The immigration field is still rather new to our community as far as programming and planning are concerned. It's new in the sense that, even though we've known for years that we should have been doing something to increase francophone immigration in our communities, we still don't have the means to make significant inroads in that regard.
As you might know, the demographic weight of francophone immigrants in official language minority communities increased from 6.2% in 1991, to 11.7% in 2011. According to our most recent study, the rate in Saskatchewan is even higher, standing at approximately 15%.
In large cities, the incidence of francophone immigration can even be seen in the schools. Francophone school enrolment in Saskatchewan has increased, and roughly 25% of the children are from visible minority families.
Immigrants who settle in Saskatchewan help us offset the aging of the francophone population. And it's worth noting that, of all Canadian provinces, Saskatchewan has the highest percentage of elderly among its francophone population. This is why we believe francophone immigration is the only way to maintain a vibrant francophone population in our province.
Our role is to facilitate economic immigration in order to meet needs like access to the workforce needed to grow Canadian businesses, and to attract foreign investors to stimulate job creation and ensure job retention for Canadians.
That said, there are still major complications in matching potential francophone immigrants to Canada's workforce requirements.
In my opinion, we must ask ourselves two questions.
The first is: How do we increase the capacity of official language minority communities to recruit, welcome and integrate immigrants?
In my last presentation, I spoke about the importance of economic development. Naturally, immigrants come to Canada to work. And they need to join the workforce as quickly as possible, or, in some cases, start a business to replace jobs or others, so they can remain here, and live a full life in their communities.
The second question is: How do we ensure that immigrants and refugees settle and integrate successfully in official language minority communities? For us, it's essential to have a support network in fields like fields of health, education, culture and law. We need to be able to offer a set of services that will help immigrants integrate into the community.
Right now, we don't have the means. Our organization has 1.5 dedicated person-years for economic integration, and that's for the entire province. People who have visited Saskatchewan might be aware that our territory is vast, and that the francophone communities are very dispersed. It takes seven or eight hours to drive, one-way, from a community in northeastern Saskatchewan, to a community in southwestern Saskatchewan.
Given the distance, and the fact that francophone communities are very dispersed, 1.5 full-time equivalents per year is not sufficient to offer services to the immigrant population.
Our role is to work with employers, both francophone and anglophone. Since our province, and our employers, are majority anglophone, it's essential that immigrants learn English. To succeed in placing francophone workers with anglophone employers, we must make the case that the ability to offer services in French, or to work in French, represents added value.
We have found that employers in rural areas have little familiarity with the immigration process. It's important that we work with them, and that we help them recruit, hire and support an immigrant workforce that can work for their businesses.
It's also worth noting that Saskatchewan is interestingly diverse. While francophone immigrants are mainly of African descent, other people come to Saskatchewan, especially from India and the Philippines. As a result, our diversity is quite good. When the people mix, the employers and new immigrants go through a learning process so that the new immigrants, whose culture is different, can adapt to the workplace.
We definitely need to raise awareness, disseminate information, and offer workshops to new immigrants. We don't think the most recent roadmap contained enough funding to enable us to offer the services necessary to have an impact in the realm of immigration.
Economic integration can happen if there's support for immigrants who want to become part of the Canadian labour market, especially in Saskatchewan. There are a few things we'd like to do. First, we'd like to work more closely with temporary foreign workers, and offer them services to help them transition toward permanent residence. We'd also like to focus on international students, and encourage our colleges and universities to welcome more francophones so we can help them transition to the workforce.
We conducted certain activities in partnership with our development and employability network in Canada. We started offering virtual job fairs, and we're working more and more with Canadian embassies on pre-arrival and other services as part of the Destination Canada job fair, which will be held during the coming two weeks.
Immigrants often say that employers ask whether they have Canadian experience. So there's a shortage of employment internships. There are some programs for young people at present. I strongly support that initiative, aimed at integrating them into the workforce. Those young people are 16 to 30 years old. There are also older immigrants with very little Canadian experience, and right now, there are no opportunities to offer them employment internships aimed at helping them join the labour market.
Lastly, I think that IRCC's permanent programs need to support a francophone immigration continuum that includes economic integration of francophone immigrants. Specifically, employability is an essential stretch of the road to immigrant integration and retention. Without jobs, they won't be with us for long. The problem is that this aspect isn't getting much support. That's why we want the next roadmap to contain a component dedicated exclusively to the economic integration of francophone immigrants.
Thank you for your time.