To achieve its full potential, Ottawa must attract, maintain, and effectively utilize an already impressive, but still growing, pool of highly talented workers. This talent resource is essential to building on the city's past successes, and to seizing new opportunities as global economic conditions return to more favourable conditions.
Ottawa already boasts the competitive advantages of the most highly educated workforce of any major metropolitan area in Canada. According to the 1996 Census, nearly twothirds (65%) of Ottawa's 25 to 64 year-old workforce possessed some form of postsecondary certificate, diploma or degree. More than one-third (34%) held a university degree.
Contributing to this pool of talent is the city's immigrant population. Each year, thousands of immigrants come to Canada and choose to settle in Ottawa. Many are highly educated workers and skilled professionals. The 1996 Census showed that 68% of the recent immigrant workforce aged 25 to 64 had a post-secondary education, and 43% held a university degree. Today, immigrants coming to Ottawa are even more likely to have post-secondary credentials. According to the department of Citizenship and Immigration 2001 landing records, 51% of immigrants intending to settle in Ottawa held a university degree.
While most immigrants find success in the Ottawa labour market, an alarming number are unable to put their skills and education to full use. Often for newcomers, there are barriers and challenges in having their foreign-obtained qualifications and work experience recognized. This results in a costly and ineffective transition into the labour market and a dramatic underutilization of available talent. Indeed, one of the 10 key challenges identified in the second Ottawa Works report, Profiling Ottawa's Workforce, (Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa) is the underutilization of foreigntrained professionals. Addressing this challenge will be an important part of the city's emerging Workforce Development Plan.
In an effort to address this issue, the Ottawa Foreign Trained Workers Project has been launched, under the partnership of the United Way/Centraide Ottawa, the Canadian Labour and Business Centre and LASI World Skills. The overall goal of the project is to develop a community-based strategy aimed at facilitating the accreditation and integration of foreign trained workers into the Ottawa economy.
As a first step in this project, the research team has crafted a statistical profile that highlights the role of immigration in Ottawa's workforce landscape. Data for the profile has been drawn from the Census1, CIC administrative data, local HRDC offices, and from the databases of Ottawa's immigrant servicing agencies. The resulting profile demonstrates the importance of immigration to population growth and the current labour force, highlights the education and skill levels of immigrants settling in Ottawa, and illustrates the underutilization of foreign-trained talent.
1 Where possible, 2001 Census results have been used. Statistics derived from the 1996 Census will be updated as information becomes available. Return