B.C. Magnate Gets One Step Closer to Kitimat Refinery

Posted on March 8, 2013 by CICS Immigration Team

The proposed Kitimat oil refinery would be one of the largest in the world, and would turn bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands region into refined products like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel (Walter Siegmund)

David Black, a British Columbia-based newspaper publisher and billionaire whose idea to raise financing for a refinery in Kitimat was largely dismissed by the oil industry when first proposed last August, saw those plans take a big step toward reality this week with the announcement that a major investment firm was ready to back the project.

Switzerland-based Oppenheimer Investments Group said this week that it is willing to lend the necessary $25 billion to build the mega refinery, which would convert heavy bitumen to light refined products like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, for export to world markets.

The refinery would reduce the environmental risk of energy products exported from Canada’s Pacific Coast, due to the reduction of bulk of the product, and the fact that refined products are lighter and quicker to dissipate in the event of a spill than the heavy bitumen that would be transported from Alberta.

The refinery would also earn significant revenue by adding value to the raw materials extracted in the Alberta oil sands. Its construction would employ an estimated 6,000 people, and create more than 3,000 permanent jobs once it is up and running.

When Black proposed the project late last year, many pundits and oil industry insiders argued that Canada’s environmental regulations and relative lack of investor interest made the project infeasible, and that it would be easier to build refineries in India or China.

Black says it makes business sense to build the plant in Northern B.C. due to

the low cost of the oil feedstock it receives from the oil sands region of Alberta
the much lower cost of natural gas in the province, which would power the refinery
the scale of the refinery, which would reduce per unit refining costs
the reduced shipping costs of transporting refined products vs shipping raw bitumen, and transporting from the Pacific Coast rather than the U.S. Gulf Coast

It would be the largest single investment in B.C. history, with $16 billion for the refinery, $6 billion for an oil pipeline, $2 billion for a natural gas pipeline to power the refinery, and possibly new tankers for $1 billion.

TD Bank Analysis Finds Even Wage Growth Among Canadian Occupation Groups, Skill Levels

Posted on February 27, 2013 by CICS Immigration Team

A large increase in construction jobs helped buoy the total employment share and the rate of wage growth of medium skilled jobs in Canada since 1999

A report released on Tuesday and put together by TD Bank’s deputy chief economist finds that wages for Canadian workers have grown at roughly the same pace in all major occupational groupings and skill levels, and the number of high skilled jobs has increased at the expense of low-skilled and medium-skilled jobs.

The findings suggest either that the skills mismatch that has resulted in a severe shortage of workers skilled in the trades has existed for longer than a decade, and has not gotten any worse in the intervening time, or that immigration is increasing the number of skilled tradespeople in Canada at the same pace as demand for trades labour is increasing, or a combination of these two factors.

Unlike in the U.S., wages for medium-skilled workers in Canada have grown at nearly the same rate as those of highly skilled workers, a result that the report attributes to expansion of the energy, mining and construction sectors, which increase demand for well-paid medium skilled jobs.

The report finds that high-skilled jobs increased their share of total employment from 33.4 percent in 1999 to 36.3 percent in 2010, while the employment share of medium and low skilled jobs has declined from 57.3 and 9.3 percent to 54.6 and 9.1 percent over the same period, respectively.

Report author Derek Burleton calls the findings a refutation of common wisdom that wages between high skilled and medium-skilled workers and between tradespeople and other workers are diverging, and proposes more research be done on Canadian labour trends to increase understanding and avoid misconceptions.

CanadianBusiness: Vancouver Could Be The Next Calgary

Posted on February 25, 2013 by CICS Immigration Team

The LNG plant planned in Kitimat, pictured above, is expected to increase natural gas industry revenues in British Columbia, which would benefit the province’s commercial centre, Vancouver

An article appearing in the online edition of last Tuesday’s Canadian Business magazine suggests that Vancouver stands to follow in Calgary’s footsteps and become an energy company magnet:

The management of Canada’s oil and gas industry has become, over the past few decades, ever more concentrated in Calgary. To many, Imperial Oil’s 2005 move from Toronto sealed the deal.

But that pattern is now showing some notable exceptions. Giants of the energy industry are suddenly setting up offices in Vancouver instead, and it looks like they’re here to stay.

Alberta in general and Calgary specifically have for years stood apart in Canada for having the highest per capita GDP, the lowest unemployment rates and the most rapid population growth among all provinces and cities, respectively, in the country.

The source of Alberta’s and by extension Calgary’s wealth has been its large petroleum industry, which has experienced growth in recent years as production in Northern Alberta’s oil sands has increased.

Canadian Business magazine says that newly discovered natural gas fields in northern Alberta and British Columbia, and the planned construction of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) conversion and export plants in Kitimat and Prince Rupert in B.C.’s northern coast, have attracted Vancouver the same type of attention from energy companies that Calgary has enjoyed for years:

Not only the terminals but most of the source wells and pipeline infrastructure will be located in B.C., making the provincial government the principal regulator. So it makes sense for companies to run their operations close to Victoria, and even closer to the contractors, suppliers and a potentially hostile public. “You could see B.C. double its natural gas production, and all of that would go toward LNG,” says Greg Kist, vice-president of marketing at Progress Energy. “It indicates that there is going to be significant pace of investment in Vancouver.” Kist expects his company’s West Coast office will in time have 200 employees.

It addition to natural gas production and transport, B.C.’s position in between Alberta and the Pacific Coast makes it an important pathway for oil pipelines, a fact that has spurred Calgary-based Enbridge, which operates the largest pipeline system in the world, to recently decide to open an office in Vancouver.

Immigrants already account for 40 percent of the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s population. If the city experiences an energy boom on the scale of what Calgary has undergone, that would make it all the more alluring to immigrants and Canadians from other regions of the country.

Immigration Causes Canada to Have Highest Per Capita Remittance Rate in the World

Posted on February 22, 2013 by CICS Immigration Team

A money transfer office in New Jersey used by immigrants to send money to family overseas

According to an article published on Tuesday in Maclean’s, a Canadian weekly news magazine, Canada leads the world in per capita outgoing remittance, as a consequence of its proportionally large and well-skilled immigrant population.

In 2012 an estimated $23.4 billion was sent overseas, according to new World Bank figures which track remittances. On a per capita basis that’s double what flows out of the United States or the United Kingdom. India was among the countries receiving the largest chunk of that money, while China and the Philippines were other top recipients.

Globally, Canada is behind only Australia in its per capita immigration rate, and its highly selective immigration programs result in most of those immigrants being skilled workers. These factors combine to account for high remittance rates.

Remittance is now one of the largest sources of income for many developing countries. For example, foreign remittance accounts for 45 percent of the GDP of Tajikistan, a small country in Central Asia, making it the primary source of income for a significant portion of its population.

Due to the enormous volume of foreign remittance, estimated at $400 billion in 2012, many international development experts consider it an important type of foreign aid, which makes a substantial contribution to economic development in poorer countries.

Some have even argued that increasing immigration is a better way for the developed world to assist developing countries, by way of increasing remittance, than providing government aid.

The author of the Maclean’s article, Rosemary Westwood, suggests that to bolster the aid remittance provides to the less-developed world, the developed world should make it easier for its citizens to send money to family-members living abroad, and notes that Canada has made some effort to this end:

along with other G20 countries in 2011, [Canada] agreed to try to reduce remittance fees paid to banks and transfer firms to five per cent—they often reach as high as 24 per cent.

Remittance options limited but growing

There is still much room for improvement, as international remittance to some parts of the world continues to be slow and very expensive, with firms like Western Union charging a fee of up to 20% for transferring to more remote countries.

The advent of new financial services promises to reduce these fees however. Bank of America (BoA) for instance eliminated fees for remittance from the U.S. to Mexico in 2005, leaving only a 1.74 percent currency exchange fee for such transfers.

Competition and investment in new financial networks is spurring an increasing number of companies around the world to offer lower priced remittance services like BoA, leading to remittance becoming more cost-effective and practical for immigrants and migrant workers.

As financial friction is reduced and immigrant populations increase, it’s likely that remittance flows will only grow larger and play an increasingly significant role in developmental economics.

Increase in US Oil Production Threatens Canada’s Oil Sands

Posted on February 15, 2013 by CICS Immigration Team

An oil rig in Northern British Columbia. The oil and gas industry is vital to the economy of Western Canadian provinces

Canadian energy producers exported over $120 billion worth of energy products in 2011, which constituted over 25 percent of the $462 billion worth of goods/services exported from Canada that year.

The sizeable contribution made by the oil and gas sector to Canada’s export revenue helped shore up the value of the Canadian dollar, which enhanced Canadians’ purchasing power internationally and helped raise the average household wealth of Canadians above that of Americans for the first time in history.

Canada’s natural resource wealth, in particular in energy resources, has also given it the best economic performance among the G8 countries over the last several years, and allowed it to better weather the economic decline following the bursting of the global credit bubble in 2008.

The exceptionalism of Canada among the developed world faces a threat from an unexpected source though: increasing shale oil production in the US.

As noted in the Edmonton Journal, a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report projects a substantial increase in global oil supplies as new oil extraction methods like hydraulic fracturing make previously inaccessible shale oil reserves accessible for the first time:

Thanks to such innovations as horizontal drilling and fracking (hydraulic fracturing), the U.S. is currently producing more oil than it has in 20 years. U.S. output now exceeds seven million barrels a day, and that has enabled the world’s biggest oil consuming nation to cut its imports to the lowest level in 16 years.

Since Canada’s crude oil exports are a critical driver of well-paid jobs, royalties, taxes — and ultimately, federal equalization transfers — that’s something that should alarm all Canadians.

Indeed, if current trends continue, the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer by 2017, the International Energy Agency has predicted.

This can threaten Canada’s energy sector due to both global and regional effects. Globally, an increase in oil production would reduce oil prices, and with it, Canada’s oil and gas revenue. Regionally, given ninety percent of Canada’s energy exports are sent to the US, an increase in American oil production would significantly reduce the premium Canadian oil producers receive thanks to the proximity of their major buyers.

The regional effects could be alleviated with the construction of more pipelines capable of transporting the oil produced in the Athabasca oil sands in Northern Alberta to the Pacific Ocean, from where it can be shipped to Asian economies, but projects being proposed at the moment, like the Enbridge pipeline, face political challenges due to ideological and cultural opposition to the oil industry among a sizeable section of the Canadian public.

Economic repercussions

If the global petroleum market progresses as the PwC report predicts, the prosperity of Canada’s Western provinces, which depends to a large part on energy production, would diminish, and federal revenues from oil and gas royalties would decline.

The rapid immigration of skilled trades people to Canada to work in the oil and gas sector would slow, and other developed countries, especially large oil importers like European countries and Japan, would become more attractive destinations for immigrants and international investors.

The net effect for the world would likely be positive, as reduced oil prices increase global economic growth and raise the average of standard of living around the world.

Immigration Canada Celebrates 20,000th Graduate of Immigrant Integration Program

Posted on February 12, 2013 by CICS Immigration Team

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney at a press conference on Tuesday commending the Canadian Immigrant Integration Program (CIIP) for reaching the milestone of 20,000 graduates

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) celebrated the 20,000th graduate of the Canadian Immigrant Integration Program (CIIP) on Tuesday, marking a milestone in its effort to improve the economic integration of new Canadians.

CIIP was launched in 2010 with funding from CIC, and is managed by the Association of Community Colleges (ACCC).

The program provides counselling on settlement-related issues like entering the Canadian labour market and credential recognition through foreign offices in up to 25 countries, including Philippines, China, India, and the UK to foreign nationals who have had their application for permanent residence in Canada approved and are waiting to receive their visa.

The goal is to prepare these would-be immigrants so that once their visa has been finalized and they arrive in Canada, they hit the ground running and more quickly find a job and begin their career in the country.

Patricia Soyao, a 28-year old nurse from the Philippines and the 20,000th graduate of the program, praised the program for helping her prepare for life in Canada:

Coming to CIIP was the best decision I have ever made. Though I totally believed in my choice to go to Canada, getting there and knowing what to do was better laid out to me by CIIP.

Ms. Soyao is scheduled to arrive in Canada in April.

The federal government, through CIC, has invested $15 million into CIIP since 2010.

Canadian Government Eliminates the Penny

Posted on February 7, 2013 by CICS Immigration Team

The Canadian penny will continue to circulate and be accepted, but will no longer be provided as change by retailers or produced by the Royal Canadian Mint (CICS News)

The government of Canada ended distribution of the Canadian penny to financial institutions on February 4th, marking the end of the penny’s 155 year history in the country.

The decision came about due to the steady devaluation of the Canadian dollar, which has reduced the face value of the penny to one twentieth of what it was worth when it was first introduced.

Due to this decline in face value, the penny as legal tender is now worth approximately 63 percent of its production cost. This is unlike other denomination coins, on which the Royal Canadian Mint makes money on their sale to financial institutions, due to their face value exceeding the value of their metal content.

The elimination of the penny is expected to reduce government expenses by $11 million a year, and save financial institutions, retailers and consumers approximately $140 million in handling costs.

A graphic provided by the federal government showing how change will be rounded now that the penny is eliminated (Government of Canada)

The smallest denomination coin that will be given in change to consumers by businesses will now be the nickel, with change being rounded to the closest 5 cent increment. Electronic money will still be rounded to one cent increments.

Financial Post Profiles Canada’s Latin Immigrants

Posted on February 6, 2013 by CICS Immigration Team

Canada’s Latin American immigrant entrepreneurs are dispelling stereotypes of Latin America’s revolutionary communist past

A story appearing in Monday’s Financial Post, one of Canada’s largest national business newspapers, examines the achievements of Canada’s Latin American immigrant entrepreneurs, which it calls Generation Ñ.

The article, by Eva Salinas, profiles Diego Casco, a native of Costa Rica, who now runs a branding agency in Toronto, Canada.

His experience is like that of many in Generation Ñ. After over a decade of building a modest-sized business, improving his English, and getting himself familiar with the Canadian business environment, he now wants to expand his company and become a major player in Canada’s business world.

Salinas notes that Generation Ñ is highly educated, with the Toronto Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (THCC) finding that 91% Toronto area Latin American professionals surveyed report having a Bachelor’s degree or higher:

“These people are educated, they come with a decent amount of money and they’re looking for not only a new life but to be recognized in terms of their quality of work and experience and education that they have,” says Jacob Moshinsky, THCC chairman and Mexican-born entrepreneur. He now runs Ñ Communications.

“There’s absolutely a misconception of what the Hispanic community is here,” he adds, listing Latino stereotypes such as all being refugees and living in low-income areas.

Unlike the previous generation of Latin American business owners, the new generation is looking to integrate into the wider Canadian economy and target beyond its own cultural group, says Salinas.

Salinas describes Cristian Contreras, who immigrated to Canada from Columbia, and graduated from the University of Toronto, as a Generation Ñer who fits this profile.

Since graduating, he has taught himself how to program, and created a political collaboration website called Next Parliament, which is intended to improve the way Canadians create, discuss and share political proposals.

Illegal Immigration in Canada Expected to Surge in 2015

Posted on February 1, 2013 by CICS Immigration Team

Over 190,000 temporary foreign workers entered Canada last year. Many of those whose work permits are set to expire in April 2015 are expected to remain in Canada illegally (CICS News)

The number of people in Canada illegally is expected to increase substantially in April 2015, when a large contingent of foreign workers see their work permits expire.

Their work permits will expire on April 1st 2015 because of a rule enacted on April 1st, 2011, that created a four year limit on cumulative time a foreign national can spend in Canada as a temporary foreign worker.

The rule change was made to reduce the perceived over-dependence of Canadian employers on the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) to meet their permanent labour needs.

The number of temporary foreign workers in Canada has increased from approximately 100,000 in 2002, to over 300,000 today, which some have criticized as a subsidy for business at the expense of Canadian workers.

Setting limits on how long a temporary foreign worker can work in Canada was seen as a way to limit the use of the TFWP to its intended role: to temporarily meet labour shortages until a permanent solution could be found.

People familiar with visa and immigration controls expect a significant percentage of those whose permits will expire on April 1st 2015 to over-stay their visa and reside in Canada illegally, leaving Canada with a problem that Americans are more familiar with: a sizeable illegal immigrant population.

The immigrant magnets of Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto are expected to host the majority of those illegal migrants, which will likely put pressure on their infrastructure, public transit and policing resources, which are already being strained by rapid population growth.

Costs vs Generosity

Canadians are a generally generous people, who don’t like deporting individuals whose only crime is to stay in a country that affords them a better quality of life, but that generosity has to contend with the reality that unskilled foreign workers represent an economic cost for Canada.

Each additional person living in Canada comes with additional set costs in government spending, that can only be compensated if the person pays taxes that are at the Canadian average – something low-wage unskilled workers do not.

Allowing any of the literally hundreds of millions of people who would choose to immigrate and work in Canada if they could, to do so, would, in real terms, result in skyrocketing government spending levels and lower wages / higher unemployment rates for less skilled Canadians who would have to compete with the entrants in the labour market.

This means that immigration controls, and their integrity, are important for the economic well-being of Canada. Nevertheless, an extensive policing campaign that deports thousands of illegal immigrants, many of them living as families in Canada, would spark public outrage and would also be logistically difficult.

How Canada deals with the surge in the illegal immigrant population in 2015 remains to be seen.

Canada’s North Will Need Up To 70,000 Workers by 2020 – Conference Board of Canada

Posted on January 29, 2013 by CICS Immigration Team

Yellowknife, the largest city in the Northwest Territories. A report released on Monday projects that, by 2020, up to 70,000 new jobs in the North will be supported by additional mining output in the region.

A report released on Monday by the Conference Board of Canada, one of the country’s most respected public policy research organizations, predicts that mining in Northern Canada will support an additional 43,000 to 70,000 jobs in the region by 2020.

The report estimates that the value of the annual output of mining activity in the North will grow at an annual rate of 7.5 percent – more than three times the projected GDP growth rate – to nearly double from $4.4 billion in 2011–12 to $8.5 billion in 2020.

The 74 page reports focuses most of its recommendations on improving communication and cooperation between mining companies, aboriginal groups, and local, provincial/territorial and federal governments.

It also calls for increased government investment, in the way of government-private partnerships, to build the necessary infrastructure in the North, and a simpler regulatory approval process by integrating environmental assessments made by various levels of government.

If these measures are taken, the report concludes, the people of the North and the rest of Canada, stand to benefit from increased exports as the industrialization of India and China boosts global economic growth and demand for minerals.