Editorial - A Guide through the Canadian Landscape

Both the Government of Canada and the Province of Ontario have devoted great resources toward making the settlement process for new immigrants as quick and painless as possible.

Naturally, the ministries of Citizenship and Immigration take the lead in working toward this goal – but since immigration is so central to Canada’s overall labour force and economic growth – many other ministries, departments and agencies involved with higher education, labour, trade and a wide range of other concerns – have all started recognizing the need to remove barriers for new immigrants. Private industry and big business are getting more and more involved in helping newcomers integrate into Canadian society, while the small business sector is filling with immigrants who are both starting their own businesses in Canada and employing newcomers to serve a market that is itself made up of more and more people from other cultures.

Thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of Canadians (many recent immigrants themselves, although many were born in Canada) work in the settlement services sector. There is an equal number of volunteers and people eager to put their skills to work in helping new immigrants.

On the other hand, many immigrants have grown frustrated about the employment barriers they face and increasingly skeptical about the chances of realizing their Canadian dreams and ambitions. Some of those have legitimate complaints about the system, while others could probably improve their situation a great deal by properly using the resources available to them:

• Some people (often men) attend a few workshops and seminars when they first arrive, then quickly grow impatient. It is not uncommon to hear someone say, “I do not have the time to invest in these things because I must look after my family. I need paid work, not years of training.”
• Some people are too proud to allow anyone to pay their way. They came to Canada on their own and they are going to succeed or fail on their own. When they hit the first barriers, they take the first and best job they can get and resign themselves to working their way up from the bottom.
• Some people give up in the face of the barriers – which can appear more overwhelming than they actually are. No one can do much to help people who do not have the patience, ambition, common sense or self-confidence to make the best choices for themselves.

But the largest group – the people who simply need information and sound advice – you, we can help.

Since our first issue appeared almost 5 years ago, Canadian Newcomer Magazine has been providing practical, useful information to newcomers from around the world in the languages of the marketplace.

In this – our 3rd annual Settlement Guide – we are proud to introduce some important changes. This is the first guide to cover the entire province of Ontario and it will be the first time we have provided such a guide for Francophone residents of Ontario. We are delighted to have achieved our goal of providing an essential resource for new immigrants. If the free copies are gone before you manage to get one for yourself, the directories will all be available online in pdf format – while the stories in this year’s guide will all appear as Issue 22 of Canadian Newcomer Magazine at www.cnmag.ca.

Dale Sproule, Editor