Canadian government to be urged by its advisory group to welcome more immigrants

The Advisory Council on Economic Growth, the Canadian government’s external advisory group, will urge the government to increase immigration by 50 percent to 450,000 per year over five years.

The fact that entrepreneurs and skilled workers must be allowed to gain entry easily into this North American country will also be recommended by the advisory group, it was reported.

The members of this group are looking at considering immigration as a means to energise the economy of Canada in both short and long terms.

Included in this council are 14 members, who include academics, institutional investors, venture capitalists and business executives. The group will deliver its recommendations to the government on 20 October.

In September, it was made public that immigration numbers during the last year were the highest ever in many years as 320,932 new immigrants had arrived in the country between 1 July, 2015 and 30 June, 2016 as permanent residents. It was said to be 33 percent higher than the same period one year ago. This is also said to be the fastest growth in almost thirty years, according to cicnews.com.

John McCallum, Canadian immigration minister, has also stated in the past in no uncertain terms that the government wanted to welcome more immigrants to the country for plugging the labour deficit, which was caused by the aging population.

It is being expected that in the next few weeks that government would make public its road map for immigration for 2017 and the years thereafter.

In the last year ending 30 June, 2016, processing time was reduced totally by 42 percent for all permanent residence programmes.

The council stated that many leaders in the IT and other sectors were said to have been affected by the existing immigration processes, which caused delays in recruitment and other attendant problems.

Tobi Lutke, CEO Shopify, a software firm, said that if the best companies are to be located in Canada, then the best talent should be allowed to enter the country. Because of the similar sentiments shared by the other business leaders, the advisory group is suggesting that certain technology and IT jobs be waived from the need for business houses to get an LMIA (Labour Market Impact Assessment) before foreign workers may be hired.

As per the LMIA process, it is assessed if citizens and permanent residents of Canada are eligible to apply for occupations before companies can consider hiring foreign workers.

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