Douglas Gilbertson, Toronto, Ontario

"Opportunities should be given for immigrants to Canada, rather than taking people from other countries on short term.Canada has good potential for growth in IT industry."

"CI am not sure what the employers want. If one looks at the ads, one can easily see that the ad wants even a network technician to know about Database or in some cases even Web related HTML, PHP etc"

"I think there are lots of IT people in Canada, but they are being left behind by the industry. Witness the Globe and Mail article (last year?) noting the 38 year old IT guy in Toronto who was unemployed, got fed up with competing against a bunch of youngsters and went to Alberta to be a forest ranger. So whatever shortage there is, comes from ineffective use of the available talent. I've been in interviews where the interviewer came out and boasted that the average age in the office was almost 10 years younger than I was - and I wasn't even 40 at the time."

"I beleive that there the IT business has been overinflated and we now have too many techs for the business."

"employers are selective to acquire software engineers who knows everything about computer science rather than offering employees training opportunities to improve themselves."

"There is not an IT shortage. The IT industry has matured since years back. Technology is stronger, more robust. More companies have moved into the IT realm already, so there isn't as much work moving companies from the paper world. Upgrades to existing IT capabilities are far less work. In addition to this, many areas have become less specialized and so more people are able to deal with them in regular day to day activities. The IT demand and thus wages show where things are now as well. The wages aren't as strong as they once were which shows a lack of demand. If the job boards etc show a lot of work it would be more related to the fact that IT has turned itself down the path of contract work. Thus a lot of small contracts for IT people with postings much more frequently. The hype is gone. Things are day to day now. Get real, the days of excitement finished off a few years back... You've got global facts now too hitting the local IT market as well (oversea development). It has become a tight market which has many people applying for one single job. Fulltime employment in it is rare and the sexyness of it has left as well."

"Since most of the Canadian employers turn blind eye to the forien trained and experienced immigrant professionals, governemnt and other agencies believe that there is a shortage of IT professionals in Canada."