September 25, 2006

Labour Scene

BC's demand for engineers not being met

It’s a fairly old story in the construction industry, the one about the university-trained immigrant engineer who can’t get a job in B.C. and is working for minimum wage at something else.

There are enough immigrant engineers with skills to make a tidy source for an industry straining to keep up with schedules.

Like the man from the Philippines who trained at Tehran University and in now employed in a small factory in B.C. making fish hooks for $9 an hour. He has a background in concrete construction which ought to make him attractive to any number of contractors in the midst of the great B.C. building boom.

His story is not unusual. There’s the old one about the Ph.D. selling oxfords in a shoe store and the newer one about all those taxi drivers who are really immigrant professionals unable to find places for their authentic skills.

B.C. isn’t turning out enough engineers to satisfy demand and it’s threatening to become a big problem.

“The number of people that apply to enter our program exceeds the number we let in,” says Dr. Perry Adebar, assistant dean of civil engineering at the University of B.C. “The provincial government has been steadily trying to increase the numbers. But it has not reacted to the demand in the industry.

“The university has not been able to react either because there is no mechanism in place to increase the flow.”

A new UBC campus has been opened in Kelowna with an engineering school and is facing “aggressive” growth. It may begin having an impact on the supply shortage, something construction will be watching carefully. While other segments of the industry are beginning to look at immigration for help, engineering can’t.

Immigrant engineers are caught in the same bind as immigrant doctors. Their credentials aren’t accepted here without further training up to Canadian standards.

“There are things that are different here,” says Dr. Adebar. “We have our own building codes. There is no way somebody can be brought in quickly and assume they’re fully capable here. We have the Canadian way, the B.C. way.” Sometimes there are highly significant differences in training systems.

“When looked at more closely, it’s clear their training isn’t adequate” says Dr. Adebar. “It’s wiser perhaps to err on the side of caution.”

It can take eight years for an immigrant engineer to get up to speed in Canada sufficiently to earn professional credentials and qualify for a licence to practise. That’s often enough of a deterrent to doing the necessary training here.

The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C. says eight years is a worst case scenario and there are various pathways to credentialing.

John Clarke

Correspondent

Immigrant engineers whose higher education is judged good enough by Canadian standards or has found some experience in construction in B.C. or has other meritorious values to offer can get qualified and licensed within a year, in some case even sooner.

But there is no doubt there are some difficult hoops for immigrant professionals to jump through even in boom times. And construction booms in B.C. are relatively short and steep and don’t lend themselves to quick labour supply solutions.

Dr. Adebar says there is “just no way that supply can catch up with the demands that industry faces in extraordinary times.”

In any case, for the immigrant engineer trying to enter the construction industry language is often a high barrier. In fact, the lack of English is often cited as the number one impediment to finding work.

English as a second language (ESL) programs are not well suited to construction. Even within English the profession has its own dialect understood best among colleagues.

That’s why the B.C. Construction Association has been working for the development of an ESL program specifically geared to construction. But it’s been a hard slog.

A pervasive complaint has been that ESL seems currently more engaged with Asian populations than with other ethnic communities. The BCCA wants it expanded into a wider cross-section of immigrants. All this effort is directed at getting immigrants like that engineer in concrete into the business here. As the man said, it could sure use him.

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