More than 5,000 people showed up at the Montreal Convention Centre Wednesday for a two-day job fair organized by L’Événement Carrières, hoping to find one of the thousands of jobs across Quebec.
“We have 20,000 jobs to fill and more than 300 exhibitors,” explained organization director, Éric Boutié.
Among the ones looking for work is agricultural engineer Faten Dandachi from Lebanon.
“I arrived the 13th of August so it’s like less than two months,” she smiled. “I’m not yet part of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, so I’m trying to get work as a horticulturalist.”
According to the Provincial Employment Roundtable (PERT), though, she could have a hard time finding work in the province. In its report released Wednesday, the group says racialized immigrants have a harder time finding work.
It also says the unemployment rate is the highest among visible minorities whose first language is English.
For example, according to the findings, the unemployment rate among English-speaking people of Arabic descent is 13.9 per cent and among English-speaking Chinese, it’s 13.4 per cent.
The unemployment among English-speaking Indigenous people is also high at just over 12 per cent.
“To be honest, this is what we heard anecdotally and qualitatively, that these communities faced even higher challenges than the English-speaking community as a whole,” PERT executive director told Global News.
He says what stood out for them was the lack of resources.
“For English-speaking visible minorities or English-speaking immigrants in particular, there’s a lack of English services,” he pointed out.
Boutié finds the results concerning because of the provincial labour shortage.
“There are 200,000 vacancies in Quebec,” he noted. “It’s huge, and it’s around 1 million across Canada.”
PERT’s research findings don’t surprise people like May Chiu, co-coordinator for the Chinatown Roundtable, and others trying to build grassroots support within their own communities.
“The Chinese community has always been over-represented in all statistics that had to do with underemployment or unemployment,” she noted.
She also blames actions by different levels of government that she believes undermine the activities of community organizations meant to help Chinese immigrants find jobs. Chiu decries the way the RCMP carried out investigation of two Montreal-area Chinese community organizations earlier this year that were suspected of being outposts for Chinese government police.
No charges have ben laid and Chiu says how the RCMP handled the allegations caused a devastating impact on the Chinese community in Montreal.
“The government has completely cut our funding to help immigrants with job search and employment programmes,” she complained.
Others, like community activist Ehab Latoyef, point to provincial legislation as part of the problem.
“There are many people in CEGEPS now due to Bill 96 and Bill 21 in a different way, who are losing their ability to get work and this is totally not fair,” he said.
Back at the job fair, though, Dandachi says she is optimistic, despite the challenges.
“I’m (in Montreal) for a very short time and I already have two interviews,” she grinned.