On November 21st my good friend Doug Jordon was ever so kind as to include me as on of this four facilitators in an interesting consultation in Toronto on “Addressing the Technical Skills shortage – Attracting and Integrating Technically Trained Immigrants into Canada’s Labour Force” hosted by The Canadian Council of Technicians and Technologists (CCTT).

I found such interesting similarities between the issues faced at this consultation to the work we are doing at 1-Focus International. There were two issues that continued to resurface. One was in response to the question:

“What would it take to enable technically trained immigrants to be integrated into the Canadian economy in their chosen field?” While the list from brainstorming was immense, the key factors were around English (and in some instances French) as a second language – primarily in technical language and systems to support cultural integration at three levels:

1. for employers and other employees to appreciate cultural differences
2. for the immigrant to understand “working in Canadian cultures”
3. for their family to understand the new culture socially

The second was in response to the question:

“What can CCTT and its constituents associations do to assist this process?” The number one answer by all parties and stakeholders was simple . . . they had to learn how to work together collaboratively. Different associations had done some amazing projects that represented best practices but few knew about it. After years of working in silos and competing for reducing resources, they realized this was not a desire but a necessity. Money would continue to be scarce and the complexity of the issues at hand demanded a collaborative and open process.

It appears to us that learning to collaborate today remains our biggest challenge – how do we really collaborate when not only do we not know what this means but we are so use to competing?

In a related article:

Immigrants Key to Canada’s Economic Strength

There is competition around the world for talented workers in almost every part of the economy; fortunately, Canada may have an edge in this competition, argues David Crane of the Institute for Research on Public Policy. Crane’s article reviews the benefits of Canada’s immigration policy and highlights why it is superior to many other countries’ and why other nations are now adopting parts of the Canadian system. http://www.irpp.org/crane/index.htm