With the reasonable accommodation debate devouring sections of Montreal’s local news and questioning the merits of being an immigrant in Quebec, in other parts of Canada it seems doors are opening for Canadian immigrants.

For Canadian immigrants choosing to re-settle in Alberta, a new loan system offers immigrants the opportunity to translate their foreign trained professional skills into nation-wide accepted ones.

The story of the foreign trained specialist arriving in Canada with no transferable diploma is not new. Take any student who graduates, let’s say, in Uganda with a degree in medicine specializing in radiology. He practices in Kampala for ten years and then decides to move to Canada with his family.

Once in Montreal, he finds out that his degree doesn’t transfer, there’s no way he can take out a loan without Canadian based credit and he’s stuck cooking at minimum wage. The main breadwinner of the family, he doesn’t have time to take classes on the side and there’s no extra cash since he’s feeding a family.

The Immigrant Access Fund, a new fund in Alberta that functions much like the Canadian student loan system, has introduced a new program to act as safe-guard in these situations by stopping well-trained foreign aid from slipping through the cracks.

The fund offers a temporary loan service to Canadian immigrants so they can re-invest in their foreign trained skills.

Canadian immigrants are loaned enough cash to upgrade their degrees to match Canadian requirements. Immigrants take classes, pass examinations and, as agreed, repay their loans after securing a job in their field.

Through public and private donations, including nearly half a million dollars from the federal government and totaling more than $2 million since 2005, the Albertan government has tapped a new resource: the training of idle, able and experienced international professionals to fill gaping holes in Alberta’s professional career sector with benefits all-around.