Housing, Healthcare, And Language Are Sticking Points For Newcomers To Greater Moncton
MONCTON–While Greater Moncton continues to be an attractive place for newcomers, there’s still room for improvement, says a study by a local immigration agency.
“There are some challenges,” said Mohamed Yessaad, the manager with the Greater Moncton Local Immigration Partnership. The partnership has released a study showing there are significant service gaps in Moncton, despite the strides the city is making toward accommodating newcomers.
According to a recent immigrant survey, titled ‘Helping Newcomers Succeed in Greater Moncton,’ the most pressing issues facing newcomers are housing, health care, access to medical services, and access to language training.
Maria Adelaida Fernandez, who immigrated to Moncton in March 2021, said she’s faced one of those.
“Accessing healthcare has been my greatest difficulty, and our greatest challenge as a family,” Fernandez told Huddle.
“I don’t know if it was something that has something to do with the circumstance of the time we’re living in, in the middle of Covid-19, with emergency rooms over-worked, but it was really a challenge to get care for one of my boys who’d fallen and I’d taken to the emergency room. It gives you the sense you’re on your own and it’s kind of scary.”
Fernandez said it took two trips and about 11 hours of waiting for a doctor to see her son.
“We don’t get access to family doctors, so we have to wait. And we don’t have a family doctor yet, after a year and two months,” she said. “You have to call at a specific hour in the day to be able to see if they have any spots available.”
Fernandez, already fluent in English, said it was not difficult for her family to find housing, since “it was quick and maybe had something to do with us arriving as permanent residents right away.”
“Aside from health care, it went smoothly. It was a challenge finding a job, and there are things to learn, like how to write a CV, but we were both working before we moved here, so there are no issues. We didn’t lose our jobs when we moved so we were able to continue earning and paying for things here,” added Fernandez, who is employed by Inter-American Development Bank, an NGO headquartered in San Francisco.
The Partnership’s survey consulted more than 500 people from 80 countries, including more than 200 international students, between January 4 and January 26.
In 2021, nearly 2,300 immigrants chose to make Greater Moncton their new home. That was a significant jump from the 1,400 that arrived in the region in 2020 and the 1,195 that moved to Greater Moncton in 2019.
Study numbers indicate 69 percent of participants plan to stay in the area in the immediate future and another quarter of respondents will stay if they can find a good job. A mere six percent of respondents’ hearts are set on moving somewhere else in the near term, a number that’s down from 12 percent in a similar study released last year.
While that number is encouraging, the Partnership is emphatic that the region needs keep up with that growth with adequate services.
“We know there’s a lack of a lot of services for newcomers as a local immigration partnership,” said Yessaad.
The Local Immigrant Partnership is tasked with implementing a local immigration strategy and regularly conducts surveys to detect emerging needs among immigrants to the region. Another arm of this strategy is several working groups, including one specializing in labour market attraction and integration, helping newcomers find employment that matches with their expertise and education.
They do it through job fairs throughout the year to help expose immigrants to potential employers. Working NB also helps as well, offering multiple services to newcomers and international students in the region.
Yessaad said Working NB also offers resources on language training to help newcomers get up to snuff in English and French.
“We have all these services, and we’re always looking to improve these services and make sure we’re up to date when it comes to newcomer needs,” Yessaad said.
Greater Moncton Chamber of Commerce CEO John Wishart said the numbers in the survey were encouraging.
“Numbers are going up. More people want to stay. More international students want to stay. More seem to be working in appropriate fields for their qualifications,” Wishart said in a release from the partnership.
“But there still are some gaps that we need to address.”
Wishart and the partnership study identified housing as a significant issue, with the study showing the majority of newcomers rent upon arrival, indicating a need for more affordable housing.
“We need to find a way to create more supply in the mid-range, and maybe some with three bedrooms because many immigrant families arrive with more children, and they can’t afford a house right off the bat,” said Wishart.
While he acknowledged that housing is a universal issue, Yessaad said the partnership is doing its best to communicate that it sees the problem across the board, from the newcomers it assists to the stakeholders who work with them.
“It’s up to us to find a solution for housing, so this is something above us, but we’re trying to keep everyone informed about what’s going on, when it comes to housing. We’re trying to familiarize ourselves with the housing landscape in the Moncton region, and trying to understand who the players are,” he said.
“Our region needs to organize itself and try to find solutions – maybe through a housing strategy. Other jurisdictions across the country have come up with housing strategies to address this crisis.”
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].