Group items tagged

Investment training for economic development staff

Conducting business retention and expansion research

Identifying investment strengths and local assets

Developing a community profile to show potential investor

Developing and implementing a targeted strategy for encouraging foreign investment

Developing and implementing a targeted strategy for retaining and expanding existing foreign investments

Developing or substantially upgrading websites for foreign direct investment purposes

Implementing strategies to retain or expand the investment of foreign affiliates already located in Canada

Eligible Expenses

Research and studies: identification of target corporations, comparative competitive analyses, development of business cases, business retention and expansion studies, etc.

Economic data: collection of community and economic data for investment profiles, etc.

Strategic FDI planning: facilitators, consultant costs, community consultations, development of strategic plans.

Website development: development and/or major redesign, addition of significant architecture and functionality.

Translation: translation of documents or website content into either one of Canada’s official languages or foreign languages;

Promotional materials (print or electronic): design and layout only (printing costs and the pressing of CDs and DVDs are not eligible).

Advertising: design and layout.

Investment Training including EDAC annual conference: courses as part of the community’s investment attraction and retention strategy for employees of the Community.

Consultants/contractors.

Ineligible ExpensesResearch activities not associated with investment attraction, retention and expansion. Collection or purchase of statistical data not associated with investment attraction, retention or expansion activities. Development of training courses/modules. Consultants hired to facilitate a training session. Costs associated with hiring consultants to develop ICCI applications. Regular website maintenance and updating web content, site hosting, software licensing, Corporate logo design, costs of printing, pressing CDs, or DVDs, and recording videocassettes. All give-aways: gifts, events/shows/concerts tickets, logo items, cups, mugs, pens, etc. Design and layout of non-investment ads (promoting tourism, for example), cost of ad placement in any media.

Travel costs incurred by applicants, partners or consultants not related to training; travel costs incurred by potential investors. Taxes: GST, PST, HST, VAT or taxes applied by foreign governments. Hospitality: Cost of meals or alcohol; lodging; clothing and uniforms; and all give-aways. Trade show/conference participation:  registration fees at international trade shows or conferences  (in Canada and abroad), booth design / purchase / assembly and shipping, design of promotional material specifically for a trade show, overhead costs such as pre-show mailing, stationery and long distance phone calls, research to target companies at a trade show, consultant costs for organizing outgoing missions (including training participants); consultant costs to develop target business cases for follow up with potential investors after show; cost of developing an advertisement (design and layout) for show specific publications. Activities or projects  related to attracting infrastructure for tourism and motion picture industries, e.g: to develop ski resorts, theme parks and film production facilities.

Capital costs: infrastructure development, capital expenditures to acquire or enhance assets, software licenses, electronics (computers, fax, machines, digital cameras, etc.), demonstration aids. Capital costs include the direct costs of acquisition, construction, expansion, modification, conversion, transportation, installation and insurance (during construction) of fixed assets, as well as the cost of licensing and franchising fees. Overhead costs: Postage, including postage for direct mail campaigns; phone; office space rental; photocopying. Salaries and benefits of personnel. Miscellaneous: activities to attract investment from inside Canada; costs incurred before the application’s approval date; activities for which one or more partners expect to receive compensation in the form of a commission, finder’s fee, or other form of remuneration; promotion activities related to properties or business investment in which one or more partners receive a personal or corporation financial gain.

help Canadian communities become more effective in dealing with foreign direct investment aftercare and support specific foreign investment promotion initiatives. 

encourage intergovernmental cooperation, promote partnerships with the private sector and demonstrate federal commitment to encourage foreign direct investment and retention.

Much of the Services sector work is seasonal and activity levels fluctuate with oil and gas prices.

The Services sector is a preferred labour supply source for the Exploration and Production and Oil sands sectors that often hire full-time employees from its contracted workforce.

The Services sector may be facing a labour shortage, but the industry as a whole will soon have to adapt to a much tighter labour market. During the downturn, cost management was the primary concern for the industry. In the latter half of 2010, attraction, retention and workforce development returned as key priorities for many oil and gas companies. Industry recovery has also increased the challenges around managing compensation and benefits expectations as well as employee turnover/retention. These workforce issues continue to escalate in today's market. For many companies, managing labour issues will be key to sustaining growth.

process of allocating nominations to employers before they select individual nominees disadvantages workers in at least two ways. First, it further discourages workers from accessing existing employment protections such as minimum employment standards in the face of employer abuses, by giving employers sole discretion to “reward” workers with nominations. Given that these nominations represent a direct path to permanent residence status in Canada, they are obviously extremely valuable to workers. As Yessy Byl, the Alberta Federation of Labour’s Temporary Foreign Worker Advocate, points out, some employers “use this program as a further excuse to exploit workers who desperately want to immigrate.

Many dangle the possibility of nomination in the AINP to ensure acquiescence to unreasonable requests such as unpaid work, additional work, etc.”[xcvi] Second, by limiting the number of allocations made to each employer, this system is likely to increase competition among workers for nominations and may even discourage employers from participating in the nominee program altogether because they regard it as arbitrary and unfair.

MPNP requires employers to notify temporary foreign workers, within their initial six months of work, that the employer intends to nominate them through the MPNP. This requirement has the advantage of minimizing worker uncertainty about their future status while they are still ineligible for nomination under provincial requirements.

further reform might be for the province to remove the six-month work requirement, making foreign workers eligible for nomination as soon as they begin work in Canada. This would at least provide the opportunity to do away with the temporary “trial period”, during which workers are arguably most vulnerable. Such a reform, however, may also serve to increase employer control ever further and calls into question the overall legitimacy of a program that gives private actors such broad scope to nominate immigrants without even basic requirements to prove their bona fides. Realistically, these challenges point to the inherent inadequacy of the TFWPs as an entry point for permanent economic immigration through an employer-driven nominee program. Palliative reforms that fail to recognize underlying problems of regulatory devolution and resulting institutional mismatch are unlikely to generate the kinds of outcomes for vulnerable foreign workers that fairness and sound economic policy-making are likely to demand.

employer beliefs that individuals from certain countries of origin are better able to perform this or that job create racialized profiles within particular sectors and industries.

Left to the sole discretion of employers, the effects of nominee selection processes in this area will likely be to ossify and entrench aspects of race and gender discrimination as part of Canada’s economic immigration system.

Employers in Manitoba, for example, have been active both in lobbying for an expanded nominee program and in developing surrounding institutions and services. 

developed a network of services for foreign workers that have been widely hailed as successful innovations – at least in those workplaces and urban environments where workers are able to take advantage of them.

Alberta’s nominee program requires employers to provide workers with in-house language training services or to arrange for provision by a third party. Likewise, the AINP obligates employers in most streams to design an accommodation and settlement plan for nominees that “demonstrate employer support and assistance toward successful integration of the workforce, community and society integration.”[cvi] While these seemingly modest requirements may appear to be positive developments in the direction of improving workers’ security and likelihood of successful settlement, the implied trend is clearly toward the devolution of support services away from the provincial government and toward private actors, the effects of which remain largely unevaluated.

There are two specific criticisms directed at this aspect of regulatory devolution. One is that obliging employers to provide essential settlement services further skews barging power to the disadvantage of workers by enmeshing their personal and family lives even more closely with authoritative decision-making processes undertaken by their employers. Jenna Hennebry has pointed out that:

emphasizing a high performance workforce and a high performance work environment.

Investment in innovation and skills upgrading are key tofinding employment in Alberta in the coming years.• Labour supply pressures will resurface for some occupationsin the medium and long term due to Alberta’s agingpopulation.• Medium to long term labour force planning should continueto ensure Alberta has the skilled labour force it requires inthe future.

people who are targeted for the BETW initiative are youth, women, people with disabilities, immigrants, Aboriginal populations and minorities

common complaint was the expense of upgrading, re-training or accessing professional association tests for immigrants who were struggling to have their credentials recognized.

job loss due to the recession has been hardest on men in male dominated professions, Aboriginal youth and in agriculture, finance, insurance, real estate, leasing, manufacturing, construction and retail industries. Job increases were observed in health care, social work, information, culture and recreation,

the reality of the situation is more troubling and complex than recent BETW evaluations would have us believe

From the Advanced Education labour market report, unemployment recession effects are felt strongly by those very groups targeted for benefit from the strategy

As the economy begins to click into second gear, employers are hiring but they are doing so with extreme caution. They will only hire individuals who have the exact specificity of skills they are looking for,"