By NICK STEWART
A project initiated by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce designed to attract and employ foreign-trained, highly-skilled professionals (HSPs) is coming to Sudbury.
As one of just nine chambers of commerce from across Ontario selected to pursue the project, the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce has partnered with the Mining Innovation Rehabilitation and Applied Research Corporation (MIRARCO) to design and implement the program.
“The goal of the project is to understand and fill in the gaps,” Jane Djivré, business development officer with MIRARCO, says.
“People come to Canada with an idea that they can come here with education and experience and they’ll get a job, and that’s sometimes not the case. We’re looking to help them make that dream more of a reality.”
The Ontario Chamber of Commerce estimates that 100 per cent of labour force growth will stem from immigration by 2011, making efforts such as these key for ensuring proper HSPs will be available to Sudbury mining firms, construction companies, and other major local industries.
Sudbury-based Professional E.D.G.E. Inc., led by Chantal Bruneau, has been hired as a consultant for one year to establish the general framework of this project. This means communicating with the various organizations in the city to determine what obstacles exist to the attraction and employment of foreign-trained, highly-skilled professionals (HSPs).
The first step will be to identify what resources are already in place throughout the region, and how this new program will be able to work with them. There are a multitude of factors involved, Djivré says, including helping potential HSPs find housing, settling their family, assisting with language training and identifying employment opportunities.
Given the immediate needs of industry, project partners will also work with various educational partners to facilitate and streamline education and training when foreign credentials don’t match up with Canadian job requirements.
This includes potential partnerships with other organizations, including the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI).
As CEMI is considering the development of a sort of “finishing school” for mining industry workers, Djivré says the two institutions share some common goals that could feed into the program.
Research into this type of overlap throughout the city is precisely the kind of work the consultant will look into. Work already performed by existing initiatives, such as the city’s efforts to attract new doctors, can either be imitated or incorporated into the framework.
“The goal is to draw those pockets of activity out and see what we really have as resources,” Djivré says.
Though they may change, preliminary plans seek to target those who have immigrated to Canada but are either underemployed or in a field with limited room for advancement.
While it may also target those working in their field in their native country, this will represent a more significant challenge as they must be presented with a sufficiently compelling argument to move to Canada.
Finally, the program may also seek to target students on the verge of graduation and who may be seeking to work abroad.
Existing linkages could potentially be leveraged, including international satellite campuses such as Cambrian College’s campus in India, while other connections could be made through foreign educational institutions that are already affiliated with project partners.
International students enrolled in Canadian colleges and universities could also be targeted, as they already reside in the country and may be seeking local work experience.
Altogether, the program will reach roughly 100 people per year, and early estimates have broken that down into five HSPs from Greater Sudbury, 20 from the rest of Canada, and 75 from the rest of the world.
Of that total, it’s expected to recruit 10 people within the first two years.
“We’ve hired people who worked in paint shops in Toronto and made pizzas, and it’s the kind of stuff you hear stories about,” Djivré says. “We believe that something can be done about it, and that’s why we’re doing it.”
