“I smell burnt toast and am having problems breathing,” I wheezed. “I need to go to the hospital right away.”
“I will call the cab company,” my fiancée yelped.
“You can’t drive me to the hospital? Is Days of our Lives on or something?” I gasped.
“No dear, chances are that the cab driver will be a doctor and he can fix you right up and the wait time will be drastically shorter than the hospital!”
While rural Canada begs for Doctors, the big cities are filled with immigrants whose diplomas and certificates are not recognized relegating them to the front seat of taxi cabs instead of the busy back rooms of our country’s hospitals. According to a Decima research poll, about five million Canadians or 17% of the population does not have a family Doctor. Citizen & Immigration Canada lures talented immigrants that possess impressive credentials with their tales of grandeur and assurances of a better life in Canada. They are told that Canada desperately needs skilled professionals and that good jobs will be waiting for them. Once they come over however, the tale turns into a nightmare as their certificates are not recognized, their foreign experience is quashed as employers tell them Canadian experience is required. It is estimated that there are as many as 5000 International Medical Graduates languishing in Ontario. Karam Punian, vice president of the Airport Cab Association figures that there are more than twenty drivers who have earned better than a master’s degree. Many are forced to work menial jobs as they try to untangle themselves from the institutional red tape that our medical institutions have weaved. Many are too embarrassed to tell their relatives back home but not Dr. Khalid Rafiq who proudly displays a picture with his PhD in his taxi cab for everyone to see. Save a life today, drive a cab tomorrow, that’s the reality for some who made the long trip across the Atlantic Ocean.
“It is third down and the game is in the fourth quarter, can you grab me a beer?” I asked my fiancée.
“Can’t you get your own, I am not your robot!” she snapped back.
“I need my own beer robot,” I muttered to myself.
“I heard that,” she said using one of her many unexplained feminine powers. “You should make your own, call the cab company, they could help you out.”
“Huh?”
“Chances are that the cab driver will be an engineer and not only could he help you design the robot but also drive you to the store to pick up the parts as well!” she said.
Ahmed Khreis is a Russian trained engineer who worked in his native Lebanon before he immigrated to Canada in 1999. He came to Canada looking for a better life and found only broken promises when he got here. Instead of feverishly designing and developing audio, video and telecommunication equipment, he waits aimlessly in his taxi cab for his next fare to arrive. Economists have been warning us about a major labour shortage that could drastically harm the economy but a bureaucratic noose continues to strangle the hopes of many immigrants like Raj Rumar who spent five years in Canada before bolting to the United States. Raj is an engineer with a PhD from the famed Indian Institute of Technology but wallowed in limbo as he could not find work in his field. Frustrated, he applied for work in the United States and found a job in Princeton, New Jersey within ten days.
Jeffrey Reitz who is a sociologist professor at the University of Toronto and a recognized expert on immigration, concludes that the underutilization of immigrant skills costs the Canadian economy at least two billion dollars annually. Economists and academics have been telling us that Canada will be soon forging a battle to conquer a labour shortage that could hurt our economy and that skilled immigrants are needed to rectify the burgeoning problem. Levels of production and efficiency will digress unless the labour market is replenished, however, the government cannot continue to pry away skilled professionals from their homeland with shallow pledges and half truths.
“Honey, I want to speak to the Immigration Minister. Do you know his or her name?” I asked.
“Ummm,” she tried to reply.
“Let me guess, call the cab company,” I blurted out.
“There have been four federal immigration ministers in the last five years, I don’t think they will know,” she said.
Maybe that’s the problem.
Max De Luca is a freelance writer who lives in London, Ontario Canada. His short stories and articles have appeared in such publications as the Istanbul Literature Review, Inscribed Magazine and Mobius: A Journal for Social Change. He is influenced by the work of Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Hunter S Thompson and Howard Zinn. Read other posts by Max De Luca.
