Canada / Employers to cherry-pick potential immigrants from a pool

Ottawa has reached a consensus with the provinces to establish a pool of skilled-worker candidates by the end of 2014 that will allow employers to cherry-pick potential immigrants to fill regional labour shortages.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced Friday he is committed to working with his provincial counterparts to implement the Expression of Interest (EOI) system, whereby employers could screen and assess a pool of applicants for immigration consideration.

“We’ve had very fruitful discussions about the future of immigration in Canada,” Kenney said after the annual federal-provincial immigration conference in Toronto.

All the provincial government representatives — except Quebec’s immigration minister, who was absent from the meeting — agreed the immigration system has to be fast and responsive to regional economic needs.

However, Kenney was lukewarm to Ontario’s own immigration plan, unveiled earlier this month, that called for vastly increasing the number of skilled immigrants the province can hand-pick under the provincial nominee program — to 2,000 next year, and to 5,000 in 2014.

Currently, Ontario receives only a 5 per cent share of the 20,000 provincial nominees accepted across Canada each year.

“The concern for Ontario is that the number of immigrants coming to Canada is going down … Moving forward, we do have to find a way to co-operate and collaborate to rectify the situation,” said Ontario Immigration Minister Michael Chan…

Choosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from

via Ottawa to create skilled immigrant pool, provinces would select applicants based on labour needs – thestar.com.