Thank you for the question.
Madam Chair, obviously, with the labour market shortage the country is facing right now, we have been extremely focused on economic immigration, but we also need to look at how we look at economic integration, where not everybody ends up in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary. We have to think about what some of the regional programs are that have given us some success.
A good example of that, I would say, would be the Atlantic immigration program. I think I heard a stat when we were last in the Atlantic region, where some of the universities and businesses told us that for every 10 workers who exit the market, only seven enter. Programs designed to bring economic immigrants to those areas of the country are absolutely essential. The Atlantic immigration program was actually a pilot for five years or so, and then it matured into a full-grown program. How can we use those examples to look at rural and northern needs and how can we better match? I think that's an important lesson for us.
Most recently, in New Brunswick, we launched a pilot program with some of the big employers—Groupe Savoie, Cooke Aquaculture and Irving—to look at what their needs are in their region and how we, as a department, can work with them, the private sector and the province to actually bring workers to those communities that may not have the ability to sustain them from within their own populations. We have to be creative in that.
We also need to keep francophone immigration in mind in the context of our work. In the new year, we'll have the flexibility to be more creative about it, and that's going to be a great opportunity for us.