Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/103039
S Security Immigration and national security Finding the balance between Canada's immigration needs and its security concerns has been an ongoing challenge – in 2009, both the director of CSIS and the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police raised flags in these pages about homegrown terrorism. Over a 30-year career, Scott Newark has acquired extensive expertise as an Alberta Crown Prosecutor, as executive officer of the Canadian Police Association, vice chair and special counsel for the Ontario Office for Victims of Crime, and as a security and policy advisor to both the Ontario and federal Ministers of Public Safety. He recently spoke with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute about the security-immigration nexus. Vanguard is pleased to publish this first in a six-part MLI interview, part of its Straight Talk series. For the complete series of interviews, see www.macdonaldlaurier.ca. Q Empirically, is relatively successful or unsuccessful integration connected to place of origin, socio-economic status, or something else? Actually one very major thing turns out to be how well they speak French or English. Another is whether skilled immigrants are able to get the kinds of jobs they're trained for. And one reason why we really do get the stereotypical problem of engineers driving taxis is that, in Canada's federal system, much of the trade certification is done on a provincial level. So even if someone gets certified in, say, Quebéc, if they move to Manitoba they have to start over again. One other weakness they identified was in the "economic" class of immigrant (the others being "family" class and refugees). They discovered that the bureaucracy was not particularly efficient either at matching skilled workers with trades or matching investors and entrepreneurs with business opportunities. Q Most Canadians want our society to remain open to immigrants and the contributions they make. But are there questions we need to ask about very high levels of immigration and how we make sure the typical immigrant is able to assimilate into Canadian society instead of living in what amounts to foreign enclaves within Canada, vulnerable to radicalization? That is certainly something that the current Minster has spent a lot of time on. The ministry has just released several very detailed studies of which factors lead to more successful or less successful integration. It's a much more evidence-based approach than we had in the past. 40 DECEMBER 2012/JANUARY 2013 www.vanguardcanada.com Q Is this a problem of not helping people find the right opportunities once they are approved as immigrants, or is the problem that we're not good at selecting immigrants whose talents match up with our economic needs? Mostly the latter. That's why Minister Jason Kenney is now directing his officials, for example, to involve local employers more in identifying and selecting specific immigrants for particular skilled trades that are short of workers. You're also seeing that out west at the provincial level, with the Premier of Saskatchewan going off to Ireland to promote particular opportunities within his province. Other prairie provinces are developing similar initiatives as part of what are known as "provincial nominee programs," where basically the provinces screen immigrants and move those