employers and migrant workers
with information are of utmost importance. The goal of this report is to examine
how labour market information contributes to the resolution of challenges faced by
economic immigrants and national immigration policy in Canada, in the hope that
EU Member States may draw lessons from an overview of the Canadian immigration
experience.
Immigration is increasingly recognized among advanced nations as a necessary
policy component of a competitive and dynamic economy. The European Union
is among the largest zones in the world today, and perhaps in history, that has
institutionalized the movement of labour across over two dozen national borders.
Canada, for its part, has admitted a large number of immigrants consistently in
the post-WWII period. This was a fortuitous policy choice given that many labour
market forecasts posit that all of Canada’s net labour growth in the coming years
will be from immigration, and other forecasts still indicate that all of Canada’s
net population growth will come from immigration by the year 2030. Canada is
also unique in that those entering Canada to work generally become permanent
residents, can work in Canada indefinitely, and usually become very integrated
into the Canadian labour market. This policy context provides Canada with a
significant amount of experience in designing and adopting immigration policy in
response to economic and labour market developments.
To set the context for the discussion of labour market information, the report
provides an overview of Canadian immigration policy and its role in the Canadian
economy, and outlines recent policy changes and the current policy trajectory in
the immigration field as it relates to labour market information. Labour market
information, broadly speaking, encompasses the resources available to businesses and
country studIes – CANADA
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