Pre-arrival services: The missing piece in the immigrant integration puzzle?

Although the education level of immigrants arriving in Canada has been steadily increasing, finding appropriate employment has remained a constant challenge for many newcomers. In an effort to improve some of the barriers that immigrants face, immigrant service organizations (ISOs) have started providing pre-arrival services for immigrants before they set foot in Canada. Pre-arrival services include orientation sessions, language classes and workshops on various topics such as job search strategies and occupational licensing.

Advancing TTC Ridership Analytics and Revenue Forecasting Tools for Improved Transit Planning

(TTC) for improved public transit planning and better transit service delivery. With the implementation of PRESTO Card, TTC now generates real-time data on how often and where transit riders interact with the TTC’s infrastructure and network. PRESTO Card data allows new ways to capture transit demand in real-time and makes it possible to deploy state-of-the-art data science and predictive analytics to develop ridership forecasts for varying time horizons. The ridership forecasts could then be used to generate forecasts for farebox revenue.

Exploring the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion of the Canadian Sport Industry

This project will examine the equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) within the Canadian sport industry.

Machine Learning for Default Prediction of Private Pension Administrator

In this research project, we will partner with the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA) to enhance its default prediction model for private companies administering pension plans in Ontario. Our goal is to enhance the current model’s timeliness in predicting default of private companies by addressing the lack of publicly accessible information from these private entities.

A hybrid two-way recommender system for candidate and job search

The recruitment industry faces information overload when matching qualified individuals with competitive jobs. A recommender system can effectively solve this problem by filtering relevant content in order to make recommendations, in this case matching candidates with jobs. The objective of this project is to develop such a system for two-way search and ranking of candidates given job description and vice versa; put simply this system will recommend candidates to employer and will recommend job opportunities to candidates. Existing recommender systems have their own unique benefits.

Inventory optimization model to support customer needs while meeting business targets

Manufacturing is a $174 billion industry in Canada, representing over 10% of total GDP and 68% of merchandise exports. Inventory is the largest spend and asset for manufacturing companies, and efficient inventory management is a proven strategy to increase profitability in the manufacturing sector. The aim of inventory management is to achieve satisfactory levels of customer service while minimizing inventory costs in order to maximize profitability.

Affordability Dashboard - Vancouver

The VEC, under its Economic Transformation Lab and in partnership with SFU and MITACS, seeks to research, design, and publish an affordability dashboard that consolidates all important metrics/statistics on affordability, relevant to Vancouver businesses and talent. The Dashboard will not only focus on affordability of office, retail, and industrial space, as well as other pertinent business operation affordability metrics, but will also contain affordability metrics that inform businesses of the cost of living for their talent.

Automated Credit Risk Assessment Systems in Small Business Lending Decisions

Small businesses account for 89.6% of the total private labour force in Canada and, despite the vital role they play in the Canadian economy, fewer than half of small businesses will survive 10 years. One of the most commonly cited causes of small business failure is the inability to raise capital to finance its operations. This occurs, in part, because banks and lending agencies lack the tools necessary to draw valid conclusions from credit risk assessments.

Closing Skill Gaps in Under- and Unemployed Youth

Learning, an online learning platform, to underemployed or unemployed youth. Building on the work of a pilot project by CivicAction, the intern will plan and implement a randomized controlled trial to test factors driving uptake of online learning and its effects on employment outcomes. The intern and CivicAction will engage with Toronto-area employment services providers to provide various treatment intensities. Treatment groups range from a simple offering of a license to weekly reminders and curated playlists to encourage uptake or hands-on help in setting up online learning modules.

Community Engagement and Ownership of Projects Emerging from Social Innovation Labs

The purpose of the proposed research is to identify the factors and indicators that enable, or block community actors from taking ownership of a solution previously led by a social leader or government actor. The project will allow our partner and the communities they work with to gain a better understanding of factors that enable the transition of projects to ownership within the community, as well as further the available research and knowledge for other government or social led business ventures transitioning ownership to the community.

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