Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC)
To find ways that the region’s labour market can better leverage the skills and talent that immigrants bring, CivicAction and Maytree formed TRIEC in 2002.
Problem Addressed
Persistent immigrant underemployment – extremely highly skilled people come to Toronto from all over the world and end up in low-skilled jobs.
Solutions Implemented
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For more than 15 years, TRIEC has pursued collaborative strategies to better integrate immigrant professionals into the Greater Toronto Region.
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It has engaged employers to build immigrant inclusive workplaces.
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It has enhanced coordination across all levels of government, municipal, regional, provincial and national.
Key Results
Better Connection for Better Jobs
To date, TRIEC has facilitated over 17,000 mentoring relationships.
In 2002, leaders representing the city’s various sectors and communities came together to hold the Toronto City Summit. They held this conference to assess the Toronto region’s strengths and challenges, and shape future initiatives to move the region forward.
Following the Summit, a group of its delegates set up the Toronto City Summit Alliance (now CivicAction). One of the challenges the Alliance identified was immigrant employment – more specifically how the region’s labour market could better leverage the immense skills and talent that immigrants bring.
CivicAction and Maytree formed TRIEC the following year. At first, TRIEC operated as a council of leaders — representatives from different sectors who came together to generate ideas and solutions to address immigrant un and under-employment.
A small team of staff made those ideas a reality, implementing them as initiatives that are still running today. TRIEC was a program of Maytree until 2012.