I have to admit, I think I just fundamentally don’t mind if international students have to jump through a few hoops (if nothing else, it prepares them for the reality of Canada well ;). Jokes aside, the willingness to go through these steps helps confirm that people are serious about their future in this country. Yes, the costs of these tests add up, but they also help fund immigration services that keep the system running. Plus, these requirements protect opportunities for existing Canadian residents - if someone is willing to go through the extra steps, it shows they’re prepared to contribute meaningfully to our society.
Maybe it's just a tone thing that irked me, but one thing that bugged me in the article was the complaint about the inconsistency between language requirements for permanent residency versus citizenship. Of course, people eligible for citizenship should have more privileges - they’ve already proven a deeper commitment to Canada. And honestly, there’s just this feeling of entitlement that doesn’t sit right with me. It’s the same feeling with things like international students protesting failed grades. We need immigrants, but we already have enough entitled Canadians as it is. Honestly, I’d rather screen for more go-getters and fewer whiners to help shift the zeitgeist writ large.
I would go one step further and make the English test a "Canadian" English test. All applicants will be quickly approved if they know what hooking, off side, tripping, too many men on the ice, diving, free agent, restricted free agent, crossbar, high sticking, enforcer, jock strap, CCM, Bauer, right hand shot, left hand shot, first round choice, number one overall and who Sydney Crosby is.
I actually think things like our rights and freedoms are more of the universal Canadian values I’d like to propagate - and I have always proudly exercised mine to take absolutely no interest in hockey whatsoever.
This could be a very challenging test if regional variations in language come into play. Are you wearing underwear, jockey shorts, gotch, or gitch? Depends where you are in Canada when you take the test!
I understand where you're coming from. On the other hand, if an immigrant doesn't raise a dysfunctional issue like this, who will? If the operating principle is "immigrants should never complain", it's an invitation to abuse and neglect - which among other things leads to fewer desirable applicants over time.
Canadians are uncomfortable with anyone complaining, especially someone who isn't Canadian. This is definitely a "shut up and get back to work" culture, at least in English Canada. It's a "git 'er done" culture more so than a get it done better culture.
You can't expect a resource extraction peasant economy so be open to complainers, they are toxic to the workplace.
Plenty of college students studying with primarily other international students (understandably) do not seem to spend much time practicing conversational English. The experience of university students is the exception, not the norm, and even then there are plenty of technical programs where many graduate with sub-standard language proficiency.
We also don't need to lower standards. If professionals, even needed ones, cannot pass tests most native speakers could pass then we should be reconsidering whether immigration is a good alternative to increasing training opportunities for young people already in Canada. Ultimately, the inconvenience of taking an extra test (to people who benefit greatly from how liberal Canada is with PR numbers) is a small price to pay for ensuring people who are admitted can not just muddle by in their job but participate as full citizens without extra supports. If there is a test that better fits with modern language use--for both jobs and full participation in society--fine, use it. But don't redefine competence as just being able to get by.
I believe the article said most Canadian born English speakers can’t pass the test due to it using outdated language structure. Maybe you could go do the test and then report back. :)
I understand that proving language proficiency is annoying, especially for someone who speaks English fluently, but with so much testing why are so many immigrants unable to speak fluently? Who is doing the testing and why are the results of the tests they conduct not trusted by those downstream? Need I ask?
Just one more aspect of the system that is dysfunctional.
That is my question as well. Reading and writing any language is basically necessary for academia. Speaking clearly, at a reasonable speed is an everyday proficiency that many, even many born and raised in Canada, cannot seem to develop. Being able to speak a language does not automatically make your speech understandable.
I was born and raised in Canada and graduated from a Canadian university. I still had to take the test when I applied for a job-related program. I was the only blonde in a room of a couple of hundred.
No, thanks. Austria has German tests, Canada has an English test. The system being a mess does not mean we just get rid of a major boost to integration. Vote to fix the system. Vote Pierre.
The suggestion isn't that we get rid of the English-language competency demonstration, it's that we don't require applicants to demonstrate it repeatedly without good reason.
If the test is continuously repeated, it's either redundant or flawed.
To have a drivers license, should you have to do a drivers road test with an examiner every two years at a cost to you of $250?
After all, the system being a mess doesn’t mean we should get rid of a major boost to road safety…. I mean, that is what you said right?
I mean, if you’re a good enough driver, you’ll pass the test so what’s the problem?
********
Actually, now that I think about it, there’s a far better case for everyone having to retake a road exam every few years than having to retake a language proficiency that often.
After all, how many people, (having learned to speak English), then forget how to speak it while living in Canada? Not many.
On the other hand, based on my daily commute, plenty of people forget how to drive safely.
Obviously, excellent proficiency in the local language should be a requirement for permanent residency let alone citizenship. But there’s a pointed which we are wasting bureaucratic resources with useless repetition.
Reducing bureaucratic waste and pointlessly repeated tests IS fixing the system, not getting rid of it. I don’t know if the author is correct on where the trade-off is between waste and efficiency, but I find it unlikely that our immigration bureaucracy is already perfectly efficient.
As a career educator I can understand each institution's need to see for themselves how fluent the candidate is in the language of work and instruction. We read in the newspapers how corrupt some broad-scale testing agencies are proving to be. Until the fee-based visa colleges with no classrooms disappear from the culture, incoming students must just suck it up. On the other hand, if government dramatically reduced the cost of such tests by legislative fiat, the problem might go away by itself.
I might add that I have been on Quora for a few years. Occasionally I commented on grammar issues from the POV of a secondary school English department head. For a while I was deluged with specific, arcane grammar questions which involved the use of the passive voice. My answers eventually became a strong encouragement not to use the passive voice at all unless 1) you don't know what you are talking about or 2) you have something which you must not disclose. Whoever set these questions on an English competency test had never been hit in the face with a snowball.
Recently retired, I wanted to take an on-line philosophy course at U de Montreal. But. although my first language is French, my education has been in English institutions. To let me register, they first wanted me to pass a test showing proficiency in French. . The displacement and cost were an annoyance, and I asked if the requirement could be waived. No, they said. So I enrolled at the Sorbonne instead.
But I am a Francophone. The federal government has said so. Here, in brief, is the story.
I joined the federal public service in 1972. In 1974, the Public Service prepared machine-readable profiles of each employee, to make easier identification of possible candidates for jobs. We were asked to review our profiles for accuracy.
My profile said Anglophone. I was in a bilingual position, but I had passed the necessary French tests., so that was okay. How did they know I was an Anglophone? I went to see the Official Languages bureaucrats. They must have never gotten the question before, but they pulled my file, and said: See! Upon joining, among the many forms I had filled out, one asked which language I spoke at home. English, I had replied. Well, I said, that was then. I have married a Quebecoise and now my language at home is French. Please give me a new form so that I can update your information.
The employee was puzzled, Wait, she said, I'll call my supervisor. The supervisor came, considered my request and said: No. I cannot let you change from Anglophone to Francophone. You are in a bilingual position, and I have proof that you can speak French. (I had passed their tests.) But I have no proof that you can speak English, so you would not meet the bilingual requirements of the position.
I said that should be no problem. I could take and pass the English tests. If I did, would she reclassify as a Francophone? She thought and said, yes, if I passed my French tests then I could become an Anglophone. So of course I asked: What if I failed my English test? In that case, she said, you would remain an Anglophone. (I passed my English test.)
I remember shortly after graduation that I attended an interview at CBC for a bilingual copy clerk. I showed up for the interview, prepared to make maximum use of my limited French. The interviewer asked, "Etes vous celibataire?" I was stumped. "Etes-vous mariee?"
I responded, "Oui, je suis celibataire -- mais pas du tout celibate!"
They all broke up. Of the four men in the room, three voted for me, including the francophones. Only the senior Anglophone flunked me, apparently on the grounds the I might make the English side look bad.
I sampled a part of one of the tests from your link. The speech pattern seemed fairly “normal to me”, although I could tell immediately from the computer voice that the whole procedure would test my patience as well as my proficiency. It was in fairly basic every day language and if you could pass this test without any help you probably understand enough Canadian English to get through most everyday situations. I don’t agree with the criticism that the test uses overly formal language: you do get to practice. But I do agree that if a person “aced” one of these tests they shouldn’t have to repeat it in two years.
Demanding to do fewer English proficiency tests pre-supposes all public and private educational institutions, public and private agencies, government departments ec. which need to know proficiency levels are all hooked into the same computer system and are therefore enabled to confirm previous results. Being on the same system is necessary since screen prints of documents are too easily falsified.
But this is not the case. Even federal government departments don't necessarily all use the same systems, never mind when provincial and private institutions are also involved. The availability of cross-agency computer systems for all would require agreements to share from all, a difficult to impossible scenario given the essential privacy restrictions they all have.
Therefore, this an inconvenience and expense that people will just need to put up with for the foreseeable future.
As someone who had to take at least 3 of those tests, yes this is dumb. CELPIP is a joke, I finished it in half the time and aced it.
The most infuriating part was that I had to take those tests after earning 2 degrees in from English speaking schools, one being a Masters degree with a thesis requirement.
A degree from an english speaking institution should automatically eliminate the test requirement.
Those tests are a golden goose for the testing institutions.
For many STEM programs at English-speaking institutions, the degree is absolutely not in any way a good indicator of more than basic language competency. Yes, it's possible to make targeted exceptions, but that doesn't mean it's worth it.
For many ARTS programs at English-speaking institutions it may not be a good indicator of more than basic language competency. Undergraduate writing standards aren't great.
Do we need more than basic language competency? These tests don't prevent people who barely speak english from coming in, so who's to say we need PhD level proficiency?
Well, not sure I'd vouch for some PhDs either! But yes, people clearly do need more than basic competency to participate fully in society (and honestly not to create difficulties for the people who have to interact with them).
I don't think it matters. Some people function just fine without speaking the language (my wife's grandmother became a US citizen and she doesn't speak a lick of english), and while I would agree that it's less than ideal, I think it's fine to let them be. They might contribute in other ways.
Of course it affects people to share a country with people they cannot easily communicate with. One person, perhaps not, but there's plenty being sacrificed (initially imperceptibly) when we lose that on a larger scale.
This is a plainly unreasonable degree of individualism. We are all part of a shared society and not just occupying the same space with no impacts on each other. We can't take take the social cohesion we have for granted, and being able to communicate without barriers is part of that.
Well, go spend some time in Toronto’s Chinatown and show me how the Chinese failed to integrate. Or Tehranto. Or polish neighbourhoods. Or Portuguese. They may not be able to communicate with you or I, but they find a nice to operate in a niche and do well within it.
There are plenty of people that English or french speakers can’t talk to that do well in Canadian society.
Their children integrate just fine and eventually that first generation comms problem goes away.
The issue isn’t a language problem, it’s an integration one. Communities that don’t mix and mingle and stay closed in on themselves might cause cultural problems, but I don’t think speaking the language or not matter so long as immigrants and their children interact on some level with the rest of society.
The language test requirement seems fairly reasonable *once*. It's unreasonable to keep insisting on repeat tests, particularly if there's evidence like receiving a degree from a Canadian university indicating sufficient fluency.
The ability to communicate in the local language is a pretty critical factor for successfully participating in the society and workplace. I can't see how a student can successfully complete a degree at a Canadian institution without sufficient fluency in English. That would tend to justify post-secondary institutions who require a language test as a condition of admission. However, it seems like it'd be an odd requirement for a student coming to Canada for the purpose of *acquiring* language fluency.
You certainly can't be successful in most Canadian companies if you lack the fluency to communicate with your co-workers. Companies are probably the best judge of that, but if the government is allowing immigration by people without a job offer from a Canadian company, checking language fluency as a condition of admission makes sense. Why would you admit people to work in Canada who lack an essential skill to work in their field? (The same applies to recognition of foreign credentials - it's really unfair to the immigrant professional to admit them on the basis of a credential that isn't recognized and leave them consigned to work for which they may be overqualified.)
This raises another question I have: are the fluency tests sufficient to evaluate fluency in the rather specialized and technical language used in professional fields, or is it more focused on a conversational fluency? My limited French is sufficient to shop, travel, and have basic conversations - I'm a very long way from being able to write a technical paper in French.
A number of years ago (in the US) an Professor in Physical Therapy) of mine, opined that "just because we are speaking English does NOT mean that we are communicating. Words to live by. Just because you can pass some proficiency test does NOT mean that you can communicate with a patient. Accents cause problems. Perceived accents will create problems. Racism will always create problems with communications whether or naught the issue exists.
I had an interesting experience at a workshop for an engineering project in the UK a few years ago. The working language of the meeting was English, and we had participants speaking with accents from Italy, Norway, Denmark, Canada, England, Glasgow and the Orkney Islands, and both Northern and Southern Ireland. The problem was that a lot of them couldn't understand each other because of the accents, but the Canadian (me) could understand everybody and be understood by everybody. I found myself in the strange position of acting as a translator even though everybody was speaking English!
As a former RN and nurse regulator I found English language proficiency as essential to processing safe medication and accurate symptom communication between individuals and teams essential. Phone and voice communication standards reduce medical and nursing errors
I thinl the average Canadian blue-collar worker is more interested in whether or not immigrant coworkers are 'willing' to speak English rather than are they able to speak it.
I have to admit, I think I just fundamentally don’t mind if international students have to jump through a few hoops (if nothing else, it prepares them for the reality of Canada well ;). Jokes aside, the willingness to go through these steps helps confirm that people are serious about their future in this country. Yes, the costs of these tests add up, but they also help fund immigration services that keep the system running. Plus, these requirements protect opportunities for existing Canadian residents - if someone is willing to go through the extra steps, it shows they’re prepared to contribute meaningfully to our society.
Maybe it's just a tone thing that irked me, but one thing that bugged me in the article was the complaint about the inconsistency between language requirements for permanent residency versus citizenship. Of course, people eligible for citizenship should have more privileges - they’ve already proven a deeper commitment to Canada. And honestly, there’s just this feeling of entitlement that doesn’t sit right with me. It’s the same feeling with things like international students protesting failed grades. We need immigrants, but we already have enough entitled Canadians as it is. Honestly, I’d rather screen for more go-getters and fewer whiners to help shift the zeitgeist writ large.
I would go one step further and make the English test a "Canadian" English test. All applicants will be quickly approved if they know what hooking, off side, tripping, too many men on the ice, diving, free agent, restricted free agent, crossbar, high sticking, enforcer, jock strap, CCM, Bauer, right hand shot, left hand shot, first round choice, number one overall and who Sydney Crosby is.
I actually think things like our rights and freedoms are more of the universal Canadian values I’d like to propagate - and I have always proudly exercised mine to take absolutely no interest in hockey whatsoever.
This could be a very challenging test if regional variations in language come into play. Are you wearing underwear, jockey shorts, gotch, or gitch? Depends where you are in Canada when you take the test!
Yes!! = :-)
I understand where you're coming from. On the other hand, if an immigrant doesn't raise a dysfunctional issue like this, who will? If the operating principle is "immigrants should never complain", it's an invitation to abuse and neglect - which among other things leads to fewer desirable applicants over time.
Canadians are uncomfortable with anyone complaining, especially someone who isn't Canadian. This is definitely a "shut up and get back to work" culture, at least in English Canada. It's a "git 'er done" culture more so than a get it done better culture.
You can't expect a resource extraction peasant economy so be open to complainers, they are toxic to the workplace.
One proficiency test seems reasonable and enough. We have greater issues within our immigration system
Plenty of college students studying with primarily other international students (understandably) do not seem to spend much time practicing conversational English. The experience of university students is the exception, not the norm, and even then there are plenty of technical programs where many graduate with sub-standard language proficiency.
We also don't need to lower standards. If professionals, even needed ones, cannot pass tests most native speakers could pass then we should be reconsidering whether immigration is a good alternative to increasing training opportunities for young people already in Canada. Ultimately, the inconvenience of taking an extra test (to people who benefit greatly from how liberal Canada is with PR numbers) is a small price to pay for ensuring people who are admitted can not just muddle by in their job but participate as full citizens without extra supports. If there is a test that better fits with modern language use--for both jobs and full participation in society--fine, use it. But don't redefine competence as just being able to get by.
I believe the article said most Canadian born English speakers can’t pass the test due to it using outdated language structure. Maybe you could go do the test and then report back. :)
The linked articled says “a number of nurses” which this article reinterprets as “many”. No evidence it’s most, or frankly even a significant number.
I understand that proving language proficiency is annoying, especially for someone who speaks English fluently, but with so much testing why are so many immigrants unable to speak fluently? Who is doing the testing and why are the results of the tests they conduct not trusted by those downstream? Need I ask?
Just one more aspect of the system that is dysfunctional.
That is my question as well. Reading and writing any language is basically necessary for academia. Speaking clearly, at a reasonable speed is an everyday proficiency that many, even many born and raised in Canada, cannot seem to develop. Being able to speak a language does not automatically make your speech understandable.
I was born and raised in Canada and graduated from a Canadian university. I still had to take the test when I applied for a job-related program. I was the only blonde in a room of a couple of hundred.
No, thanks. Austria has German tests, Canada has an English test. The system being a mess does not mean we just get rid of a major boost to integration. Vote to fix the system. Vote Pierre.
The suggestion isn't that we get rid of the English-language competency demonstration, it's that we don't require applicants to demonstrate it repeatedly without good reason.
If the test is continuously repeated, it's either redundant or flawed.
I see no difference
Let me ask you this.
To have a drivers license, should you have to do a drivers road test with an examiner every two years at a cost to you of $250?
After all, the system being a mess doesn’t mean we should get rid of a major boost to road safety…. I mean, that is what you said right?
I mean, if you’re a good enough driver, you’ll pass the test so what’s the problem?
********
Actually, now that I think about it, there’s a far better case for everyone having to retake a road exam every few years than having to retake a language proficiency that often.
After all, how many people, (having learned to speak English), then forget how to speak it while living in Canada? Not many.
On the other hand, based on my daily commute, plenty of people forget how to drive safely.
Obviously, excellent proficiency in the local language should be a requirement for permanent residency let alone citizenship. But there’s a pointed which we are wasting bureaucratic resources with useless repetition.
Reducing bureaucratic waste and pointlessly repeated tests IS fixing the system, not getting rid of it. I don’t know if the author is correct on where the trade-off is between waste and efficiency, but I find it unlikely that our immigration bureaucracy is already perfectly efficient.
What leads you to think forcing applicants to repeatedly pass a test they've already passed will have any appreciable impact on immigration levels?
As a career educator I can understand each institution's need to see for themselves how fluent the candidate is in the language of work and instruction. We read in the newspapers how corrupt some broad-scale testing agencies are proving to be. Until the fee-based visa colleges with no classrooms disappear from the culture, incoming students must just suck it up. On the other hand, if government dramatically reduced the cost of such tests by legislative fiat, the problem might go away by itself.
I might add that I have been on Quora for a few years. Occasionally I commented on grammar issues from the POV of a secondary school English department head. For a while I was deluged with specific, arcane grammar questions which involved the use of the passive voice. My answers eventually became a strong encouragement not to use the passive voice at all unless 1) you don't know what you are talking about or 2) you have something which you must not disclose. Whoever set these questions on an English competency test had never been hit in the face with a snowball.
A question for Mr. Ahmed. While studying at McGill in Quebec did they require proficiency in French?
Recently retired, I wanted to take an on-line philosophy course at U de Montreal. But. although my first language is French, my education has been in English institutions. To let me register, they first wanted me to pass a test showing proficiency in French. . The displacement and cost were an annoyance, and I asked if the requirement could be waived. No, they said. So I enrolled at the Sorbonne instead.
But I am a Francophone. The federal government has said so. Here, in brief, is the story.
I joined the federal public service in 1972. In 1974, the Public Service prepared machine-readable profiles of each employee, to make easier identification of possible candidates for jobs. We were asked to review our profiles for accuracy.
My profile said Anglophone. I was in a bilingual position, but I had passed the necessary French tests., so that was okay. How did they know I was an Anglophone? I went to see the Official Languages bureaucrats. They must have never gotten the question before, but they pulled my file, and said: See! Upon joining, among the many forms I had filled out, one asked which language I spoke at home. English, I had replied. Well, I said, that was then. I have married a Quebecoise and now my language at home is French. Please give me a new form so that I can update your information.
The employee was puzzled, Wait, she said, I'll call my supervisor. The supervisor came, considered my request and said: No. I cannot let you change from Anglophone to Francophone. You are in a bilingual position, and I have proof that you can speak French. (I had passed their tests.) But I have no proof that you can speak English, so you would not meet the bilingual requirements of the position.
I said that should be no problem. I could take and pass the English tests. If I did, would she reclassify as a Francophone? She thought and said, yes, if I passed my French tests then I could become an Anglophone. So of course I asked: What if I failed my English test? In that case, she said, you would remain an Anglophone. (I passed my English test.)
I see Canada has become Absurdistan quite a long time ago, not recently as many of us thought.
I remember shortly after graduation that I attended an interview at CBC for a bilingual copy clerk. I showed up for the interview, prepared to make maximum use of my limited French. The interviewer asked, "Etes vous celibataire?" I was stumped. "Etes-vous mariee?"
I responded, "Oui, je suis celibataire -- mais pas du tout celibate!"
They all broke up. Of the four men in the room, three voted for me, including the francophones. Only the senior Anglophone flunked me, apparently on the grounds the I might make the English side look bad.
Sorry. Error in the third-to last two. Should read:
"if I passed my English tests then I could become a Francophone."
So in other words it didn’t make sense then and maybe doesn’t make much sense now either? Lol
I sampled a part of one of the tests from your link. The speech pattern seemed fairly “normal to me”, although I could tell immediately from the computer voice that the whole procedure would test my patience as well as my proficiency. It was in fairly basic every day language and if you could pass this test without any help you probably understand enough Canadian English to get through most everyday situations. I don’t agree with the criticism that the test uses overly formal language: you do get to practice. But I do agree that if a person “aced” one of these tests they shouldn’t have to repeat it in two years.
Demanding to do fewer English proficiency tests pre-supposes all public and private educational institutions, public and private agencies, government departments ec. which need to know proficiency levels are all hooked into the same computer system and are therefore enabled to confirm previous results. Being on the same system is necessary since screen prints of documents are too easily falsified.
But this is not the case. Even federal government departments don't necessarily all use the same systems, never mind when provincial and private institutions are also involved. The availability of cross-agency computer systems for all would require agreements to share from all, a difficult to impossible scenario given the essential privacy restrictions they all have.
Therefore, this an inconvenience and expense that people will just need to put up with for the foreseeable future.
As someone who had to take at least 3 of those tests, yes this is dumb. CELPIP is a joke, I finished it in half the time and aced it.
The most infuriating part was that I had to take those tests after earning 2 degrees in from English speaking schools, one being a Masters degree with a thesis requirement.
A degree from an english speaking institution should automatically eliminate the test requirement.
Those tests are a golden goose for the testing institutions.
For many STEM programs at English-speaking institutions, the degree is absolutely not in any way a good indicator of more than basic language competency. Yes, it's possible to make targeted exceptions, but that doesn't mean it's worth it.
For many ARTS programs at English-speaking institutions it may not be a good indicator of more than basic language competency. Undergraduate writing standards aren't great.
Do we need more than basic language competency? These tests don't prevent people who barely speak english from coming in, so who's to say we need PhD level proficiency?
Well, not sure I'd vouch for some PhDs either! But yes, people clearly do need more than basic competency to participate fully in society (and honestly not to create difficulties for the people who have to interact with them).
I don't think it matters. Some people function just fine without speaking the language (my wife's grandmother became a US citizen and she doesn't speak a lick of english), and while I would agree that it's less than ideal, I think it's fine to let them be. They might contribute in other ways.
It doesn't affect you or I.
Of course it affects people to share a country with people they cannot easily communicate with. One person, perhaps not, but there's plenty being sacrificed (initially imperceptibly) when we lose that on a larger scale.
This is a plainly unreasonable degree of individualism. We are all part of a shared society and not just occupying the same space with no impacts on each other. We can't take take the social cohesion we have for granted, and being able to communicate without barriers is part of that.
Well, go spend some time in Toronto’s Chinatown and show me how the Chinese failed to integrate. Or Tehranto. Or polish neighbourhoods. Or Portuguese. They may not be able to communicate with you or I, but they find a nice to operate in a niche and do well within it.
There are plenty of people that English or french speakers can’t talk to that do well in Canadian society.
Their children integrate just fine and eventually that first generation comms problem goes away.
The issue isn’t a language problem, it’s an integration one. Communities that don’t mix and mingle and stay closed in on themselves might cause cultural problems, but I don’t think speaking the language or not matter so long as immigrants and their children interact on some level with the rest of society.
The language test requirement seems fairly reasonable *once*. It's unreasonable to keep insisting on repeat tests, particularly if there's evidence like receiving a degree from a Canadian university indicating sufficient fluency.
The ability to communicate in the local language is a pretty critical factor for successfully participating in the society and workplace. I can't see how a student can successfully complete a degree at a Canadian institution without sufficient fluency in English. That would tend to justify post-secondary institutions who require a language test as a condition of admission. However, it seems like it'd be an odd requirement for a student coming to Canada for the purpose of *acquiring* language fluency.
You certainly can't be successful in most Canadian companies if you lack the fluency to communicate with your co-workers. Companies are probably the best judge of that, but if the government is allowing immigration by people without a job offer from a Canadian company, checking language fluency as a condition of admission makes sense. Why would you admit people to work in Canada who lack an essential skill to work in their field? (The same applies to recognition of foreign credentials - it's really unfair to the immigrant professional to admit them on the basis of a credential that isn't recognized and leave them consigned to work for which they may be overqualified.)
This raises another question I have: are the fluency tests sufficient to evaluate fluency in the rather specialized and technical language used in professional fields, or is it more focused on a conversational fluency? My limited French is sufficient to shop, travel, and have basic conversations - I'm a very long way from being able to write a technical paper in French.
A number of years ago (in the US) an Professor in Physical Therapy) of mine, opined that "just because we are speaking English does NOT mean that we are communicating. Words to live by. Just because you can pass some proficiency test does NOT mean that you can communicate with a patient. Accents cause problems. Perceived accents will create problems. Racism will always create problems with communications whether or naught the issue exists.
I had an interesting experience at a workshop for an engineering project in the UK a few years ago. The working language of the meeting was English, and we had participants speaking with accents from Italy, Norway, Denmark, Canada, England, Glasgow and the Orkney Islands, and both Northern and Southern Ireland. The problem was that a lot of them couldn't understand each other because of the accents, but the Canadian (me) could understand everybody and be understood by everybody. I found myself in the strange position of acting as a translator even though everybody was speaking English!
As a former RN and nurse regulator I found English language proficiency as essential to processing safe medication and accurate symptom communication between individuals and teams essential. Phone and voice communication standards reduce medical and nursing errors
A final check to confirm someone’s ability to communicate and ideally integrate into Canadian society seems responsible and reasonable.
I thinl the average Canadian blue-collar worker is more interested in whether or not immigrant coworkers are 'willing' to speak English rather than are they able to speak it.