Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marc Miller waits to appear before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration in Ottawa on Feb. 28.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
More small towns – as well as francophone communities – will be able to recommend which foreign workers can settle in their communities permanently under an extension to a pilot immigration program.
More than 5,100 newcomers have received permanent residence through the rural and northern immigration pilot program, which is designed to help communities address local labour shortages. The vast majority have stayed in the communities where they were recommended for permanent residence.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced he was extending the program and launching new parallel pilots in rural and francophone communities to give them a say on who could gain permanent residence and settle there.
The new rural community immigration pilot project, to be launched in the fall, will help to overcome critical labour job shortages, Mr. Miller said.
The new francophone community immigration pilot project, which will also be launched in the fall, will focus on increasing the number of French-speaking newcomers settling in francophone minority communities outside Quebec.
Speaking in Sudbury, Ont., Mr. Miller said the vast majority of people who have applied for a pathway to permanent residence through the pilot program have stayed in the towns that recommended them.
“These people are not only here, they love it and they want to stay and they want to contribute to building,” Mr. Miller said at a news conference Wednesday. “So this addresses the labour shortages, in health care, manufacturing, retail accommodation, food services, as well as scientific and technical services.”
He said more small towns will be able to take part in the pilot program and, in about 18 months, the plans are to make it permanent.
Remote and northern communities are facing challenges because of Canada’s aging population, Mr. Miller said, and it is critical for them to attract skilled workers from overseas.
The programs provide another pathway to permanent residence, and eventually citizenship, for newcomers with skills who want to live long-term in smaller communities.
Newcomers who find a job in one of the participating communities can be recommended by them for permanent residence, if they meet the community’s own criteria. They must also meet Canada’s immigration requirements.
Last month, the Immigration Department extended the deadline until the end of July for towns involved in the pilot, which include Thunder Bay and Sudbury in Northern Ontario, to recommend candidates for permanent residence. It also increased the number of candidates communities can recommend.
Patty Hajdu, MP for Thunder Bay-Superior North, said the pilot has been “a pivotal program to address labour gaps consistently expressed by employers in Northern Ontario.”
“The inclusion of Thunder Bay and participating surrounding communities has increased our region’s ability to attract and retain many newcomers and their families to our area, each contributing to our labour work force and bringing with them incredible skill and talent,” she said in an e-mail.
Matthew Shoemaker, mayor of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. told The Globe that 130 local employers had been participating in the town pilot, and that around 753 people have received permanent residence.
The program has contributed to the cultural diversity of the community, Mr. Shoemaker said in an e-mail, adding it “has helped employers in the Sault and area recruit skilled professionals for job opportunities they were unable to fill through the local labour force.”
Among those who have settled in the town through the program is Felix Koros a light aircraft maintenance engineer who moved with his wife and five children to work at JD Aero, an aircraft maintenance provider.
“Sault Ste. Marie has a significant need for increased immigration to address demographic, age-structure and youth-outmigration challenges,” Mr. Shoemaker said. “For Sault Ste. Marie to thrive as a community, we need a renewed labour force, which we cannot build organically because our birth rate is outpaced by the local death rate combined with out-migration.”
Michelle Boileau, mayor of Timmins, Ont., which has also taken part in the pilot, said local employers had told her that without the program, they would have had to “look at closing their doors in the near future.”