TRIECAbout UsTRIEC’s story

TRIEC's Story

In 2002, leaders representing the city’s various sectors and communities came together to hold the Toronto City Summit.

They held this conference to assess the Toronto region’s strengths and challenges, and shape future initiatives to move the region forward.

Following the Summit, a group of its delegates set up the Toronto City Summit Alliance (now known as Civic Action). The Alliance aimed to decide future priorities that would help the Greater Toronto Area prosper.

One of the challenges the Alliance identified was immigrant employment – more specifically how the region’s labour market could better leverage the immense skills and talent that immigrants bring. Employment is a key step in the path to settling in a new country, and immigrants face many barriers to meaningful employment in the Toronto region.

To face this challenge, Civic Action and Maytree formed TRIEC – the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council – the following year. At first, TRIEC operated as a council of leaders — representatives from different sectors who came together to generate ideas and solutions to address immigrant un and under-employment. A small team of staff made those ideas a reality, implementing them as initiatives that are still running today. TRIEC was a program of Maytree until 2012, when it became a charitable organization in its own right.

Today, the Council is the sum of TRIEC the organization and all its many stakeholders and partners. For more than 15 years, TRIEC has pursued collaborative strategies to better integrate immigrant professionals into the Greater Toronto Region. We’ve worked with multiple stakeholders to create and champion solutions. We’ve engaged employers to make real progress towards building immigrant inclusive workplaces. And we’ve worked to enhance coordination among key stakeholders including across all levels of government, municipal, regional, provincial and national.

View the story of our first 10 years.