Greater Moncton Reports High Immigrant Retention Rates, But Needs To Welcome Even More
MONCTON – Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview have published results of their 2014-2018 immigration strategy Thursday, reporting a retention rate of 84.2 per cent in 2015, the latest data available.
Economist David Campbell of Jupia Consultants presented the results, saying the strategy has been successful because there’s been a significant increase in the number of immigrants.
“If you look at the growth in the labour market and you look at the growth in the GDP for our community, those are actually starting to become highly correlated with the increase in immigration to our community,” he said.
In 2013, the population of the Moncton area went up by 628 immigrants. By 2017, that annual number grew to 1,282. There was a spike in 2016 due to the influx of Syrian refugees, but the 2016 census showed economic immigrants still account for most immigration in greater Moncton at 61 per cent.
The U.S. and the U.K. remain the top sources of immigrants, but in recent years, more people have come from China, South Korea, the Philippines and African countries. Between 2011 and 2016, half of the population growth in Moncton came from immigration.
But as more immigrants settle in the area, public engagement is also crucial, said Campbell.
We want to make sure the public is aware of why we need more immigrants, and why it’s important to the economic health and the vibrancy of our community. If you don’t have local support, it’s very hard and we see a lot of backlash in the U.S. right now. That’s what we don’t want to see here. We want to be a welcoming community.”
The immigration rate in greater Moncton is significantly higher than Saint John, but below Charlottetown and similar to Fredericton.
In the first 11 months of 2018, 1,360 immigrants admitted for Canadian permanent residency chose greater Moncton as their intended destination, according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). The numbers don’t include international students, temporary foreign workers and immigrants who move to Moncton from other parts of New Brunswick and Canada.
Greater Moncton is now pushing for more international students by lobbying the province to allows some private colleges like Oulton’s College and McKenzie to offer students the possibility of a post-graduation work permit.
“About 70 per cent of the jobs on offer right now require college-level education, not university. So we need to bring in students at the college level and hopefully, we’ll even do more of that in the new strategy,” Campbell said.
Getting accurate data on immigrant retention is challenging, as Statistics Canada’s data is lagging. But the provincial governments are working on an initiative to track Medicare cards to get this information. For the Moncton region, the 2015 retention rate was higher than that of the provincial nominee program in the same year (77 per cent).
Old Challenges
Viktor Khalack, a professor at Université de Moncton who came from Ukraine around 14 years ago, says he has seen “strong improvement” on immigration policies over the years and the local community has been helpful.
“The community is open, but for immigrants to stay, they would like to work. They would like to succeed but they need an opportunity. It’s the same opportunities local Canadians need as well,” he said. “They have a good education but they need to find a job – a job that’s well-paid, so they can support themselves.”
Khalack said many high-skilled immigrants end up leaving Moncton because they can’t find similar levels of work as they had in their home countries.
“Their expectations [don’t] always become true when they came here, so they see something not [as] they were expecting. So what they’re trying to do is fit in or just move out to other areas or bigger cities to just get what they wanted,” he said. “Because when you started to move you can move everywhere just to find a place where you will be happy and your family will be happy and you can succeed.”
The key to solving this, Cambell said, is skill alignment and ensuring that “we’re not selling them something that’s not real.” The Atlantic Immigration Pilot program had sought to better match employees and employers based on skills, but more can be done, he said.
“I think we need to do what we can to make sure that immigrants coming to our community have economic opportunities whether that’s a job or a new business opportunity,” he said. “If you have a certain skill set and that skill set is matched to an opportunity in our community, that’s what’s ideal.
If you need a taxi driver, go find a taxi driver, don’t find an engineer.”
Many immigrants also come from cultures in which keeping the family unit close is important, so when their kids have to go away for school or work, parents may leave with them.
“If you want the population to be growing here, we need to find the way to make young people stay here – Not force them, but create opportunities for them to stay here,” Khalack said.
Greater Moncton Chamber of Commerce CEO John Wishart says it’s important to remember that immigration isn’t just a solution to labour shortages.
“Creating a more diverse culture in Greater Moncton is good for a lot of reasons and we have to realize that [immigrants] have a variety of needs that include a job. But if we’re going to retain them, we need to really make sure we fulfill every one of their needs.”
A New Strategy
The three municipalities are now developing a strategy for 2019-2024. It’s in the consultation phase and will be made public in September.
The previous strategy aimed to attract more immigrants, boost efforts to support retention and integration, and ensure immigrant entrepreneurship plays an increasingly important role in economic development.
Angelique Reddy-Kalala, Moncton’s Immigration Strategy Officer, said many of the themes will likely carry forward to the new strategy, including efforts focusing on labour market needs, immigrant entrepreneurs, as well as national and international recruiting missions.
Greater Moncton works with nearly 180 employers looking for employees for its newcomer job fairs, she said.
Connecting immigrants to the labour market even before they arrive through virtual job fairs and attraction missions, as well as when they get here, have really been key and we want to continue to build that growth and continue to work with our local employers.”
Wishart says local businesses are becoming savvier in navigating the immigration process for its employees. And more are open to recruiting internationally if they can’t find what they’re looking for at home.
“But not every business, especially a small business, can afford to go on international recruiting missions. So we either need to partner with organizations who can represent them or we need to do it virtually, online,” he said.
Ethnocultural associations and the Local Immigration Partnership (LIP), which includes newcomers, all three levels of governments, settlement agencies, post-secondary institutions and representatives of the business sector, have also contributed to the strategy’s success.
Immigration processes remain complicated, with many newcomers asking for a one-stop shop for information. But Campbell said the municipalities can only lobby for changes, including a recommendation to have a local IRCC office.
To maintain the bilingual nature of the region, the new strategy will likely also continue to focus on attracting Francophone immigrants.
Moncton, Riverview, Dieppe and their partners encourage residents to get involved in the consultation process through the online platform www.letschatmoncton.ca.