For the past six months in Toronto, however, Ahuja has been learning to drive a truck, convinced it was too difficult a process to practise as a foreign-trained doctor in Canada.

But his experience as a veteran physician kicked into high gear Saturday when he performed an emergency delivery on an Air India flight from New Delhi to Toronto, turning a passenger cabin into a birthing room within minutes and improvising with makeshift instruments.

The baby, a girl, was born 45 minutes later.

“It was very exciting … I’m glad I was able to help,” Ahuja said in a phone interview en route to Collingwood in a tractor-trailer. “But I doubt I’ll use my skills again.”

At least, he doesn’t expect to use them here. Like most foreign-trained doctors, Ahuja must be recertified before he can practise.

But with thousands of foreign-trained doctors in the country and few opportunities for residency, Ahuja says he knows it will be almost impossible.

“I don’t want to get frustrated,” he says.

“I’m not closing that door completely but as of now I’m focusing on trucking because I have a family and I need money.”

Ahuja said he immigrated to give his three children a better future.

There are at least 7,500 internationally trained doctors in Ontario but fewer than 200 can get residency spots because they have to compete with young Canadians who are more familiar with the language and the system.

On board the plane, Ahuja had settled into his seat and was almost asleep when a call went out on the loudspeaker asking if there was a doctor or nurse aboard.

He went to the back and saw Kuljit Kaur, about 37 weeks pregnant, on the floor obviously in labour and in pain. Her husband, Ranjodh Gill, was sitting next to her.

The couple and their 7-year-old daughter were flying to Canada as landed immigrants.

There was also an oncologist on board. “She had never attended a delivery,” Ahuja said, quickly realizing it was all up to him.

He had seen hundreds of births and though he hadn’t assisted with any he knew exactly what needed to be done.

Ahuja quickly gathered what he thought he would need. And then improvised.

Empty food cartons were used to lift Kaur’s legs. Scissors were sterilized in Scotch. Pieces of thread tied the umbilical cord. The microwave warmed a blanket for the baby.

The baby was born after 45 minutes of intense labour but no one freaked out, said Ahuja.

“I’ve attended all sorts of emergencies in the past years but this was such a different experience,” he said.

“I was anxious but not scared. There was no alternative, too.”

Aakash Leen Kaur was born about 11,000 metres over Kazakhstan. Aakash means “sky” in Hindi.

Ahuja became an instant hero.

Passengers gave him a standing ovation, the Air India crew gave him a bottle of Scotch and the new father visited him at his home and gave him a box of sweets.

“I was so grateful there was a doctor there,” said Gill, 37, a lawyer who immigrated to Alberta under the provincial nominee program.

But the family wanted to spend some days in Brampton with his wife’s sister before flying to Calgary this weekend.

“My wife was due on Nov. 7,” said Gill. “We don’t know what happened, why the baby came early.”

He said her labour pains started an hour after the plane took off.

“We first thought it was gas but soon realized … it wasn’t,” said Gill, admitting he panicked a bit until Ahuja, calm and composed, showed up.

His wife, he said, is still tired but she and the baby are doing well.

Ahuja, meanwhile, is reliving his days as a physician through the mid-air delivery. “It was the most exciting thing that’s happened to me in Canada,” said Ahuja, who lives in Brampton with his wife and children.

What’s next?

“Getting my own truck.”

Is the baby girl born in Kazakhstan airspace Canadian or Indian? Or Kazakhstani?

Her father, Ranjodh Gill, says he doesn’t know and doesn’t care.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada will not comment on the baby’s status due to privacy reasons. “The status of the child will depend on the status of the parents,” said spokesman Bill Brown.

But he did present some hypothetical scenarios:

Generally, a child who is not born in Canada and does not have a parent who is a Canadian citizen is not a Canadian citizen either.

If one or both parents are Canadian citizens, they can apply to have a citizenship certificate issued for the child.

If one or both of the parents are permanent residents, they can apply to have the child become a permanent resident.

If the parents are here temporarily, they can apply to have the child gain temporary status as well.

Raveena Aulakh
Staff reporter
Toronto Star

Comments from the Article

Re: Meet Dr. Balvinder Singh Ahuja, Oct. 27

Canada has a stressed health system and an aging population, not to mention a reverse pyramid tax base, yet we prevent qualified doctors, dentists, nurses and other professionals from working in Canada. Is our training really so superior to other countries? Surely we could adapt a fast track, subsidized system for these highly skilled immigrants to requalify.

Jill Wykes, Toronto

Maybe it’s time Stephen Harper and some of his highly paid, university educated ministers spent a week in the shoes of men like this. Work cleaning offices, driving trucks or taxis, and live only on the money received from those jobs. They will quickly realize how wasted their time in university was for menial jobs.

We have a shortage of doctors and other skilled people in this country, yet allow these highly skilled individuals to immigrate and not use their talents. Instead of spending millions on ridiculous projects, spending the same money on ensuring these people get the proper language skills and upgrading will ensure not only more doctors, engineers, etc. at our disposal, it will also generate more income for the government in the way of taxes and personal spending.

Bruce Katkin, Brampton

While what the doctor did is commendable, I am appalled that a woman who was due to deliver on Nov. 7 was allowed to board a transatlantic flight 15 days before her due date. It is well-known that in the last two to three weeks of pregnancy the baby can arrive at any time. Someone should question Air India’s policy on allowing pregnant women to travel on its planes. This story had a good ending, however, others may not be so lucky.

Hana Tariq, Richmond Hill

While holding immigration levels steady for 2012, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said in his annual report he plans to rejig the selection criteria for skilled immigrants, giving preference to those who are young, fluent in English/French and have Canadian work and education credentials.

The government will also continue to beef up its border enforcement by implementing the Temporary Resident Biometrics Project. By 2013, selected foreigners will be required to provide biometrics, such as fingerprints, when they apply for visas to study and work to Canada.

“Citizenship and Immigration Canada is committed to move toward more efficient and effective processing, stronger program integrity and improved client service,” Kenney said in his 2011 report, tabled in the House of Commons late Tuesday.

“The ultimate goal is to deliver a more timely, flexible and responsive immigration system with no significant backlogs, and with reasonable service stands and processing times across all business lines.”

What was missing in the report, said critics, is a breakdown of 2012 targets for various immigration streams, such as family reunification, economic class and refugees.

“It’s the first time in anybody’s memory that there’s only the total of immigrants the minister intends to issue visas to. There is no breakdown of these numbers by categories,” said NDP immigration critic Don Davies. “What is the ministry trying to hide from Canadians?”

The release of the report followed an announcement Wednesday that Ottawa plans to create a new “MI4 phD” immigration class, which would allocate up to 1,000 spots as permanent residents under the federal skilled worker program to international PhD students.

To be eligible, the students must have completed at least two years of study toward the attainment of the doctoral degree and remain in good academic standing at a recognized university in Canada.

That the government is refocusing on the Canadian Experience Class — granting permanent status to those in Canada on work or student visas — was evident at the news conference Kenney held to mark the 10,000th permanent resident who came in through this stream since its inception in 2008.

“The CEC and the PhD initiative represent what we hope is the future of immigration to Canada: bright young people who have a Canadian education or work experience that will be recognized by Canadian employers, and who have strong English or French language skills. Such newcomers are set for success,” Kenney said.

Advocates for immigrants and refugees are pleased that so far in 2011, there has not been a marked reduction in family reunification numbers for spouses and children, or parents and grandparents.

“But our focus is going to be on the backlogs — capping of family reunification for parents and grandparents and the conditional sponsorship of spouses,” said Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants.

Top 10 immigrant source countries in 2010

Philippines

India

China

United Kingdom

USA

France

Iran

UAE

Morocco

South Korea

All other countries132,88247.3%

Total280,681100%

Citizenship and Immigration 2011 Report

Nicholas Keung,
Immigration Reporter
Toronto Star

The Canadian Experience Class program fast tracks permanent residency applications for skilled foreign workers and graduate students who have spent time in Canada on temporary permits or student visas.

This type of economic immigrant class, unveiled three years ago, was the first new avenue to obtaining a permanent residency card in decades.

The number of foreigners admitted under the Canadian Experience Class program is expected to rise to 7,000 in 2012 from 2,545 in 2009, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced Wednesday. It is currently the Department of Citizenship and Immigration’s fastest-growing immigration program.

The initiative is perhaps Canada’s most hard-nosed effort to place a premium on newcomers whom Ottawa believes fit best into Canada’s economy, removing obstacles for a class of immigrants that Mr. Kenney calls “the most likely to succeed.”

“We should pick the best and brightest and seek to attract them in what is increasingly a global marketplace for human capital,” he said.

The program targets temporary foreign workers already in Canada and non-Canadians who have graduated from universities and colleges here, people who have proven they can integrate into society and meet labour market needs.

Before it was created, highly skilled outsiders could not become permanent residents from within Canada. “We’d tell them to leave the country because their temporary foreign work permit or student visa had expired” after they’d completed two years of contract work here or obtained a degree at a Canadian university, Mr. Kenney recalled.

“And if they wanted to immigrate, we’d say, ‘Great, get in the queue of the federal skilled worker program,’ where processing times were up to seven years.”

Canada was forced to bring in the new program because of a global race for talent with rival destinations such as Australia and the United Kingdom, which had similar programs.

The new program has made a difference for people like Goomaral Chukhalkhuu of Mongolia, who is now a permanent resident. These days, the 25-year-old daughter of a Mongolian diplomat is a manager of small-business accounts at a Royal Bank in Ottawa.

Ms. Chukhalkhuu, saluted by Mr. Kenney on Wednesday as the 10,000th person admitted through the Canada Experience Class program, said the initiative was a perfect solution for her.

“It made it a lot easier, smoother and more efficient for me to become a permanent resident,” she said. “For me to go [to Mongolia] and never come back, for me was not an option.”

Ms. Chukhalkhuu, who obtained an honours bachelor’s degree in international business from Carleton University, said it made sense to ease the immigration process.

“I already studied here. I already speak the language, both French and English, so it makes it easier for both me and Canada,” she said.

While the Canadian Experience Class program is growing rapidly, it’s fallen short of what Ottawa originally anticipated.

Back when it announced the program in 2008, the government said it expected to grant permanent resident status to 8,000 economic immigrants in the first year. However, only 2,545 were admitted in 2009, the first full year under the initiative.

Immigration lawyer Richard Kurland suggested the mandatory language proficiency test that now forms part of the Canadian Experience Class application is a deterrent.

He suggested potential Canadian Experience Class applicants instead applied for residency through provincial programs – in British Columbia, for instance – that did not have the same language test.

Mr. Kenney said on Wednesday that Canada expects to admit 254,000 immigrants this year in total.

“We’re maintaining the highest per capita levels of total immigration in the developed world with, I think, the sole exception of New Zealand,” he said.

STEVEN CHASE

OTTAWA— From Thursday’s Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Nov. 02, 2011 12:39PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Nov. 02, 2011 11:52PM EDT

Many employers are stubbornly refusing to hire immigrants who don’t have Canadian experience — and firing them first during economic downturns. The result is that newly arrived immigrants have an unemployment rate that is twice as high as that of the Canadian-born population, in spite of being better educated.

A new report by Deloitte is calling on Canadian employers to focus on an employee’s core skill set and qualifications — instead of on their accent and cultural background. A more diverse work force is not only better for society, it fosters creativity and innovation. Two good examples in Canada are Xerox and Toronto’s Steam Whistle Brewery, which have broadened their markets, thanks to a diverse work force.

While lingering biases in recruitment may not be intentional, they definitely persist. A recent study by University of Toronto researcher Philip Oreopoulos showed that job seekers with anglophone names in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal are 47% more likely to receive callbacks than those with Indian or Chinese names — even if their work experience, education and language proficiency are the same. Employers perceive that it will take more time to train foreign-born workers, or that they won’t fit into the company’s culture. But group think isn’t good for business, and differences can strengthen an organization.

Canada needs immigrants to fuel economic growth. But this goal won’t be achieved if newcomers can only get “survival jobs”. Canada’s immigration model is recognized for its excellence, both in selecting the best and brightest, and for making the path to citizenship painless. However, the model will lose its credibility if employers cannot address the challenge of immigrants’ persistent under-employment.

Employers must broaden their thinking, and integrate skilled people who may not have Canadian experience, but who offer something even more valuable: global experience.

Globe Editorial

Published Tuesday, Nov. 01, 2011 5:06PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Nov. 02, 2011 1:32PM EDT

Andrew Padmos, the college’s chief executive officer, said between 6,000 and 10,000 doctors can’t practise in Canada because there aren’t enough spots in residency programs.

“If they require residency, there are severe constraints,” Dr. Padmos told the Commons standing committee on human resources. He said that’s because there are only slightly more residency spots in Canada than there are medical school graduates each year. “It’s insufficient to deal with several thousand foreign-trained grads,” he said.

The committee is looking for ways to speed up the recognition of foreign qualifications in a bid to improve work opportunities for immigrants and make Canada more economically competitive.

Dr. Padmos said qualifying doctors can sometimes get around the residency backlog by working under the temporary supervision of a Canadian-trained physician – but that option has its own price tag.

“The federal government should fund the salary of the international graduate, plus something for the supervisor to make it possible,” he said after the meeting.

He also recommended the creation of an arms-length observatory to study health and human resources and advise the provinces on where doctors and specialists are most needed.

Governments have long promised to help internationally trained professionals find work at their skill level. In 2009, the federal government announced workers in eight fields would not have to wait longer than a year to find out how the credentials they obtained abroad compare with Canadian standards. At the time, the government promised to add foreign-trained doctors to the list of professionals by the end of 2012.

Robert Young holds the Canada Research Chair in multilevel governance and his research includes immigration and settlement policies. He said that while the federal government’s efforts to reduce wait times on qualifications are laudable, they often aren’t the biggest barrier for professional immigrants – whether they are doctors or work in another field.

“In many cases, it’s not the credentials that matter but getting the Canadian experience,” Mr. Young said in a telephone interview.

KIM MACKRAEL

Globe and Mail Update
Published Tuesday, Nov. 01, 2011 11:08PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Nov. 02, 2011 1:32PM EDT

And if foreign-born workers continue to experience the promise of prosperity as hollow, this country risks losing the growing global war for talent as Brand Canada is tarnished abroad.

Those are the main findings of a new report, to be released Tuesday, by Deloitte. The study adds to a growing body of research warning that Canadian living standards are being threatened by outdated hiring practices that hamper business growth.

“We’re losing out,” said Jane Allen, partner and chief diversity officer at Deloitte. “We’re making our productivity situation worse by not capitalizing on the skills that new immigrants are bringing.”

Canada’s labour productivity – a measure of what the economy produces in each hour of work – is often criticized for lagging that of other industrialized countries. It has increased by an average annual rate of 0.5 per cent since early 2005 versus 2.1 per cent in the United States.

The report found that companies are wary of hiring highly educated immigrants due to perceived “risks” including lengthy immigration approvals processes and other more intangible concerns over cultural fit.

“People like to hire people that are like themselves. And often times they will, wittingly or not, set the bar higher for immigrants than they would for local people regarding language or Canadian experience,” said Ms. Allen.

That leads to biases in recruitment that enable companies to cite a lack of Canadian experience as “an excuse not to hire immigrants,” she added.

While some professional associations have started streamlining the recognition of foreign credentials, much work lies ahead since there are more than 440 regulatory bodies in Canada. As a result, Deloitte found there is a growing fear among progressive companies that Canada is going to lose workers to other countries if these systemic problems are not corrected.

Some companies, however, are finding innovative ways to tap the latent pool of foreign workers without breaching the rules. Toronto-based Medical DataBanks, which manages clinical research programs for drug development, hires foreign-trained doctors, pharmacists and nurses to fill research and administrative positions.

“I’ve had doctors working for me in this capacity from all around the world, and they will deal with certain scientific, medical-safety issues,” said founder Peter Feldman. “It is all as compatible quality-wise to what I would get from a local Canadian doctor, but I can’t get a local Canadian doctor – they don’t have the time.”

While those professionals are prohibited from delivering medical services in Canada without accreditation, their previous work experience can be applied to clinical research. Moreover, most of those candidates possess strong written English skills that make it easy for them to handle the reams of written documentation required for clinical research.

Vancouver-based Allon Therapeutics Inc. is taking a similar approach.

Gordon McCauley, president and chief executive officer, argues the recognition of foreign credentials is being hampered by an overly zealous testing process: “I think that is more about economic protectionism.”

Nonetheless, the underemployment of highly skilled immigrants is proving to be a persistent problem. In 2010, the unemployment rate averaged 7.5 per cent for native-born Canadians and 15.8 per cent for new immigrants (people who have been in the country for five years or less), according to Statistics Canada.

RITA TRICHUR

Globe and Mail Update   
Published Tuesday, Nov. 01, 2011 6:00AM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Nov. 01, 2011 9:25AM EDT

While it took 8-year-old Phillip no time at all to adjust to his Grade 2 class at Saint Elizabeth Catholic School, it has been a different story for 16-year-old Rencis at Bishop Marrocco Catholic Secondary School.

“My younger one is learning so quickly, but the older one doesn’t even want to go to school and is having a difficult time fitting in,” said Rivera, who came here as a live-in caregiver in 2006 and was recently joined by her family. “I am worried that he would not graduate high school.”

The Toronto mother has every reason to be concerned.

According to a Statistics Canada study, the chance of immigrant children dropping out of high school rises the older they are when they arrive here, especially after the age of nine.

“More important to their success is how old they (are when they) come, not where they come from,” said author Miles Corak, an economist with the University of Ottawa’s graduate school of public and international affairs.

Based on 2006 census data, Corak’s study found 15 per cent of boys and 11 per cent of girls who come to Canada before the age of nine ultimately dropped out of high school, compared to the Canadian average of 10.3 per cent and 6.6 per cent respectively.

The likelihood of immigrants not attaining a high school diploma increases progressively after that age. More than one in five, or 21.6 per cent, of those arriving here at age 15 drop out of high school.

However, the study also found exposure to English or French, in countries like Hong Kong and India, can ease the transition even if the child speaks a different mother tongue.

The finding is crucial to immigrant families in deciding when to make the move to Canada during their life cycle to ensure their children’s future academic success, said Corak.

The age of nine is the turning point in the development of children’s cognitive capacity as they make the transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” he added.

These patterns of success at school can be attributed to the challenges faced by older immigrant children in learning the two official languages of English or French. Older kids may also have more emotional and developmental issues that make integration more difficult.

“For my younger son, everything was new, interesting and exciting,” said Rivera. “But it’s much harder for my older son to make friends because others had already been friends. He’s bullied here and he misses his good friends, grandmother and everything else in the Philippines.”

The study also found age of arrival has little bearing on dropout rates among those arriving from English- or French-speaking countries.

High school dropout rates by age at arrival:

Age……………………Rate (%)

0………………………13.4

1………………………12.7

2………………………13.6

3………………………12.7

4………………………12.3

5………………………12.9

6………………………12.8

7………………………13

8………………………13.7

9………………………13.9

10……………………..15.5

11……………………..15.2

12……………………..16.5

13……………………..19

14……………………..18.7

15……………………..21.6

16……………………..24

17……………………..24.4

Source: Age at Immigration and the Education Outcomes of Children, Statistics Canada

Nicholas Keung,
Immigration Reporter,
The Toronto Star

He envisions a nimble, efficient immigration machine that will help solve Canada’s demographic imbalance and boost the country’s competitiveness simultaneously.

Step one comes this week when he announces immigration targets for next year.

Kenney says when he is done with his multiple reforms of the system, the flow of newcomers into Canada will be predominantly young, well educated, highly skilled, and fluent in English or French.

They’ll be admitted to Canada within a year of applying.

And soon after, they’ll start paying taxes because they will have lined up a job prior to arrival or should be able to find one quickly once they land.

“Where we want to be in a few years time is a flexible, just-in-time … system where we admit people within a year of their application,” he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“Where people with pre-arranged job offers are given priority, because they succeed best. Where we continue to see a better geographic distribution of newcomers. And where we can more flexibly change the (acceptance) criteria based on developments in the labour market,” he explained.

“That’s where we want to go.”

But getting there is no easy amble. His critics don’t disagree with his goal, but they have qualms about how he will achieve it.

“It’s like saying ‘we want to have sun in January.’ We all want that,” NDP immigration critic Don Davies said in a telephone call from Vancouver. “He doesn’t explain how. He sets the goals but he doesn’t say how we’ll get there.”

Kenney foresees a multi-step process that will require changes to many different parts of Canada’s creaky immigration machinery.

His department has already undertaken major studies of what kind of immigrant succeeds in Canada and what kind fails. Kenney has followed up with extensive consultations and polling to find out what mix of immigration the public is willing to take.

Now comes the action. Kenney is expected to table the annual report on immigration on Tuesday. As usual, it will include his decisions about how many immigrants Canada should accept in 2012, and what kind.

The report will give a range of operational targets for each type of immigrant, from foreign skilled workers to parents and grandparents.

The key number is the overall number of immigrants Canada wants to let in — and that number is clearly not going up despite pressure from the opposition.

Under the Conservative government, Canada has let in an average of 254,000 immigrants a year, which is high by historical standards.

While some immigration observers argue that Canada could solve its demographic imbalance, workplace shortages, family demands and backlog issues all at the same time by opening the doors to far more immigrants, Kenney rejects that idea.

“I don’t think realistically we can increase the levels of immigration in orders of magnitude,” he said.

“I think it’s important for policy makers to listen to public opinion on immigration and not become disconnected from public opinion, which has arguably led to some of the problems in Western Europe.”

Immigrant-related riots in a few European countries over the past three years have become the spectre of what immigration policy makers around the world aim to avoid.

Kenney understands the logic in calculations that show Canada would have to at least triple the number of immigrants it lets in every year if it wanted to bring down the average age of its population and resolve expected labour shortages over time.

But Canada can’t absorb that many people, he said, nor would Canadians accept that kind of inflow. He points to polling last year done by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. It shows 47 per cent of respondents say immigration levels are just right, and 34 per cent say they are too high.

“That, in my view, is in no way a reflection of anti-immigration sentiment, because new immigrants are disproportionately likely to say that,” Kenney said.

“So this is just, I think, a sense that Canadians have that there’s a practical limit to how many people can be successfully settled each year. The broad political consensus in Canada is pro-immigration, but the caveat on that is to make sure that we’re able to successfully integrate and employ the people who arrive.”

Once the levels of immigration are decided, Kenney will be turning his attention to getting rid of the enormous backlog of potential immigrants waiting in the queue to have their applications processed. There are about one million names on the list, many of whom have been waiting for years and years for word from Ottawa.

He has suggested capping the number of applications in some areas, perhaps starting with the parents and grandparents of permanent residents. That would cut down the backlog, make for a younger inflow, and reduce Canada’s costs for social services.

Then, once the numbers are under control, Kenney wants to focus on shaping the quality of the various immigration streams.

Next spring, the minister wants to re-jig the point system that allows economic immigrants to qualify. Youth and high-quality education will be worth more, and the emphasis on English or French fluency is likely to be increased. Quantity of education will matter less, the minister says.

But this isn’t the first time Kenney has tried to reform the stream of economic immigrants, points out Davies.

Kenney has given three major directives over the past few years to limit applications and put certain professions at the front of the queue. The fact that he’s rehashing the system yet again is a sign that his previous attempts have failed, Davies says.

It’s not enough for Kenney to simply be the “Energizer bunny” when it comes to shaping Canada’s future workforce and diverse population, he adds.

“I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. I think he should slow down.”

Heather Scoffield
The Canadian Press
The Toronto Star
Oct 30th, 2011

When Anita (not her real name) first moved from India to Canada, the marketing professional didn’t know what to expect. Even so, she never imagined finding a job in her field would be as difficult as it turned out to be. She was repeatedly turned down, because she “lacked Canadian experience.” To seek advice, Anita approached a settlement counsellor, who suggested volunteering as a good way to get that experience.

“Work for free? That’s not why I came to Canada,” she said.

But she decided to give it a chance, and began volunteering at the YMCA, working with new Canadians like herself. Now, three years later, Anita smiles at the memory of her original response. She remains an active volunteer with the YMCA – while heading up a leading-edge social media company at the same time.

Three months later, through a mentor she met, Anita was offered a part-time job with a nonprofit. The non-profit needed help submitting a bid for funding for its marketing plan. When the bid was accepted, Anita’s part-time job turned full-time. No one ever asked her about “Canadian experience” again.

Anita’s work at the Y provided her with Canadian references and a network of contacts she would have had trouble building otherwise. But that’s not all. Like many new Canadians, Anita used volunteering to help her master Canadian English – not so much formal reading and writing, but practical, everyday speech. She learned Canadian idioms and phrases, and got a better sense of how Western offices operate. She interacted daily with men and women outside her cultural group, absorbing new ideas and perspectives. All this made her a strong candidate when the time came to interview for that job.

According to a survey conducted by LinkedIn released Sept. 7, 46% of Canadian professionals polled consider volunteer work as valuable as paid work experience. For many new Canadians, volunteering is the first step to a bright future.

Nick Noorani is founder of Canadian Immigrant magazine and a partner of Destination Canada Inc., helping immigrants learn essential skills before and after they immigrate. You can follow him on prepareforcanada.com. For more from The Mark, visit themarknews.com.

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