Good morning. Thank you for inviting us to present to this committee.
I'm Yoko Yoshida, associate professor of sociology at Dalhousie University, and this is Howard Ramos, also a professor of sociology at Dalhousie University.
Our presentation this morning is based on the brief we submitted to this committee. We also have additional reports and information you can find on our website, perceptionsofchange.ca.
Today we will offer an overview of our analysis of the longitudinal immigration database, which captures landing records and tax records of immigrants. Our analysis focuses on immigrant tax filers in Atlantic Canadian provinces and compares the Atlantic Canadian immigrants to the national average.
We have several observations to share with you. First, recent economic principal applicants, one year after landing, have a higher rate of employment than the Canadian average in all but one province of Atlantic Canada. For example, nationally, 73% of economic principal applicants had a job one year after landing. That rate was 90% in Newfoundland and Labrador, 76% in Nova Scotia, and 74% in New Brunswick. Prince Edward Island was the only province that had a rate lower than the national average. Likewise, recent economic principal applicants had higher earnings, on average, than the national average in all but one Atlantic Canadian province. P.E.I. was the outlier.
Spouses and partners who come with the economic principal applicants, however, did not fare so well. Compared to the national average of the same category, they had lower rates of employment one year after landing in Canada.
In terms of earnings, the story is rather mixed. In Newfoundland and Labrador, they had higher earnings than the national average. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick had almost the same as the Canadian average, only slightly higher. In Prince Edward Island, the same category of immigrants earned slightly less than the Canadian average.
Based on these findings, and also the fact that the Atlantic immigration pilot and to some degree the express entry system focus on employers playing a role in settlement, we believe that a key to the success of these programs is to tap into the employment potential of the spouses and partners, especially those who follow the principal applicants of the economic stream.
The story is slightly different for recent family-sponsored spouses and partners. They have better employment outcomes in Atlantic Canada compared to the national average. This happens across all the Atlantic provinces. They also have higher earnings than the Canadian national average in the equivalent categories. Prince Edward Island, however, was again a little lower than the national average.
Based on these results, we believe that much more can be done to promote the economic success of immigrants in the Atlantic region. Atlantic provinces need to bust the myths about the economic difficulties immigrants may face in the region. They need to challenge the stereotypes based on the experiences of earlier immigrant cohorts.
Howard has a few more points to share.