I love that question because that's what we've been advocating for. That's why I mentioned that in 1995 we set up our own business and economic development centre with the settlement funding. The purpose of the centre is to help new immigrants connect with local business people.
In 2002 we received funding from Western Economic Diversification Canada so we could launch the famous Gateway to Asia project. Within this project we helped to recruit and train about 1,000 Asian traders. They are new Canadians, but they are very experienced in trading. They had businesses in China or in Asia before. We train them with a developed database, and then we help them connect with Canadian manufacturers. And we give seminars to Canadian companies on how to do business with China as well as Chinese business immigrants.
We organize “East meets West” business networking luncheons. We help them get together, and we provide translation, support. We provide presentations so that they can meet and talk about different partnerships, including exporting Canadian products to China, and also explore investment opportunities here. A lot of new immigrants are looking for investment opportunities within the local business community.
In the past three years we've been helping our members, just our members, to export over $20 million in Canadian products back to China and Korea. So this is a very famous project, and this project was named one of the best practised by the Asia Pacific Foundation last year.
But unfortunately this funding will end by next March. Again, WD has not managed to provide settlement money to new immigrants. That's why we've been advocating for the government to expand the funding framework to support business immigrants as well as skilled immigrants who want to be self-employed.
Half of our clients at our business centre are in the skilled immigrant category. So we are not only serving business immigrants, we are also serving ordinary immigrants. They want to go for the self-employment alternative. The job market is tough, and self-employment is a driving force for our local economy. So the government should look at how to help new immigrants become self-employed as another driving force for our local economy.