CANADA IS wasting its brains, a new Statistics Canada survey shows. And it's especially true in the cities. The research shows that virtually all immigrants coming to Canada in the 1990s -- about 1.8 million -- have settled in metropolitan cities. It also shows these immigrants, who actually have higher levels of education than people born in Canada, are being wasted and are stuck without jobs or forced to work ones with much lower skill requirements.

The result is a drain on social programs and public transportation in the country's largest cities, the study found.

"We're skimming the cream of the crop of immigrants from around the world and then we are just wasting them," said David Hughes of Skills for Change, a Toronto organization that tries to find job opportunities for immigrants. "It really is a brain waste, not only for us but for the countries of origin where the immigrants were productive citizens."

Toronto's Alexey Teterim, 48, can't land a job here even though he came from Russia in December with a PhD in electrical engineering. He's an IT expert who has scored in the top 10% in international tests but can't seem to find work in Toronto.

"So now I am on social assistance," Teterim said yesterday. "I do my best to find a job but it is so hard here. At first, I thought it was a problem with my English but I don't think that's the case anymore."

Based on the 2001 census, the study shows that in Toronto 32% of Canadian-born people aged 25 to 54 had a university degree compared to 38% of recent immigrants. The disparity is even wider in Ottawa where 30% of Canadian-born people had degrees compared to 50% of recent immigrants.

Despite the education gap, immigrants are much more likely to work for low wages or be unemployed than their native-born counterparts.

Teterim spent eight years working as an associate professor at a Russian university.

"I'm unemployed in Canada but I hope that changes in the future," Teterim said.