INNISFAIL – The town is now a provincial designated community and eligible to move ahead with the Rural Renewal Stream program that will offer future employment opportunities to immigrant workers to fill new labour requirements, specifically in the ambitious Southwest Industrial Park.
Once a community has been recognized as a designated community by the province, it works with local businesses to attract and hire newcomers.
In addition, it partners with a settlement-supporting group to help retain newcomers by sharing information about settlement services.
Town of Innisfail council was fully briefed by administration on the municipality’s application for designated community status last June.
The town has also been accepted by the province for the related Rural Entrepreneur Steam, which is designed to promote local business growth from new Canadian entrepreneurs.
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Gordon Shaw, the town’s manager of community development services, told the Albertan on Oct. 20 the province notified the town on Sept. 9 that the municipality was accepted for the Rural Entrepreneur Steam, while the application for the Rural Renewal Stream was approved earlier in the summer.
Both streams are administered under the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program.
The Rural Entrepreneur Stream is described as an economic immigration program for entrepreneurs who want to start a business or buy an existing business in a rural Alberta community, while the Rural Renewal Stream was created to empower rural communities to recruit and retain foreign nationals to live, work and settle in their communities.
“We have been fielding calls from prospective immigrants. But we still have a lot of things to put in place before it can come to fruition itself,” said Shaw, noting the potential benefits of both programs. “With the Rural Entrepreneurs Stream candidates have the ability to be able to purchase businesses or come into the community to pursue businesses that are not currently within the community itself.
“Under the Rural Renewal Stream companies can look at having potential employees from overseas to be able to fulfill their skill requirements,” he added. “It is a way to be able to try to increase the number of potential employees within the community to be able to fulfill those jobs coming in the industrial park.”
Mayor Jean Barclay said the community designation initiative by the province was “interesting," noting that the businesses that have been participating are saying “over and over again” there is a shortage of labour.
“It's probably preventing some businesses to grow the way they would like to grow,” said Barclay. “It's all about growth and all about giving people an opportunity.
“We've known for many years that when we look at the demographics of our country and in our province, there's going to be quite a change as baby boomers are now heading into retirement. It's going to be a bit of a difficult time replacing workers,” said Barclay, acknowledging the benefits of both new streams. “I think it's beneficial to both parties, as well as for our community.”
With the town and council focusing on economic development since the 2021 municipal election, and its ongoing push for its ambitious plans for the new Southwest Industrial Park, Barclay said the new rural streams tie into the high expectations council and the town have for future economic growth.
“Yes, definitely. We know through various reports, and not just provincially but nationally, that Canada is going to have to continue to welcome new people into our country to fill labour positions,” said Barclay. “I'm going to say probably across the spectrum of labour itself, there's a shortage. We have businesses here in town that are having labour shortages in areas like trade.
“Some of the feedback we've got is that people coming from other provinces with certain accreditations may not be recognized here,” she added. “So, there's probably some work to be done by provincial governments to try to co-ordinate that to allow for better mobility within the country.”
Innisfail now joins several other Alberta municipalities across the province as designated communities, including the City of Brooks, City of Grande Prairie, County of Grande Prairie, Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, Town of Taber, Town of Trochu, Town of Whitecourt, Municipal District of Smoky River and Municipality of Jasper.
There are 37 participating communities in Alberta in the Rural Entrepreneur Steam, including Innisfail, Olds, Sundre, Sylvan Lake, Red Deer County, Blackfalds, Didsbury, Three Hills, and Trochu.
