Auditor General Says Nova Scotia Must Do Better To Hit Immigration Targets
HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s Auditor General Kim Adair says changes are necessary within the Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration in order to meet the province’s population growth plans.
The provincial government wants to grow Nova Scotia’s population to 2 million by 2060 and the primary mechanism to do that will be immigration.
Adair’s new report, released November 8, argues the Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration is handling its current workload relatively well. However, to meet the province’s 2060 goal the department will need to scale up annual immigration intakes from 10,000 to 25,000.
On Tuesday, Adair identified some of the key areas her report attempts to address.
“They’ve [the department] had a lot of success with the Nova Scotia Nominee Program, however, we discovered their ability to identify the labour markets that may benefit from this program is limited, so we recommended they develop a strategy to do so,” Adair said.
“Fraud is also always a possibility when dealing with these types of programs so many of our recommendations focus on reducing the department’s susceptibility to it.”
Adair also argues work is needed to improve the services available to newly arrived immigrants, which will help improve retention rates. Right now, the department gets $6.4 million each year to help immigrants settle. That money is distributed to groups across the province that provide settlement programs.
Adair questioned whether that was enough to achieve the required retention rate for the 2060 population goal, which is 75 percent. Adair also said the province needs to do a better job tracking how that money is spent.
The most recent research on retention rates in Nova Scotia is from 2020. It found 42 percent of immigrants who stayed in the province, and 55 percent of immigrants who left, did not access settlement services.
“We thank the Auditor General for reviewing our programming at this critical time of growth and providing recommendations that will help provide the best experience for newcomers,” said Jill Balser, Minister of Labour, Skills and Immigration. “We’re pleased to see the report also shows the Department is exceeding our performance indicators, the decisions we’re making on immigration applications are the right decisions, and the work that our settlement service providers do is extremely important to the success of newcomers.”
A full list of all 15 recommendations can be found in the full report, and work implementing some of them has already begun including:
- Commissioning research to understand how settlement funding can best meet the needs of newcomers;
- Adding more human resources, including 12 new positions to process more applications with consistency, two new positions to conduct fraud investigations and program compliance reviews, and six navigators to support regional settlement and retention;
- Ensuring policies and application assessment tools are updated regularly and effectively communicated to staff;
- Developing a fraud reporting service to allow individuals to safely provide anonymous tips of fraudulent activity;
Nova Scotia experienced a record number of landings in 2021 with 9,160 arrivals and has already exceeded this in 2022 with 9,375 arrivals as of August.
Evan Taylor is a reporter with CKBW in Bridgewater, a Huddle content partner.