Certainly we are facing demographic and economic challenges here. Your colleague MP Alaina Lockhartis very supportive of the Atlantic immigration strategy, which will see more people coming to our region. With that and with programs like our succession connect program, we hope to be able to attract and retain more newcomers to our region. We have about a 63% retention rate for newcomers who come here, and we'd like to see that increased. It would be great to see it at over 75%.
One area is negative, but it does have a right side. Currently we face a nearly 10% unemployment rate, which means we have an available workforce. We simply need to get people skilled up to the right skills. We also have a skills gap. There are 3,600 jobs right now on the NB job board, and many of those are IT-focused. We need to make sure we are training people in the right sectors and looking at supporting people with credential recognition, such as newcomers who are qualified in their home countries. To be able to recognize their credentials when they come here is a really important thing, and we need to do it quickly so they can hit the ground running and become part of our economy.