Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the parliamentary committee. Thank you so much for inviting us to present to you this morning.
I'd like to introduce Joëlle Désy. Joëlle is one of my colleagues at the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration. She is our designated francophone staff within the Office of Immigration.
Thank you, Joëlle, for joining me.
Like Ben, I'm just going to put everything in context for you. I'll perhaps compare and contrast Nova Scotia a little bit with Manitoba to give you a sense of where we are with respect to Manitoba.
Nova Scotia's population is under a million. Of that, about 35,000 people are individuals whose mother tongue is French. They would be of Acadian descent. Of those 35,000 people, about two-thirds live in very rural parts of Nova Scotia. That gives you a little bit of context about our population.
You may know as well that Nova Scotia's population is older than that of any other province in the rest of Canada, so immigration is very important to Nova Scotia for a variety of reasons: labour market needs, population, cultural diversity and, of course, French language maintenance as well.
Unlike in Manitoba, the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration did not begin our immigration efforts in earnest until 2005. Until then, our provincial position was that immigrants come to the province--that's good. They stay--that's good. But there was no policy direction that really supported this initiative.
That changed in 2005, with the development of a strategy and the opening of the Office of Immigration. We are a small office compared with Manitoba's, but I will say that we were very fortunate, in that when we opened the Office of Immigration, we were hosted by Manitoba. They shared with us many of their lessons learned and their excellent programs and excellent ideas. I will say that the Manitoba is a beacon for the other provinces. They have been bold in their immigration strategy and they have been successful because of that. So we are following the game and following what they're doing in many ways.
I also want to say that we, like Manitoba, have an agreement with the Government of Canada, with Citizenship and Immigration Canada. They are the principal partner in immigration, of course, and they provide the lion's share of funding for settlement programming.
Unlike Manitoba, however, we do not have a devolved agreement. Sot he Nova Scotia division of Citizenship and Immigration Canada allocates funding directly to community-based organizations for the programming they do.
Now, we do have some good news. In 2003, our base year for immigration numbers, we had about 1,400 people coming to Nova Scotia. In 2008 we were up to over 2,650. That's an increase of about 79%. We think we're going in the right direction, but our numbers are very modest, and certainly modest when compared with Manitoba's. But we believe that we have to set the ground in order to have a successful immigration program.
In addition to doubling our landings, we have also improved our retention rates. In 2003, the 2001 census data told us that our retention rate was about 40%. That was really embarrassing, but I'm proud to tell you that in the census period of 2006, our retention rate went to 64%. So we're delighted with both of those trends, but we also see that we have a long way to go.
Like Manitoba, we have an immigration agreement, and an annex, or part of that agreement, which allows us to also have a provincial nominee program. Unlike Manitoba, however, our nominee program represents about a third of all the landings. Manitoba's was about 70% to 80%, you said, but we're at about a third, so we see the opportunity to optimize our nominee program further.
We have also developed partnerships with the local community organizations, and certainly with the local francophone Acadian organizations. That partnership has done us very well. We provide funding to those organizations for initiatives they're undertaking, as does Citizenship and Immigration Canada—and I believe they access other sources of funding as well. So we have a partnership with them.
We have also participated in immigration destination fairs, Destination Canada, in Paris, France, and in Morocco and other parts of the world. We started to do that only in 2005, so we are starting to see the fruits of those immigration fairs. They're starting to have a return on investment for us in Nova Scotia.
We do have one major settlement organization in Nova Scotia. It has recently changed its name. It's called the Immigrant Settlement and Integration Services of Nova Scotia, ISIS. This organization, though small, is I think a very effective settlement organization. They provide programming in a number of areas: settlement, language training, and labour market attachment, etc. Those programs and services are available in French to all francophone immigrants who come to the province of Nova Scotia; they provide a significant part of their programming in that regard.
With regard to our nominee program, which is our major tool to attract immigrants, and also with selection, you have an opportunity to also affect your retention rates. So if we are very effective in selection--helping to nominate those individuals who are likely to come to Nova Scotia, are likely to stay in Nova Scotia, and likely to succeed--that will certainly improve our retention rates. Our nominee program is our principal tool in that regard.
As I said, it represents about a third of our landings. We have nominated probably under 2,000 people at this point, but of the 2,600 landings last year, about 229 individuals identified that, of the official languages, French was their sole spoken language and/or bilingual language. I think about 27 of them identified French as their official language that they could speak; the remaining 202 said bilingual.
So our numbers, as I said, were modest, but we feel that we are working in the right direction to attract more immigrants. As I said, we are setting the groundwork to do that with our partnerships with our Acadian and francophone organizations and with the Université Sainte-Anne. But we also have in Nova Scotia a French-language Services Act, and this act ensures that individuals have access to services in French.
Our office of immigration is committed to that as well. We participate on national committees and we also participate in a local francophone immigration round table that is looking at developing strategies to recruit and retain more immigrants.
I see my time is running out so I'll conclude on the development of a new strategy. Our first strategy is from 2005, so it's about to end. We're now in the process of developing a new immigration strategy for Nova Scotia.
We've consulted with our francophone partners on that and they have been very clear on the vision that they see for Nova Scotia with regard to attracting francophone immigrants. Their recommendations to us include improved pre-arrival information on Acadian and francophone communities and services being made available to new and prospective francophone immigrants. Like Ben says, once we start working with immigrants overseas, we need to begin working with them while they are abroad to fully educate them on what is available for them in Nova Scotia.
Also, our francophone organizations would like to provide direct access to settlement, labour market and language training delivery through francophone organizations. Currently, most of our settlement and language training is done through ISIS. Our francophone organizations would like there to be a separate organization--or organizations--that would provide those services in French. They would be French organizations. Finally, they would like the creation of a francophone welcoming centre that will provide these services.
These are the recommendations they've put forward, both to Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the federal government, and to the provincial government. We are working with them to consider if and how this could go forward, but we are very hopeful that our partnerships with these organizations, with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and with the good friends we have from other provinces will help us to be very effective in the future with our francophone immigration and our immigration strategy overall.
Thank you.