Access to professions | Issues and challenges | Self-employment | Volunteer contribution Access to professions | Issues and challenges | Self-employment | Volunteer contribution
Back to Resource Library Index Page
Labour market integration
Immigration & Skill Shortages
http://www.clbc.ca/Research_and_Reports/Archive/report11230401.asp
Trends in Immigration, Immigration as a Source of Skills, Labour Market Integration: Issues and Challenges for New Immigrants.Assessing and Recognizing Foreign Credentials in Canada - Employers’ Views
http://www.clbc.ca/files/Reports/Fitting_In/Credentials_paper.pdf
From a governmental perspective, the assessment of foreign qualifications has been part of the larger issue of ensuring and facilitating access to professions and trades. This issue has included other key dimensions such as ensuring interprovincial labour mobility under Chapter 7 of the Agreement on Internal Trade… From an employer’s point of view, credentials assessment and recognition may be one of a number of immigration-related issues which affect their ability to recruit the skills they need. Immigration regulations and administrative procedures, or practices in posts abroad are among the other concerns which employers raise in this connection.Fulfilling the Promise: Integrating Immigrant Skills into the Canadian Economy
www.td.com/economics/standard/full/Alboim.pdf
This paper starts from the premise that a comprehensive integrated system must be in place to facilitate entry of skilled immigrants to the Canadian labour market in their field of expertise... They should have access to self-assessment tools and opportunities to fill gaps in qualifications, if any, while overseas, with the rest completed once in Canada. The requirements to enter their occupation must be comparable to their Canadian counterparts. Upgrading should be customized to fill identified gaps... Governments, educational institutions, regulators, professional bodies, community organizations and employers must work together to ensure the process from immigration decision to entry in one’s specialized field is transparent, smooth and efficient. The Maytree Foundation, 2002.Immigration and Integration through a Social Cohesion Perspective
http://policyresearch.gc.ca/page.asp?pagenm=v5n2_art_03
Integration policies, programs and services are managed and delivered through multi-jurisdictional partnerships with other federal departments, provincial and territorial governments, and the non-governmental sector. A multi-sectoral capacity assists newcomers through a settlement continuum that begins with information to immigrants overseas, through orientation and adaptation services in Canada to the acquisition of citizenship. Ultimately, the goal of integration is to encourage newcomers to be fully engaged in the economic, social, political and cultural life of Canada… To maximize the benefits that immigrants offer, successful economic and social integration is essential, thus enabling immigrants to achieve their full potential and become citizens with a stake in Canada’s future.Recommendations for Enhancing the Immigration Experience in the Rural West: Lessons from Research, Policy and Practice. Working Paper, 2005
http://www.brandonu.ca/organizations/RDI/PDF/TwillingateWorkingPaper.pdf
The injection of people and their skills into areas that are struggling to retain current residents may serve as a crucial facet of wider strategies to combat the demographic challenges facing rural communities… Successfully attracting and retaining immigrants can be a key component of a rural community’s economic development strategy, and viable, realistic and sustainable efforts to this end are increasingly on the radar of rural development practitioners.Too much, too soon
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/series/newcanada/news/twentysix.html
If Canada really were "desperate" for people, as the more frenzied advocates of current immigration policies claim, the new skilled immigrants would be snapped up to occupy jobs suitable to their qualifications… Recent immigrants are not doing as well as previous ones because their services are not in demand… Yet it is the only country whose government deems the universal phenomenon of population aging a crisis that must be remedied by immigration… Because of these policies, entire job categories such as cab drivers and cleaners are now occupied almost exclusively by immigrants under the absurd justification that they "do the jobs Canadians won't." The reality is that they do jobs Canadian-born people would gladly do, but won't do for low wages. Without ever explicitly admitting it, Canada is using high immigration levels to keep wages down. The result is increased poverty among immigrants. 2003Immigration and Canadian Nation-building in the Transition to a Knowledge Economy
http://www.utoronto.ca/ethnicstudies/Reitz_June2002.pdf
Canada’s perceived need for high levels of immigration will continue, but its success in integrating these immigrants is becoming more difficult, creating increased strain on the economy and society. This raises significant issues and dilemmas which are likely to become more salient and produce important policy changes in the future. Analysis suggests the importance of basic institutional changes, such as Canada’s transition to a knowledge economy that creates new challenges for highly-skilled immigrants.Labour Market Outcomes for Immigrants - Conversation Series
http://canada.metropolis.net/research-policy/conversation/conversation_report_15.pdf
Research on the determinants of immigrant outcomes could be enhanced by examining why overachievers were successful. Participants also thought that broadening the cross-country comparison would be beneficial in order to determine which policies were successful in other countries in attracting immigrants who had labour market success and which policies failed.Cold calls
http://ctv2.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060201.wcacold01/business/Business/businessBN/ctv-business
While they may despise it, job hunters cannot afford to exclude cold calling from their search strategy… It takes 25 phone calls to get one interested person who'll say come in and see me. From our research on salespeople, we know that many don't get the [cold] calls done, so I can see why a lot of job applicants don't want to do it, either… When done right, a cold call can ring up a job offer or, at the very least, plug job hunters into a referral network to which they might not otherwise have access. Even if those companies aren't hiring right now, if you make a good impression, they'll refer you to other people they know who might be hiring. 2006Regulatory Policy - Grade: C
http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/critical_issues/1996/federal/regulatory_policy_grade.html
Perhaps the most important but overlooked challenge to Canada's competitiveness comes from unfair and unreasonable regulatory burdens that federal, provincial, and municipal governments impose on businesses. By raising the costs of doing business, regulatory burdens introduce inefficiencies into the production process, reduce productivity and investment, and impede job creation. However, since these costs are not easily detected and are not noticed by the public at large, the impact of the regulatory burden is often overlooked in the policy process. As an "invisible" barrier to wealth and job creation, regulation is potentially the most insidious of all forms of government intervention...Immigrants to both Canada and the United States, have been net contributors to the public purse. In terms of taxes paid for benefits received, native-born citizens clearly benefit from immigration... The federal government's approach to immigration policy, on the whole, has been reasonable. Efforts to increase the share of independent class immigrants must be applauded. However, the recent reduction in the total number of immigrants admitted each year is unnecessary and sends out a disturbing signal about this government's understanding of the economics of immigration policy. There is no reason why Canada's intake of immigrants should fall below 250,000 per year. For being too cautious in this area, the Liberal government deserves a B. 1999
The Labour Market Experience of Immigrants
http://lifelong.oise.utoronto.ca/papers/pOwenPaper.pdf
Employers indicated (in 1998) that educational attainment was a mandatory requirement for employment in at least 60% of their organizations, and in more than one job category, yet approximately 40% of employers would screen out internationally educated applicants because they did not know how to assess their education.Immigrant Source Country Educational Quality and Canadian Labour Market Outcomes
http://dsp-psd.pwgsc.gc.ca/Collection/Statcan/11F0019MIE/11F0019MIE2004234.pdf
Immigrants from source countries with lower quality educational outcomes, as measured by
international test scores, are observed to receive a lower average return to their schooling in the
Canadian labour market than those from countries with higher quality results. In contrast to
immigrants educated outside of Canada, source country school outcomes do not have an impact on
those who immigrate at a young age.Cultural Interviewing - More Involved Than Just a Job
http://www.workplace.ca/newsletter/2005m10-Perspective.html
Candidates from other countries have many barriers they must overcome which we tend not to realize… Many candidates who have immigrated from the Middle East, have never been interviewed… they have been recruited straight from their educational institution and have been hired based on their credentials alone. While personality and behaviour are a factor in what type of position is being hired for, this is something that is evaluated by references and the comments from others… Many candidates from the former Soviet Union tend to be very "matter of fact" when responding to interview questions. Therefore, to conduct a behavioural based interview with a candidate from this area you may not get the response you are looking for… Do we as interviewers take into consideration the fact that those candidates who have recently relocated to Canada do not yet share (and may never) the cultural norms that are held here? Do we as forward thinking interviewers educate ourselves to the cultural norms that exist outside of our Canadian cultural bubble?The Potential Impacts of Immigration on Productivity in Canada
http://strategy.sauder.ubc.ca/nakamura/Nakamura_Beach_Ed.pdf
Using 1991 and 1996 Canadian Census data, we replicate the finding of others that more recent immigrants to Canada have had poorer earnings outcomes compared with earlier immigrant cohorts and Canadian born workers. However, we also show that the immigrants who were born in the US or UK continued to enjoy relatively high average earnings. It is the more recent immigrants born outside the US and UK whose average earnings fell below the earnings of the Canadian born. The proportion of immigrants born outside the US and UK rose over time so that their experiences came to dominate the overall immigrant picture.Let's make a deal, Western-style: A new, wide-ranging trade agreement between Alberta and B.C. will erase the border and create a new economic power
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/canada/article.jsp?content=20060807_131482_131482
Under the pact, everything from professional and trade designations to the financial services industry will be unified. Companies, for example, will no longer have to register or have separate filings and separate offices to operate in or win government procurement contracts in both provinces… The most anticipated impact of the agreement is labour mobility. Efforts under TILMA to make the western labour pool more mobile are being welcomed in both provinces, with surprisingly little resistance from provincial labour groups. B.C. and Alberta will now recognize each others' standards in over 60 professions and trades, and in some cases seek to harmonize qualifications… Interprovincial trade barriers have persisted in part because they are so deeply ingrained in Canada's economic structure. Under the Constitution, economic and regulatory powers are spread between federal and provincial governments. Over time, each province has developed its own rules and ways of doing things, slicing the country into 13 different economic jurisdictions.Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts: The Effect of Barriers to Competition on Canadian Productivity
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/documents.asp?rnext=1653
An in-depth inventory of both tariff and non-tariff barriers indicates that while international tariff barriers have been substantially reduced over the past 15 years, tariff rates remain high in a number of sectors… In addition, a unique empirical analysis of the relationship between barriers to competition and Canada–U.S. relative productivity performance indicates that productivity could be enhanced by eliminating barriers to competition in a core group of primary and manufacturing industries. However, for the service sector, differences in regulatory frameworks were not related to relative productivity performance, suggesting that policy-makers must look elsewhere than to barriers to competition for a complete explanation of the Canada–U.S. productivity gap. Document Highlights, Conference Board of Canada 2006.Our Times - Are Unions Obsolete?
http://www.ourtimes.ca/organizing/organizing_6.html
Those employees whose numbers are growing the fastest in Canada — the young, immigrants, the private service-sector workers — are the least unionized… In today's hyper-competitive economy, labour-management conflicts are luxuries we can't afford… Enhancing economic insecurity, Ottawa has made huge cuts in social welfare and in unemployment insurance coverage and payments. Whereas nine of 10 unemployed workers were once eligible for unemployment insurance, today fewer than four in 10 qualify. In most provinces, the minimum wage has fallen below poverty levels. These and other policies are promoting a flood of precarious, part-time, short-term "bad jobs" with little job security, low wages and no or few fringe benefits. For an increasing number of people in Canada, stable jobs and careers have been replaced by a sequence of employment "episodes"... In this context, union organizing is much more difficult… All these are signs not of the demise of unions, but of the labour movement's growing adaptation to the new global economy.Youth and the labour market 1997 to 2004
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/051123/d051123b.htm
Between 1997 and 2004, job creation among youth aged 15 to 24 rose 21.1%, the equivalent of 428,000 new jobs. This compares with a growth rate of just 15.8% among adults aged 25 and over... The retail trade sector, the largest employer of teenagers, was the driving force behind new jobs for teenagers... A distant second was the accommodation and food services sector. In both sectors, more jobs went to girls than boys. That is because more women tend to take jobs as cashiers, salespeople or servers in food and beverage outlets. Among young adults aged 20 to 24, growth was spread across several industries. For young women, it occurred mainly in health care and social assistance, and in information, culture and recreation and educational services. For young men, the growth sectors were construction; business, building and other support services; and finance, insurance, real estate and leasing. The DailyA role for labour organizations
Engagement with Regional Stakeholders on Integrating Internationally Trained Workers into the Workforce
http://www.clbc.ca/files/Reports/Roundtables_report_-_en.pdf
Immigrants need better information on employee rights and on how to act on those rights. The point was made that unions are well placed to provide access to such information. In addition, he suggested that a collaboration with the Human Rights Commission should be explored in order to undertake best practices or studies on this issue. immigrant workers need to be protected from unscrupulous employers who want to pay less than the norm, and some form of a monitoring system could be put in place to ensure such things do not happen. Unions can obviously play an important role in ensuring the immigrants’ protection in the workplace. 2005Building what kind of future? The Real Job Creation Story in Ontario
http://www.caw.ca/news/contextnewsletter/vol-1no4.asp
In relative terms, Ontario's private sector businesses are not producing many good jobs. An astounding 50% of jobs created are the self-employed - not brave new entrepreneurs with employees, but people who have lost, or never had, good jobs, and find themselves working on their own in an environment characterized by poor-quality and low wage work. According to a recent Statistics Canada study, the type of self-employed work being created in Ontario provides earnings that are 23% less those of paid employees, and the wage gap for women is worse. These workers become a cheaper source of labour regardless of occupation or industry. In the fast-growing service sector they are becoming the ideal "just-in-time" workforce - no investments, and no commitments, on the part of Ontario's employers. Not only do the self-employed earn less but also their insecure status is compounded by little access to health benefits, pensions, unemployment insurance or severance pay. And they are rarely protected by health and safety rules. 1998Canada's new job statistics are not that much to celebrate
http://www.nupge.ca/news_2005/n12jy05a.htm
There continue to be 1.2 million Canadian men and women who want work but are left out of the economy. Meanwhile, new jobs are largely in the insecure and precarious self-employment category… A disproportionate share of new jobs are created through self-employment rather than hirings by employers. This situation recalls what we experienced in the 1990s when self-employment grew in importance because of employers’ reluctance to hire. 2005Amnesty for illegal workers ruled out
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename
=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&
cid=1162335012380&call_pageid=968332188492&
col=968793972154&t=TS_Home
It's not good public policy to ignore the realities of the economy, said Cosmo Mannella of the Labourers' International Union of North America, who estimates that one-third of Toronto's residential construction workforce consists of undocumented workers. You cannot take that kind of human resource out of the home building economy and expect anything less than a disaster. 2006Age Discrimination and the Employment Rights of Elderly Canadian Immigrants
http://www.lcc.gc.ca/pdf/grant.pdf
“I didn’t care what time I had to retire–I just wanted to find work!” Exemptions to the human rights codes in Canada restrict the employment rights of elderly Canadians by potentially obliging them to retire at the age of 65… Given the “intersectionality” between immigrant status and the elderly, it is imperative that any policy discussion gives adequate consideration to the unique work and retirement experiences of immigrants… Since many immigrants arrive relatively late in their working life and with little personal wealth, denying them the right to employment may inadvertently create an undue economic hardship by limiting their capacity to accumulate sufficient savings for retirement… With the exception of 5 % of individuals who placed their savings at over C$100,000 upon their arrival in Canada, all reported very modest accumulated wealth. Over one half stated that they had savings of less than $1,000. 1996 Census data.Labour Market Integration: Issues And Challenges For New Immigrants
http://www.clbc.ca/files/Reports/IHB_section_c.pdf
The unemployment rate among those immigrants who had arrived in Canada during the 1981 Census year was 17.4%, much higher than that of the Canadian-born population (7.9%). However, for those in Canada for 1-5 years, the immigrant unemployment rate had fallen to a level just below that of the Canadian-born population (7.1%). The 2001 Census tells us that those immigrants who had been in Canada for less than five months face an unemployment rate of roughly 30%. Recent immigrants who had been in Canada 1-5 years still have an unemployment rate significantly higher than that of the Canadian-born population (12.7% compared with 7.4%). Indeed, it now takes more than 10 years in Canada before the observed unemployment rate of immigrants falls to the level found among the Canadian-born population. 40% of immigrants intending to seek further training reported one or more problems in executing their plans. Of these, 27% reported language as the most serious barrier, 25% cited financing, 11% the availability of courses, 9% lacked time, and 8% were thwarted by credential recognition problems.Employment Insurance is Unfair to New Canadians Too
http://canadianlabour.ca/unionize/pdf/torstar.pdf
It would seem like a reasonable expectation that if you pay insurance premiums you should be able to collect benefits when hard times hit. But our current Employment Insurance system falls far short, particularly for new Canadians. Only 23% of recent immigrants who experience unemployment receive EI benefits, compared to 31% of non-immigrant unemployed workers. Women fare much worse. Among unemployed immigrant women, merely 19% qualify for EI benefits when 30% of other unemployed women do.Labour & Markets: Education & Skills Training
http://www.policy.ca/policy-directory/Policy_Articles/Labour___Markets/
Education___Skills_Training/index.html
Policy articles 2003, 2004, 2005Human resource planning
Hiring IT pros: Looking for "the wrong stuff"
http://www.ppforum.ca/ow/PolicyImps_final_EN.pdf
Employers overlook immigrants in their human resource planning; do not hire immigrants at the level at which they were trained; and face challenges integrating recent immigrants into their workforce. 59% of survey respondents said that the majority of the recent immigrants they hire have elementary or high school as their highest education level attained. In the private sector, 63 % indicate the majority of their recent immigrants have high school education or less. 50% of survey respondents said that Canadian work experience is either a requirement for employment in their organization or that foreign work experience is not necessarily considered equal to Canadian experience... The public sector is much less likely to accept foreign work experience on par with Canadian work experience... Employers may themselves be benefiting from underemploying immigrants.
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878-6125612.html?tag=nl.e101
They all bring varied perspectives from their other careers... If we allow these people to be forced out of the industry by checklist recruiting, our projects and work lives will be poorer for it... Myth 1: Past experience equals future success. Myth 2: Specialization equals productivity. Myth 3: You can do only one thing well.
Canada’s Regionalization Challenge: Big geography, small population
http://pcerii.metropolis.net/events/events_content/GenevaPaper.pdf
Canada issues over 80,000 permits annually to temporary workers needed to fill gaps in the labour market. The number of temporary workers within the country at any point in time approximates 200,000. All of these have practical restrictions on their mobility because of the job-specific nature of their work permit. There is no general criticism of this reality, seen as a term of their admittance. Now there is an indication that Provincial Nominee Programs may be employed to permit temporary workers to cross over into permanent resident status, all of which suggests that it is the way a “social contract” is packaged that determines public reaction.Immigration and Wealth Inequality in the U.S.
http://paa2004.princeton.edu/download.asp?submissionId=40459
Later arrival cohorts and non-citizenship contribute to a larger bottom of the wealth distribution; Having no high school education harms natives more than immigrants, suggesting that immigration reduces the polarizing effect of education at the bottom of the wealth distribution; and High-educated immigrants do not accumulate as much wealth as their native counterparts, suggesting that immigration also reduces the polarizing effect of education at the top of the wealth distribution.
Quantity: Yes, Quality: Not Yet
http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/eqi-cda-012006.pdf
In 2005, selfemployment was responsible for one-third of all jobs created in the economy. The number of selfemployed Canadians has risen by 8% since 2003, double the rate of growth in the number of paid employees… While the economy is generating jobs at a very rapid pace, the quality of these jobs is on the decline. The 255,000 new jobs created in 2005 coincided with a 1.4% decline in the Employment Quality Index. Granted, a low quality job is better than no job, but the headline employment figures exaggerate the real strength of the Canadian labour market… Canadian Employment Quality Index, January 30, 2006The Visible Minority Population in Canada: A Review of Numbers, Growth and Labour Force Issues
http://www.canpopsoc.org/journal/CSPv33n2p241.pdf
In 2000, SMEs represented 6% of all the self-employed in Canada and visible minorities owned 7% of all the SMEs. The visible minority-owned SMEs were concentrated in two sectors: the knowledge-based industries (11%) and
wholesale/retail (10%). In 2000, 18% of visible minority-owned SMEs were majority female-owned compared to 15% for all businesses; while 60% of visible minority-owned SMEs were majority male-owned compared to 66% for
all businesses. Visible minority SME owners had higher levels of education: 51% with university degrees compared to 31% for all other business owners.Immigration, Entrepreneurship, and the Family: Indo-Canadian Enterprise in the Construction Industry of Greater Vancouver
http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/CJRS/Spring97/20.1_2/hiebert.pdf
Immigrant and minority entrepreneurship is often seen as a way of bypassing discrimination in the mainstream labour market. From this point of view, when immigrants and members of minority groups find closed opportunity systems, they create their own vehicles for economic participation and success. But, ultimately, self-employment does not insulate ethnic entrepreneurs from discrimination. Success in entrepreneurial pursuits, as in the labour market as a whole, requires an open society where people are treated fairly; entrepreneurship, in and of itself, cannot overcome prejudice... Family-class immigrants integrate into the economy more slowly and contribute fewer tax dollars than those who arrive under the independent/economic categories... These findings are often used to argue that Canada should prioritize the latter over the former in terms of admission criteria in order to maximize the cost-benefit ratio of immigration. However, the entrepreneurs we interviewed — who have built successful businesses that employ, collectively, hundreds of workers — are the product of family-class immigration or refugee settlement.The Public Policy Challenge: Women in Non-Standard Jobs
http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/pubs/pubspr/0662334809/200303_0662334809_3_e.html
Women in non-standard work; Recent developments in non-standard employment; Documenting non-standard work in Canada; The policy challenge of contingent work; Responding to the challenge - Status of Women Canada, 2003The Entrepreneurial Manager - Some Thoughts on Entrepreneurial Careers
http://www.scar.utoronto.ca/~bovaird/A02/2005-Fall/Dubai%20speech.htm
1979-2002: dramatic rise in self-employment in Canada - Average Annual Increase - Self employed workers: 2.25%, Self employed women: 3.23%, Total population: 1.00%… “Pull” factors of Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Immigrants are economic migrants, Immigrants take risks to better their economic well-being, Immigrants show confidence, take risks to achieve desired goals… “Push” factors: Immigrants may lack social contacts, networks, Immigrants may lack recognized credentials for professional careers, Therefore: immigrants must create their own economic success.Becoming Self-employed
http://www.mortgagecentre.com/index.cfm?pg=32&view_article=3
98% of the businesses in Canada are small businesses. About 80% of those are micro-businesses, meaning fewer than five employees. And three-quarters of that number are service-based businesses, which is where most self-employment opportunities can be found. Some of the strongest areas are in business services, health services, information technology and culture industries... These can be home-based businesses or they can be services delivered in clients' homes. 2005Spotlight on Self-employment
http://www.ednet.ns.ca/pdfdocs/labourmarket/lmiforpdf.pdf
Statistics Canada reports that since 1989 self-employment has been responsible for over three quarters of employment growth in Canada. Today, the self-employed account for over 17% of the workforce, up 5% from 20 years ago. The growth in self-employment is largely influenced by the creation of new business opportunities and working environments that have resulted from factors such as the continued shift from goods production to service production, increased contracting out, and advances in technology.Economic Returns of Immigrants’ Self–Employment
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/research/papers/returns/returns-c.html
Controversies on Immigrants’ Entrepreneurship and Its Economic Returns, Data and Method, Self-Employment Rate and Market Outcome, The 1980, 1985, and 1990 Entry Cohort, Returns to Self-employment in the 1995 Tax Year.
Conclusion: Immigrants who landed in Canada between 1980 and 1995 earned less than their salaried counterparts. Furthermore, self–employed immigrants earned substantially less than salaried immigrants when differences in country of origin, educational level at landing, age at landing, and class of admission are controlled for. This finding suggests that the smaller original (actual) earnings disparity between self–employed immigrants and salaried immigrants is due to differences in other characteristics, such as a tendency for the self–employed to be better educated. But when these advantages are removed under statistical control, self–employed immigrants’ earnings dropped even lower relative to the earnings of salaried workers… New immigrants probably encounter employment obstacles in the labour market and turn to self–employment as an alternative for self–preservation.Canadian Initiatives In Supporting Self-Employment
http://www.disabilitystudies.ca/caninitindex.html
Information on Canadian models of entrepreneurship for a number of target populations, including those with disabilities. The report concludes with recommendations for a long-term strategy. Even as the report is going to print, the federal government has built entrepreneurship into some of their funding criteria and are initiating a round table discussion which will focus on a long-term national strategy that would include people with disabilities, governments and the business sector. 1999
The Informal Learning of Volunteer Workers
http://wall.oise.utoronto.ca/research/schugurensky5pager.pdf
Immigrants tend to volunteer less than Canadian-born people (18% v. 31% in 1997), and those who do it to improve their job prospects tend to use it as a strategy to gain the “Canadian experience” so desired by employers. One of the reasons that explain the lower participation of immigrants in voluntary activities is that they do not know how to become involved and that they have limited social networks... Paradoxically, at the same time that immigrants are becoming more and more qualified, they are less likely to find a job in their intended occupation. Between 1969 and 1971, about 61% of immigrants who came to Canada between had jobs in their intended occupation. After 1976, only 47% of the men and 26% of the women had jobs in their intended occupations after one year. 1998The Giving and Volunteering of New Canadians
http://www.givingandvolunteering.ca/pdf/factsheets/Giving_and_volunteering_of_New_Canadians.pdf
Immigrants to Canada were somewhat less likely to volunteer than were Canadians generally (21% vs. 27% volunteered, respectively). They also tended to volunteer less on average (144 hours vs. 162 hours per year, respectively). Both the likelihood of volunteering and the number of hours volunteered increased with the length of time immigrants had lived in Canada. 25% of established immigrants volunteered, compared to 18% of recent immigrants. Similarly, established immigrants volunteered 177 hours, on average, compared to 102 hours for recent immigrants... 28% of the hours volunteered by immigrants went to religious organizations, compared to just 16% of the hours donated by all Canadians. Established immigrants were more likely than recent immigrants and Canadians generally to volunteer because they or someone they knew was personally affected by the cause supported by the organization they volunteered for (74% of established immigrant volunteers, 58% of recent immigrant volunteers, and 69% of Canadian volunteers generally). Recent immigrants were more likely than established immigrants and Canadians generally to say that they did not volunteer because they had not been asked, did not know how to become involved, or had concerns about the financial costs of volunteering. 2000Time and Money
http://www.ccsd.ca/pubs/2006/makingconnections/factsheet2.pd
In 2003, 29% of immigrants to Canada volunteered with charitable or nonprofit organizations, up from 21% in 2000. Among Canadian-born residents, the rate rose from 29% in 2000 to 35% by 2003. In 2000, immigrant volunteers gave an average of 144 hours per year. Canadian-born volunteers averaged 166 hours… Immigrants donated a total of 98.8 million hours that year to all types of organizations − the equivalent of over 50,000 fulltime jobs. This represented almost 10% of the over one billion hours volunteered by all Canadians in 2000. Immigrants who had lived in Canada for one to five years volunteered an average of 96 hours in 2000. Those who had lived here for more than 26 years gave an average of 176 volunteer hours per year to their community. Canadian-born youth aged 15 to 24 were much more likely to volunteer than immigrant youth: 31% compared to 18%. The majority of all Canadians make donations to charitable and nonprofit organizations through financial contributions or donations in-kind. In 2000, 82% of immigrants and 80% of Canadian-born residents made charitable contributions. Longer established immigrants have higher rates of giving than recent immigrants. 2003Police criminal record check - Volunteer job
http://www.settlement.org/discuss/topic.asp?topic_id=6655&forum_id=5&cat_id=5
I am thinking of doing some volunteer job in Toronto while waiting for the immigration to proceed. However I found that for some of the community services like YMCA, they require the volunteer applicants to get the police record check with the application. I have no idea where should I go to get that record from and how much should I pay for that? - According to this department, the cost to process Police Record Checks for Volunteers is $16.05. Discussion forum postingsCan volunteer work help me get a job in my field?
http://lifelong.oise.utoronto.ca/papers/rSchugurenskyPaper.pdf
On learning, immigration and labour markets: One strategy pursued by those who can afford it (thanks to savings or to financial support from a family member) was to work for free in their field, but this was seldom attainable due to restrictions in the labour market… Our preliminary findings indicate that informal learning is very important in voluntary work for immigrants. Participants in this study valued their informal learning about “Canadian culture” and communication so much that they rated their volunteer experiences very positively despite the fact that only 13% of participants found employment matched to their education, skills and experience.