Advocacy on proposed policy amendments impacting foreign graduates in Canada

On Friday, 20 November 2015, I sent off a letter by e-mail and regular (postal) mail to  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship John McCallum, regarding proposed amendments to their Express Entry Immigration Program outlining some key concerns as an international graduate of a Canadian institution. I detailed my migrant trajectory, work experience and settlement patterns to offer closer context to some recommendations.


The letter first congratulated the Prime Minister on his new portfolio and visionary cabinet. It also lauded the government's expediency with citizen feedback most recently reflected in the announcement of the return of the long form mandatory questionnaire in time for the 2016 national census, and went on to outline the reasons for my approaching the cabinet with proposed amendments to their Express Entry immigration program.  

Prime Minister Trudeau's campaign had already made broad announcements to ease hurdles and eliminate barriers to citizenship through the various streams (federal and provincial) for foreign students and graduates among other cohorts. Once implemented, these policies would strengthen Canada's position as an exporter of education and continue to attract talented immigrants to fill labour shortages to support an ongoing and historic symbiosis as birth rates plummet and baby boomers retire in large numbers in the host nation. The letter referenced Canada's unique success with multiculturalism--foreign students and graduates constituting a significant portion of this mix every year. Among the most challenging periods for foreign graduates from Canadian institutes are the gaps between program completion, graduation notification and the actual arrival of their open work permits. These challenges were outlined and recommendations offered. 


Three key recommendations were made to: 

1. Repeal the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) test, especially for professions where skills are transferable for foreign graduates of Canadian institutions
2. Inform employers that international students who have applied for their post graduation work permit (PGWP) deserve to be employed like domestic students
3. Remove the Express Entry criteria for international students OR award points for years spent studying in Canada (for eg. 300 for 1 year, 600 for 2 years, etc.) with additional points for co-ops and volunteer work completed in Canada at the Express Entry assessment

As an Express Entry candidate on the verge of the desired points for immigration to Canada, my recommendations came couched with the hope of being invited for permanent residency before my 30th birthday, three days after Christmas this year.  The letter concluded on a high note, with the hope to soon witness the impact of amendments to immigration that would enable smoother settlement experiences for skilled international graduates who have sacrificed their time, money, and simple pleasures to join the Canadian labour force and give back collectively to their new homeland.


To read the entire letter, feel free to get in touch at arundatid@gmail.com 

RELATED LINKS

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (2014, February 12). Retrieved November 7, 2015, from http://gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p2/2014/2014-02-12/html/sor-dors14-eng.php

Economic Impact of International Education in Canada - An Update. (2013, December 31). Retrieved November 20, 2015, from http://www.international.gc.ca/education/report-rapport/economic-impact-economique/index.aspx?lang=eng

Mckenna, B. (2015, November 7). As the baby boomers retire, the threat of intergenerational inequality looms. Retrieved November 7, 2015, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/retirement/as-the-baby-boomers-retire-the-threat-of-intergenerational-inequality-looms/article27163694/

Smith, B. (2015, October 28). Canada: New PM pledges to ease citizenship path, stakeholders optimistic. Retrieved November 7, 2015, from http://thepienews.com/news/canada-new-pm-pledges-to-ease-citizenship-path-stakeholders-optimistic/

OTTAWA IS ON FIRE! Rebranding Canada’s favourite city in 2017

Extolled for being great communicators, former winner of the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) Award, Mayor Jim Watson along with veteran businessman Guy Laflamme, an MBA professor at the University of Ottawa for over 25 years, engaged a full audience at the Lowertown Brewery in Ottawa’s Byward Market on Tuesday night, the 27^th of October, by their fireside chat on “Ottawa 2017”.

What is Ottawa 2017?

APEX CELEBRATIONS: Ottawa 2017 is gaining high currency nationwide!

In 2017, Canada turns 150 years as a nation, and the city’s mayor was in full form as he introduced the idea of a joyeux anniversaire as the country unites in the opinion that Ottawa should lead the country’s sesquicentennial celebrations. Guy Laflamme, Executive Director for this project, has scripted a 300-page blueprint/business plan of 2017 that details the year-long festivities and logistics planned for this city. Every day of the year will be celebrated as Canada Day.  The yearlong event is pegged to be not just a “flash in the pan”, but a mega celebration with sustainable long-term benefits for the city, province and neighbouring provinces.  Moreover, it’s not just Canada but the province of Ontario that’s also turning 150 years old and they are hoping to align Ontario's celebrations with the city of Montreal’s 375^th anniversary in 2017.  

2017 is not just nostalgia for those around in 1967. 81% of Cdns feel it's important to celebrate this milestone #Canada150 #IABCottPD

— 150Alliance (@150Alliance) October 27, 2015

Methodology

Guy Laflamme’s team conducted a series of consultations and sought over 600 recommendations from a number of stakeholders from which around 60% of the ideas were implemented. Research revealed that Ottawa should lead the celebrations as the country’s capital. They conducted numerous focus groups and considered the results of national surveys. 

Findings and proposed festivities

In 2017, it is estimated that over 11 million visitors will be coming to Ottawa,  the epicenter of all celebrations. It will be a unique program and rebranding exercise for the city, that plans to engage all of Canada with most events being offered FREE of charge. Guy explained some specifics of his blueprint, and how the project aimed to bring Ottawa to the forefront of all celebrations in his multimedia presentation that included fancy building projections, the new glass structure at the National Arts Centre, big interactive GIS powered experiences, a salute to the video games industry, sound and light shows, National Museum exhibits, and so much more! The plan is to distribute the celebrations equally across all regions of the city. Ottawa the Old will become Ottawa the Bold, spoke Guy, the mutltimedia magician.

#Ottawa deserves to be an epicentre (not "the place fun forgot!"). #Ottawa2017 to deliver 3,000-4,000 new jobs! #IABCottPD

— Tina Barton (@TinaMBarton) October 27, 2015

The idea would be to partner with existing local events (like Bluesfest, Jazz Fest), festivals and local businesses to magnify the offering for 2017. Their efforts have received close to 6 million dollars in municipal funding and is slated to bring in almost $230 million in GDP impact and provincial economic benefits. While New Canadians and the Canadian Youth (in accordance with the Canadian Tourism Commission 2017 Strategy) are the key target markets for this festival others include:  National Capital Region (NCR) Residents, Leisure tourists, Travel trade associations in Canada and the US.  All activities would be aimed at social cohesion and acculturation of diverse new cohorts of new Canadians by involving embassies and sub-communities as much as possible.   

  

How do organizations and small businesses get involved?

Watch out for www.ottawa2017.ca in the middle of May 2016 to find out exactly how. In the meantime, if you’d like to brainstorm, feel free to contact Guy or Jim. They extend an invite to align all your marketing efforts across all your platforms in ingenious ways to encourage a 150 years alliance. The board is also ready to sit down with your unique organizations and chat about other ways you could become "Sesquicentennial Ambassadors".

Great to hear that definition of success for #Ottawa2017 is for local citizens to help create a better city as ongoing legacy! #iabcottpd

— James Chan (@AccidentalCity) October 27, 2015

Where is, what about, Ottawa?

Sorry for the long sabbatical!

I was sidetracked by the World Book Reviews blog. But largely, I was adjusting to Arctic/Atlantic climates, because, you know, minus 44 degrees Centigrade is teeshirt weather.

Since My RitetoRead is the more city-portrait-calendar-of-events-in-town kind of blog, I return with posts about present cities and future ones too.

Most non-Canadians assume I must be living in Toronto when I tell them where I am in Canada. Even when I slowly enunciate "Ott-awa", the city still doesn't ring many bells. In Canada of course, everyone knows Ottawa. The house of big government.  Parliament Street. The Parliament. The Government. And until not too long ago, Stephen Harper. 

But, one rad mayor and his 2017 Team are about to change all of that. Watch out for some major rebranding ops underway for Ottawa in 2017 as the nation turns 150 years and its "old" sleepy capital gets a facelift and image makeover with the numerous activities planned for that year. I was glad when Ottawa's IABC event came along and explained all that was in store for this city in 2017. Read my next post to find out what's in store for Ottawa 2017. 

Photo credit: MapofCanada.org

THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY’S PANACEA IN A DIGITAL AGE

[This post first appeared on the MRIA website today, here: http://mria-arim.ca/publications/mria-blogging/blog-posts/the-publishing-industrys-panacea-in-a-digital-age]

Big data is how retail behemoth Amazon disrupted book publishing. Did publishers need to become the contact point for retail and aggregate data in order to keep their margins too?  Authors and publishers were discombobulated by the rise of digital, shattering old hierarchies and book distribution channels, reaching different demographics, epitomized by the game changing and controversial novel Fifty Shades of Grey accessible on discrete e-readers. The p-book apocalypse became the top business concern for first world publishers. Short stories and novellas made a digital comeback: fewer pages did not mean lesser business! Portability was a blessing for gadget-fed millennials and other urban commuters.

Disruptive innovation happened in the nineties for some and noughties for others. For many, it is happening right now. Nielsen BookScan, BookNet Canada, the Book Industry Study Group and Bowker Marketing Research among others, compile book sales figures that make it possible to track real time sales data and consumer profiles. Authors are held accountable to marketing research and sales benchmarks that are dubious. Part of the threat is the self-publishing revolution—where one in five books purchased in Britain in 2013, and a quarter of the books that got ISBNs in the US in 2012, were self-published!   

Will the future of books be unravelled by data intelligence techniques alone? Or will the success of e-books ride on the cheapest prices to break inroads with the mass market? The monopsony that is Amazon scares publishers who have turned multimedia, attracting mergers and acquisitions as bailouts for consumer starved, segregated marketplaces. Big data will extract customer insights and link publishers to retail outlets. It will identify and solve research problems (eg: closet readerships) and address the book industry’s demands locally, nationally, and internationally.

  

Bibliography

Barber, John. (2012). “Why Book buying stats might stifle the next great author.” The Globe and Mail.Retrieved September 26, 2014, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/why-book-buying-stats-might-stifle-the-next-great author/article6755208/?cmpid=rss1&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+TheGlobeAndMail-Entertainment+%2528The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Arts+News%2529

Frank, Adam. (2012). “Big data and its problems.” National Public Radio.  Retrieved September 26, 2014, from http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/09/18/161334704/big-data-and-its-big-problems

Fromen, Allan. (2014). “Why Big Data Will Never Replace Market Research.” Green Book Blog. Retrieved 

September 27, 2014, from http://www.greenbookblog.org/2014/05/19/why-big-data-will-never-replace-market-research/

Krugman, Paul (2014). “Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.” Retrieved October 19, 2014, fromhttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/paul-krugman-amazons-monopsony-is-not-ok.html?_r=2

Wunker, Stephen. (2011)“Long Tail Business Models: Amazon on offense and defense.” Retrieved September 26, 2014, from http://www.newmarketsadvisors.com/blog/bid/36296/Long-tail-business-models-Amazon-on-offense-and-defense

Webb, Jenn. (2012).“Publisher: a new role in data herding.” Retrieved September 26, 2014, fromhttp://toc.oreilly.com/2012/10/data-driven-publishing-changing-publisher-roles.html

World Book Reviews: my journey in books

Here's plugging to you, my world book reviews blog. Follow my journey in books by clicking below!

WORLD BOOK REVIEWS

An old poem!

circa 2006: The Wittenberg Review of Literature & Art

- With grateful thanks to dear friend Indraroop R. Mohanti for scanning/dearchiving.

Publishing, Pundits, and the India of all things

This was my first time at Delhi’s World Book Fair, until I was quickly bombarded with memories in hall number 12, from when I was six or seven years old, of being pushed into the Scholastic book stall, coaxed into sampling the many educational toys and multimedia that would test my applied mental maths, science and grammar skills, complementing my good Indian education, preparing my kid-brain for standardised (and computerised) test-taking in the (far) future.

Today, a different excitement preceded me. When I heard about colleges giving free iPads to Indian students, my heart skipped ten beats – was this my India? People throbbed between stalls and aisles where screen space and page space became interchangeable; BPOs had also become book happy. Good commerce was the high point for many Indian publishers today, the unicorn of world publishing, having forever thrived on their volume and velocity of books in numerous languages from over 5000 years of documented and undocumented wealth from skinny pamphlets to doorstopper tomes. Books as cheap as Rs. 15 were displayed on exhibitor shelves and promoted alongside live authors holding out glass ashtrays (and fishbowls) for donations. Self-publishing brokers enticed you to ‘become a (published) poet in 25 days,’ and booklove was competing for shelf space with bookbiz. With a sizeable cross-section of people of different ages and sections of society, the footfalls were the roughest survey of what indicated a clearly buoyant industry. Local language publishers (and we have about 22 formal and over 400 spoken languages in India) were all obtaining niche markets in retailers and libraries abroad, setting up new imprints, breaking new inroads. Digital was just another dimension of Indian publishing and beckoned no print apocalypse, even as publishers the world over racked all their brains, whipped up new technologies to struggle to co-exist in a tablet eat tabloid world. 

The running theme ‘Indigenous voices’ offered a sound platform for the showcase of local and legacy  art including Bihar’s historic Madhubani paintings depicting gods and goddesses sketched by artists who mixed their colours from plants, bark, and cow dung. The artists said their art could not be muted by a stink, even if “sab devi-devta gobar hain” (all the gods are dung). Our economic choices are our social choices too.

But the special debut this year was the ‘author’s corner’: cool hotspots in every hall were dedicated to author interviews and interaction. The organizer proudly told me it came from NBT’s generosity and commitment to authors so that they do not have to be crammed in publishers’ quarters, stalling instead of aiding commerce. The idea was great, equally inspired by other world book fairs and intended to accommodate healthy, telegenic audiences.

My first event at the author’s corner would be for the critically acclaimed book Our Moon Has Blood Clots and its author Rahul Pandita. No sooner had I arrived at the venue than I was greeted with the sight of a gentleman in white robes and flowy hair, bloodshot vermilion with rice grains shooting out of his forehead, as he reclined into the studio sofa. “Ladies and gentleman forks” he began, “I am Hindu Pandit, you can ask me anything you want to know about Hinduism, Hindu ethics and Hindu morality.” A trickle of followers wormed their way into his audience hold, and began asking him questions about how to be a good Hindu. 

His advice went on unabated for ten minutes until I caught the attention of an NBT guest in-charge who hurried over when I signalled to her that this was not the author! Her jaw dropped; she had asked the wrong man if he was Rahul Pandita and he had replied, yes, seizing the stage too promptly. For proof, when I reproduced the author’s photo from the insides of his first book, the girl paled, but shot quick orders for cameras to stop rolling. The speaking man onstage caught wind, and with the force of an ablution dropped the curtain, “Thank you forks.” A trickle of audience members almost as easily dispersed with him, leaving one with doubts about their ‘genuineness’ too… were they his followers pretending to be an ‘audience’!

In between speedy intercoms the boss organiser who had visited the publisher stalls meanwhile, returned to us with no news, declaring the event cancelled. “Bah! These English language authors are all like that…”, he cackled. “Big foreign publishers are also like that…” he continued, “Gulzar ji, Akhtar sahib, and even I would never do such a thing!”

On that fated Saturday, when other anticipated authors made their absence felt too, Mr. Akash Bannerjee, author of India Shining and Sinking and former TV TODAY broadcast journalist took on the vacant slots, capturing the minds of an army of media students and budding journalists as he waxed on about the day’s news from Afzal Guru’s hanging that morning, to the highs and lows of Indian journalism today, provoking intense debate about idealism and commercial sense in newsmaking. Book? Author? Who?

Even the absence of few heavyweight authors on a Saturday did not quite dent the spirits of the masses who had come to this Kumbh mela in books with hopes in hell to sever from their loved ones and siblings, even as a handful of men roamed the grounds claiming to be speakers, jockeying for minutes of fame on the NBT film archives. The National Book Trust staff utilized twenty minutes of cancelled event time that day, capturing my own video bytes for their film documentary, sending me home in a woolly sheep's clothing.