Being A Smart Canadian
We all love when we win free goodies at the stores.
But do you know that in Ontario, they also come tax-free?
With the new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), replacing the federal General Services Tax (GST) and the Provincial Services Tax (PST) which were levied separately, there is some confusion about what are taxed.
Yes, this is something even some stores forget; for example, if you have a coupon which provides you something for free, then that product is not taxable under Ontario’s tax law.
The Canadian government will distribute almost 600 million dollars during 2012-2013 to all provinces outside the French-speaking province of Quebec to fund immigrant settlement programs.
But there is a general trend, with more money heading towards western and eastern Canada while central Canada, with the province of Ontario at its core, receiving less than in previous years.
According to federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, Ontario will be receiving 315 million dollars, down from 347 million dollars it received during the current fiscal year.
This is because recent data suggest more immigrants are heading western provinces like Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the Atlantic Canada provinces in the east of the country.
The Minister’s office says that the number of immigrants coming to Ontario, with its capital Toronto and its suburbs at the core, has gone down from 64 percent in 2005 to 52-percent in 2010.
Ontario, which is still the most known province for immigrants, is not happy. The province’s immigration minister Charles Sousa is complaining that immigrants are not coming towards Ontario because of slower immigration application processing by the federal immigration officials.
However, federal immigration officials are denying this. One official was quoted as saying on average, an application filed under the Federal Skilled Worker class is processed within a year.
Some analysts point out that the problem might be lying with Ontario, with the province slacking off in attracting more immigrants. The province has also has a longstanding issue of slower integration of skilled professionals such as accountants, engineers and architects.
Some suggest Ontario should take advantage of the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP), which gives the country’s individual provinces and territories to bring in immigrants who can fulfil local employment needs.
Canada is planning to increase considerably the number of immigrants allowed under the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) next year.
According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada – CIC which is the federal department in charge of immigration issues – most of the country’s provinces and territories will be allowed sponsor between 42,000 and 45,000 immigrants will be allowed through the program next year.
The PNP is a program that allows the country’s individual provinces and territories to select immigrants who possess a skill set that the respective province or territory needs. The immigrants have to be nominated by the respective province or territory.
Under the Canada-Quebec Accord, the French-speaking province of Quebec has the sole authority for selecting immigrants to its province. However, these candidates must still meet CIC’s admissibility requirements.
For more information, visit the following CIC site.
“The Government of Canada recognizes the crucial role the Provincial Nominee Program plays in meeting local labour market needs,” said Minister Kenney. “The PNP has made great strides in sharing the benefits of economic immigration across the country.”
The number for 2012 compare to the estimated 36,000 immigrants who will be granted permission to move to Canada this year under the PNP. These numbers include the principle applicant and their spouses and dependents.
According to officials, the number of immigrants moving to Canada under the program has increased by seven-fold since 2004.
Traditionally, most of the immigrants have ended up in major cities such as Toronto in Ontario, Vancouver in British Columbia and Montreal in Quebec, but this program is being increasingly used by other provinces to attract immigrants.
For example, Manitoba plans to bring in as many as 5000 immigrants through the PNP stream.
Four provinces in Canada’s east coast, commonly known as the Atlantic Provinces, have launched major initiatives to boost immigration.
As part of the strategy, the Premiers (who are the elected leaders of the provinces in Canada) of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland & Labrador and Prince Edward Island (PEI) want to talk to Canada’s federal government about relaxing the cap on the so-called Provincial Nominee Program (PNP).
The PNP allows individual provinces and territories to select their own immigrants based on the needs of that particular province or territory. The federal government, through the department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), together with a province or territory imposes a cap for every year for PNP immigration.
According to CIC, the national quota for PNP for this year is between 17,500 and 18,800 principle applicants.
But the PNP annual quota differs from province to province and some officials from the Atlantic provinces have been unhappy about that. They point out that New Brunswick, for example, has a population of 750,000 and is allocated a PNP cap of 625 every year while Manitoba, in the west, is allowed 5,000 under the PNP for a population of 1.2 million.
It is not clear, though, how many immigrants the four provinces want to bring under the PNP.
Attracting new immigrants has become critical for many of Canada’s provinces and territories. It is even more critical for the Atlantic provinces for four key reasons: keep population growing, keep pace with the developments in rest of Canada in terms of immigration, attract people with knowledge and attract fresh cash.
As one observer put it, the general population trend of Atlantic Canada is old, white and declining while in provinces like Ontario, British Columbia it is young, multicultural and growing.
Some of the provinces have already launched separate programs to boost immigration. For example, earlier this month, Nova Scotia launched an ambitious program to double its annual immigrant intake, to reach 7,200 immigrants by 2020, and part of the plan is to increase the PNP from the current 500 to 1,500.
One of the challenges faced by region is that many of the immigrants who move there do not remain there; they emigrate within Canada, mostly to major hubs such as Ontario or British Columbia after a few years.
But this might be changing. One study done by the St Mary’s University in Halifax, in Nova Scotia, found out that while 54 percent of the immigrants who had moved to the Atlantic region during the five years ending in 2001 were still in the region, this had gone up to 65 percent by 2006. Nova Scotia, in its new immigration strategy, plans to increase the retention rate to seventy percent.
Officials from the region say that immigrants generally fare better there, than in the major hubs. Some studies do show immigrants moving to the Atlantic provinces tend to get jobs appropriate to their professions faster and also earn more than immigrants moving to provinces such as Ontario.
Links to Atlantic Canadian Provincial Immigration Sites:
There are ever more foreign-trained doctors being granted licence to practise in the province of Ontario in Canada.
According to provincial health officials, 41-percent of the 3,700-plus doctors who were granted a licence last year were from abroad.
Ten years ago, this was 28-percent.
At present, the province grants about 200 residencies for those doctors who immigrated to Canada. But those lobbying for the interests of the internationally trained medical professionals claim there are thousands of foreign trained doctors currently looking to practise in the province.
Canada, both at federal and provincial levels, has been trying to alleviate at least some of the hurdles faced by foreign trained doctors in trying to practise in the province.
Ontario’s provincial government has rejected calls to waive its three-month waiting period for new immigrants to receive free health care.
The Ontario Health Insurance Plan – or commonly known as the OHIP, is Ontario’s version of the Canadian free health care system, and it covers most essential health care bills of Canadians and permanent residents.
New immigrants can access the services only after 90 days of registered residency in the province, but there have been calls from immigrant and settlement groups as well as from the powerful Ontario Medical Association (OMA) – the group representing the province’s medical professionals – to do away with it.
The OMA had lately argued that the waiting period was an unnecessary hurdle to medical care without being cost effective.
The agency also said that money can be saved if those suffering from a serious illness seek immediate medical assistance, rather than wait for the waiting period to end.
But the provincial health minister Deb Matthews says all hospitals and community health centres will accept patients needing emergency care with or with the OHIP card.
The government also says it is keeping the waiting period intact to prevent people visiting the province just to take advantage of the medical system.
Although a number of provinces and territories in Canada do not have a waiting period, Ontario officials point out that they are not alone in maintaining it. Quebec and British Columbia, the two other provinces that also receive high number of immigrants every year, also have a waiting period.
The Metro supermarket chain has a special offer for shoppers in Ontario, Canada (excluding Thunder Bay) with AIR Miles Collector Cards. It is offering more than 200 Bonus Air Miles on selected products.
The offer is valid from November 12, 2010, to Thursday, November 18, 2010.
No coupons are necessary.
You can buy the following for 200 Air Miles.
$25.00 gift coupon from The Keg (195 Air Miles)
$25.00 gift coupon from Starbucks (200 Air Miles)
$25.00 gift coupon from Kernels Popcorn (185 Air Miles)
2, $10.00 gift coupons from iTunes (total 190 Air Miles)
Movie Package for two from the Empire Theatres (175 Air Miles)
1 year of subscription for Chatelaine magazine (75 Air Miles)
You can also rent movies from Blockbuster from 30 Air Miles upwards
One of the largest regions of Ontario province, in Canada, has started a new initiative to attract immigrants. The 32 cities, townships and villages that make up north-western Ontario have come together and set up a new portal, immigrationnorthwesternontario.ca, to send out invitations.
With an area of more than half a million square kilometres, north-western Ontario is larger than many countries but almost half of its 250,000 people live in one city, Thunder Bay.
Traditionally, the region has depended on natural resources such as forestry for its economic well-being, and while natural resources-based industries still dominate the landscape, the region also hopes to cash in on in the investments in the knowledge-based economy, such as bio-technology sector and other research companies as well as the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. Besides, it also hopes to cash in on the thousands of lakes that attract tourists from Canada and the neighbouring United States.
Officials say there is a demand for professionals in a number of sectors.
courtesy:northwestontario.ca
While the region lacks the hustle-bustle and the diversity of major cities such as Toronto or the Greater Toronto Area with their thousands of restaurants catering to every ethno-cultural group and a host of other multi-cultural facilities, life in north-western Ontario has its own attractions.
For example, it is very quite and people tend to be closer and helpful to each other. There also tends to be more facilities for families as they grow.
And one of the biggest advantages of the region is that it is open to welcoming immigrants, not just from Europe but from the around the world. The immigration portal, for example, runs in a number of languages, including Arabic, German, Japanese and Hindi.
OTHER LINKS
The Ontario provincial government and the province’s medical profession’s regulatory body are being taken to task to resolve the long-simmering issue of insufficient residency spots for foreign-trained doctors.
Mitra Arjang and Parampal Ghoshal, who are Iran- and India-trained doctors, respectively, are using the Internet for their campaign. They have started an online petition, asking the Ontario provincial government and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) to grant transitional licences for foreign-trained doctors who have passed the necessary Canadian exams.
Arjang and Ghoshal say the ‘transitional’ licences should allow them to work them in a restricted capacity under supervision until they are qualified to work on their own. This way, they suggest to be able to bypass the residency requirement, which is the stumbling block for most foreign-trained doctors wishing to practise in the province.
In their petition, the two doctors say the CPSO, “without convincing clear reasons or explanations, and in defiance of the law, is unfairly denying licenses to highly qualified immigrant medical doctors.”
The Association of International Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, which is a non-governmental group lobbing on behalf of the foreign-trained doctors, says there are about 7,500 immigrant doctors living in Canada’s largest province which attracts the most number of the 250,000 immigrants who come to Canada every year.
About 2,000 of them have reportedly passed all the qualifying exams – which range from the Canadian Medical Exams and received the Licentiate of Medical Council of Canada, the Ontario Clinical Assessment Exams, English Language Exams – and had many interviews but are struck without a residency.
The problems faced by foreign-trained doctors in Canada are well documented, and many have pointed out the disconnect between the country’s immigration policies and the practises of regulatory bodies. Under the points-based immigration system, they get extra points for the reported need for doctors in Canada, but practising in provinces like Ontario is a whole different story. Thousands of them give up the hope of resuming their practise and end up doing jobs totally different.
In fact, there is even a joke that if one is sick, he or she should take a cab, because the chance of meeting an unemployed doctor driving the taxi is pretty high.
But for many, this is a waste of resource of both the country that trained them, and for the doctors who want to work but cannot.
But the CPSO is defending itself, saying there has been progress in resolving the issue. For example, it points out that more than 40-percent of the just over 3,600 licences issued last year were issued to foreign-trained doctors. The agency also says that it has increased the residencies available for foreign doctors from 24 to 200 during the past ten years, and is citing lack of resources as the key reason for not being able to issue all qualified foreign doctors a residency.
And the federal and provincial levels of government have indeed taken note of the issue, and have been funding special projects to help the foreign-trained doctors.
Just earlier this month, the government gave an almost three-million dollar grant to the Medical Council of Canada to create a centralized online system for the foreign-trained doctors to apply for medical licences in any of the provinces or territories. At present, applications have to be made to the respective province or territory.
The system is expected to be go online in two years time.
But for foreign-trained doctors, the problem is not about applying. It is about being able to practise once t hey pass all the needed exams.
And as for Arjang and Ghoshal’s petition, there are already 175 signatures.
The provincial government in Ontario has introduced new legislation it says will help it protect foreign students from falling for bogus universities or colleges.
What the Ontario government wants is more powers to tackle businesses that might establish colleges or universities without permission to grant degrees or diplomas.
The new rules will help the government shut down such businesses much easily, than having to go through extended legal processes.
This move comes as Ontario announced yet another step to make the province even more attractive for foreign students.
The provincial government, just like its federal counterpart in Ottawa as well as governments in Australia and New Zealand, sees the foreign student sector as an excellent source for foreign exchange earnings.
Accordingly, Ontario wants to increase the intake of foreign students by fifty percent over the next five years.
Under new rules, those who have completed PhD from an Ontario university can apply to be fast tracked for the permanent residence, which allows them to work without a work permit. Generally, the permanent residence is the first step towards Canadian citizenship.
Canada’s French speaking province of Quebec has also brought in changes to fast track foreign students towards Canadian citizenship. (Article here.)
Get the Word of the Day & Much More
