WWICS Blog

Canada needs One MILLION Immigrants: A Recent Study
Labor Crunch in IT Industry
Posted on : 13 April, 2011

Despite Canada having the highest immigration rate per capita, a new study brings forth that the Maple Country needs ONE MILLION more immigrants within 2012-2021 in order to bolster the economy.

The Canadian Immigration system boasts of several skilled immigration programs to tackle the labor crunch and has been a favored immigration destination for Skilled Workers & Professionals worldwide: however, this new study conducted by a Canadian Professor, Tony Fang, Canada suggests that Canada should increase the immigration levels.

Citing reasons like strengthening of investment and augmenting the nation’s gross domestic product, the Professor claimed that an additional one million immigrants, meaning an extra of 100,000 immigrants a year would be needed. The time period ranges from the years 2012 to 2021.

The study took into account several factors including: immigrants' participation in the labor force; associated spending on government services and infrastructure; funds brought by immigrants and labor market differences between migrants (in order to capture the effect of large-scale immigration on Canadian-born workers).

If Canada can sustain this level of immigrants only then can it recover from the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. By the increased immigration, a whopping 14$ billion would be added in the tax revenue for the Government.

One area wherein Canada faces acute shortage is the IT Industry as another report released by the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) states that Canada would face acute shortage of Qualified Applicants for IT related jobs. The crunch is expected to be within the next few years.

As many as 106,000 IT related positions will become available between 2011 and 2016 in Canada, the reports highlights and there may not be enough people to fill the positions.

The shortage is most likely to occur for positions which require five or more years of experience, the report indicated.

One of the recommendations to counter the shortage is to bring more foreign skilled workers to Canada as the IT industry will be looking for skilled workers with many different skills, rather than specific technical expertise.

Col BS Sandhu (Retd.), CMD, WWICS, said that this is a golden opportunity for all the IT Professionals who want to move to Canada. He said that all the aspirants should get their assessment at the earliest to make the most of the shortage.

Adding he said, “Considering the shortage of immigrants and specifically the IT Professionals, it is likely that the upcoming list of Priority Occupation expected to release by the end of June 2011, may have the occupation. Thus, all aspirants should gear up and get timely assessments.”