- Target:
- Whistler Chamber of Commerce, The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, The Govenment of Canada, The CIC
- Region:
- Canada
- Website:
- www.piquenewsmagazine.com
Labour shortages within the tourism retail, and food and beverage industry have started to affect the bottom line of businesses throughout Canada. A million jobs are due to be created in the province in the next decade and there will be only around 650,000 workers to fill them in BC alone.
Every year international workers come to Canada to visit, travel and work under the International Experience Canada Visa Program. Most of these visitors engage in tourism, retail, and food beverage jobs.
Increasing the duration of the visa from one year to two years, increasing the quotas of visas issued and lifting the age requirements for British, New Zealand, Japanese, Czech, South Korean, Irish and Australian nationals would help to offset the labour shortages within these respective industries.
The extension of the period of validation will allow employers to keep experienced staff on raising service levels. The removal of residency requirements will enable international workers to come to Canada with work experience gained overseas. The amendment of age restrictions will open up the program to participants with years of experience in various trades.
The removal of residency requirements and, the increase in visa duration and quotas will also allow the Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to process the visa applications more efficiently especially for British and Irish nationals. Participants were forced to apply very early this year to ensure they got their visa.
Allowing British and Irish nationals who have previously participated in the pre 2010 BUNAC and USIT working holiday program will give every participant a better opportunity to apply for Permanent Residency with the proposed changes being made to Canadian Experience Class.
IEC UK and Ireland 2012 filled their quotas in May. Since demand is outstripping supply processing of the visas has been slow. Residency requirements also slow down the process as the CIC has to check whether the participant has resided 18 of the past 36 months in their home country. A number of applicants have been unjustly rejected.
We, the undersigned, support changing the current International Experience Canada Visa Program to extend the period of validation from one year to at least two years without residency requirements and to amend the current age restrictions for nationals mentioned in the preamble from the age of 18 to 35.
The working holiday visa program is a reciprocal country to country exchange program which currently allows international visitors age 18-30/35 to work in Canada for a period of up to one or two years.
The proposed changes would greatly help offset the current and future labour shortages within the construction, tourism and hospitality industries that have had, and will continue to have, a serious impact on business operations and service levels across Canada.
You can further help this campaign by sponsoring it
The 2 Year IEC Visas for other nationals without residency requirements petition to Whistler Chamber of Commerce, The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, The Govenment of Canada, The CIC was written by Ko Homma and is in the category Employment at GoPetition.