Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it's very important. I think we can be far more strategic about immigrant investment into the region. When I came to Moncton, there was one sushi restaurant. Now there about 20. I'm not kidding. The reality is that immigrant investors come in, and many times they do what

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are 40,000 businesses in New Brunswick. With the aging demographic, I would suspect that a pretty big share of those are close to transitioning. Accounting firms tell me that here in Moncton they have been dealing with that. It has multiplied in their business in terms of t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. In a perfect world, every immigrant would come through the post-secondary system, either the college or the university system, because they would then be accredited with a Canadian degree or diploma. They would have had the time to put up with our winters for two or three or

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'd like them to spend a little more money, not just federal but also provincial and even local. As I said before, it takes a lot more money and a much longer period of time to bring somebody from birth into the labour market than it does to bring an immigrant. If we're talking a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I think so, but remember that they take much more time and effort to integrate into society and into the labour market because they're not coming as economic immigrants. They normally don't have the language skills. They don't have the specific labour market skills per se. I

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think we need to get there. I'm not sure we need to get there in the very short term, but ultimately the immigration levels in Atlantic Canada need to get up to at least 1% of the population, which is where they are now nationally. I think they're going to have to get closer to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, in smaller communities, that's more difficult. In larger areas like Halifax and Moncton, we're seeing that happening a lot more. We're actually seeing churches and other groups catering to specific ethnic communities. In smaller areas like Cape Breton, it might be more of

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it has. They closed their office in Moncton as well, and Moncton is attracting more immigrants than any other part of New Brunswick. In my opinion, doing that was a mistake. You need to have these people on the ground to understand the challenges and to be able to work di

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The first challenge is that a lot of these immigrants are coming without actual jobs. We need to do a better job of matching the job opportunities in the community to the immigrant population that's coming in. That's the first thing we need to do. The second thing we need to do

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to speak before the committee. I am currently the president of a private economic development consulting firm here in New Brunswick, but I was previously the chief economist with the New Brunswick Jobs Board Secretariat. In that role, we