Participants in NBMC's recent cohort of Skills Launch program for newcomers. Image: NBMC Facebook Page
New Brunswick received 5,660 new permanent residents up to November 2019, a record high for the province, according to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
The number is expected to grow once the data for December is included.
“I think it’s extremely good news for the province, considering we’re expecting 120,000 retirements in the next 10 years,” said Alex LeBlanc, the executive director of the New Brunswick Multicultural Council (NBMC).
The 11-month figure already marks a 23 percent increase from 2018, with 4,610 permanent resident landings in the province. Prior to last year, the highest number on record was 4,675 in 2016, a time when immigration numbers were boosted by the influx of Syrian refugees. These numbers don’t include temporary residents like international students or temporary foreign workers.
Nearly 85 percent (4,795) of the permanent residents in 2019 are economic immigrants, while less than 1 percent (470) were refugees.
“A growing percentage of [economic immigrants] are coming with job offers in hand or they’ve been temporary residents in New Brunswick and have found a pathway to permanence by getting a job,” LeBlanc said, pointing to international students and temporary workers who have been able to gain permanent status.
LeBlanc said the data doesn’t surprise him. NBMC’s members, which include settlement agencies, have been seeing the increase at the frontline.
“I think we’re going to see a similar trend next year of just continuing growth,” he said. There are temporary workers, spouses of permit holders and international students out there who are also struggling to settle and get connected to housing and jobs here. We need to keep that in our minds as well and in our planning moving forward.”
LeBlanc said the data is proof of the effectiveness of immigration strategies that target certain regions.
“It’s proof that place-based immigration streams like the Provincial Nominee [Program] and the AIPP [Atlantic Immigration Pilot Program] are the right kind of streams for regions like New Brunswick,” he said.
“I think it’s also a sign that more and more employers are turning to immigration because they are unable to find the skills, talent and workers locally. AIPP is driven by employers, and the immigration increase is directly a result of more employers just needing to use immigration.”
The AIPP was launched in 2017. The federal government has mandated immigration minister Marco Mendicino to make the program permanent, and add 5,000 more slots to the program.
In New Brunswick last year, 30 percent of the total permanent residence were achieved through the AIPP, marking a significant increase from the previous year. Another 48 percent of the total were through the PNP.
Moncton received the most permanent residents in 2019, at 1,810, for the first time surpassing Fredericton, which received 1,500. Saint John received 960. Miramichi and Edmundston received 130 each, and Bathurst added 110 permanent residents.
Currently, approximately 72 per cent of the provincial nominees stay in New Brunswick beyond a year. The province aims to boost this number to 85 percent by 2024.
It also aims to receive 7,500 immigrants a year by 2024 … 1 percent of the population, with 33 percent of that reserved for Francophone immigration. In his State of the Province address Thursday night, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs said he plans to increase that target to 10,000 immigrants per year by 2027.
Now, LeBlanc says governments at all levels need to have a coordinated effort to ensure that they’re ready to receive and properly support the newcomers in everything from navigating the workforce to figuring out the school system for their children.
“We have to continue attracting people and recruiting people to New Brunswick, but we have to also be very mindful of the settlement needs that newcomers have when they come here,” he said. “Our settlement sector is already quite bootstrapped. It would only be reasonable to see increased resources directed towards those agencies.”
“It’s good news that we’re growing, but now we have to buckle down and work through some of the challenges that will come with that growth,” LeBlanc added.
Ensuring the availability of housing is one of those challenges, especially as New Brunswick’s cities experience very low vacancy rates.
“Housing is going to be a structural barrier for us in growing our population,” he said. “We need to see the development of housing options that are affordable and adequate for these newcomer families, but also for the entire province to benefit from.”
A version of this story was published in Huddle, an online business news publication based in Saint John. Huddle is an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
