It has been a landmark year for TRIEC – 2018 marked our 15th anniversary!

In November we brought our partners together for the first annual TRIEC Immigrant Inclusion Summit where we launched the State of Immigrant Inclusion 2018 Report. Some of the key findings were:

• The unemployment gap for university-educated immigrant professionals in the Greater Toronto Area is narrowing, but is still twice that of Canadian-born professionals
• 80% of employers felt immigrant professionals had positively affected their organizations
• 61% of employers said that a new focus on diversity and inclusion was the main reason their organization had changed its practices around hiring and retaining immigrants
• Newcomers in the GTA who gained a Bachelor’s degree or higher in Canada are more likely to be working in a job that requires a degree than newcomers who did not
• Newcomer women with a University degree earn on average half the amount of their Canadian-born counterparts

These learnings showed us that while some things have improved for immigrant professionals, there is still a great deal of work to be done. It encouraged us to focus our efforts, with the support of our partners and champions, to create more inclusive workplaces and work toward a Greater Toronto Area which is fully leveraging the skills and talents of our newcomers.

And we are proud to report that we had some great successes this year as we continued the work of our two-year strategic plan and advanced our key priorities to:

1. Grow mentoring impact

   This year the TRIEC Mentoring Partnership program continued its success with 2,201 mentor matches - smashing the target set for the year. We also brought four new employer partners into the program, expanding the pool of established professional mentors available to support newcomers in their fields. 2018 - 2019 also saw the launch of the National Mentoring Pilot in partnership with founding sponsor RBC. We’re excited to work with RBC and our immigrant employment council partners across Canada to give more newcomers the opportunity to access a mentor.

2. Broaden and deepen immigrant inclusion in workplaces

   In 2018-2019, to help individuals, teams, and organizations become more inclusive and build workplaces that work for everyone, we piloted two strategic frameworks – Inclusive Workplace Competencies and Inclusion Measurement Blueprint.

   We developed new inclusion measurement tools and have already tested them with 19 employers in Toronto and Ottawa. We also added new capabilities to the TRIEC Learning platform and aligned our resources with the Inclusive Workplace Competencies. Already in this short period, the competencies have helped employers in Ontario and around the world with over 100 organizations accessing the model.

   In addition, seven organizations completed the Certificate for Inclusive Leadership program, a four-month program helping organizational leaders build Diversity and Inclusion strategies within their organizations.

3. Maximize the role of partners and champions.

   Over the course of the year we supported 1,191 immigrant professionals planning to come to Canada through our partnership with JVS Toronto on the CanPrep program, by creating e-learning modules, and connections with professional associations in the PINs program.

   Associations, community partners, and employer partners in the Professional Immigrant Networks (PINs) program came together to host four sector-specific networking events for immigrant professionals in the fields of Healthcare, Legal, Finance, and Engineering. with. They were a huge success with almost 400 participants attending.

We would like to take this opportunity to offer a heartfelt thanks to our board, our staff, our community and employer partners and all of TRIEC’s stakeholders for making our achievements possible.

All in all it was exciting anniversary year. A chance to look back on where we came from, assess the state of things for immigrant professionals and point our way to where we are going next.

We look forward to collaborating with a growing circle of committed organizations, networks and individuals to support immigrant inclusion in the years to come.

The TRIEC Team