The House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration invited TalentLift to join the committee as a witness on a study that focuses on ‘attracting and empowering global talent to strengthen Canada’s economy.’ Our Dana Wagner joined fellow panelists David Finch from Mount Royal University, and Rebecca Webb and Ken Chatoor from the Labour Market Information Council.

Dana spoke about how to unlock more solutions for people living as refugees globally using Canada’s economic stream. She focused on two recommendations that would provide talented candidates in displacement with broader and more equitable access to in-demand job and skilled visa opportunities.

Her remarks are below and can also be viewed by video.

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Opening statement at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration

My name is Dana Wagner and I’m the Co-Founder and Managing Director with TalentLift. 

We’re a Canadian charity that supports employers to hire internationally from within refugee populations. There are many talented people living as refugees globally. My remarks are about how to attract them using economic immigration pathways.

Why attract displaced talent?

I’ll begin with why we should attract this population. 

First, because the talent is real and unique. In our talent platform of 46,000 displaced people, are more than 1,600 engineers, 3,100 welders and mechanics, and 1,600 nurses and paramedics. They are a deeply creative community. Many of the professionals we support learned a new language, a new trade, or a new national industry – while in precarious and underpaid work.

Second, if it was us, how would we want another country’s skilled visas to work? Imagine a hostile takeover – and Passport Canada didn’t function, and bank accounts were frozen. We’d want Germany, South Africa, Colombia, to recognize our skills and accommodate our displacement.

How to better design the EMPP

The Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (EMPP) did this. It let someone apply without a passport, and without funds in a bank account – not because they’re displaced, but in spite of that. The EMPP is an extraordinary policy innovation. 

This is why we need to improve it. 

In its latest form, the EMPP had several flaws. The most fundamental and structural is that only a narrow set of economic programs had EMPP accommodations, and none of them were work permit pathways.

The EMPP had two streams, a regional and federal stream. The regional stream extended accommodations to some permanent residence economic programs, including participating Provincial Nominee Programs), the Atlantic Immigration Program, and the former Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot. But it did not apply to Express Entry or any work permits, among other pathways. Meanwhile, the federal stream created a dedicated pathway with its own human capital criteria. We argue that the regional stream was too narrow, while the federal stream was too broad. The emphasis should flip. 

Recommendations

I’ll share two recommendations to do this. 

1) First, we recommend extending an accessibility layer like the regional EMPP, with displacement accommodations, across the economic stream.

TalentLift and the Global Migration Institute at the Toronto Metropolitan University identified 12 common, non-human capital barriers for displaced talent within economic programs, and there are reasonable accommodations for all. 

These accommodations – like accepting alternatives to a passport, alternatives to savings, and alternatives to sealed transcripts from a home university – should apply to every permanent residence economic pathway; as well as to a large segment of temporary work permits. These should include nomination-supported work permits, the Global Talent Stream, high-wage Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) work permits, and others that position someone to have a credible pathway to PR.

If we get this broad access to the economic stream right, a separate dedicated EMPP pathway could still add immense value to attract above-and-beyond for specific workforce or political goals, like responding to a crisis. 

2) A second recommendation is to implement this accessibility layer immediately, with an interim public policy, and not wait two years or longer for a permanent EMPP program.

Qualified people living as refugees are waiting right now to fairly compete. Often, just one criteria can restrict eligibility. We’re supporting an Autobody Technician displaced from Venezuela, with a job offer in BC, who meets all the BC PNP criteria except a valid passport.

Closing

To close, accommodations for displaced talent across the economic stream would solve many issues.

It would solve how to balance accommodations with low immigration levels. Accommodations don’t require new space; it’s about leveling the field within existing space. 

It would solve the utter failure of EMPP PR processing times, which ballooned from a six-month service standard to four to six years in December 2025. Instead, like any other skilled worker, displaced talent could get here quickly on work permits or under Express Entry.

The EMPP is not the fastest, best route for employers to hire the skills they need – it very rarely has been. Not for tech talent, agriculture talent, Francophone talent. We painstakingly design so many economic programs for in-demand talent. It’s time we let displaced folks into them.

Thank you.

Candidates living in refugee circumstances and seeking a job in Canada can join TalentLift. Employers seeking global talent while engaging their team in something transformative can start hiring.