Letter to the Editor – Mark A MacDonald – Provincial Liberal candidate for SD&SG on the $10,000 Tax Credit for New Professional Immigrants – September 10, 2011

First of all there are many existing programs to fund companies to employee Canadians such as the Eastern Ontario Development Fund, the Rural Economic Development program, Second Career and Employment Ontario.

PROFESSIONAL NEW IMMIGRANTS, architects, engineers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, dentists are often not given a job because they don’t have Canadian experience.  therefore, these people could be on welfare, using our services and not paying in.
The idea of this program is to get them a high-paying job so they’ll start paying their share of income tax for their salaries, sooner.
The idea is to get the money back from them faster with some of them being able to pay back the money in the first year.
The economics of this are simple.
Mark A. MacDonald – Liberal candidate for SD&SG
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22 Comments

  1. Young people coming out of university or college are in the same situation, no Canadian work experience. Why would employers not qualify for similar tax discounts for hiring them? Seems to me a call for immigrant votes and forget about young Canadians struggling to pay off their education debts.

  2. Author

    Yvan that’s kinda silly. This is about professions that there are shortage in. These are about trained people who simply need some experience adapting to our system. I hope one day that you never need a medical procedure when our system has a shortage of doctors because your cab driver couldn’t get into our system fast enough.

    The attacks on this proposal are nothing short of partisanship and underlying racism. For anyone to try and twist this into some sort of attack on locals is utterly evil and retarded.

  3. It’s almost funny that the Con supporters are saying that “real” Canadians coming out of medical or engineering school can’t get work. Ironically, Hudak proposed a program very similar to this about a year ago to get immigrant doctors and engineers working where they are needed. Now that the Libs are running with the idea, the Cons are screaming “reverse racism!”.
    Yvan, like it or not, new Canadians are Canadians.

  4. Hi Mark,

    You know I love ya but I hate this initiative! My best friend growing up was Vietnamese! Both my parents and their parents worked their entire lives in Canada and paid taxes. When it came time for me to go to college/university I was forced to attend the local college because my parents did not have enough money for me to go away and yet OSAP said they made too much for me to qualify for a student loan! However, my friend qualified for the maximum amount and both his parents never worked a day in Canada in the six years they lived here! Both were on social assistance and had money given to them to start a home!

    So my parents and grand parents technically paid for my friends education with their taxes and yet their own children received none! Totally unacceptable and honestly disugusting in my view! That will never change!

    Thank You,
    Mike Bedard

  5. If this is only to get professionals into the work force sooner, why not fix the problem? Throwing our money at something in this way does not help someone already living here get needed education or training. We also would have more kids if we had a better job or payed less tax, but that is 2 other issues.
    When applying for a visa, start the process to recognize foreign credentials, this would need to be a shared Federal / Provincial concern, that currently does not start till after someone is here.

    I do not see how this is racism, helping people with our tax dollars is what we do in this country and even around the world.

    12 million to start this program helps my grandmother living on a fixed income, paying tax for 60 plus years pay her hydro how? This 12 million is each year for the next 4 at least as shown in the platform costing document. Would not be less than 96 million to fix the problem?

    Also in the document there is a statment of having a 1 billion dollar reserve…which means you want to take 1 billion more in tax than you need to operate in my book!

  6. Furtz, if Hudak promoted this idea, why didn’t the Liberals say jolly good, let’s roll with it old bean?

  7. @Eric. They have.

  8. Furtz, I mean a year ago when the legislature was in operation. Perhaps sharing credit would not help with votes……

  9. OMG!! Whenever liberals don’t agree with with others they bring up the racist card….. Shame on you…. The problem is much deeper than what you can think. If immigration was better managed, people would have jobs waiting for them when they get here. Try moving to the US… If you don’t have a job waiting for you, they don’t want you unless you have a sponsor. Here it’s a freeking free for all. To the detriment of natural born Canadians of all colour, race and creed. People like you think racism can get you out of any argument. Think again if you can.

  10. I think the Libs looked at Hudak’s proposal and thought the concept was good, but not the way it would be implemented. So the Libs reworked it, sat on it, and released it as their idea during the next election campaign.
    Now the Cons have their shorts in a knot, calling it “reverse discrimination”.

  11. This election race should be on cutting spending not promising more spending. If McDonell or either MacDonald come to my door promising me to spend more of my great-great grand children’s money without promising to cut spending on other money pits like the LHINs or the e-Health fiasco, they will not get a good reception. Ontario has a debt higher than the federal debt and at this rate of spending and deficits, it will take more than a century to pay it off if ever at all. Seeing all the money spent in the last few weeks alone with all the ribbon-cutting ceremonies the McGuinty government has held at local hospitals and long term care centers in the Ottawa region alone, is a sign that McGuinty is not going to reel-in spending. He had over 8 years to even keep his first promise of no new taxes and has failed miserably. Time for an other government to take the helm.

  12. I tried searching the Liberal website for details on this plan and hope the candidate can point me to the details to help with 3 questions.

    1. this plan is supposed to help architecture, accounting or engineering educated new Canadians get jobs here. So, will they be working in their fields BEFORE their education degrees have been given equilivancy inspections by a government agency or ministry?

    2. The 12 million dollars in the costing document set aside for each of the next 4 years will help how many?

    3. If there are already programs in place that are similar, why do we need additional programs and adminstration?

  13. This program helps Canadians.
    There is no degree of citizenship that I am aware of in Canada.
    Businesses can only get the funding when they hire someone who is already a Canadian.
    It means the government is improving the level of professional services within the Province of Ontario by accessing a pool of professionals that are going to waste at this time.
    The fact that the PC’s are calling the target audience “foreign workers” is intentionally ignorant and inflammatory. Their intent is to pit citizen against citizen. That is what you get from Tea Party politics.
    Keep in mind that all of our families were “New Canadians” at some point in history, accept the First Nations people.
    I am thankful to see more professionals get into the work force quicker. Programs like this will ensure our standard of living in Ontario will continue to lead the rest of Canada. This means healthier Ontarians.

  14. Seems to make sense to get foreign educated Canadians into the professions they were trained in. We don’t need doctors and engineers and such driving cabs or working in convenience stores. I think the investment will pay back big-time pretty quickly.
    Hudak is making a mistake playing up to his base support of xenophobes and racists and “I was here first” voters. He already has their votes in the bag. It’s going over well in some rural ridings, but the Cons are safe in those ridings anyway. If he keeps up this BS, the NDP just might form the Official Opposition.

  15. I couldn’t agree more, Mark. Keep up the good work!

  16. Today it looks like Hudak is trying to change the channel from “foreign workers” to Liberal waste. Now that’s he’s blown their lead, his advisers have wisely told him to clam up with his immigrant bashing. Still waiting to hear about something new and forward thinking that he will do if elected. Criticizing your opponents is OK, but it takes more than that to get people fired up. The Libs are loving Hudak to bits so far.

  17. I dislike the argument used about all of us being new Canadians at one time. For example, my family came to Eastern Ontario and Montreal in the late 1700’s. The country did not need to pay 18.5 million dollars that year (Ontario did last year) in legal aid costs alone for refugees.
    The taxpayers did not need to provide them with welfare for a few years or dozens of government agencies to house, feed, and otherwise support them till they found work.They learned the language of majority for business without the cost we see today.
    They did not wait for the government to provide a job either.

    After working here for 10 years they did not expect a government pension, as we now have. Come here at 55 years old and retire with government pensions at 65 which we would be happy to mail to which ever country you choose to live.

    By the way, foreign workers is being used by Immigration Ontario, see their website, Hudak obviously did!
    http://www.ontarioimmigration.ca/en/tools/OI_RESEARCH_STATS.html

  18. Author

    Eric one party did not create the current system, and one party isn’t going to fix it. The issue is that Mr. Hudak’s amateur tactics of divide and dissension create an environment that makes it harder for parties to work together. What happens if the remote chance of a minority government occurs? Do we go to Harper style hijinks that have hurt our country?

    No, Mr. Hudak lost on the $10,000 tax credit issue. Next topic?

  19. I agree that it is time to move on, getting bogged down on one 96 million dollar promise is wasting time talking about the other 67 items in the Liberal costing document.

    How about the over taxing of us to create a 1 billion dollar reserve in year one while there is 10.2 billion going towards the debt interest.

    http://www.ontarioliberal.ca/OurPlan/pdf/platform_costing_english.pdf

  20. Author

    That sounds like a Harper type move Eric….

  21. Might be a little early to predict, but it looks like Hudak has blown this election in the urban ridings, which he needs for even a minority win. Today, he’s polling in third place, behind the NDP, in the GTA.

  22. We went to seperate schools together LOL

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