Article content continued

On prioritizing the best and brightest

“Currently, if you can believe it, we ascribe the same points to an applicant for immigration to someone with a degree from Harvard as someone with a degree from the worst college in the United States. There is no qualitative assessment, it’s ridiculous. We’ll be designating bodies and organizations that have expertise in assessing international education to look at the relevance of the education — not just the quantity but the quality of the education and its relevance to the Canadian labour market. Within a couple of years, we’ll also be setting up a system for the pre-assessment of credentials for those hoping to work in the licensed professions. We’re also going to increasingly empower employers to select people from abroad, making a pre-arranged job one of the key factors in selection and fast-tracking those who have such jobs. Our recent research shows that newcomers who arrive with a pre-arranged job after three years are on average making $80,000 in income. That’s nearly twice as much as those who arrive without pre-arranged jobs.

On the Canadian immigrant struggle

“Sometimes people, typically from the left, tell me that we’re trying to commodify immigration or we’re missing out on the wonderful organic chaos of diversity, people kind of struggle and they eventually succeed. That’s a wonderful myth and it’s not as though we’re going to exclude people who will need to struggle, we’re actually increasing the number of re-settled refugees we accept in Canada. But my response to that is that there’s nothing romantic about being unemployed or about having left your country as an engineer or a doctor and find yourself driving a cab or working in a corner store in Canada. It’s not a wonderful narrative that you can tell your family when you come home that you’re ashamed that you brought them to this country and you’re working under your potential.’’