Provincial Premiers Call For Greater Say in Canadian Immigration

Posted on November 23, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter and Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney at the two day economic forum (Province of Nova Scotia)

The premiers of Canada’s provincial and territorial governments concluded a forum on economic development in Halifax today with a joint-call on the federal government to give them greater control over immigration.

“We want to become masters of our own destiny when it comes to the immigration file. Nobody better understands our needs and our capacity to accommodate and our capacity to develop new Canadians so they can develop to their fullest,” said Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty at today’s news conference.

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark added: “We want more space to be able to make our decisions about which immigrants will come to our provinces, where they will be settled and how many we’ll get.”

Quebec has had an independent immigration program since the 1970s, but the other provinces only started being delegated immigration selection powers over the last decade with the signing of several federal-provincial agreements creating Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs).

While the number of provincial nominees has grown seven fold since 2004, with 42,000 to 45,000 individuals expected to immigrate under a PNP in 2012, the pace of change is not fast enough for the provinces, who want to select a greater share of the approximately 250,000 individuals who are admitted into Canada as permanent residents each year.

The provincial premiers say that being able to select their own immigrants gives them more power to control the direction of their economic development by selecting those individuals that have the skills to meet their regional labour shortages, which they say their governments are best positioned to assess.

The two-day economic forum was hosted by the Council of the Federation, an institution created by the provincial and territorial governments to facilitate collaboration between their respective governments.

The forum saw presentations from Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney and Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Tyler Cowen, author of The Great Stagnation.

Canada and EU Working Toward Free Trade Agreement

Posted on November 22, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Canada could see more energy exports to the EU if it finalizes a free trade agreement with the economic block this week

Canada and the EU are close to finalizing a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that would be the EU’s first with a G7 country. Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast is meeting his EU counterpart in Brussels in talks this week to negotiate an agreement on the remaining issues.

Among the areas where differences still exist between the parties are agriculture market access, intellectual property standards relating to the pharmaceutical industry, procurement at the provincial and municipal-government level, and investor protection through arbitration rules.

Canada-EU trade amounts to $67 billion a year, with Canada chiefly exporting natural-resource intensive industrial goods like steel, manufactured goods like machinery and transport equipment, chemical products, and energy products to the EU, and the EU exporting a similar mix, with less energy and more machinery and transport equipment, to Canada.

Both economic blocks stand to gain from an increase in bilateral trade due to returns to scale. A joint-study in 2008 projects a $14.9 billion gain in annual income for the EU and a $10.5 billion annual gain for Canada from a FTA.

Canada currently has FTAs with fourteen countries and has an economy that is heavily reliant on external trade.

Canadian Government Developing a Digital Dollar

Posted on November 8, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

The Winnipeg Royal Canadian Mint, where the circulation coins of Canada and other countries are produced. The Mint hopes to develop a digital replacement for physical coins in the MintChip

The Royal Canadian Mint, a Crown Corporation responsible for minting Canada’s coins, is developing a digital version of the Canadian dollar that it hopes will make digital transactions as easy as cash-based ones.

The technology being developed is called MintChip, and the Mint is describing it as the ‘evolution of currency’. It relies on public-key cryptography and tamper-proof hardware to create non-reversible digital payments that do not require a connection to a third party payment processor like a bank or credit card network to complete.

The technology is not expected to be unhackable, but to keep risks for small-value digital transactions at manageable levels. The Mint says that due to the absence of transaction fees, the chips would also allow micro-transactions as low as 1 cent ($0.01).

The chip is still in the R&D phase, and it’s not known when, if ever, it will be released for public use.

To push the technology along, the Mint held a MintChip Challenge this year that invited software developers to create prototypes of applications of the technology. The competition ended in September with the winning teams being awarded a total of $52,700 worth of .9999 purity gold at a ceremony on October 25th.

While ambitious and seemingly far-fetched, it appears the Mint is quite far along in developing a replacement for physical banknotes and coins. If successful, the MintChip project would make Canada the first country in the world to have digital government-issued cash, giving its economy a leg up in the race to be a globally competitive centre of innovation.

Immigrating to Canada to Escape American Election Results

Posted on November 6, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Resource hubs like northern Alberta's oil sands offer prospective immigrants numerous jobs, which can be the best first step to immigrating to Canada

When Americans look for a country to flee to in the event of their favoured candidate losing the presidential elections, they inevitably look to Canada, their (mostly) English speaking cousin to the North.

For the past three decades, it has been predominantly supporters of Democratic candidates that have made the immigration ultimatum, as Canada has been perceived to align with their party on foreign policy, income redistribution, and cultural issues.

This election season though, the warnings of immigrating to Canada have taken on a more bi-partisan quality, as Canada’s lower government debt levels, stronger economy, tighter control over illegal immigration, more reserved culture, and what many perceive as overall more functional governance, appeals to many conservative-leaning voters.

The growing appeal of Canada to American conservatives also stems from a strong personal dislike that many of them have for Obama, for reasons both ridiculous/bigoted – e.g. conspiracy theories of Obama being a secret Muslim – and ideological.

Whatever the appeal, the number of Americans who actually follow through with their threats and make the move is few. There is no statistically significant spike in immigration levels from the U.S. following presidential elections.

The length and complexity of the Canadian immigration process requires a significant investment of time and a long-term commitment that political passions typically do not motivate.

Immigration Pointers

If you are an American and, having read all of this, still intend to move to Canada, keep these points in mind:

Getting a job in Canada is the most practical way for Americans to become landed immigrants. Having Canadian work experience confers significant advantages for foreign nationals applying for Canadian permanent residency through several immigration programs.

Occupations not traditionally viewed as prestigious, like heavy duty mechanics and welding, can give you the best opportunity of getting a job offer and a work permit in Canada, which will start your process of becoming a Canadian.

Less populated provinces with booming resource-industries, like Alberta, have better job markets and easier paths to immigration than the immigrant magnets of Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

As an American, you can take comfort in the fact that you will likely have an easier time immigrating than the nationals of many other countries, as proficiency in one of Canada’s official languages (English and French), is one of the most important criteria in Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s assessment of a permanent residence application.

Canadian Non-Partisan Think Tank Finds Oil Sands Greatly Benefit Country’s Economy

Posted on October 24, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

A technician at Syncrude, the largest producer of crude oil derived from the Athabasca oil sands (Syncrude Canada Ltd.)

The Conference Board of Canada (CBoC), the largest non-partisan think tank in Canada, has published a study today showing that development of northern Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands will create over 3.2 million person-years of employment in Canada over the next 25 years, a third of them in provinces other than Alberta.

The CBoC report projects $364 billion in investment will be made into developing Canada’s oil sands deposits over the next 25 years, which will create 880,000 person-years of employment in projects directly related to oil sands development and 1.45 million in production of goods/services linked to the investment through the supply-chain.

The combined 2.3 million person-years of employment are projected by the study to earn $172 billion in income, which will generate another 880,000 person-years of employment through the wealth effect of the employees spending their income.

The report estimates that over 90 percent of the direct-effects employment, 70 percent of the supply chain employment, and 59 percent of the wealth effect employment will be generated in Alberta, where the investment activity will occur.

Other Canadian regions will benefit in the order of Ontario, deriving the largest benefit, then BC, Quebec, the Prairies, and Atlantic Canada, which will see the smallest gain in oil-sands-investment-related employment.

The CBoC report only studied the projected effects of the oil sands investment, and not the oil production itself, which it estimates will be even larger than the investment activity.

The report projects Canadian oil exports will increase by 2.9 million barrels of oil per day (mmbd), from 2011 levels, to 4 mmbd of oil by 2035, increasing direct employment in the oil and gas industry to 175,000.

Continued immigration into Alberta

The employment effects predicted by the CBoC study suggest that high-levels of inter-provincial and international immigration into Alberta will continue for the forseeable future.

Alberta led Canadian provinces last year with a population growth rate of 2.5 percent, thanks to having the highest per capita GDP and, alongside Saskatchewan, the lowest unemployment rate in Canada.

Canada Ranks 17th in ‘Ease of Doing Business’, Shines in ‘Starting a Business’ Category

Posted on October 24, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Canada's largest port, the Port of Vancouver. Canada placed 17th in the World Bank's Doing Business report that ranks countries by general ease of doing business.

Canada ranks as the 17th easiest place in the world to do business in a report released on Tuesday by the World Bank. The 2013 edition of the Doing Business report rates 185 countries according to 11 sets of indicators that quantify the ease of complying with regulations and the protection of property ownership rights.

Canada’s overall ranking was weighed down by the low scores it received in the ‘Dealing with construction permits’ (69), ‘Getting electricity’ (152), and ‘Enforcing contracts’ (62) categories. It ranked near the top of the rankings in the ‘Starting a business’ category, at third, with a business requiring one procedure and five days to start on average in the country.

Last month, Canada placed fifth in another international economic freedom index, the Fraser Institute’s annual Economic Freedom of the World report. In that ranking, Canada placed well ahead of its southern neighbour, which came in 18th.

The situation is reversed in the World Bank report, with the US, at 4th in the world, ranking 13 places ahead of Canada -exactly the same number of places that Canada was ahead of the US by in September’s report.

Relevance

The accuracy of economic freedom indices has been questioned by some groups, due to the arbitrary weighting of the indicators used to formulate the final score a country receives, and the non-recognition of the ease of participating in the un-regulated, informal economy – an area where less developed countries have an advantage due to their less developed regulatory enforcement mechanisms – as a factor in economic freedom in all of the major indices.

Nevertheless, a good showing in an economic freedom index is highly sought after due to the perception it gives of a country being open for business and having a strong rule of law.

Canada’s placing in the indices should improve considerably in coming years due to the comprehensive Red Tape Reduction Action Plan, a major overhaul of the regulatory framework, announced this month, which will implement the recommendations of the federal government’s year-long Red Tape Reduction Commission.

Report Says Canadian Health Care “Like a Ponzi Scheme”

Posted on October 18, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

The headquarters of the BC Ministry of Health. Governments in Canada have made promises to Canadians that will require imposing much higher taxes on younger generations than those paid by older ones according to a report by a Canadian public research university. (Google Maps)

A report released by a public research university says Canada’s pay-as-you-go health care system will, in its current form, take money from younger generations to give to older ones.

The research paper, by the U of C’s School of Public Policy (SPP), notes that the taxes paid by the baby boomer generation are not enough to cover their projected future health care costs, and that the only way the federal and provincial governments will be able to keep their promises to them is to collect more taxes from future generations during their working years than the baby boomer generation paid.

According to the report, the fundamental issue facing the current health care model is that the tax paying stage of people’s lives is different than the stage of their life when they will use health care services, as shown by this graph included in the report:

A graph showing relative health-care costs and health-care taxes by age (Can we avoid a sick fiscal future? The non-sustainability of health-care spending with an aging population, U of C School of Public Policy)

The current “pay-as-you-go” model spends all tax revenues collected from an individual on present health care needs, rather than saving it for that individual’s future health costs, resulting in intergenerational inequity in taxes paid by individuals relative to the health care they receive, in situations when a younger generation is not large enough to pay for the claims of the older generation, as is the case now with the baby boomer generation and the younger generations that follow it.

As a partial solution, the report proposes the federal and provincial governments adopt a ‘pre-funding’ model like that used for funding the Canadian Pension Plan. Taxes in the present would be increased under this set-up, and excess revenues would be invested in a government fund to be spent for the current tax paying generation’s future health care costs.

The paper further recommends that governments do more to reduce the growth in health care spending. As an example of cost-saving changes that can be made to health services delivery, it proposes shifting the site of health care delivery to the home for the elderly and those with chronic conditions, and away from acute-care hospital beds.

Political standstill

The SPP’s report is one of several released in recent years by prominent Canadian institutions that have recommended major changes to Canada’s government-run health care program.

Proposals to increase taxes for health-care or institute reforms to reduce the growth in health care spending have proven to be a political hot potato though, with the major parties unwilling to risk losing the support of the public and powerful health sector employee unions by promoting them.

Canada On Verge of Expansion of Undersea Territory

Posted on October 9, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

The brown line marks Canada's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which is an area of continental shelf 200 nautical miles (nm) from a country's coastline over which it has sovereign rights. The green line is an estimate, made in the mid-1990s, of the outer limit of Canada's extended continental shelf. Substantial data collected about the sea floor off of Canada's coasts as part of Canada's Extended Continental Shelf Program have largely confirmed the initial estimates. (Polar Commission of Canada)

The Canadian government is near completion on its application to a UN commission to claim its extended continental shelf, and it holds the potential to expand the country’s ownership over seabed territory by up to 1.75 million square kilometres.

The government must submit the application, which according to the geologist in charge of the project, Dr. Jacob Verhoef, is thousands of pages long and includes 25 scientific reports, before the December 2013 deadline.

The UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), an expert body established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), will evaluate Canada’s application and render its binding recommendation on the outer limits of Canada’s extended continental shelf.

Canada ratified the UNCLOS treaty in 2003, which grants signatory countries ten years to provide a scientifically defensible submission to the CLCS on the outer limits of their extended continental shelf.

Valuable energy and mineral resources under the seabed are expected to become available to Canada with the expansion of its undersea territory.

Five Immigrants Receive Ottawa Immigrant Entrepreneur Awards

Posted on October 2, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

Five individuals received Ottawa Local Immigrant Entrepreneur Awards yesterday in the first annual Ottawa Immigration Forum, organized by the Ottawa Local Immigrant Partnership (Citizenship and Immigration Canada)

Five Canadian immigrants received awards for their entrepreneurship at the first annual Ottawa Immigration Forum yesterday.

The Ottawa Immigrant Entrepreneur Award ceremomy is organized by the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership (OLIP) and given to individuals judged to have made valuable contributions to the local economy.

Yesterday’s recipients were:

Valery Tolstikhin, founder of OneChip Photonics Inc, who won in the Fast-growth enterprises category. OneChip Photonics manufactures high performance optical transceivers for broadband applications.

Dr. Dipak Roy, founder of D-TA Systems Inc, the winner of the award in the Innovation-oriented enterprises category. D-TA Systems provides sonar and radar signal processors for the defence, aerospace and wireless industries.

Vinod Rajasekaran, creator of HUB Ottawa, won in the Social enterprises category. HUB Ottawa is an innovation incubator that provides collaborative office space and networking events to members.

Dr. Supriya Mishra, founder of visionTech4u, the winner of the Women entrepreneurs category award. VisionTech4U provides IT consultancy in the Ottawa area.

Obaid Ahmed, founder of OAK Computing, won in the under 35 Youth business entrepreneurs category. OAK Computing is a software development company that manages several start-ups.

OLIP is funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) as part of the federal government’s campaign to boost the integration of immigrants into the Canadian economy.

Data emerging over the last few years, showing a growing income gap between recent immigrants and other Canadians, has spurred the federal and several provincial governments to fund initiatives by local immigrant serving organizations like OLIP to reverse the situation.

Canada Most Tax Competitive For Corporations Among Developed Countries

Posted on September 25, 2012 by CICS Immigration Team

The KPMG Competitive Alternatives report rates Canada as the most tax competitive developed country in a survey of 14 major economies

Canada’s corporate taxes are the second lowest overall, and lowest of any developed country, among 14 large economies included in a KPMG survey of international tax competitiveness.

At the other end of the scale, Italy and France had the least competitive corporate tax rates in the survey, while the US was in the middle of the pack, at eighth most competitive.

Four of the five developing countries included in the survey: India, China, Mexico and Russia, ranked in the top of five in tax competitiveness, at first, second, fourth and fifth, respectively. Brazil was the only developing country with a tax competitive rating in the bottom half, ranking eleventh.

The survey only looked at corporate taxes and did not factor in taxes paid by individuals directly like the personal income tax and sales tax.

KPMG’s Canadian managing tax partner, Elio Luongo, lauded Canada’s standing in the survey in an interview with the Globe and Mail: “This helps our attractiveness around the world and helps us compete .. We need this to compensate for other costs.”