Immigration Solution to Canada's Top Problem

Canada's Prime Minister recently held a meeting of all the country's Premier's, intended on addressing what is foreseen as the country's top economic problem. The problem that they were addressing was that of Canada's decreasing labour force: within 10-20 years, there may not be enough of a workforce to meet the country's requirements.

Canada's present Minister of Human Resources, and former Minister of Immigration, provided figures to demonstrate the problem:

* British Columbia will be short 350,000 workers over the next 12 years.
* Alberta will require 100,000 workers over the next 10 years.
* Ontario will need 560,000 more workers by 2030.
* Quebec will have 1.3 million job openings by 2016.

Improvement of training programs and increasing immigration are proposed to avoid what some government strategists called an "economic time bomb." The ability to admit more skilled workers is one of the goals behind recent legislative amendments to change immigration rules to fast-track certain groups of immigrants. Some political opponents to these changes feel that this purpose is not sufficiently clear: 'What we think is that the immigration policies of this country should be designed to help workers come here with their families, use their training and skills and help build the country,' says NDP Leader Jack Layton.