Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. In fact, we've been helping them. Some employers are interested in the Atlantic immigration pilot project. They're applying to get their workers, with whom they've been working for years in some cases, into this program so that they can get them permanent residency. They wi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I do. I think it is a good pathway for us to pilot and to find out how we can quickly get some of these temporary foreign workers into more security by becoming permanent residents of Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We know from our experience that fish plant farms, the trucking sector, and so on have been unable to fill the vacancies they have from the existing population, and that's why they sought to keep their businesses going by accessing the temporary foreign worker program. I hear fro

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't think there's a competition there. I think they go together.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Actually, we do okay with refugee services right now, but with the numbers we received last year, we were nearly overwhelmed. We got some short-term funding to deal with it, but we really need some more work to help the Syrians through the rest of their initial journey in Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't know how many temporary foreign workers are currently in the province. We do support those who approach us with service. As I said, we currently have about 1,400 on our caseload. Many of them do work in rural P.E.I. in fish plants and on farms.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Right now, about 60% to 70% of our clients in our employment assistance service are finding work. We have growing sectors in Prince Edward Island in bioscience and in aerospace, with high demands for highly educated and experienced employees. Frankly, new immigrant businesses a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, we have—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It was actually good to have people to whose office you could go to deal with things around contribution agreements. We have three contribution agreements with IRCC: one for settlement, one for refugee resettlement, and one for a LIP, a local immigration partnership. We have peop

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Most of the people who come through the two main programs, the provincial nominee program and express entry, are settling primarily in the greater Charlottetown area, which includes the towns of Stratford and Cornwall. There is a small trickle of people, after they've been here f

Citizenship and Immigration committee  —whereby people wanting to do business are unable to get access to it. The other one is public transit.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. When I started here seven and a half years ago, we had four or five CIC employees. That was dropped down to one, but at least we had a presence here. Although it wasn't a public presence, it could help to deal with clients. We now have clients who have to travel out

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much. I appreciate the invitation to participate in this discussion about immigration in Atlantic Canada. For us, immigration is about individuals and families. It's about people, often vulnerable people. Let me describe a shared experience for many immigrants a