If re-elected, Ottawa Mayor would Hire 100 Foreigners

Bob Chiarelli said he will ask the City of Ottawa to hire 100 foreign-trained workers as staff apprentices if he is re-elected as mayor. Chiarelli said the hiring spree will be part of a five-point plan to help find jobs for the 7,500 new Canadians who arrive in Ottawa every year. "Forty-nine per cent of them have post-secondary training and most of them cannot be certified," he said. "That's a travesty. We need to fix it." The foreign-trained apprentices will be hired over four years for one year each, and will be paid $20,000.

Chiarelli said he will also: create 200 municipal volunteer positions for foreign professionals who want to mentor with a Canadian professional in their field, Create a special City of Ottawa web portal to help newcomers, Lobby for more funding for local college programs targeted at helping newcomers get jobs, Create a special committee to monitor the city's progress at getting foreigners hired and to propose additional steps.

Bilingualism a barrier, Pollock says... Barkley Pollock, who is running for mayor against Chiarelli, said the plan is a good start. But he said a main reason some groups are underrepresented among city staff is that they must speak both English and French in order to be hired. "What I've heard from Aboriginal and from minority groups is that the bilingual policy is a barrier at City Hall," Pollock said. He said he wonders, then, how the 100 foreign apprentices will get real jobs once their one-year apprenticeships are up. "Are we going to force language training on people or maybe have to soften the bilingual policy?" Meanwhile, another mayoral candidate, Alex Munter, says Chiarelli's plan comes after years of doing little to help foreigners gets jobs. He said that's proof the city needs a change.