A program designed to prepare immigrants for Canada’s workforce is seeing great success after 500 newcomers to the province have enrolled within the last three years.
Immigration Services Association of Nova Scotia (ISANS), who offer the program FAST (Facilitating Access to Skilled Talent), says they are looking to expand in order to offer more trades.
“The fields that the program currently offers are for IT and data services, accounting, biotechnology and life sciences as well as culinary arts,” says Julie-Ann Vincent, a client services officer with ISANS.
Saeed Fallah moved to Nova Scotia from Iran and before he landed in the province, he had already started taking online accounting courses through FAST.
“Accounting is a standard concept, but some concepts were different from what I learned in my home country. So, this program helped me to get familiar with Canadian financial work,” Fallah told Global News in a Zoom interview.
Fallah previously had 10 years of experience in the financial industry in Iran, but he says the FAST program prepared him for employment in Canada.
“FAST program is a concise program in a short period of time; you can learn many things about accounting. You don’t have to spend years in university,” he says.
One of the main goals of the program is to help solve labour shortages while helping immigrants contribute to their full potential.
Vincent says the classes are being tailored with input from the provincial government (who also help fund the program) to help meet the demands of the Nova Scotia work force.
“We have regular conversations with them (the government) to understand what their labour market interests are, where they are seeing a demand and also where we’re seeing demand from the immigrants coming into the province who can then contribute to the economy in their fields,” she says.
Vincent adds registration is ongoing and they are always looking for people to join the program.
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