Conservative
Government Fails to Match their Words with Action on Foreign Credentials
By:
The Honourable Geoff Regan, Member of Parliament for Halifax West and
Liberal Opposition Critic for Human Resources and Skills
Supporting
immigrant settlement and integration services is the key to helping
immigrants flourish in the Canadian labour market. But under the new
Conservative government, the only help for newcomers has come in the form
of broken campaign promises.
During the last federal election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a promise to new Canadians. He told voters that “the biggest barrier to newcomers is the frequent failure of Canada to recognize legitimate foreign credentials.” If elected, he vowed to do more to ensure that foreign-trained professionals meet Canadian standards and speed up the process so that they could put their skills to work.
But
as soon as the election was over, Stephen Harper forgot about this
promise. Apparently, he no longer needed the votes of new Canadians.
The
hypocritical election attention paid to new Canadians became even clearer
with the Conservatives’ spring budget.
Despite his election promise to help internationally trained
professionals put their skills to use, the Conservative government chose
to cut funding for foreign credential recognition programs by 83 percent.
Instead
of honouring the previous Liberal government’s commitment of $263
million over five years to help internationally trained workers, the
Conservatives’ committed only $18 million over two years to set up a
Canadian Agency for Assessment and Recognition of Credentials – an
essentially hollow gesture because foreign credential recognition is
traditionally a provincial responsibility.
Missing
from the Conservative budget was:
-
any mention of the previous Liberal government’s commitment to
assist over 2,000 internationally-trained doctors, nurses and other health
care professionals to put their skills to work and improve Canadians’
access to high-quality care;
-
any reference to the Liberals’ Foreign Credential Recognition
program, which supports the assessment and recognition of foreign
qualifications for a number of other occupations including engineers,
computer technicians and other skilled workers; and
-
any funding for the Liberals’ Enhanced Language Training
Initiative, enabling newcomers to gain the language skills they need to
flourish in the workplace through job-specific language training.
Unlike
the Conservatives, who only pay lip service to immigration-related issues
at election time, the Liberal Party has always believed in the importance
of helping Canada’s newcomers succeed.
Liberals
believe that Canada should be an inclusive and caring society where
fairness and equality of opportunity are the measure of our progress. That
is why we invested over $2.4 billion to help newcomers settle into
Canadian society and put their skills to use in the Canadian labour force.
It
is also why we chose to commit $263 million to launch the
Internationally-Trained Workers Initiative to improve the integration of
immigrants and internationally-trained Canadians into the work force, and
invested over $100 million to improve the delivery of immigration services
to help prospective immigrants make informed decisions about coming to
Canada.
As
Liberals, we believe every Canadian should be able to use their skills and
abilities in the workforce, no matter where they received their training.
That is why we will continue to defend the interests of new Canadians who
are an integral part of our society and deserve our respect – not only
at election time, but always.
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