Pilot project to make recruiting foreign faculty easier

ERIC SMITH | Federal and provincial governments are making it easier for spouses of professors hired abroad to work in Quebec. A one-year pilot project launched October 15 is aimed at attracting highly skilled workers to the province. Previously, the spouses of academics hired with temporary work permits were ineligible to work until they established permanent residency in Canada. And according to Lindsey Bignell, responsible for academic personnel in the Vice-Principal (Academic)'s office, the policy was a deterrent when the University attempted to hire academics from abroad. "People don't come here, or they leave, because their spouses can't work," she said. It's a problem electrical and computer engineering professor Andrew Kirk encountered when he and his wife came to Montreal from Belgium two years ago. With a visiting spouse visa, Kirk's wife, a trained teacher and UK citizen, was initially unable to continue her career as an educational consultant in Quebec. "We knew it was a risk that it would take a while," said Kirk, "but we didn't know it would take as long as it did." Now both spouses are permanent residents and able to work in Canada, but not before a lawyer was hired through the Principal's Office to speed up the file. Under the new pilot project, once the spouse of a professor on a visitor's visa gets a job offer in one of dozens of professional and managerial fields, he or she can get work authorization (Certificat d'acceptation du Québec) within a month. According to a release from the Ministère des Relations avec les citoyens et de l'Immigration, "The one-year experimental program is a response to one of the priorities identified in the 1996 Sommet sur l'économie et l'emploi. At that time, the public and private partners acknowledged the importance of strategic foreign labour in stimulating Quebec's economy. They also found that the possibility of their spouse working here was a decisive factor for many workers who decided to accept a job in Quebec.