Italians Toronto

2008-09-05T05:46:00.000-07:00

Immigrants bypassing Toronto to follow money West, study finds

Source: the globeandmail.com Sept 4th 2008

MARINA JIMENEZ

September 4, 2008

A new study shows immigrants earn more money in Calgary, Regina and Saskatoon than they do in Toronto, a significant trend that could help explain why the city's share of immigrants is steadily declining.

While Toronto remains overwhelmingly the dominant hub for newcomers, its proportion of Canada's total annual immigrant intake dropped to nearly one-third in 2007 from half in 2001. In contrast, the numbers settling in western cities such as Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Saskatoon have increased every year in the past five years.

"This represents a significant shift in immigration patterns," said Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies, which released the study on immigrant family income this week.

"We think of Alberta and Saskatchewan as a place for internal migration, but now the West is drawing immigrants as well."

In 2005, the average annual income for an immigrant family in Calgary was $102,118, which is $33,000 more than in Montreal, $22,000 more than in Vancouver and $12,000 more than in Toronto, according to the census data analyzed in Mr. Jedwab's paper.

The average income was $92,932 in Regina and $91,356 in Saskatoon. Between 2001 and 2005, Saskatchewan moved from the bottom three provinces to the top three in terms of average income for immigrant families, behind Alberta and Ontario.

The wage differential between non-immigrant families in Toronto - who earned on average $139,926 a year - and those born elsewhere was 55 per cent. In contrast, the gap narrows to 33 per cent in Calgary, where non-immigrant families earn on average $136,380, and 19 per cent in Edmonton.

In Regina and Saskatoon, non-immigrant families actually earn 1 per cent less on average than their immigrant counterparts. The income gap reflects social mobility. "People are asking the question, 'How am I doing as an individual, and how am I doing compared to others?' " Mr. Jedwab said.

For his study on family incomes, all foreign-born Canadians were considered immigrants. But more recent cohorts of arrivals show a similar trend. Their wages are substantially lower than for the overall immigrant population; however, they still fare much better economically in the West, as well as in some smaller Ontario cities such as Oshawa and Ottawa, than in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.

For example, the average annual income for an immigrant family who settled in Calgary between 2001 and 2005 was $69,148. The only city where they earned more money was Sudbury, while in Toronto, the average annual family income was $57,239; in Vancouver $53,028; and in Montreal $45,435.

Ottawa's goal has always been to disperse immigrants more evenly across the country and avoid concentrating too many new arrivals in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. In 2007, cities outside the "MTV" received nearly one in three of Canada's total 236,000 newcomers.

This trend is healthy, said Myer Siemiatycki, a Ryerson University professor of immigration and settlement studies, although he noted that Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver still receive the lion's share of immigrants and Montreal has actually increased its share.

Well-educated newcomers may be faring better in smaller cities such as Regina because there is less competition for high-paying jobs. "Saskatchewan traditionally had problems attracting high-end talent," Prof. Siemiatycki noted.

As well, the economy is not as robust and dynamic in Toronto and Montreal as it has been in Alberta and, more recently, in Saskatchewan.

Ratna Omidvar, executive director of the Maytree Foundation, a charity that aims to reduce poverty and inequality in Canada, said Toronto is still a huge draw, as are surrounding cities such as Brampton and Mississauga.

"For sure, there are fewer immigrants coming to Toronto, but they are going to the outlying suburbs comprising the city region," she said.

*****

New Roots

Where new immigrants are finding work and putting down roots in Canadian cities.

The number of foreign permanent residents is rising in these communities:

Charlottetown: +50.2%

Halifax: +44.8%

Moncton: +74%

Edmonton: +52%

Calgary: +32%

Montreal: +36%

...while declining in these cities

Toronto: -20.8%

Vancouver: -1%

SOURCE: SHIFTING PATTERNS OF IMMIGRATION IN CANADA'S URBAN CENTRES BY JACK JEDWAB

2008-07-22T17:01:00.000-07:00

Educated newcomers struggle to find work, study shows

OTTAWA

www.globeandmail.com

July 18, 2008 at 9:53 PM EDT

Some university-educated immigrants were less likely to be employed in 2007 than their Canadian-born counterparts, a new study shows.

Statistics Canada said university-educated immigrants between the ages of 25 and 45, who arrived in Canada in the past five years, had a more difficult time finding work than native-born Canadians.

Native-born Canadians holding a university degree had an employment rate of 90.7 per cent. The study found that immigrants who were educated in Western countries were more likely to find work than those educated elsewhere. Immigrants' employment rates varied depending on their country of origin:

United States: 77.8 per cent

Europe: 73.8 per cent

Asia: 65.5 per cent

Latin America: 59.7 per cent

Africa: 50.9 per cent

But even immigrants who received their degree at a Canadian university had lower employment rates than native-born Canadians.

Between 2002 and 2007, about 28,000 core-working-age immigrants received a degree in Canada. Despite their Canadian education, their employment rate in 2007 was 75.3 per cent – lower than the 90.7 per cent average among their Canadian- born, university-educated counterparts.

The study also found that the employment gap between degree-holding immigrants and the Canadian-born narrowed the longer an immigrant has been in Canada. University-educated immigrants who have been in Canada for more than a decade had employment rates comparable to native-born Canadians, Statistics Canada says.

Studies have shown that it is often difficult for newcomers to Canada to find work because of language barriers and their foreign credentials not being recognized. The study found immigrants with Canadian degrees in Ontario and B.C. had employment rates similar to those of Canadian-born graduates, regardless of their landing period. The Canadian Press

2008-07-22T16:56:00.000-07:00

Saskatchewan - Not just a breadbasket

Canada

Not just a breadbasket

Jun 5th 2008 | ALLAN, SASKATCHEWAN
From The Economist print edition

Saskatchewan becomes the new Alberta

THINK of Saskatchewan, and if you can place the western Canadian province on a map you might conjure up a vision of an endless prairie of wheat, so flat that the locals joke that “you can watch your dog running away from you for hours”. Now think again: Saskatchewan boasts the fastest economic growth rate of any Canadian province not just because of wheat but a rich mix of other farm crops as well as potash, uranium, oil and natural gas, all of which are enjoying record prices. PotashCorp, a fertiliser company based in Saskatoon, has become one of the biggest companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange by market capitalisation.

“We don't use the word boom, because it is immediately followed by that other word,” says Brad Wall, the provincial premier, whose centre-right Saskatchewan Party ousted a left-wing government last November. Such caution stems from history. The province was settled before the first world war by European farmers, lured to the area by free land and the mendacious promise of an “agreeable” climate (winters can feature temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius, and summers 40 degrees). In 1931 Saskatchewan was the third most populous province in Canada, behind only Ontario and Quebec. Depression and drought then ushered in eight decades of decline.

More recently, Saskatchewan has been overshadowed by neighbouring Alberta, where oil and gas have created Canada's richest province. Now, thanks to its export boom, Saskatchewan too has become a “have” province, which in Canadian parlance means that it no longer qualifies for federal handouts for certain social services. Canada's economy contracted in the first three months of this year (mainly because of the impact of the American slowdown on Ontario's industry). But Saskatchewan's job market is so tight that officials are visiting Ontario this month to try to persuade laid-off carworkers to move west. Migrants and returning residents have nudged Saskatchewan's population back over 1m—a far cry from predictions of 10m made a century ago, but seen as a milestone nonetheless.

Prosperity is not without its problems. The price of an average two-storey house in Saskatoon jumped 57% last year, while wage demands are astronomical too. The nurses' union rejected a 35% increase over four years. Aboriginal groups, who make up 14% of the population, complain they are not getting an equal share. Farmers grumble about the high fuel and fertiliser prices that are helping to make the province rich. As always, they worry about sudden changes in the price of their crops, or bad weather. “This year I could earn C$300,000 ($296,000) or I could lose C$300,000,” says Lyle Funk, who has a large farm in the centre of the province.

Mr Wall wants to use the commodity windfall to build more infrastructure and fund more research and development. The government plans a clean-coal power station in the south-east of the province, for example. All very well but prosperity has dulled the interest in diversification, says Doug Elliott, who publishes an economic newsletter. “We're still in the business of drilling holes in the ground and taking things out of it that are processed elsewhere,” he says.

Others are more optimistic. The bust, when it comes, may not be as deep or as long as previous farm slumps because biofuels now link grain and energy prices, says Richard Gray, an economist at the University of Saskatchewan. Canola (rapeseed), used in biodiesel, is an important local crop. Those runaway dogs might soon run into a few more people.

2008-07-04T06:46:00.000-07:00

Saskatoon grapples with boomtown pains

Source: www.globeandmail.com

DAVID HUTTON

July 3, 2008

After a lifetime in Alberta, Don Evernden sold off his charter aviation business and moved to Saskatchewan, drawn by the kind of economic boom he has witnessed in his home province.

Mr. Evernden, 73, bought a farm last year northwest of Saskatoon, cashing in on the growing agriculture sector, and went looking for another opportunity.

The investment that caught his eye was McNab Park, a rundown former military base bordering the Saskatoon airport where old barracks have been used for decades as low-income housing for about 400 people. Some city officials consider the neighbourhood an "eyesore" at the gateway to the city and have longed to redevelop it. Mr. Evernden had the same idea when he bought the land in January for $17-million.

His plans, however, have pitted him against the area's residents, in a struggle that has become a symbol of the tension created by the rapid growth of the city.

The unprecedented boom in the commodities Saskatchewan produces, ranging from oil and gas to uranium, potash and agricultural crops, is forcing local business to adjust.

Michael Grace, the president of Kingsmere Capital Corp., a local investment firm, says Saskatoon has many strengths but has been caught off guard by the pace of growth and is spinning its wheels to catch up. The challenges facing investors are the labour and housing shortages. Major companies have been reticent to relocate to the city because there's a lack of housing for their employees, which has slowed investment, he said.

On the other hand, local businesses find themselves delivering an unfamiliar pitch to potential hires, notes David Williams, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan's Edwards School of Business. No longer do they trumpet the region's cheap housing and cost of living; instead, they are talking up what a great place it is to relocate to and invest in real estate.

"We're a humble people here and we're not used to all this attention. We're all looking at each other and thinking 'how did this happen?' "

It may just be getting started. There's a building boom in houses and condominiums, industrial traffic crowds the streets, old, rundown apartment buildings are being rebuilt into big-city condos, and the population of 208,000 is growing at a rate not seen in a century. Cranes and traffic jams, once rare, are now part of everyday life.

Mr. Evernden plans to turn McNab Park into a high-end business park. He believes the development will attract major hotel chains and some of the country's big resource players who are looking to gain proximity to an expanding airport, he says.

The intense growth, however, is creating many of the problems that still plague Alberta, where the inflow of workers and money sent the housing market climbing to record highs, and made it nearly impossible to find affordable accommodation, even on a good wage.

"The high prices are eating into the working poor," Mr. Williams said. "It's the people who are working two or three part-time jobs who have seen their rents skyrocket that are being hurt."

In Saskatoon, housing prices were up more than 50 per cent last year alone, a leap on top of a market that had already been ticking up. The city's industrial vacancy rate is below 2 per cent for the first time in its history, while construction costs have more than doubled in the past three years. The industrial market continues to grow, with the number of building permits rising 64 per cent last year.

Many of the city's poor are struggling to find housing, and shortages of labour and materials have caused major construction delays and cost overruns. Contractors from as far away as Detroit have had to fly in their own work crews.

"We think we've learned from Alberta's experience before us," said senior city planner Alan Wallace. "But what we've learned is that it's impossible to keep up. You're basically reacting continuously."

For Mr. Evernden's Calgary-based project management team, this has meant a public battle with McNab Park's 400 tenants, many of whom see their neighbourhood disappearing and have nowhere to go in a rental market that still lacks low-income options.

City councillor Pat Lorje says the McNab Park development has become a symbol of the people being left behind as the rest of the city moves forward.

"We are creating the conditions for an incredible amount of social unrest. They're shutting down the equivalent of a small town," she said. "It's going to be difficult for these people to find accommodation let alone afford accommodation."

Mr. Evernden's group has come up with one solution to the housing problems created by his plans for McNab Park. It has teamed up with a local developer, Innovative Assets Inc., that is literally moving many of the neighbourhood's rundown houses and apartment buildings across the city, then refurbishing them in their new locale.

Ms. Lorje said the city is implementing several affordable housing initiatives and working with the province to implement measures to help keep up with the growth. The city has struck what it calls a "future growth team" to come up with a strategy to cope with the boom.

The province, for its part, has moved to ease the labour shortage by beginning to develop programs to encourage aboriginal people to train for the skilled trades, where demand is soaring. It has reached arrangements with countries such as the Philippines to recruit workers for areas of high demand.

It has also invested $400-million more in infrastructure than it did last year, pouring money into roads, schools and hospitals, drawing a lesson from the experience in Alberta, where such facilities were overwhelmed.

2008-07-04T06:45:00.000-07:00

Student wins big with plastic-bag plan

Seventeen-year-old Ontarian finds bacteria are the key to fast-tracking the breakdown of polyethylene

Source: www.globeandmail.com

KRISTINE OWRAM

The Canadian Press

July 2, 2008

As jurisdictions across Canada take action to ban the use of landfill-clogging plastic bags, which can take up to 1,000 years to decompose, an Ontario high-school student has discovered a way to break down the pesky plastic in a matter of months.

Daniel Burd, a 17-year-old student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, took home in May the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa for his project. The prize earned him $10,000, as well as several other awards and entrance scholarships to various universities equalling tens of thousands of dollars.

But Mr. Burd, who will start Grade 12 in the fall, is modest about his idea, saying it literally hit him on the head one day.

"At home I have to do chores if I follow my mom's instructions," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Waterloo, Ont. "Each time I open the closet where we keep our cleaning supplies and things like that, the plastic bags are on the top shelf and they always fall down like an avalanche onto my head.

"One day I just got so tired of it and I began to research it to find out what other people are doing with these plastic bags, and through my research I found out that we're not doing too much."

Mr. Burd discovered that approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide each year. Billions of these end up in the oceans, where they are ingested by animals that often die as a result.

He also learned that plastic bags can take anywhere between 20 and 1,000 years to decompose - numbers in which he found unlikely inspiration.

His hypothesis was that if plastic bags do eventually break down, it should be possible to isolate and concentrate the micro-organism responsible for the decomposition, thus speeding up the process.

To test his hypothesis, Mr. Burd took a few soil samples from a local landfill and mixed them with polyethylene, the substance used to make plastic bags, as well as a solution to encourage bacterial growth. After concentrating the solution several times and incubating it for 12 weeks, he took the resulting bacterial culture and tested it on strips of polyethylene.

After six weeks, the strips had lost more than 17 per cent of their weight, compared with a set of control strips.

Mr. Burd concluded that a combination of two types of bacteria - Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas - was most effective at breaking down the polyethylene. After isolating these two bacteria, combining them with some sodium acetate and incubating the solution at 37 degrees, he was able to degrade the plastic by 43 per cent in six weeks. He figures the solution would entirely break down plastic bags in a matter of three months.

Mr. Burd said his findings could have a real impact on the amount of garbage that ends up in landfills - or as litter in our oceans and on our streets. He envisions what he calls "recycling stations" for plastic bags, which would essentially act as large composters.

"It's like a container with constant temperatures and conditions in which you would have your liquid solution, your microbes and your plastic bags," he said.

Mr. Burd said he plans to keep working on his project to further reduce the time it takes to decompose the plastic bags, and he's thinking big when it comes to the future.

"To do that, it would be necessary to do more work in the laboratory with sequencing and things like that, and then after that, you can take it to the patent level," he said. He acknowledges his discovery is a "very big step," but says there's a lot more work to do before it's marketable.

2008-06-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

Toronto's schools fail to overcome barriers

www.thestar.com

Louise Brown
Education Reporter
http://www3.thestar.com/static/PDF/080613_school_achieve.pdf

A startling demographic snapshot of students across Canada's largest school board shows the system is failing to help children overcome roadblocks of culture, race, poverty and family background.

The ambitious personal student survey of achievement, to be made public next week, is a call to action for the Toronto District School Board to try to reduce these barriers over the next five years, says director of education Gerry Connelly.

"It confirms our belief that the status quo for too many of our students is not working," said Connelly in a covering letter for the 55-page report, which shows boys lag behind girls in almost everything including math, that teens born in Mexico tend to fail more Grade 9 courses than classmates born in India, and that students whose first language is English are less likely to pass Ontario's compulsory Grade 10 literacy test than those who speak Hindi or Serbian.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by the Star, was distributed recently to all principals, and Connelly pledged in her note "we will continue to work together to raise the bar and close the gaps in student achievement.

"I am bringing an action plan to address the underachievement of marginalized students that will specify targets and actions to break this cycle over the next five years."

The board's landmark 2006-2007 survey of 105,000 students from Grade 7 to 12 was launched in a bid to pinpoint specifically which students need help in particular areas.

But this first analysis puts local numbers on what educators have known for years – that how children do in school has very much to do with their family background; how rich they are, how many parents they live with, what value their culture tends to place on formal learning, whether they have survived war or are grappling with personal issues.

The differences pose a staggering challenge to schools wanting to give all kids an equal chance.

At a board committee meeting next Thursday, staff will unveil a sweeping new plan aimed at helping students over some of these demographic roadblocks through changes that could range from curriculum and teaching staff to extra free help for certain groups.

Among some of the gaps it will try to address:

Grade 9 students who identify as gay somehow do worse at geography than those who say they are straight – although both do about the same on the literacy test the next year;

Children of single fathers are more likely to do worse at Grade 8 science than children of single mothers – and both do worse than classmates who live with two parents.

Among the 4,800 black students in Grades 7 and 8, the 400 born in Africa are more likely to earn at least a B in math than those born in the Caribbean or Canada.

While board officials are not talking until they put the finishing touches on this blueprint, leading Canadian researchers in the minefield of demographics and learning warn these numbers can be more complex than they seem.

"This isn't some sort of horse race – we do this kind of research in the interest of equity because we know kids from different countries can come to school with different degrees of preparedness, depending on the dominant values of their culture," said Vancouver researcher Bruce Garnett, who has just completed his doctorate in the achievement of immigrant students.

"It's dangerous to use this kind of data to make genetic assumptions. The differences often reflect economic status or the school system in the country you came from."

Experts warn many factors can be knotted together.

Are students who speak Hindi, India's national language, for example, better at the Grade 10 literacy test because they are more likely to live with two professional parents and have studied at an English-language school back in India?

Do African-born black students do better because they are more likely to live with both parents, as research from Princeton University suggests, than blacks born in North America or the Caribbean? Living with both parents is known to boost the chances of school success.

Can children from war zones, who may have had little experience with school at all, expect to keep step with students grounded in the often rigorous schools of eastern Europe or Asia?

"Demographic data can send you down the wrong path if you're not careful, and often what seem like racial differences end up being linked to poverty," said researcher Robert Balfanz of Johns Hopkins University's Centre for Social Organization of Schools.

"At a system-wide level it can be helpful to pinpoint which groups need help, but when you get down to the individual classroom and say all African-American boys need help, well, some will and some won't, and some white girls will need help too, so it becomes more important to track individual students by attendance and grades rather than demographic profile."

Most scholars warn against comparing groups; they say the data is best used as a baseline to track how each group improves over time.

"We know these differences in achievement are not due to native intelligence; Africans are as smart as Asian students who are as smart as anyone else – the country of origin simply does not determine intelligence," said Prof. Lee Gunderson of the University of British Columbia, who has written several books on immigrant students.

"If your family has come from a refugee camp where they were worried about survival, about being murdered, about where the next meal was coming from, you bring a very different focus than a child whose family has been socialized into believing that books are important, that education is important, that becoming a doctor or lawyer is important," said Gunderson, who has written a teachers' guide on how to teach immigrants using more visual aids, more clear vocabulary and even translation.

In the United States, where school boards have been tracking racial data for decades to try to break these same cycles, there is a body of theory on why some groups do better than others, said Garnett.

One school of thought suggests immigrants who come to North America voluntarily have higher hopes and expectations of schools here – and therefore put in more effort – than so-called "conquered" or "colonized" immigrants such as First Nations children or the African-American descendents of slaves, whose skepticism about the fairness of the school system may cause many to feel simply resigned to failure.

While some theories skirt dangerously close to stereotypes, Garnett warns, there are some cultures whose dominant values seem to fuel academic success more than others.

"At the end of the day, the Confucian values of diligence, obedience and industriousness lead many Chinese families to send their kids to get more schooling after the school day ends, and more school is a predictor of success."

Yet no matter what a child`s cultural background or family income or or what language they speak, if Canada is to be truly inclusive, our schools should be able to help all children overcome these barriers, said Gunderson.

And with nearly half of Canadians now born in another country, according to the 2006 Census, every teacher should receive training in how to teach immigrant students.

"For Christ's sake, we can put a man on the moon and a robot on Mars – surely we can figure out how to design lessons in a way that can be understood by children of all backgrounds."

2008-06-08T17:05:00.000-07:00

Ontario proposes changes to get foreign doctors working sooner

CARLY WEEKS - www.globeandmail.com

June 7, 2008

TORONTO -- The Ontario government announced yesterday it plans to lift restrictions on foreign-trained doctors and to fast-track applications to help them start practising as soon as they enter Canada.

The move is designed to reduce the province's critical shortage of physicians and is part of a plan that Health Minister George Smitherman said will make Ontario the country's leader in integrating foreign-trained doctors.

But critics said the push to bring more foreign doctors to Canada won't help physicians who already live here and are stuck doing odd jobs. One medical association also criticized the changes as a flawed and potentially immoral approach.

"I think we have to seriously look at the ethics," said Karl Stobbe, president of the Society of Rural Physicians of Canada. "We lure them over here and a lot of times the countries we're taking them from ... have a bigger problem than we have and we're actually making their problem worse."

Under the proposed changes, doctors licensed in the United States and Commonwealth countries, as well as the other provinces, would be eligible to begin practising in Ontario without having to go through onerous assessments and evaluation periods. That would bring Ontario in line with other provinces, such as Alberta and British Columbia, which already have programs to tap into the talented pool of foreign doctors whose training is equivalent to Canadian requirements.

The province will also create a new "transitional licence" that would eliminate the need for foreign-trained physicians to wait years before being allowed to practise. The changes would let foreign specialists whose credentials differ substantially from Canadian requirements practise in a supervised setting. The transitional licence would last between two and five years, during which the doctors would be responsible for undergoing training to meet Canadian requirements.

"This is a total change in the way we do things," said Laurel Broten, parliamentary assistant to the Health Minister and author of the government's new report on reducing barriers to foreign doctors.

The government also intends to improve its ability to quickly assess internationally trained doctors in order to determine what type of training or language education they would need to work in Canada.

Mr. Smitherman said it's impossible to say how many new doctors this program could generate because it focuses on streamlining the registration process for foreign-trained physicians, not adding spots for medical residents.

"It's not about simply creating more residency positions," Mr. Smitherman said. "This is about transitioning those specialists into opportunities without having to go through residency, and they would be supervised by existing physicians in those environments."

Although the changes may offer some help to doctors who want to move to Canada, Conservative health critic Elizabeth Witmer criticized the government for failing to create more residency positions to help foreign-trained doctors who already live in Canada and are stuck in dead-end jobs.

2008-05-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

Report on Engineering Schools 2

Students savour green content

More engineering courses and extracurricular activities are catering to a growing interest in environmental issues among engineering students

PAUL LIMA

Special to The Globe and Mail

May 5, 2008

Peter Topalovic is working as an intern with the city of Hamilton, Ont., on sustainability infrastructure programs. One might expect to find a civil engineering graduate helping a city go green, rather than a computer engineer. But Mr. Topalovic spent an extra year at McMaster University so he could graduate from "computer engineering and society," a combined program that allowed him to develop technical skills and explore the social aspects of engineering.

"We looked at the implications of technology at the design stage, including how design affects the environment, and how engineering can be used to prevent environmental problems," says Mr. Topalovic, 29, who will complete his master's of engineering and public policy in September.

Among other things, the master's program makes engineers aware of the lifecycle of products - design, use, discard -and how waste can be reduced by using less material or by maximizing reuse and recycling. He is also studying how government policies, voluntary corporate governance and private-public partnerships can help foster a greener approach to design, manufacturing, ecosystems and waste reduction.

"Technology development, too, often goes along unchecked, without looking at the consequences," Mr. Topalovic says.

"As engineers, we have to ask how to mitigate negative consequences. We have to think about the future now, which can be difficult," as his course of study demonstrated. For example, nanotechnology might revolutionize the production of solar panels but a great deal of uncertainty surrounds the effect nanoparticles may have on health and the environment. "There is a lot of promise in the technology, but will short-term gain lead to long-term pain?" he wonders.

Mr. Topalovic may not be a typical engineering graduate, but he thinks he is starting to represent a change in attitude in engineering. "There is a trend towards more responsible engineering. It's not large, but is definitely growing."

McMaster statistics support that view. About 10 per cent, or 200 students, of the school's engineering students are enrolled in five-year programs that include environmental courses and components, says David Wilkinson, dean of engineering.

Students in five-year programs can take courses in psychology, drama or language, as well as courses that help them see where engineering "fits into the context of societal events," says Brian Baetz, director of the five-year Engineering and Society program. He says the school is training "the renaissance engineer" with technical, critical thinking, analytical, research and writing skills. "They can do the nitty-gritty but they can also step back and ask if there are solutions that use fewer resources, or even ask if a project is needed."

McMaster has been offering five-year programs for 15 years and green studies are becoming more important to the university and its students, Mr. Wilkinson says.

However, students don't have be part of a five-year program to take courses that address green issues. "Sustainable manufacturing process" is a popular elective that four-year engineering students in a variety of disciplines take. Chemical engineering students take courses dealing with biotechnology; the civil engineering program includes water resource management courses; and engineering physics has a number of courses related to nuclear technology. In addition, McMaster, like many other universities, offers graduate engineering programs that target environmental issues.

Undergrad engineering programs are starting to include environmental courses, "but the more pervasive invasion is green topics in many existing courses and in extracurricular activities," says Bruce Dunwoody, associate dean, engineering programs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

For example, UBC students in a first-year course complete four case studies dealing with how to approach problems.

One professor is passionate about sustainability and her case studies focus on how to develop more sustainable projects.

Engineering student clubs and extracurricular activities often focus on green initiatives, such as the international Supermileage competition in which engineering and technology students design and build a single-person, fuel-efficient vehicle.

Last year, UBC's Supermileage Team placed first (for the fourth year in a row), beating 40 teams from Canada, the United States and India. The 36-kilogram, carbon-fibre vehicle with a 54cc engine set a course record of 3,145 miles per gallon, beating the closest rival by more than 1,300 miles per gallon.

As well, the UBC chapter of Engineers Without Borders has designed an irrigation pump for use in developing countries; the club looked at simplifying the design and using materials that might be available in remote villages. Leather was used to create gaskets because it is more likely to be available and is easier to repair so the pump does not have to be fixed by a plumber, Dr. Dunwoody notes.

Not all university administrators are gung-ho about having green courses as part of undergrad engineering programs, however.

"Environmental issues are extremely complex and should be examined at the post-graduate level," says Dr. René Tinawi, acting dean of engineering at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa.

Speaking personally, he says he believes students should obtain classical technical skills at the undergrad level and then specialize in post-graduate programs. "Some universities are touching on [environmental programs] because it is fashionable or to attract more students. You become a doctor first, before you become a heart surgeon. We need to do major surgery on the environment and it's complicated."

Having said that, Dr. Tinawi points out that undergrad engineering students complete a thesis project in their final year and some chose to examine green issues, such as making air conditioners or heat pumps more efficient.

Many engineering students are interested in green initiatives, even if green concepts are not part of their course of study, says James Goh, a computer engineering student at the University of Waterloo.

He's also director of the Waterloo Alternative Fuel Team, an environmental club that integrates alternate fuels with existing automobiles, such as converting a gas-powered vehicle into a propane-powered one, or replacing an internal combustion engine with one that runs on hydrogen. Computer engineering plays a part in such vehicles because they use computerized signal controls, rather than gears and shafts, to ensure the alternative fuels propel the vehicle.

Mr. Goh says that while the "green content is quite low" in many of his engineering courses, students can get involved in going green - if they want to.

2008-05-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

Report on Engineering Schools

'The demand is enormous' in energy and mining

Retiring workers and the rocketing need for resources mean graduates with technical skills will be scooped up, experts say

TERRENCE BELFORD

Special to The Globe and Mail

May 5, 2008

Aaron White has suddenly found his services in as much demand as the latest version of Grand Theft Auto. The 29-year-old is about to graduate with a certificate as a petroleum engineering technologist from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary and already has several job offers.

Two years ago he was an underemployed University of Calgary graduate working as a server in a restaurant. Today he can command a starting salary of between $60,000 and $65,000 a year.

"A couple of years ago I looked around this city and realized the future was in energy," Mr. White says. "But energy companies don't want people with basic bachelor of science degrees; they want people with technical skills, so I went back to school.

"The demand is enormous."

Enormous indeed, say researchers, educators and the industry itself. Canada's wealth of natural resources puts it centre stage on world markets. The question is, can we supply all the engineers, scientists and technologists that will be needed to get those resources out of the ground and into the hands of eager consumers?

In Alberta, provincial forecasts suggest there will be a shortage of 6,000 energy industry engineers within 10 years, says Elizabeth Cannon, dean of the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary.

The mining industry will need 92,000 more workers by 2017 and a significant chunk will be engineers and engineering technologists, says Ryan Montpellier, executive director of the Mining Industry Human Resources Council in Ottawa.

The fact is, universities alone can not cope with the huge surge in demand, says Anis Farah, director of the school of engineering at Laurentian University in Sudbury. His school will graduate just 15 to 17 mining, chemical and mechanical engineers this year, although Laurentian is now gearing up to significantly increase its class sizes.

Currently only nine universities offer mining engineering, Dr. Farah says. And those nine graduate only between 120 and 150 new mining engineers a year, says Mr. Montpellier.

"Three years ago, our first-year class for all engineering courses was just 20, last year it was 80 and this fall we will have 110 students," Dr. Farah says. "Meeting the enormous demand for engineers in this sector is a major challenge. I am not at all certain if industry has any solutions."

University administrators say a number of factors are lining up to create a wave that may overwhelm Canada's ability to capitalize on the huge global demand for its resources.

As Mary MacDonald, dean of the MacPhail School of Energy at SAIT, points out, global appetite for oil and gas seems certain to continue well beyond the next decade. With world oil prices predicted to hit the $200 a barrel mark, and with Canada sitting on what many suggest is the second-largest oil reserves in the world, this country is well positioned to benefit.

Alberta alone has between $100-billion and $150-billion in new oil projects on the drawing board right now, says Dr. Cannon.

At the same time, however, demographics are working against us, Ms. MacDonald says. The huge bulge of baby boomers is now nearing retirement and the next generation is significantly leaner in numbers.

"About 25 per cent of all petroleum technicians are now in their 50s," she notes.

In the mining industry a third of all university-trained engineers are over 50, adds Mr. Montpellier.

"We just can't meet demand," says Dr. Cannon. "There is not enough money to expand university classes to that level - even if we could find the students. This year we will graduate 450 engineers in total with half of them going to the energy industry. We have plans to increase enrolment to about 600 but that still will not be enough."

Meeting future needs will depend on a mix of expanding university and technical college graduates, providing Canadian credentials for foreign-educated newcomers, and recruiting from overseas, she adds.

"About 95 per cent of our students are now new Canadians who may be qualified in their own country but don't have Canadian qualifications," says SAIT's Ms. MacDonald.

"At the same time in Alberta, only between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of high school students are going on to higher education. The salaries offered by the energy industry are just too great a draw," she says.

Those salaries start at $60,000 a year for technologists like Mr. White and can range as high as $80,000 for a newly minted mining engineer, says Laurentian's Dr. Farah. He adds that even his school's co-op program students are drawing between $3,500 and $4,000 a month while on work programs.

"We are even losing graduate students who drop out of their courses to take advantage of the money being offered by mining companies," he says. "The industry has given us grants to do research but we can't do it because we can't find the researchers to take on projects."

For new graduates like Mr. White, however, the resource industry's problems virtually guarantee a glowing future. His two-year SAIT course boosted his annual salary by about $25,000 a year and that will be just the starting point.

"There is enormous demand for people like me right now," he says, "and I can't see that changing."

WHERE THE JOBS WILL BE

Within four years, Canada's oil and gas industry will need thousands of new engineers and technologists, says the Calgary-based Petroleum Human Resources Council.

Northern Alberta's oil sands alone will demand more than 1,000 college- and university-trained professionals. The council estimates the oil sands will need about 5,250 new people by 2012, in addition to the 2,780 now working there. Here are some of the jobs the council predicts will be in significant demand in Alberta:

Process engineers

Mechanical engineers

Chemical engineers

Power engineers

Instrument technicians.

In the East Coast oil and gas fields, only about 25 per cent of the current work force is aged 45 or older, compared with about 40 per cent in Alberta, the council says. As a result, Alberta will need more new professionals to replace older ones leaving the field.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, the expected areas of demand include:

Engineering technicians and technologists

Production technicians

Instrumentation and electronics technicians

Surveyor technologists.

In Nova Scotia, the need will be for geologists and engineers, the council says, such as:

Well engineers

Marine engineers

Drilling engineers

Structural engineers

Mechanical engineers

Electrical engineers.

Terrence Belford

2008-05-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

Highly educated but poorly paid

Source: www.globeandmail.com

COLIN PERKEL

Canadian Press

May 1, 2008 at 8:59 AM EDT

TORONTO — Piloting his cab through the congested streets of Toronto, Ifzal Ahmad is looking forward to the day when he can come up with $35,000 for a course that should allow him to again become a mechanical engineer.

Despite 15 years in his profession in India, the 47-year-old married father of three — like so many other new arrivals to Canada — has found himself in a relatively low-skilled job because his qualifications aren't recognized here.

The latest data on income and earnings from the 2006 census released Thursday by Statistics Canada shows that highly skilled immigrants — the country's preferred newcomer — have a long row to hoe once they arrive, and it shows in the amount of money they earn.

The past quarter century has seen the earnings gap between recent immigrant workers and Canadian-born ones widen dramatically.

Having a university degree didn't help either.

Recent immigrant men holding a degree earned only 48 cents for each dollar their university educated, Canadian-born counterparts did. Some 30 per cent of male immigrants with a university degree worked in jobs that required no more than a high-school education — more than twice the rate of those born in Canada.

The gap was actually less for non-university educated immigrants, who earned 61 cents to every dollar earned by their Canadian-born counterparts.

“That's not right because when you apply for immigration, they check all your degrees and send all your degrees to Canada for verification,” Mr. Ahmad said after dropping off his latest fare.

The lack of recognition of his qualifications or experience in a textiles factory managing 2,000 people, he said, came as a huge blow, as did the dilemma of trying to get Canadian experience when no one will give him work.

“Wherever you apply for a job, they say, 'Do you have Canadian education? Do you have Canadian experience?”'

The reason for the dramatic divide, Statistics Canada reported Thursday, was the decline in the information and communication technologies sector between 2000 and 2004. A disproportionately high share of those workers were trained in computer sciences and engineering, the agency said.

René Morissette, lead analyst with Statistics Canada, said it is well documented that foreign experience has been increasingly undervalued.

The trend started in 1980, when immigrants began to see their earnings level fall even though their educational levels “grew remarkably” compared to those of Canadian-born workers.

“The group of people that were hit the most were the older recent immigrants,” the analyst said.

“This amount of experience in your (home) country is no longer rewarded the way it used to be, if it has any rewards at all.”

Analysts have put forward several explanations for the disparity. Employers may simply not appreciate or trust the quality of higher education in a country with which they are unfamiliar.

It can also be challenging for employers faced with the usual issue of orienting new employees to deal with the added problem of taking on someone with different language skills or cultural values. Others wonder if there aren't simply too many newcomers for the labour market to absorb.

Then, there is perhaps the most sensitive issue.

“There might also simply be discrimination,” said Morissette. “But this is awfully hard to test empirically.”

The new census data do show the earnings gap for recent arrivals aged between 25 and 34 who completed the final phase of their higher education in Canada also fare worse than their Canadian-born counterparts, suggesting something beyond credential recognition is an issue.

Ernie Lightman, an economist at the University Toronto, is convinced employer discrimination is the real reason many immigrants struggle.

Mr. Lightman did a study in 2006 of former welfare recipients in Toronto that found the foreign-born, despite having relatively superior education levels, fared worse than their Canadian-born cohort, even when moving onto a second post-welfare job.

The study also found immigrants were actually worse off financially after leaving welfare.

“Clearly, their education was not useful or usable in Canada,” Mr. Lightman said.

“The only explanation I can come up with is discrimination or racism or barriers in the workforce.”

Mr. Lightman does concede that other issues, such as language skills may explain at least some of the discrepancy, but notes the earnings gap widened at the same time as immigrants became increasingly non-white.

“I cannot prove racism or discrimination, but I have no problem believing that's what's going on here for lack of a better explanation,” Mr. Lightman said.

Politicians across the country have recognized the significant barriers skilled foreigners face in landing on their feet in the workplace once they arrive in Canada.

Ontario, for example, legislated an independent agency a year ago to ensure skilled newcomers have fair access to 34 self-regulating professions with penalties of up to $100,000 for mistreatment.

Across the country, some self-regulating bodies have made a concerted effort to streamline their recognition procedures. For others, the process remains slow and painful.

“This is a Goliath and we're nibbling at its toes,” Timothy Welsh, of the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance, said from Vancouver.

“What we're seeing is a lot more collective will (but) whether that's making a difference for everybody right now is less clear because it's such a complex issue.”

Part of the problem relates to Canada's devolved federal system itself in which rules differ from province to province and, within that system, self-regulating bodies set their own rules for qualifications and standards of practice.

In all, there are about 400 licensing bodies in Canada — just for the various professions.

Last year, the federal government committed $30 million over five years to the new Foreign Credentials Referral Office, which is designed to help those trained abroad get their credentials assessed and recognized more quickly.

“Too many newcomers can't get jobs they have been trained for,” Immigration Minister Diane Finley said at the time. “That's a terrible waste, for them — and for the country.”

But Mr. Welsh, whose organization represents 450 immigrant and refugee service agencies across Canada, said while the office can provide information and general leadership, its scope remains limited as a federal body dealing with various provincial governments and provincially mandated agencies.

One area that needs to be looked at, he said, is whether Ottawa's focus on recruiting skilled professionals abroad even makes sense given, for example, the need for trades and unskilled labour in provinces such as B.C.

In the interim, Mr. Ahmad plans to apply soon for a provincial loan that will help him pay for a course he hopes will lead him back to the kind of career he believes he should be pursuing.

“If we get the opportunities, we can prove our worth,” Mr. Ahmad said.

2008-04-29T07:04:00.000-07:00

Student Achievement - 29 April - 2008

www.globeandmail.com

Quebec teenagers take first place in math, reading on new national test

JILL MAHONEY

EDUCATION REPORTER

April 29, 2008

Quebec teenagers rank first in reading and math in a new national test, according to results released yesterday.

In addition, 88 per cent of 13-year-olds across Canada met or exceeded the expected level for reading, although girls outscored boys.

"We are getting world-class results in Canadian schools in this area. Having said that, though, we still need to do better," said Kelly Lamrock, New Brunswick's Education Minister and the chairman of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada.

While Quebec teens were tops in reading and math, Alberta students took first in science. Ontario students placed second in reading and math, and third in science. Teenagers in the other jurisdictions scored below the Canadian mean, with those from Prince Edward Island hovering at or near the bottom of the pack.

Quebec students' performance may be because of the province's "formidable record" of investing in early-childhood education and interventions for struggling pupils, Mr. Lamrock said.

The reading assessment found significant differences between girls and boys. Twenty-six per cent of girls achieved the superior level compared with 19 per cent of boys. Thirteen per cent of boys scored at the bottom level versus 9 per cent of girls. (Students' results were categorized into three levels.)

"This is a similar experience whether you're in Toronto or you're in rural Prince Edward Island," Mr. Lamrock said, noting the trend also exists in other countries.

However, there were no differences between boys' and girls' scores in math and science.

Francophone students outside Quebec underperformed in reading and math, with scores below the Canadian mean. Lower achievement by minority language pupils is a continuation of past trends, said Raymond Théberge, director-general of CMEC, which administers the test.

Mr. Lamrock said it is important to measure Canadian students' achievement in cornerstone subject areas, noting that the results give politicians and school administrators the opportunity to learn from each other.

"Very simply, what we are trying to do is to evaluate, find what is working, find where there are problem areas so we can better share what works and we can also have a national conversation about what we need to do to improve," he said.

The evaluation, which is known as the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program, was administered for the first time in the spring of 2007 to about 30,000 randomly selected students, mostly in Grades 8 or 9, in all provinces and Yukon. The test, which focused on literacy but also tested math and science, was designed to assess knowledge of common areas of the curriculum of all 11 jurisdictions.

The test, which replaces a previous assessment, was developed to better measure recent curriculum changes as well as correspond with international evaluations.

2008-04-29T07:02:00.000-07:00

Immigration legislation - 29 April 2008

New law would put skilled immigrants before families, opposition MPs say

GLORIA GALLOWAY

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

April 29, 2008 at 4:19 AM EDT

OTTAWA — Opposition MPs accused Immigration Minister Diane Finley yesterday of secretly planning to cut back on the number of immigrants who are allowed to come to Canada to be reunited with family members.

Ms. Finley says the intent of immigration legislation that has been tucked into an omnibus budget bill is not to reduce the number of family-class immigrants. The aim, she told the Commons finance committee, is to shorten the queue of immigrants that has developed because her department must process applications in the order they are received.

She said that means the skilled workers that businesses need might wait for years to come to Canada.

The new law would allow her to establish the categories of workers that will be processed - and reject applications from potential newcomers who don't meet those criteria.

But Liberal finance critic John McCallum pointed out that the new law would also allow the Immigration Minister to reduce the number of people who come to Canada to be reunited with loved ones.

Mr. McCallum said it is logical to assume that, if certain skilled workers are given high priority, family reunifications will be given a lower priority.

"If you are fast-tracking one group, you are slow-tracking another group, which is the family class," he said. "Essentially, you are putting more emphasis on newcomers as commodities, as workers, rather than newcomers as people."

Ms. Finley responded that the Conservative government does consider family reunifications a priority. "And, if at a future point in time, we decide that is the priority, they could be fast-tracked just like any of the worker categories."

Ms. Finley replied that there are millions of people in China and India alone who qualify for admission. "That doesn't mean that we can accept them all," she said.

Because the immigration changes are included in a budget bill, a confidence matter, they must be passed by the House of Commons or the country would face an election.

When asked why she decided against introducing standalone legislation, Ms. Finley said some good laws have been sidelined for up to two years in the minority Parliament. "We couldn't afford to let that happen with immigration. We have to act now," she said.

And it seems the Liberals' distaste for an election means the tactic will work.

Despite their opposition to what is being proposed, the Liberals have given no indication that they are prepared to bring the government down over immigration policy.

"We are certainly going to be against it. Whether we vote against it in sufficient numbers to provoke an election is a decision for our leader," Mr. McCallum told reporters. The Liberals would rescind any Conservative immigration changes they deem unpalatable when they return to office, he said.

When it was pointed out to Mr. McCallum that the Conservatives could form the government for many years, and any legislation passed by this Parliament could be in effect for a long time, he said, "That's possible, but it's not my decision as to the timing of the election."