Why newcomers face the “Canadian experience” disconnect
From: The Conference Board of Canada
Image credit: News Canada
An Impact Paper for the Conference Board of Canada by Yilmaz Ergun Dinç explores the economic benefits and costs of “Canadian experience” and recommends ways to improve the transition from temporary to permanent residency.
Key findings reveal that:
• “Canadian experience” has no coherent or consistent definition. This inconsistency reduces the efficacy of the immigration system and leads immigrants to invest at significant cost in studies, volunteering, and other activities with unreliable economic returns.
• There is a significant measurement problem in comparing two new permanent resident groups: those who recently arrived in Canada and those who transition from temporary to permanent residency. The settlement journey of the latter group starts much earlier.
• In assessing the economic viability of two-step immigration, we must consider that temporary residents typically have no access to settlement services funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and lack the rights of a permanent resident. In addition, they often face visa status vulnerabilities and/or work in precarious and difficult conditions.
• Having experience in a good-quality job in Canada before becoming a permanent resident, advanced language and soft skills, and professional networks and ethnic ties help immigrants achieve economic success in their first few years. IRCC and settlement service providers should promote settlement interventions that provide these skills and experiences to boost economic success.
• Canadian education, volunteering and unpaid internships, and personal networks alone don’t guarantee successful economic integration. IRCC and the settlement sector should consider the systemic risks of increased immigration costs and suboptimal labour market outcomes when funding programs focused on these activities or recommending them to immigrants.
• Employers should tackle existing bias against foreignness and not approach Canadian work experience as a hiring requirement. Hiring practices that assess a candidate’s “Canadian-ness” perpetuate discrimination against immigrant talent and are not based on actual performance in the workplace.
Excerpts from the impact paper:
Canada has increasingly relied on international students and temporary foreign workers as future permanent residents over the last decade.
The pandemic has further reinforced this trend. More immigrants with pre-admission work or study experience in Canada were admitted during the pandemic than in the preceding five years.
International students and temporary foreign workers are also significant in size: Canada currently admits more temporary residents each year than permanent residents.
International students and temporary foreign workers are often considered “ideal immigrants” as they have professional and personal experiences in Canada – branded as “Canadian experience” – that government and employers presume would facilitate their economic integration. But the evidence for Canadian experience paints a more complex and nuanced picture.
Although the term “Canadian experience” is used by different levels of government, employers, and the settlement sector, we don’t have a coherent and consistent definition of it. It often refers to a wide range of experiences, skills and qualifications, and networks, and there are varying degrees of evidence to support its current use in the immigration system. In turn, governments, settlement service providers, and employers all focus on different forms of Canadian experience. These varying approaches are costly for Canada since they reduce the efficacy of the current immigration system and economic integration strategies while lowering the economic and social benefits of immigration.
The discrepancy is also unfair for immigrants themselves, who must both navigate a system that gives them conflicting advice and bear the time, financial, and personal costs of getting Canadian experience.
This misalignment about Canadian experience in policy and practice is an urgent problem that the immigration ecosystem needs to tackle.
Economic integration means overcoming two obstacles:
1. Labour market barriers specific to newcomers (such as finding their first job in Canada).
2. The employment and earning gaps between immigrants and people born in Canada with similar qualifications.
Successful settlement is a combination of economic, cultural, and social integration. Some forms of Canadian experience could be beneficial for social and cultural integration and hence settlement more broadly but could have an indirect or no impact on economic integration.
Learnings can inform settlement program implementation, immigrant hiring practices, and the design and execution of immigration programs at both federal and provincial levels.
The term “Canadian experience” is currently used to refer to one or more of the following factors, though there’s no consistent and coherent definition that brings these components together:
1. Work experience in Canada.
2. Advanced language skills, including cultural use of language and occupation-specific language skills.
3. Soft skills and knowledge of Canadian workplace culture.
4. Professional and ethnic networks.
5. Personal networks.
6. Study experience in Canada.
7. Volunteering and unpaid work in Canada.
Newcomers are frequently encouraged to acquire different forms of Canadian experience like volunteering, building soft skills, and networking, often with the expectation that these interventions would support and speed up their economic inclusion.
Employers tend to view Canadian work experience as a predictor of success in the job and approach it as a hiring criteria. However, there is limited evidence on whether and why candidates with this experience are successful.
Employers often approach Canadian experience as not only previous work experience in Canada but also symbolic representation of “being a Canadian”. This gets intertwined with bias and racism. It’s not often clear whether employers are looking for
Specific know-how or soft skills. The way Canadian experience is defined in immigrant selection is disconnected from the way it’s defined in talent assessment or settlement services that focus on economic integration.
IRCC doesn’t explicitly define Canadian experience, but the program requirements or eligibility criteria that the department sets for selection signal the forms of Canadian experience that the federal government considers to be valuable. Likewise, settlement program and funding decisions set the boundaries of settlement service provider activities and how these providers deliver on Canadian experience.
These divergent approaches to Canadian experience offer a fragmented picture of immigrant economic integration. Immigrant selection might be ignoring types of Canadian experience that could set up prospective immigrants for success. On the other hand, settlement service providers might be advocating for activities with the goal of economic inclusion, even though these activities may not create the desired economic impact. Hiring decisions based on vague criteria often perpetuate discrimination.
Overall, immigrants get mixed signals on what they need to do to find economic success.
What kind of Canadian experience drives economic integration? The benefit of Canadian experience depends on the form of that experience. Experience in a well-paid job in Canada, advanced language skills, soft skills to navigate the Canadian workplace, and professional and ethnic networks boost economic integration, particularly in the short term. However, the impact of Canadian study experience, volunteering and unpaid internships, and personal networks on economic integration depends on the nature of these activities, as well as whether they are bundled with other forms of Canadian experience.
Pre-admission work experience in Canada and the quality of jobs they held here influence immigrants’ career trajectory upon admission.
Host-country work experience is associated with higher earnings, and for men, this effect is long-lasting. However, not every type of work experience sets immigrants up for success.
Immigrants who can access permanent, full-time jobs in their field of expertise (“good-quality” jobs) upon arrival in Canada do better than those who can’t. Better earnings before permanent residency leads to a greater likelihood of employment and higher employment income after landing. But getting more immigrants in quality jobs before admission is challenging.
Many employers still discount international work experience in hiring. Requiring immigrant candidates to show a record of work in Canada pushes them to work in any job, regardless of quality or fit, early on, which can perpetuate newcomer underemployment and harm for their careers. In addition, this requirement often ends up as a tool for assessing a candidate’s “Canadian-ness,” which discriminates based on race and ethnicity.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission has labelled stern Canadian experience requirements for jobs or licensing as “prima facie discrimination” except in a few limited cases.
In addition, not all sectors prefer their candidates to have Canadian experience. Some jobs where attracting non-immigrants is challenging (e.g., agriculture) have no Canadian experience requirement. Likewise, in high-growth occupations that require in-demand skills (e.g., software engineers), this requirement is likely less strict.
Furthermore, no evidence suggests that employees with Canadian work experience perform their tasks better in the workplace than those with only international work experience. Employers should focus on the skills and competencies of immigrants in hiring and address discrimination and biases that affect recruitment.
Advanced language skills predict immigrant earnings. Both immigrant selection policies and settlement practices recognize the importance of language skills. Proficiency in English and/or French is a key predictor of immigrant earnings in the first two years – and potentially longer – in Canada.
While language proficiency per se is not a type of Canadian experience, language skills often include cultural use of language as well as mastery of occupation-specific terminology.
Many employers look for language skills beyond proficiency. These skills could be different from country to country and are often distinct from foundational language and communication skills.
However, preferring a more Canadianized use of language and no accent paves the way for bias and discrimination.
Occupational language skills may also not be straightforward. Even though knowledge of occupation-specific concepts and jargon presumably improves employability, it’s hard for immigrants to prove and for employers to assess these skills in the earlier stages of recruitment.
Canadian experience, particularly in talent assessment and settlement service provision, often includes soft skills such as understanding how to effectively navigate and communicate within the Canadian workplace. The more immigrants are familiar with Canadian workplace norms and communication styles, the better their employment and career advancement prospects.
This finding is also in line with Employment and Social Development Canada’s Skills for Success framework, which outlines nine core skills that Canadians need to succeed in their personal and professional lives.
At the same time, employers have a responsibility to build an inclusive workplace that respects and appreciates cultural nuances and differences in how employees express soft skills. Immigrants might already possess some of the soft skills that employers value but may demonstrate them differently. Employers should differentiate between a lack of soft skills among job candidates and employees and a lack of enabling human resource management policies in addition to a non-inclusive workplace environment that prevents immigrants from leveraging their skills.
Settlement service providers often advocate for networking to compensate for a lack of Canadian work experience or to assist with gaining it.
Both professional and ethnic networks are important for immigrants’ first employment in Canada and career progression.
Canadian education doesn’t always lead to economic success. Canadian education as a form of Canadian experience has mixed results in driving economic integration. Study may occur at multiple levels (e.g., college degree, bachelor’s degree, graduate degree), focus on different fields (e.g., science, technology, engineering, and math; skilled trades; social sciences), and take place at a wide range of organizations (e.g., universities, colleges, private institutions). Most Canadian education programs to which international students and newcomers turn to gain Canadian experience aren’t explicitly designed for economic integration. As a result, these programs don’t always lead to successful economic inclusion.
Even when they study in the same fields in Canada, international students still earn less than their domestic counterparts upon graduation. The difference in earnings varies based on the subject, with wider gaps in fields like business and social sciences than in science, technology, engineering and math fields.
Language skills are also crucial when considering whether studying in Canada improves economic integration.
Evidence shows that language abilities in a host country could mediate the returns on pre-admission education abroad.
Immigrants bear the cost of gaining and proving Canadian experience
Immigration is a costly process, and some of the integration costs, including gaining various forms of Canadian experience, are inevitably borne by immigrants.
However, we need to sort out which costs are fair, creating significant risks and vulnerabilities for immigrants, and which are a result of slow, ineffective, or counterproductive policies or practices that need to be changed or eliminated.
Valuing Canadian experience may heighten vulnerabilities and risk of exploitation. Temporary residents may gain Canadian experience that helps with their economic integration upon admission, but they often do so while facing visa status vulnerabilities, having limited access to IRCC-funded settlement services, working in precarious and difficult working conditions, and lacking the rights of a permanent resident.
These challenges are more disproportionately felt by racialized migrant workers.
These findings show that the Canadian experience phenomenon contributes to an underclass of workers that do the jobs that other groups don’t want to do.
The current immigration and settlement support system wasn’t set up to support temporary residents in gaining Canadian experience first and then transitioning to permanent residency.
Only a handful federal programs offer limited types of settlement support to temporary residents (such as the Atlantic Immigration Program and the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot), and these programs are available only to those already set to transition to permanent residency.
The other option is provincially funded settlement, community, and social services, which may not fully meet newcomer needs.
Some temporary residents might perform better in the labour market after they become permanent residents than new arrivals from abroad with similar professional backgrounds.
But measurement here presents a significant problem.
Newly arrived immigrants and temporary residents who transitioned into permanent residency are not in the same stage of settlement.
Temporary residents are more advanced in their integration process, and they absorb the costs of gaining different forms of Canadian experience much earlier.
Some immigrants with significant work experience pay for training courses and certifications to demonstrate Canadian experience and expand their local networks.
This expense adds to the cost of immigration for the individuals, who may not always need this additional training.
Furthermore, seeking more qualifications in Canada is not affordable for all immigrants.
Whether these education and training programs deliver the expected Canadian experience benefits is uncertain.
International students, for instance, are often paying for programs with limited employment prospects, with significant uncertainty on transitioning to permanent residency.
High bar for Canadian experience may deter immigrants from choosing Canada. Not all immigrant groups will be willing to pay to acquire different forms of Canadian experience.
Economic immigrants, particularly top talent who can choose between countries to settle, could prefer easier and faster access to permanent residency and the labour market in another country.
They may not see the economic case of investing in the process of gaining Canadian experience.
Currently, not all immigration pathways require Canadian experience, but relying more on two-step immigration could increase the challenge of attracting top talent.
Recommendations. Federal government should:
• Produce an evidence-based, coherent, and consistent assessment of Canadian experience to adjust permanent resident pathways.
• Review settlement practices and realign programming based on economic outcomes.
• Support and invest in international students as potential immigrants to ensure their economic success
Provincial governments should:
• Coordinate the Canadian experience definition with the federal government in immigration policy-making.
• Work with educational institutions to better align international programs with regional economic opportunities.
Employers should:
• Eliminate Canadian work experience as a formal hiring requirement with limited exceptions, focusing instead on immigrant skills and competencies.
• Address wider bias, discrimination, and racism against immigrant talent through targeted anti-racism and inclusion practices.