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Originally Posted by highthief
What needs to happen is to have the immigrant flow redirected. Right now, 90% of all immigrants come to Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, probably in that order, but Alberta is the one with the shortage of workers.
So Toronto sinks deeper into debt trying to pay for community services for an excess population we don't need while Calgary can't find anyone to drive the buses.
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Calgary can't find anybody to drive the buses because nobody can find any house to live in Calgary.
Everybody keeps talking about how their family came from another country at some point time in history that they didn't speak a word of English. My grandparents were like that, they came from Netherlands during the second world war and spoke mainly Dutch.
But that isn't the issue here, the issue is that lately the government is not taking the time to ensure people can understand, speak and write English/French without having to cause its own citizens to tear their own hairs out.
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Official language skills also had an impact on the employment of newcomers. Over one-half (52%) of immigrants aged 25 to 44 years who could converse in English or French were employed at the time of the survey. In comparison, only one-third (33%) of those who had no knowledge of either language were able to find employment.
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That means 2/3s of immigrants can't get a job because they don't know how to speak either English or French. I question their usage of "can converse" because it could mean a wide degree of understanding either language and that can affect one's ability to get a job, especially for less than half of them.
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Upon arrival in Canada, 18% of newcomers stated that they were unable to converse in either of Canada's official languages. This was because of the high proportion of immigrants arriving from non-English and non-French-speaking countries. Immigrants who could not speak either official language on arrival tended to be in older age groups and were usually admitted under the family class and refugee category. As well, immigrant women were less likely than men to have knowledge of one of Canada's official languages.
Overall, 22% of the immigrants who identified at least one problem during the process of finding a job stated that a lack of skills in either official language was their greatest hurdle in seeking employment. Those who could not converse in English or French were more likely than those who had knowledge of at least one official language to cite language barriers as a major concern (69% versus 16%).
Language was also one of the frequently cited barriers that newcomers faced in the other areas of settlement. Fully 15% of immigrants who identified problems in accessing health care cited language barriers as an issue. As well, 27% of those who experienced problems in the pursuit of further training cited this barrier as the most serious hurdle.
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Some six months after landing, 45% of newcomers had already pursued some kind of training. Since language was a major concern for many newcomers, language courses were the most popular type of training taken during the initial months after their arrival in Canada.
Of the immigrants who had started some type of training, 58% had taken at least one English-language course and one in 10 took some form of French language training. Most newcomers who took English-language training during the initial months after their arrival resided outside Quebec (93%), and the majority of those enrolled in French-language training lived in Quebec (95%).
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Rest of the article here:
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/030904/d030904a.htm
Even the government knows of this problem and isn't bothering to do anything about it. The article points out the main problem of not being able to speak, write and understand English or French is:
- Getting Health Care
- Finding Jobs
- Finding Housing
- Getting Education
I remember watching a segment on one of the news station out in Calgary that the city is hosting some semiars for taxi drivers to give them more training in English language for obvious reasons and that's not the way I want them to spend my taxpayer money, especially for a city that's facing budget shortfall