And the point is that the shortcuts unfairly limit the opportunities people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds have in a way that a white person with a "Canadian" sounding name doesn't face.
Perhaps so. On the other hand, studies have shown this preference for similar people is not confined to white anglos. Francophones tend to hire Francophones. Blacks hire Blacks. Asians hire Asians. Most people are more comfortable with those who are much like we are.
And the presumption most of those with foreign names are foreigners will fade away in any event since there are now an awful lot of Canadian born people with 'foreign names'. And more every year.
The point is that these are barriers people face through no fault of their own. This is what we are talking about when we say "white privilege." It's not some mythical thing.
People are human, and at least a lot of the barriers in place, at least in Canada, is due to so many people immigrating here in such a short time with so little grasp of the language or culture, and an encouragement from government to take pride in who and what they are and not cast it aside. Communication skills are a HUGE issue in areas like I worked and foreigners often do not possess them to the extent needed. "Taxi driver English" is simply not acceptable when dealing with complex software and regulatory issues.
It's not to make you feel guilty that you're "privileged," it's to make you recognize that there's barriers that are far from their control and that people not from those backgrounds, namely straight white men, can be completely unaware of because hey never have to face them. That's the privilege; it's the privilege of living a normal life.
I don't doubt someone new to Canada is going to be at a disadvantage to me. Are you saying they shouldn't be? Are we to deny any advantage, however natural, to those born and raised here?
Anyone who is new to a country is going to face challenges, and should expect to. They won't have the connections and the local knowledge. As you're aware most good jobs are never advertised outside a firm or department. They don't need to be. People who work there almost always know someone. If you're an immigrant you don't have those connections. Hell, if you come here from Vancouver you won't have those connections either.
The government puts a lot of effort into short circuiting the hiring process in order to be fair to all applicants, but the result is a bureaucratic mess which is unfair to the actual government itself. Now the government can afford to have a hideously expensive bureaucracy which slows down hiring to a snails pace, and takes up masses of managers' time, but private industry cannot.