OTTAWA – Employment Minister Jason Kenney says the government is making improvements to its online job bank amid revelations that hundreds of employment positions on the site have long since been filled.
Kenney is under fire about the job bank, a critical component of the federal government’s controversial temporary foreign worker program.
Employers are required to post ads seeking Canadian workers for four weeks before they apply to hire temporary foreign workers.
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The government also relies in part on job bank data to determine what regions of the country are clamouring for labour.
But from customer service representatives in New Brunswick to food service supervisors in B.C. and RCMP clerks in Saskatchewan, many of the 110,000 jobs listed on the job bank are no longer available.
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Kenney has lauded the listing, saying it receives seven million hits a month from job-seekers and that tens of thousands of Canadians have signed up in the last two years to be notified about openings.
He denies opposition claims that the job bank is a mess, but says it will incorporate “new technological developments” in the near future to ensure jobs and job-seekers are better matched.
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