Prince George, B.C. – Representatives of several community organizations in Prince George received an opportunity to meet with the federal Minister of Employment, Social Development and Multiculturalism today.

Jason Kenney arrived in the city Monday night and attended an informal supper.  A meeting was set up for today to allow the local groups to provide input about the issue of immigrants who come to work in Canada.  The Executive Director of the Immigrant and Multicultural Services Society, Baljit Sethi, says new immigrants to the country should be provided with training for their particular profession so that they can be absorbed quickly into the labour market.

Sethi says currently “we have Skill Connect, that’s a good program and the only program that helps immigrants to get some training and we want that it should be continued while other programs should not be slashed.”

Sethi says it was felt that Kenney would be a good minister to speak with because “he was the Minister of Immigration before and he is very dynamic in the way that he did so many changes and overhauled the whole immigration system.  He has more knowledge than anybody a else and should know that the immigrants that are here don’t want to go to the government” for handouts.  She adds “it is an economic benefit to the country if they utilize their skills and help the economy if they can get established in Canada in a better way.”

Asked what message she wants to deliver to Kenney, Sethi says “our concern is to inform the appropriate minister to what the community needs, what a certain group of people may need, and it’s a major group of people not a small group.  And according to the population of Canada it’s decreasing, the birth rate is decreasing so one of the big issues getting support is that we bring more young immigrants to this country.  But if they come to this country we don’t need labourers, we need people in every field.  But if an engineer is working as a janitor or a doctor is working in a field there is no point bringing them over here.  If we bring them here then we should know what we are going to offer them and how we could make them useful for the economy of this country.”

Sethi says immigrants coming to B.C. are settling in the lower mainland and places like Kelowna, but, she says “it is in the northern region that we are short of skilled workers.  The northern region is the last one they would come to so we need the immigration focused on the northern region and more immigrants should be sent here instead of those other places.”

Sethi says she doesn’t  not want to see an influx of temporary foreign workers “because that would delay the process of other immigrants who want to come and stay in our communities.  They will work and involve themselves in the future of this country.”