Revision as of 11:07, 18 August 2017

Migration from India to Canada

2000-13: High immigration--followed by tight restrictions

Canada follows US, makes work visa difficult

Effective July, employers in Canada will have to pay $275 as processing fee for each application that they file to bring in a foreign worker.

Shilpa Phadnis, TNN | Aug 13, 2013

The Times of India The Times of India

BANGALORE: The decade 2003-2012 has seen a phenomenal increase in the number of Indians working in Canada, the highest amongst any single nationality.

Like the US, Canada too is tightening its temporary foreign worker program (TFWP) that allows foreign nationals to work in Canada for short periods. The effort, as Rakesh Prabhu, partner-immigration practice in ALMT Legal, says, is to improve employment opportunities for its locals.

Employers have to fill a new questionnaire that tries to figure out whether a firm is seeking to replace existing Canadian workers. Employers must advertise for the position locally three months before the application for bringing a foreign worker is filed, and the advertisement must run for four weeks compared to two weeks previously.

The latest restrictions follow a decision in April to end a provision that allowed employers to pay foreign workers as much as 15% less than the average Canadian wage for a job.

Sajan Poovayya, managing partner in law firm Poovayya & Co, said the changes would have an impact on the Indian workforce movement to Canada. "Companies in India will find it harder to use this route to ship personnel on temporary IT assignments. There will be cost over runs and time delays in sending workforce to that country. The Canadian government's decision to insist on employers who rely on temporary foreign workers to have a firm plan in place to transition to a Canadian workforce over time, will make the whole programme unattractive to Indian technology players," he said.

Canada's move comes shortly after the backlash that followed when the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) outsourced its IT services to iGate, which then replaced RBC's IT employees with foreign workers. It also comes after a ten-year period (2003 to 2012) that saw the number of Indian workers in Canada grow a whopping 730%, making them the fastest-growing foreign worker community in that country. The number of Indian foreign workers rose from 2,686 in 2003 to 22,281 in 2012, said a report by Canada Facts and Figures 2012. The French were a distant second with a growth of 332% to 18,961 workers, followed by Filipinos, who grew 280% to 23,683.

Politics and PIOs

2015: Liberal win in Canada

The Times of India, Oct 21 2015

Ikhhlaq Aujla

 Liberals sweep Canada polls with Punjabi help

A painful chapter in the history of Punjabi migration is the Komagata Maru episode when a shipload of Punjabis was stopped from landing in Canada in 1914 and sent back from Vancouver.Harsh immigration laws had ensured that only 24 of the 376 people on board disembarked.As the rest returned to the Calcutta port, the British fired at them, killing 19. A little over 100 years later, exactly 19 Canadians of In dian origin were elected to the Canadian parliament.

This is the highest ever representation of MPs with Indian roots in the House of Commons in Canada. As many as 17 are of Punjabi ori gin. In 2011, only eight Indianorigin MPs were elected to the House of Commons, all of whom were Punjabis.

The result was historic in more ways than one for Canada as the Justin Trudeau-led Liberals ended nearly 10 years of Conservative party rule. Fifteen or 8.15% of his 184 MPs are Punjabis. IndianCanadians make up over 3% of Canada's population of about 35 million.

The role of Punjabis is important as it helped the Liberals get past the 170-mark needed for a simple majority .

Among sitting MPs, Con servative Deepak Obhrai from Calgary Forest Lawn in Alberta was the only Punjabi-origin candidate to retain his seat.The losers included multiculturalism minister Tim Uppal, who lost to Amarjit Sohi of the Liberals by a mere 80 votes.

Sohi was arrested in 1988 in Bihar under TADA for alleged links with Naxals and released in 1990 on court orders. This victory is about in clusion, cohesiveness, where we build strong communities,“ Amarjit Sohi of the Liberals told a daily .“Canada is where someone like me can come from somewhere else, build a new life, raise my family and contribute back so immensely.“

“I have a strong record both as a representative of the constituency as well as working in government, and in the opposition, over the years I have been in Parliament,“ Deepak Obhrai, who won a seventh term, told the Calgary Sun. Compared to the 24 candidates of Punjabi-origin in the previous general elections in 2011, this time 43 were in the fray, including one independent. There were 11 constituencies where at least two of the candidates put up by the Liberals, Conservatives or NDP were of Punjabi origin.

In the 2011 polls, there wasn't a single Punjabi-origin candidate of the Liberal party who made it to parliament.From just 36 in 2011, Liberals have 184 MPs in a house of 338 this time.

Four PIOs Inducted As Cabinet Ministers

Harjit Sajjan and Navdeep Bains

The Times of India, Nov 05 2015

Sikh named Canada defence minister

Harjit Sajjan among four PIOs inducted as Cabinet ministers by PM Justin Trudeau

The Punjabi community in Canada made history on Wednesday when two turbaned Sikhs, among four Indian Canadians, were sworn in as cabinet ministers, as Justin Trudeau took oath as the country's 23rd Prime Minister. While 42-year-old Harjit Sajjan was appointed defence minister, 38-year-old Navdeep Bains got the portfolio of innovation, science and economic development in the 30-member Cabinet. Another Sikh, Amarjeet Sohi, who is not turbaned, has been sworn in as minister for infrastructure. A former bus driver, Sohi was jailed in 1988 for two years in Bihar and accused of being a terrorist. Sohi told the Edmonton Journal that he was beaten and tortured. He recounted that he was held without charges or trial for almost two years. A young Sikh woman, Bar dish Jhagger, who is a firsttime MP , has been sworn in as minister for small business and tourism. Trudeau, 43, kicked off his slimmed-down Cabinet Navdeep Bains, who played a key role in Trudeau's election as the Liberal Party leader in 2013, has been awarded with the important cabinet berth. Bains, who became MP for the third time last month by winning from MississaugaBrampton, previously served as parliamentary secretary to the prime minister in 2005 when he was MP from 2004 till 2011 when he lost. Considered very suave, Bains has been a distinguished visiting professor at Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto till now.

2015: Punjabi is 3rd language in Canada House

The Times of India, Nov 03 2015

Punjabi now third-most spoken language in Canada's parliament

Justin Trudeau, son of a Canadian leader follows his own path to powerCanada politician mistakes Bank of England governor for actorTrudeau's Liberals win Canada election: TV projectionsThree Sikhs sworn in as cabinet ministers in CanadaCanada withdraws from US-led coalition against Isis TORONTO: Four years after Punjabi became Canada's third most common language, it has now attained the same status in the country's new Parliament, after English and French, following the election of 20 Punjabi-speaking candidates to the House of Commons.

Twenty-three Members of Parliament of South Asian-origin were elected to the House of Commons, Parliament of Canada, in the October 19 parliamentary elections.

Three of them, Chandra Arya - born and raised in India, Gary Anandasangaree - a Tamil, and Maryam Monsef - of Afghan origin, do not speak Punjabi, The Hill Times Online reported.

Of the 20 who speak Punjabi, 18 are Liberals and two are Conservatives. Among the newly-elected Punjabi-speaking MPs, 14 are males and six are females. Ontario elected 12, British Columbia four, Alberta three and one is from Quebec.

Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau is scheduled to unveil his Cabinet this week and some of these Liberal MPs are expected to be included in the front bench.

"The voice of the Indo-Canadian community will now be very well represented in the Parliament. In the overall aspect of it, the South Asian community won," MP Deepak Obhrai of Conservative Party said.

In an interview with the paper, Navdeep Bains, a Liberal MP, said although 20 Punjabi-speaking MPs have been elected, these MPs represent all constituents regardless of their party affiliation or ethnic origin.

"It speaks to our commitment to diversity and allowing individual [MPs] to play an important role in our political institutions. The main issue to understand is that we have a very clear mandate to execute our platform and we also have a responsibility to represent our constituents, which are very diverse," Bains said.

Iqra Khalid, the Liberal MP who was born in Pakistan, said the diversity of the newly-elected House reflects the true make-up of Canada.

According to Statistics Canada's 2011 National Household Survey, 430,705 Canadians identified Punjabi as their mother tongue, making it the third most common language after English and French.

The 430,705 native Punjabi speakers make up about 1.3 per cent of Canada's population. The 20 Punjabi-speaking MPs represent almost six per cent of the House of Commons.

Students

Number of Indian students, 2004, 2015

Lubna Kably, Canada's new residency points plan to aid Indians, Nov 21 2016 : The Times of India

Number of Chinese, Indian and French students studying in Canada, 2015

According to Canadian government statistics published by the Canadian Magazine of Immigration, the number of foreign students in Canada has more than doubled over the past decade from 1.72 lakh in 2004 to 3.56 lakh as at the end of 2015. India was the second largest source country , since 2012. The number of Indian students rose by 630% from just 6,675 in 2004 to 48,914 in 2015, constituting 13.7% of the total foreign student population. Engineering, including IT, business management, pharmacy related courses and hospitality management are generally top choices for Indian students wishing to study in Canada.