Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Members of the committee, thank you for having us today.
Founded in 1997, the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité (RDEE Canada), sets up many structuring projects each year to stimulate economic development and employability in all of Canada's francophone and Acadian communities. Our national organization acts as a lever to create business opportunities for each of our members in all provinces and territories, except Quebec. So we have 12 members.
With that in mind and with our network's cooperation, in 2015, RDEE Canada responded to a call for tenders from the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship for the launch of a pre-arrival support project in Canada. That's how we obtained the mandate to provide this sort of service, specifically in French, for francophone clients in the process of immigrating to the country.
To do so, we have partnered with other francophone and bilingual service providers, such as the Information and Communications Technology Council, JVS and La Cité collégiale, with international associations, such as Pôle emploi, in France, and ethnocultural associations in Morocco, Tunisia, France and Belgium. Thanks to the mobilization and expertise of RDEE Canada members in all provinces and territories and our other partners, pre-departure services have become the first francophone employability and entrepreneurship online services for immigrants in Canada.
With the support of our immigration officers in the provinces and territories, who are the primary source of information preferred by clients, RDEE Canada's pre-departure services provide free services in French directly on site. This service structure, which provides personalized and remote advice, ensures better economic integration of immigrants, in addition to connecting newcomers to the host francophone community.
From September 2015 to December 2018, the pre-departure services provided the following support services to immigrant clients. First, participants registered on a web platform. Then, we assessed the needs of clients individually with an expert adviser. We also provided access to online resources and tools, such as fact sheets, webinars or virtual job fairs. We then referred the clients to the RDEE Canada agency in the province or territory matching their destination of choice. This stage ensured local support tailored to their needs. We also ensured that we guided clients carefully to other partner organization that provide settlement services in the destination communities, according to the identified needs. Finally, we developed surveys to obtain feedback on the services received by clients.
We believe that the service structure put in place by RDEE Canada met the needs of francophone clients and helped achieve francophone immigration targets in Canada.
For the last three years, our pre-departure services helped more than 700 francophone clients eligible for immigration, according to IRCC criteria. Our customized support services allowed 75% of the clients to land a job within the first six months of their arrival. That figure went up to 90% after more than six months of job search.
According to the surveys we conducted, 97% of clients were satisfied with the services received, and more than 92% of them responded that they would recommend pre-departure services to others trying to immigrate to Canada.
These results were achieved with an average annual budget of $400,000. We can therefore say that these are best practices that have given convincing results.
At RDEE Canada, we believe that the economic integration of newcomers is an essential component of their immigration journey. We believe that the success of immigrants' arrival in Canada is measured when they obtain a job that matches their skills and can contribute to the economic growth of their communities and host country. The pre-departure services provided by RDEE Canada and its members have also helped to promote the retention of immigrants in francophone and Acadian host communities.
With its Canada-wide background in francophone immigration and the expertise acquired in the field by network members, RDEE Canada was invited to submit a new nation-wide project, in keeping with the criteria set out in the call for proposals, namely that of a one-stop shop for francophone immigration. We therefore responded to the call for tenders issued by the IRCC in 2018.
As part of this project, we proposed a budget and requested financial support of $6 million over five years. The objective was to establish a one-stop shop to provide a continuum of services and make the immigration process even more effective and, above all, client-centred. However, our proposal was not accepted. Since we no longer receive funding, the pre-departure services that we had been offering since 2015 ended on December 31, 2018.
In closing, I would like to make the following two recommendations. Pre-arrival francophone services must be timely, seamless and efficient. Francophone pre-departure services must also include a very well-developed employability and entrepreneurship component.
My thanks to the members of the committee for having us.
We are more than happy to answer your questions.