Time: 12:30-1:30pm
Place: Rm. 1600, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.
Cost: Free
As part of SFU Public Square’s Community Summit week on BC’s economic future, City Conversations looks at how immigrants with advanced training have difficulty working at their skill level in their new country. Are the barriers language problems and differences in training? Do Canadian professions protect their fees, or employers protect workplace status quo by finding ways to keep ‘outsiders’ out? What are the implications for BC’s future economy when large numbers of immigrants are unable to contribute fully, and what are the impacts on our new citizens, their families. and our communities?
Exploring these timely issues are Kelly Pollack , Executive Director of the Immigrant Employment Council of BC, Gillian Pichler, P. Eng. , Director of Registration & Licensing at the Association of Professional Engineers & Geoscientists of BC, and Dr. Amanda Wu , a chemical engineer from Taiwan who was unable to work in Canada for almost two years. Then it’s your turn to question and comment— it’s a conversation! Feel free to bring your lunch.
“Are the barriers language problems and differences in training?”
The right question to ask is, “What matter the language barriers when our resource jobs disappear because our potential customers have found their own?”
We will wonder why we wasted billions on vanity infrastructure when our potential customers realize they have same resources, more accessible under their lawn.
If, and that is a big IF, the Massey bridge is ever completed Delta will have one hell of a job fending off the empty sprawl à la 1950’s Levitt town.
In the meantime all the lunch cart experts are burning up the hard drives gossiping about their transportation expertise that doesn’t amount to a row of buttons when real city planners show up.
I don’t want to sound pessimistic but all this transportation gossip emanates from over enthusiastic amateurs who’s arm chairs are gently collapsing under the weight of so many misconceptions.
The big question none of these over loquacious enthusiasts never ask is, what is the purpose of city building, getting there or being there?”
As J M Barrie said in his play, The Will, “Time is money, time is money.” So why are we wasting time and money hoping to get from here to there on a bridge, too expensive, too potential and too far?