Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has announced a new pilot project to promote immigration to rural and northern communities so that they can meet their labour market needs.
The program is rather complex, but some basic information is as follows:
To participate, interested communities work with local economic development organizations to apply to IRCC to be considered for the program. Selected communities will receive some benefit in supporting immigrant applications.
Eligible Communities
To be eligible, a community must either:
- Have a population of less than 50,000 and be at least 75km from a core metropolitan area, or
- Have up to 200,000 people and be considered remote from other large cities.
The program is available only in certain provinces and territories, namely, Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Yukon.
The selected communities will need to have the ability to settle newcomers including resources with regard to, for example, housing, transportation, and health care.
Economic Development Organizations
An Economic Development Organization can include, for instance, a chamber of commerce, or other not-for-profit economic development group.
Working with local municipal officials, such organizations develop strategic plans for economic development in an area, and will lead the process for a particular region.
Process
The community development organization, with support from local officials, submits an application based on its economic development plan, and will be expected to manage the pilot in the relevant community. Applications (at least for this initial pilot phase) must be submitted by march 1, 2019.
The full details of what assistance is then provided by IRCC are not yet fully expounded upon, but presumably, selected communities will be able to support applicants for permanent residence destined to their region/employers in their region. (This may in turn allow for some interim work permit allowances, but this is not fully clear at this time.)
We will of course provide further details as the information becomes available, but at this time, we simply wished to apprise readers of the new program. If there are employers/economic groups/municipalities in appropriate areas for whom this may be of interest, it is time to consider an application which may be of benefit in securing immigrants in the near future, and to consider the details of such an application.
The information in this article is for general purposes only, and not intended as legal advice for any particular situation.