Good afternoon, everyone.
I'm very pleased to be here today and to be able to speak to people across Canada.
We're going to briefly present our organization, Droit à l'emploi, and our division specifically dedicated to immigrants, L'Ancre. We invite immigrants to come and drop anchor in the Richelieu River, which runs through our city.
We'd also like to tell you a little about our region. We're located in Montérégie, Quebec's second largest region, with 1.6 million inhabitants. The area is very large from east to west, it takes two and a half hours to drive across it.
Our region is known for its wide range of jobs in all sectors. At 5.7%, our unemployment rate is very low compared to Montreal's, which is 9.2%. Ours is the same as the average unemployment rate in Canada. Before the pandemic, we were truly fully employed. Our businesses were in dire need.
We're located in Montérégie, in the City of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, which has a population of nearly 100,000. The city is only a 30‑minute drive from Montreal.
We have very few immigrants. They make up only 3.5% of our population. We really want to bring that number up, because the employment situation is very much thriving. Another good thing we have for immigrants is we provide all the same services as a big city. We're surrounded by farms and green spaces. Many seasonal workers from South America come to work during the warm season.
Droit à l'emploi is a charitable organization with community experience. Our mission is to fight poverty and social exclusion through employment. We've been around for over 30 years and have about forty staff members trained in a variety of disciplines, including career counselling, psychology, human resources, administration and communications.
We've developed specialized services for women, older workers and immigrants, and we provide support to over 500 people per year. Our job placement or return to school rate is 80%, which is excellent.
We work with many partners, including a large network of more than 300 businesses that hire or offer internships to our participants, and our main funding sources are Quebec's Ministère du Travail, de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale and Immigration, Francisation et Intégration Québec.
We've been helping immigrants through their arrival process for almost 15 years. Our efforts have paid off, as more and more immigrants are settling in our area. When we opened L'Ancre in 2007, the school didn't offer any French courses for adults. Today, we have more than four French classes. Last year, L'Ancre served over 300 people from 50 different countries, mainly in Africa and Latin America.
To promote the success of immigration in our area, we work both with immigrants and in the community. We're recognized in the community as the specialized resource in the field and as a mobilizing force. For the past four years, we've been organizing a roundtable for immigration partners including more than 20 active partners from all sectors, and we take action on four fronts: attraction, welcoming, integration and retention.
In closing, I'd like to share some keys to successful retention that we've found work well back home.
One, you need to make immigrants aware of the opportunity to move to the regions. They don't know about it. Two, you need a network of employers who are interested and willing to hire them. Three, you need to set up services to help children, their parents and those working for businesses to learn the language. Four, you need to inform and teach newcomers the values of their new community and how everything works. Five, you need to equip local stakeholders, elected officials, businesses and workers to welcome and integrate newcomers. Six, you have to raise awareness among the local people to counter prejudice and racism. Seven, you need to organize activities or events that help immigrants build intercultural bridges with members of their new community. Finally, eight, you need to provide easy access to affordable housing and transportation.
I will now turn the floor over to Mr. Magnan, coordinator of L'Ancre, who will give you more details about our immigrant services.