Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the House of Commons standing committee. ISANS is the only multi-service settlement agency in Nova Scotia and the largest immigrant settlement agency in the Atlantic region. We've been operating for 35 years.
I'm sure you know how critical immigration is to the province and how the demographic challenges that face us are now constantly in our public discourse. Communities are shrinking, and employers are now really hurting and in many cases unable to meet their workforce needs. We just heard that.
Increased immigration is central to our future, but please don't take away from this that immigration is not working in Nova Scotia, because it is. Our numbers are increasing. As Wadih said, our retention rate has increased from 45% in the 1990s to 73%. Employers and communities are engaged. We have a unique approach to regulated professions that has led to immigrants in Nova Scotia, as Wadih said, being twice as likely to be working in their professions. The exam pass rates for internationally educated pharmacists, physicians, and engineers is way above the national average. Economic principle applicants and family-sponsored spouses have higher earnings in Nova Scotia than immigrants nationally.
Immigration is working in Nova Scotia, but we need more and we need to keep more. Here are a few things that would help.
Firstly, resource the Atlantic immigration pilot. To bring you up to date, ISANS has developed 123 settlement plans to date, 109 outside Canada for all the four provinces, and a total of 74 for Nova Scotia both in and outside Canada. The pilot is based on the premise of the need for retention in the Atlantic provinces, and it's assumed that the added responsibilities placed on employers will increase that retention. The whole pilot has been developed with this in mind.
While we're excited about the opportunity and working really hard to make it work—in fact, determined to make it work—the process is complicated. It demands a lot from the employer, mostly SMEs who have neither experience in nor resources to respond to the settlement needs of their employees.
If we're really determined to make this work, we need to resource the pilot. The AIP is a priority for us. We've had hundreds and hundreds of calls, and to respond to employers, employees, individuals, and communities, we need some coordination around it. This is not business as usual, and if we have learned anything in the last few years in Nova Scotia, it's that our increased retention rate is due to two things: better selection and increased investment in settlement services.
In addition, we need to make settlement programs accessible to the applicant sooner. Right now we're doing needs assessments for AIP clients. We're telling them this is what you need and these are the programs you should access, but right now you can't because you're not a permanent resident and you're not eligible. For the pilot we've amended eligibility for them to allow them to receive a settlement plan before they become a PR.
I suspect the rejection rate by IRC of AIP applicants is really negligible. We know they will access these programs once they become a permanent resident. Also, we want them to integrate more quickly. We want the spouses to access the labour market sooner. We know from our research on our regular pre-arrival programs that 78% of clients are working within six months of arrival. Let's make AIP clients eligible for federally funded programs upon endorsement of their application.
Secondly, we need increased flexibility around the PNP, provincial nominee program. If we're seeking ideas how to increase and retain immigrants to the Atlantic, we know people bring people to a community and we know people keep people in a community.
In Nova Scotia, we had a very successful program that worked with the existing communities to bring people. For example, the local Jewish community worked with the province to bring Russian Jews to Nova Scotia who were finding it difficult to settle in Israel. Around 250 to 300 people came, and only one or two families left. Of course they didn't leave. They had support. The local Jewish community helped to integrate them to resources, work, schools, etc.
For various reasons, the program didn't continue. I know there have been problems in the PNP in some of the provinces. I know that Nova Scotia had its own unique challenge, but we need some flexibility. Here's a pilot ready for the making, a community-supported immigration pilot that uses some of the best elements of Canada's enormously successful privately sponsored refugee program, engagement of communities to attract, support, and retain immigrants.
Provinces don't retain people. People retain people. I'm suggesting that the federal government allow opportunity for some additional pilots outside of the AIP. Nova Scotia has demonstrated over the last few years its commitment to immigration and its ability to settle and retain immigrants. Provide us with some additional tools to do so.
Before I leave the PNP, I have to take the opportunity to speak to the caps on the provincial nominees. While I fully support the AIP, it's the nominee program that has allowed the province to significantly increase its numbers of immigrants for the past few years.
We currently have a cap of 1,350. We've never failed to reach that nomination number. Most of our immigrants to Nova Scotia come through the PNP stream. If the federal government is truly interested in increasing immigration to the Atlantic, raise or eliminate the caps. The arguments that I've heard against it—that people don't stay, that increasing those numbers would decrease numbers in the federal economic stream—I don't understand. Seventy-three per cent of people do stay, and certainly most PNs stay. Also, provinces know who they need in their communities and workforce. Let them nominate them, and in Atlantic Canada let's attract to retain. Eliminating those caps for a pilot for a few years would have very little impact on the overall federal economic numbers.
Finally, I'd like to talk about refugees. Refugees are just PRs who came through a different immigration stream. They're having a significant impact on our communities right across the Atlantic, and ISANS is an organization supporting increased numbers of refugees, both government-assisted and private sponsorships. We know that means increased investment up front, but immigration needs a long-time vision. We're growing a province, and we're growing our communities, not just responding to labour market shortages. If we want to increase the number of immigrants into our province, we need to look at all immigration streams.
Already, our Syrian refugees are asking how to sponsor their family members. Many are not yet in a position to do so, but they will be and we want to have an answer for them. We know that refugees who carve out a life in Canada will have the resources to sponsor family members. When they bring those family members, they don't move anywhere.