“We have been making lots of changes to our economic immigration system,”
said Minister Kenney. “We will take the next six months to do a lot of the heavy lifting to get us closer to a fast and flexible immigration system.”
The pause will allow CIC to make important changes to its economic immigration programs before accepting more applications. This is an important step in moving towards a faster, more flexible immigration system, while immigration levels are at a historic high.
Since the launch of Canada’s Economic Action Plan 2012, Minister Kenney has announced a series of changes to CIC’s economic immigration programs. They include:
- eliminating the backlog of old FSWP applications;
- improving the selection of FSWs;
- creating a new Federal Skilled Trades Program;
- modifying the Canadian Experience Class to help transition successful skilled temporary workers to permanent residence;
- changing business immigration programs to target more active investment in Canadian growth companies and more innovative entrepreneurs; and
- moving towards a new application management system, to develop a pool of skilled workers who arrive in Canada ready to begin employment.