Assessing and recognizing foreign credentials in Canada: employers’ views

The assessment and recognition of the education credentials of foreign-trained workers is an issue of growing importance in Canada. An accurate understanding and evaluation of the skills, knowledge and experience of foreign-trained workers plays a key role in enabling these workers to find jobs in which this preparation can be used to full advantage. Over the last several years, the growing threat of skill shortages has lent increasing importance to the need to fully use the skills of the Canadian labour force, regardless of where these skills were obtained. In turn, this has made it more and more important that the qualifications of foreign-trained workers be fully and accurately evaluated, so that they can be most effectively used. In this context, in September 2000, the Canadian Labour and Business Centre (CLBC) was contracted by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) to undertake a project to engage Canadian employers in preliminary discussions around two issues, namely: (1) business experiences with issues and processes related to recognition of foreign credentials, and their implications for further government approaches in this area; and (2) communicating with the business community to raise awareness of and interest in foreign credential recognition issues, including promotion of provincially-mandated credential assessment services. This report summarizes the project findings.

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