Ontario looking to ban employers from requiring Canadian work experience on application forms and in job postings
Ontario has declared its intention to present new legislation that, if passed, would prohibit businesses from requiring “Canadian work experience… in job postings or application forms,” in a first-of-its-kind move among all Canadian provinces and territories.
The Ontario Ministry of job, Immigration, Training, and Skills Development anticipates that the new law announced today will enable more newcomers fill in-demand job gaps across the province.
According to Ontario Labour Minister David Piccini, this measure will benefit newcomers to Canada because “for far too long, far too many people arriving in Canada have been funnelled into dead-end jobs they’re overqualified for.”
Piccini believes that Ontario’s proposed law would go a long way toward guaranteeing that “these people can land well-paying and rewarding careers that [would also] help tackle the labour shortage.”
What Ontario expects from the proposed legislative changes
The province of Ontario believes that eliminating Canadian work experience requirements will “help even more internationally trained immigrants work in the fields they’ve studied in.”
According to a recent provincial government news release, “this change would help more qualified candidates progress in the interview process and [is one step closer to making] it easier for internationally trained immigrants to find meaningful work and contribute to building Ontario.”
Beyond the benefits to the provincial workforce that this new legislation would provide, Ontario’s Minister of Citizenship and Multiculturalism, Michael Ford, says that “this change will [also] help support families as they start their journey in their new homes, create more vibrant communities, and help ensure businesses have the talent they need.”
Immigration’s Impact on Ontario
As stated in the press release introducing this law, immigration is a crucial component of growth in Canada, particularly in Ontario, which receives the most immigrants in the country each year.
The press release goes on to say that “research has shown that helping internationally trained newcomers work in the professions they studied for could increase the province’s GDP by up to $100 billion over five years.”
Other initiatives being made by Ontario to welcome more qualified newcomers to Canada
The benefit of immigration to Ontario is clearly stated by the province’s Labour Minister, who states that “when newcomers to Ontario get a meaningful chance to contribute, everyone wins.”
As a result, Ontario will nominate 16,500 immigrants for permanent residency alone in 2023. This will be done through the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP), the province’s dedicated Provincial Nominee Program (PNP), as part of a coordinated effort to welcome immigrants capable of contributing to the provincial labour market “in various critical sectors such as health care and the skilled trades.”
Aside from the newly announced legislation, the Ontario government is proposing a number of other measures that will enhance the province’s efforts to stabilize and improve the local labour market through immigration. Three of these initiatives, according to a recent news release, are:
Increasing the amount of international students eligible to apply to the OINP in Ontario.
This will be accomplished, according to the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training, and Skills Development, by “revising eligibility requirements for hundreds of one-year college graduate certificate programs across the province.”
Requesting that the federal government give Ontario “significantly more influence” in deciding who will come to the province as economic immigrants.
The province has already started this process by asking and receiving more PNP nominations through the OINP. In reality, the federal government’s allocation to the OINP will more than treble by 2025 (nearly 18,000 seats) compared to 2021 (9,000 in 2021).
“Improving oversight and accountability” in how regulated professions use third-party organizations to “assess international qualifications in a timely, transparent, and fair manner.”
Overqualification of immigrants has always been a concern in Canada.
Overqualification of Canadian immigrants in the national labour force has been extensively documented for many years, a problem that Ontario seeks to remedy with these proposed legal amendments.
According to a 2020 Statistics Canada (StatsCan) report, “immigrants were almost three times more likely (10.1%) than non-immigrants (3.6%) to have been persistently overqualified*.”
Additionally, the report stated that “according to 2016 Census data, immigrants with a university degree (bachelor’s degree or higher) were twice as likely as people born in Canada to have a job that required no more than a high school education.”
Statistics Canada data from as recently as 2022 demonstrate that Canadian immigrants are frequently overqualified for the professions they hold in this nation. According to a November 2017 research, statistics on “the overqualification rate of degree holders aged 25-64, by immigration status, location of study, and gender” reveals that immigrants are “twice as likely to be overqualified as those with a Canadian degree.”
Specifically, whereas 10.6% of all degree holders (regardless of gender) born in Canada were regarded overqualified, that figure jumped to 11.8% for immigrants (men and women) “with a location of study inside Canada.” The same figure increased to 25.8% for those who worked in Canada after receiving a foreign degree.
These are the problems that Ontario is attempting to address with legislative reforms like the ones proposed earlier today.
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- Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program
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