The province has developed two new immigration streams designed attract new Canadians to rural communities across Alberta, Premier Jason Kenney announced Wednesday.
The goal of the rural renewal stream and rural entrepreneur stream is to create a new approach for attracting and supporting newcomers, all while revitalizing shrinking or stagnating rural communities, Kenney said Feb. 16 at the inaugural Premier’s Summit on Fairness for Newcomers.
“We absolutely have to ensure that the immigrants who we receive are, to the greatest extent possible, matched up with the available jobs in demand occupations upon arrival,” Kenney said.
With declining birth rates, the economy will rely on immigration to fuel growth across the province, he said.
In rural communities, many young people leave for big cities, Kenney said, and these communities then struggle to attract workers to fuel their economies.
“In many parts of rural Alberta, in smaller and mid-size communities, often their biggest challenge is a demographic one,” Kenney said. “Yet so much of Alberta’s economic wealth comes from rural Alberta.”
On top of that, not enough people are choosing to settle in these smaller communities, according to the premier.
The two new streams will help to solve this issue, Kenney said, giving rural communities the opportunity to apply for newcomers who will match the skills and jobs required to help the community thrive.
Only a limited number of rural communities can apply during the initiative's first year.
The rural entrepreneur stream is designed to attract immigrant entrepreneurs to rural Alberta who are interested in starting businesses that will create jobs and help stimulate economic recovery, Kenney said.
Interested entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to visit a community first to scope it out.
Some rural communities face the ongoing challenge of gaps in key services once local business owners retire.
“We want to connect entrepreneurial immigrants with those businesses that are looking for buyers to come into the turn-key businesses to take them over to operate them, but also those immigrants who have the entrepreneurial zeal to take a chance and start a new business in those rural communities,” Kenney said.
The premier said immigration is a key element of the province's recovery plan and strategy to welcome diversity, as the talent and hard work of newcomers will help to build the economy.
Often newcomers arrive in Alberta from other countries that don’t provide them with the appropriate credentials to start working in their fields of expertise, Kenney said.
“It is fundamentally immoral to invite newcomers here to failure.”
Often we invite immigrants to Canada, Kenney said, and then they face chronic underemployment or unemployment, where they struggle for survival at the bottom of our labour market, after leaving their home countries where they were doctors and dentists, at the top of that country's labour market.
Their skills atrophy and become demoralized while they wait to find work in their fields of expertise, Kenney said.
In a statement Wednesday, Paul McLauchlin, president of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, said rural municipalities provide an excellent opportunity for increased immigration in the form of abundant economic opportunities and community amenities.
“Designated rural immigration streams to attract newcomers to areas with lower populations provide a unique opportunity for rural communities and for immigrants. Rural Alberta has always shown, and will continue to show, gracious hospitality for the newcomers and look to them to invigorate our communities,” McLauchlin said.
To be eligible for the rural renewal stream, communities must have a population of less than 100,000 and be outside of the Calgary and Edmonton Census Metropolis Areas.
