Audiologists and speech-language pathologists. These are two professions that have the most number of foreign trained personnel in Canada’s Ontario province.
The province’s independent Fairness Commissioner’s latest report says more than a third of the almost 3,200 professionals in this sector were trained abroad.
The report tracks the performance of the 34 regulated professions and how they are dealing with, among other issues, assisting skilled immigrants integrate into the Canadian workforce.
The 34 professions regulated in the province are: architects, audiologists and speech-language pathologists, chiropodists, chiropractors, dental hygienists, dental surgeons, dental technologists, denturists, dietitians, early childhood educators, engineering technicians and technologists, engineers, foresters, general accountants, professional geoscientists, land surveyors, lawyers, management accountants, massage therapists, medical lab technologists, medical radiation technologists, midwives, nurses, occupational therapists, opticians, optometrists, pharmacists, physicians and surgeons, physiotherapists, psychologists, respiratory therapists, social workers, teachers and veterinarians.
All in all, just about one in seven of the more than 700,000 professionals working in these sectors were trained abroad.
While pharmacists and audiologists-speech language pathologists professions have a high percentage of internationally trained professionals, Opticians and foresters come at the bottom of the table, with just one percent.
Some professions – surveyors, lawyers, midwives and paralegals – did not submit any data.
A quarter of the provinces engineers and 27 percent of the doctors and surgeons were foreign trained.
One interesting facet of Canada’s changing demographics is also very evident in this study. More and more professionals are coming to Canada not from other Anglo-Saxon countries such as Australia, the US, UK or even South Africa, but from countries such as India, Pakistan and the Philippines.
For example, of the top ten professions in the province, the US is the top source for five (teachers, lawyers, management accountants, chartered accountants and social workers) and India comes second with three (physicians and surgeons, engineering technologists and technicians and general accountants). China is the top source for engineers while the Philippines sends most of the nurses.
To view or download the report, go to the Ontario Fairness Commissioner’s site.
