Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 29th, 2017

[Donald Arseneault, Minister of Post-Secondary Education Training and Labour, Government of New Brunswick]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's an honour and a privilege to be here in front of your committee. A special shout-out to my own MP, MP Arseneault, as well as our New Brunswick MP, Alaina Lockhart, and also to my colleague from P.E.I., Minister Gallant.

Our government is working on some very important immigration initiatives, and I'm looking forward to speaking about them today. As a government, we are focused on creating the right conditions for New Brunswickers to thrive and for the private sector to create jobs and grow the economy.

New Brunswick is a small province and we have an aging population. This is amplified by significant youth outmigration and a decrease in natural population growth, with deaths now surpassing births in the province. The 2016 census highlighted our declining population, with New Brunswick being the only province or territory to record a population drop from 2011 to 2016. Recent research suggests that low or negative population growth is expected across most areas of the province except Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton.

People leaving New Brunswick for other provinces continues to be a primary reason for low or negative population growth rates, especially in rural areas. This is closely tied to unemployment in New Brunswick while boosting the economies of other provinces.

Going forward, immigration will continue to be a strong driver for offsetting these negative population growth trends. We need more people to build our workforce and create a better future in New Brunswick.

NBjobs regularly has 3,500 to 4,000 job postings for skilled labour throughout the province. According to recent LMI projections, over 9,000 jobs may need to be filled through immigration over the next five years, 2017 to 2021.

That is why our government is committed to increasing the number of immigrants to our province. Historically, immigration to New Brunswick has been concentrated through our provincial nominee program, the PNP. Through the PNP, we're able to attract skilled workers and business immigrants who intend to settle, work, and raise a family in New Brunswick.

It is also very important to welcome new French-speaking arrivals in order to maintain our linguistic balance. For that reason, we are sparing no effort to attract and retain francophone immigrants who want to settle and work in New Brunswick. For example, we are the first province in the country to sign an immigration agreement with the Trudeau government and, under the terms of that agreement, we are the first province outside Quebec to establish a francophone core. It is a first in the country.

In 2016, we exceeded our francophone immigration objective, reaching 24% of the total number of francophone immigrants, thanks to the New Brunswick Provincial Nominee Program. Our long-term objective is 33%.

In March 2017, New Brunswick hosted the very first Forum sur l'immigration francophone. During this historic event, the ministers responsible for immigration and the francophonie in Canada came together to discuss possible areas of cooperation with a view to encouraging francophone immigration outside Quebec.

We are currently preparing to launch a renewed entrepreneur immigration stream that will focus on increased business immigration to the province. To further our business immigration efforts, the province will continue to support our innovative business immigrant mentorship program and la Ruche, the Hive, a centre that provides business immigrants with the tools necessary to establish a business and successfully settle in the province.

In conjunction with our business immigrant mentorship programs, the province is piloting a succession connect program in Fredericton that will connect business immigrants with businesses for sale in New Brunswick.

Our government believes it is essential to support settlement initiatives that assist with the integration and retention of newcomers in communities throughout New Brunswick. We currently have 13 service provider organizations across New Brunswick. This ensures that newcomers have access to settlement services in communities throughout the province.

It is important to encourage newcomer participation in our provincial labour force and to show all New Brunswickers the value and benefits of a diverse and multicultural society. We believe in inclusive communities, support for all New Brunswick families, and investing in culture.

Recent public opinion research produced by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada shows that residents of Atlantic Canada express more positive views on immigration and refugees compared to other regions of Canada. New Brunswick is proud to have supported the federal government's Syrian refugee initiative last year, welcoming over 1,500 Syrians to the province, the most per capita in the country. New Brunswick resettled more Syrian refugees per capita than any other province in Canada.

It is important to maintain this momentum moving forward to continue to create welcoming communities for all newcomers, and to increase the number of new immigrants coming to New Brunswick.

As a part of this push for more immigration, New Brunswick played a key role in establishing the Atlantic growth strategy and negotiating the Atlantic immigration pilot, advocating for an Atlantic-wide strategy on immigration early on. Through the new Atlantic immigration pilot, the province will leverage growth opportunities to increase immigration and retain newcomers in New Brunswick.

With the program, we have the potential to double the number of economic immigrants coming to New Brunswick. The province is expected to welcome an additional 646 families. The province has increased its focus on employer engagement and retention. Employers in New Brunswick have shown great interest in using immigration as a tool to meet their labour market needs. Now more than ever, we are working with employers in the province in key sectors to recruit skilled workers that meet their labour market needs.

To this end, 200 employers have shown interest in the pilot in New Brunswick with over 140 employers submitting designation applications resulting in over 1,400 job opportunities. Our current retention rate is 72%, and we are looking to increase this to 80% with concentrated integration and retention efforts.

To support these efforts, our government allocated an additional $2.5 million for pilot project related activities including increased employer engagement and support for settlement services. We have also launched a public awareness campaign, “We are all NB”, to educate all New Brunswickers on our current demographic and skilled labour challenges, and on the benefits of immigration and creating welcoming communities to alleviate this situation.

New Brunswick is looking forward to the many opportunities that this new pilot presents including those offered by the pilot's international graduate stream, which will help our post-secondary education institutions attract and retain more international students to the province.

Our government's increased focus on international students has led to several new initiatives including enhanced engagement with universities and colleges to discuss immigration opportunities, a new language training service in Moncton specific to the needs of international students, and the new international student entrepreneur stream under the provincial nominee program that will encourage students to settle and start a business in the province.

Although there is no simple solution to address the demographic challenges facing our province, we believe we have made significant progress and want to continue to encourage immigration growth to New Brunswick.

Particularly, we are reassured by our recent growth in immigration allocations and wish to continue to see allocation increases in future that will meet the labour market demands of New Brunswick employers. It is important that, with these allocation increases, we as a province continue to focus on the important aspects of settlement and retention.

Going forward, by encouraging newcomers to settle in New Brunswick, we will accomplish our goal of creating jobs, growing the economy and making New Brunswick the best place to live, work, and raise a family.

To see our progress first-hand, we welcome you all to come to New Brunswick to learn more about our immigration efforts.

We thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Arseneault.

Mr. Gallant, for seven minutes, please.

[Sonny Gallant, Minister of Workforce and Advanced Learning, Government of Prince Edward Island]

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for the invitation.

We are pleased to be here to represent Prince Edward Island.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to present Prince Edward Island's views on this important matter.

We have two departments that have mandates related to population. My colleague Minister MacDonald sends his regrets for not being able to attend today. His Department of Economic Development and Tourism includes the P.E.I. Office of Immigration. As the workforce and advanced learning minister, my mandate is to grow our population and workforce.

Just last week, Premier MacLauchlan announced a new population action plan for P.E.I., focusing on recruitment, retention, repatriation, and rural economic development.

In recent years, the story of P.E.I.'s population has been positive. Since 2007, driven by strong international immigration, P.E.I. has led the Atlantic provinces in population growth. This influx of new Islanders has contributed to our province in many ways: socially, culturally, and economically. We are seeing this success. Our GDP grew by almost 2% in 2016, which was ahead of the national average by 1%. Manufacturing sales saw the highest growth among all provinces and outpaced the national average of 1%. Over the past six months, we have seen employment growth of 2.8%, the strongest in the country. Over the past five years, the total income from wages and salaries has grown steadily.

We are on the right track, but we are also facing challenges. We must act now to slow and reverse two concerning trends: out-migration and an aging population. Our action plan lays out a path to do this, but we can't do it alone. It is a call to action to Islanders, businesses, communities, and the federal government to help us reach our ambitious target of growing our population to 160,000 by the end of 2022. This is over 10,000 more Islanders in five years.

Today, we have several slides, as we respond to the areas outlined in motion 39.

Canada experienced a 5% population growth in 2016. P.E.I. led Atlantic Canada in population growth, but we know that Atlantic Canada still lagged behind the rest of Canada. We are concerned about the widening of this gap. Atlantic Canada had 10% of the nation's population 50 years ago, and today it has only 6.6%. As in all provinces, the aging of the population is concerning for P.E.I. In Atlantic Canada, one out of every five residents is above the age of 65.

We are the smallest province; however, we are nimble, connected, and innovative, so we use our small size to our advantage. Last year, our immigration growth was the highest in the country. As mentioned, we have an ambitious plan to ensure continued population growth, but we are facing low birth rates and out-migration of young people. We see population growth in our capital region, while rural areas have declining populations. This is concerning.

Our working-age population experienced trends similar to the national average, with a decrease of 2%. This is concerning, particularly for our primary industries: fishing, farming, and tourism. To address this, the population action plan seeks to recruit new Islanders, retain Islanders so they stay over the long term, repatriate Islanders who have moved away, and ensure that our rural areas are growing.

We are pleased to see the increase in immigration levels across Canada, with 40% of immigrants going to western Canada, 37% to Ontario, and 18% to Quebec; this is 95% of the total. While our Atlantic population is about 6.6% of the national, our immigration rate was 4.6% in 2016.

The urban/rural pattern is important to note. When we talk about immigrant retention, we need to look at the challenges that smaller areas like P.E.I. face with the pull to the big urban centres.

In P.E.I., we are working hard on recruitment and, as mentioned, we are seeing success. The majority of arrivals come through our provincial nominee program, followed by an increased refugee resettlement. We are proud of our contribution to the Syrian resettlement plan, as an example of both population growth and humanitarian support. With the start of the Atlantic pilot, we have increased employer engagement and identified new immigration opportunities.

Our post-secondary institutions continue to see growth in international students, at about 1,200. Over 60% have expressed an interest to stay in P.E.I. for the long term. Connecting graduates to work and increasing youth retention are key to the work of my department and our population action plan.

We are also looking at international and domestic models to boost rural development. We need a settlement plan that focuses on proactive engagement and expanding growth in rural P.E.I, as well as a coordinated approach with the federal government.

We are also working closely with our francophone organizations to grow our francophone community. We believe these efforts, along with community engagement, will lead to improved retention rates.

Our last slide notes some of the recommendations. We recommend a national strategy that focuses on rural development. We see this as a direct benefit to Atlantic Canada.

We need a coordinated settlement strategy. We can no longer afford to have the federal government and the provincial government funding both settlement and integration initiatives without a coordinated framework. We would be pleased to pilot an integrated model in P.E.I.

Finally, when the former federal government made the decision to close 19 regional immigration offices, P.E.I. lost its face-to-face services. This negatively impacted our province and our clients. Today, when immigrants land they must report to a landing office in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We continue to be the only province in Canada without an IRCC presence. This reduced service delivery creates an additional barrier to our success. We do appreciate modernization, but in this case, face-to-face services are incredibly important.

We support your recommendation number 24 and encourage the committee to look at all impacts in addition to a cost-benefit analysis.

It has been a pleasure for us to appear here today, and we are looking forward to any dialogue.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Gallant.

We'll begin our rounds of questions with Mr. Whalen.

I believe you'll be splitting your time with Ms. Lockhart. Mr. Whalen, the floor is yours for seven minutes.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm very interested in the Atlantic growth strategy. Since I am an MP from Newfoundland and Labrador, obviously my province is experiencing exactly the same challenges that you've described in P.E.I. and New Brunswick. With the rising and falling commodity prices, certainly right now we're suffering from an additional factor.

I have some questions around the pilot itself. For the 2,000 families who are invited to Atlantic Canada under the growth strategy, who, from your perspective, is responsible for designating employers to take advantage of the plan? Is this a shared federal-provincial responsibility? Are you each doing it provincially yourselves? How has each of your provinces designated employers to take advantage of the pilot project? We'll start with New Brunswick.

[Donald Arseneault]

I think it's a collective effort; everybody has a role to play. I think this is what is going to make this pilot project work, and we're going to see some success. I know we in New Brunswick work tremendously hard to engage employers. We heard it throughout part of the conversation you had in the past hour. These people are looking for jobs. So we are engaging the employers in the process and getting them to come out on various trade missions around the world to talk to these potential new Canadians. Before they come over, they'll have landed a job, and that, I believe, is going to go a long way to making sure we can retain them in a province like ours or in Atlantic Canada. I think that is the major difference that's going to drive success, but it's a collective effort. The government is working very hard. As I said in my slide, we've added $2.5 million just for this pilot project to increase our resources so we can help by going to talk to employers and get them more engaged and so forth. Because of that, we have over 200 employers who have stepped up to the plate just in New Brunswick, committing over 1,400 jobs already. In the short term, it's been a success, and we really haven't gotten rolling as of yet.

[Sonny Gallant]

We in P.E.I. work with employers to try to get them their settlement programs and keep our immigrants on P.E.I.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

In terms of the 2,000, in New Brunswick you mentioned that you've identified 646 to come. If another province doesn't pick up its share of the 2,000 do you feel that New Brunswick would be able to take advantage of that opportunity and take an additional share of worker class immigrants into your province along with their families?

[Donald Arseneault]

As my ADM has just said, there is an agreement within the four provinces that if such a case happens, we can switch some of those numbers up so we can go and attract those people. I wish all of my colleagues the greatest success in reaching their numbers. It can happen.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Gallant, do you think you're going to hit your targets this year?

[Sonny Gallant]

We will.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

Alaina.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you.

Thank you to the committee for allowing me to be here today. I appreciate it.

I have some questions, since we have Mr. Ayles along with you here, about some of the specifics of the program and what we're doing. Feel free to answer. How has New Brunswick identified the gaps in our workforce? I ask this question because I think it's important from a communication standpoint when we do have an unemployment rate. That's one of the questions we hear a lot. How are we identifying those gaps?

[Charles Ayles, Assistant Deputy Minister, Post-Secondary Education, Training and Labour, Population Growth Division, Government of New Brunswick]

There are a number of ways, but the main way is that we have an employer outreach unit that is going out and talking to individual businesses. That's how we're identifying the positions that my minister spoke about, the 1,400 jobs. There are a number of ways to do it, through Stokes reports or economic forecasting that can tell you shortfalls in the short, medium and long term, but we're doing it differently. We're going face to face in communities meeting people and asking what their employment needs are, and that's how we're tracking those jobs. It's more of an on-the-ground effort than an economic-based model effort.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Okay. And what are the jobs that have been identified? Are there classes of...?

[Charles Ayles]

I'm glad you asked.

We have them identified in basically every region of the province and we have a breakdown by sector, by region. We have a number of IT and we have business service centres, contact centres, transportation, aquaculture, seafood processing, agriculture, forestry, food manufacturing, manufacturing, home care, hospitality and food services, administration, finance, and of course, the always fun category, “other”.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Right. Are the NOC codes related to the pilot?

[Charles Ayles]

They are. When my predecessor from IRCC talked about the medium and skilled, there are different NOC codes for the different parts of the pilot. So, yes, and as I went through that list, some are NOC 0, some are A, some are B, some are C. So there's a mix.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Have you found that to be a challenge so far?

[Charles Ayles]

Not so far because the pilot has been built to allow us to fill that in. It's given great flexibility.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Okay, great.

I'm not sure how much time I have, but I'll keep going.

How do you find the businesses that are engaging in the recruitment? You had mentioned doing some travel, but what other ways, tools, are they using for recruitment?

[Charles Ayles]

For recruitment tools, even in the pilot, they still have to prove that there is a need because the goal is still Canadians first. Once they prove to us that need, then the other pieces of it take place. There's a direct recruitment, and right now we have teams overseas. They have employers with them right now and are identifying people on the spot to bring back to New Brunswick. That is working well. We found so far that because we've done more direct contact with the employers, the pickup is much higher. They see that service being right there, and we're able to, not hold their hand through the process, but assist them in different ways. Immigration is still complex and it is still complicated. We're trying to make it as simplistic as possible. There are still elements of it that when you move from one side of the world to the other, there are questions that have to be answered and there are forms that have to be filled out. We're assisting with that; there is still a lot of that documentation that needs to be done, which just takes time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Ms. Rempel, and I understand you'll be sharing your time with Mr. Tilson.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you.

I'm just wondering if each of you can take a very brief amount of time and explain how the downturn in the energy sector, specifically with some of the punitive policies around destabilizing or adding uncertainty to the regulatory process for natural resource projects, has affected each of your provinces. In my understanding, and from what I hear anecdotally, I certainly know that Alberta had a lot of workers from your provinces employed in Alberta in the energy sector and that has increasingly not become the case. Since we're talking about migration and unemployment, I'd be very curious to hear that from you.

[Donald Arseneault]

I don't think I want to...maybe you can elaborate more on what punitive policies you're talking about.