Ontario: Skilled Workers

Canadian Immigration Dept: The primary reason is a restructuring of Canadian immigration that gave more control to provincial governments. Ontario, for so long an irresistible magnet to highly educated skilled workers, was slow to adjust. The status quo had served it well. While provinces such as Manitoba, British Columbia and Alberta jumped at the newly created provincial nominee program early in the decade, Ontario did little, according to Globe and Mail. While the number of immigrants remained constant at about 250,000 per year, Ontario s share shrank. The other provinces used the nominee program to gobble up applicants, such as tradespeople, who don t fare well in the points system for skilled-worker applications. As the skilled-worker stream declined, so did Ontario. Ontario s going to show declining growth, that s for sure, said Doug Norris, senior vice-president at Environics Analytics and a leading expert on the census. They ve pulled immigrants out of Ontario, and immigrants drive growth, so Ontario s going to be down. Ontario didn t use the nominee program very much because for a long time it thought it was getting the numbers and also the kinds of immigrants it wanted, said Leslie Seidle, research director for immigration at the Institute for Research on Public Policy. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.