I recently asked an immigrant from Pakistan who is a mentee with The Mentoring Partnership why he came to Canada. He had been showing me pictures of his life back in Pakistan—beautiful pictures of his office at the bank where he was bank manager, his well-appointed home, his two lovely children in their school uniforms. He didn’t say anything, he just scrolled back on his iPad to the image of the two children and pointed. “You’re here for them?” “Of course I am,” he said.

This interchange seemed to sum up for me so many things that I have seen and heard over the last ten months I have been at TRIEC.

  • Canada and the GTA are in competition to attract the best and the brightest and that competition is getting steeper as the opportunity in our source countries is increasing substantially for skilled professionals.
  • That immigrants come here for a better future and that Canada is still perceived as being a better future for the next generation. For previous generations, taking a survival job might have been a sacrifice willingly made for the children, but the promise of Canada is that you don’t have to make that sacrifice. You can or should be able to get the same or better job in Canada that you had in your home country.

Unfortunately, Canada is not delivering on that promise and we’ve seen a decline in the number of immigrants coming to the GTA over the past few years.

At TRIEC, we truly believe that by working together we can ensure that better future for skilled immigrants who come here as well as for our region as a whole. The working life of the immigrant needs to get better, and when it does, it will have a profound and positive effect, economically and socially, on us all in the GTA.

I encourage you to take a look at our Annual Report and our new Strategic Plan to see how we imagine our better future. We all have a role to play and we look forward to working with you to make that it happen.

 

Margaret Eaton
Executive Director