New Manitobans often arrive confused over their rights to
vote, participate, and add value to their new home. Simple, effective citizenry
policies can help ensure that each person understands and can take up every
appropriate opportunity for participation. We are stronger working all
together.
Clearly the face of Manitoba is changing. And there are a lot of benefits from this change. A number of programs help the newcomers to work on language skills, health problems, employment issues, and accommodation challenges so that each one can enjoy the rights of being Canadian. What appears to be missing is assistance with an understanding of the related responsibilities which insures the comparative attractiveness of our society. Here, in part, is some of the discussion which surrounded the creation of the above topic.
ReplyDeleteWe need some type of identification of a Canadian citizen within Canada. Although controversial,as well as logistically difficult, some jurisdictions have looked at providing a box on a driver's license or a data insert on a chip card. There are values to this at election time which would help guarantee that only citizens could vote. There are also positive values in rewarding citizen status with something tangible.
Another area of discussion surrounded the whole idea of training to understand the role of government and the political process. This training could show for example, the values of being involved in a political party and the basic differences in the parties. Getting the newcomer engaged in the broader social community rather than being completely sheltered within a cultural community is definitely healthy.
Encouraging engagement is not something that has to be formal or cost big dollars. Examples might be a family supper exchange program or a bring a guest to a meeting.
Encouraging voting is also important but it might be easier if the newcomer could better relate to the process of how others might evaluate and rank choices for parties or individual candidates. Too often groups tend to vote as a block (or as some leader tells them) so responsibility for improved individual analysis should have value.
Manitoba United has got to be sensitive to these demographics to protect against becoming a party of cranky old white men One of the best ways of doing this could be outreach sessions within specific cultural communities to grow policy initiatives.
Immigration, although it is a Federal responsibility, has a Provincial component when quotas are assigned to individual Provinces. Manitoba addresses these quotas with a nominee program. There are sub-streams within this area for categories like special skills and family reunification, labour market shortages and business investment. Manitoba’s nominee program has insured a relatively strong flow of newcomers but only in two of those specific streams and not in the others. It might come as a surprise to some people that the two streams that are working produce the lowest economic value to the Province while other streams could offer much higher value.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to get into Manitoba and have a job offer from Robin’s Donuts it will only take you a couple months to get here. In six more months you will probably get your certificate of permanent residency. On the other hand, if you wanted to make a serious investment in Manitoba and had all your ducks in order, it would probably take you four to seven years. The same fate awaits those with special skills like plumbers. For example, there is no policy, which targets skilled trade’s people in the construction sector, unless they have a permanent job offer. This is not realistic approach as most trade’s people are mobile and contract based. Right now the only way a carpenter or a plumber can get in is to take a full time job serving coffee.
In terms of the other sub-stream, the investor, even at the best times investor immigrants have a tough time prying open the entry door. They need to have $150,000 in capital to spend on an acquisition. They also need to post $75,000 of that money up front so that they will make such an acquisition. (Note that we are not opposed to increasing this level as it has remained unchanged for over ten years and as the average investment is already over $400,000) Manitoba has an annual target of 400 newcomers in this category but even though there are thousands of applicants and even though these are highly prized quality immigrants, we never seem to come close to filling that quota. It is not a matter of funding either because that particular stream actually more than pays its own way in terms of the cost of operation to the government. The existing record is an embarrassment and the reason at its core is that the current government, for their own selfish reasons, is simply is not interested in high value immigrants.
Manitoba United aims to change this by putting a priority on entrepreneurial and high skill immigration. We believe that fast tracking those two failed streams to at least the speed of the other streams could help this Province a lot. We also think that showing some priority effort on those two streams would re-energize the private sector to prospect, screen and manage more applicants successfully.
The big opportunity here is that the private players know the business world well, network well and can spot opportunity above and beyond what the original intent was. There is one more plus to such a change. Private sector consultants understand getting paid for performance. They will fill the quota bringing huge new investments to Manitoba and their candidates are most likely to live and stay here.