The CLBC received support from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) for a development project under the Enhanced Language Training (ELT) initiative. This project had three objectives:
- To identify, understand, and analyse the needs, barriers, and challenges facing sector councils, business, and labour with respect to occupation-specific language training, and to assess current capacity to support the delivery of ELT.
- To identify models, best practices, and approaches in delivering both occupation-specific language training and Canadian work experience programs that can illustrate how some industry needs are already being met effectively.
- To work in partnership with workplace stakeholders to identify key considerations for developing realistic, practical, and valid approaches to occupation-specific language training that can be used by CIC, by provinces and territories, and by community-based language-training providers.
Despite a shared concern with the need for enhanced language training, the investigation found individual employers conscious of their limited capacity to avail themselves of the higher-level language training and occupation-specific language training within the ELT initiative. The study findings indicate that a concerted effort is needed to coordinate workplace stakeholders in the promotion of ELT programs.
Sector councils were identified as one possible agent to bring together employers, language providers and immigrant-serving agencies as per the example of coordinating bodies in regulated professions.
