July 18, 2016

Canada’s Atlantic Provinces: Fishing for New Immigrants

Posted by Legal Team - Bellissimo Law Group PC

Federal Ministers (including the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship) and Atlantic Premiers, announced the launch of an Atlantic Growth Strategy following a meeting on Atlantic Canada’s economy last week. The Atlantic Growth Strategy is intended to drive economic growth in the region by implementing targeted, evidence-based actions under the following five priority areas:

  • Skilled workforce/immigration
  • Innovation
  • Clean growth and climate change
  • Trade and investment
  • Infrastructure

The leadership committee unveiled a two-year action plan, the first area of action focusing on skilled workforce and immigration to the Atlantic provinces. Increased immigration to these regions will be facilitated through a new immigration pilot project which hopes to address labour market challenges in Atlantic Canada. The pilot project will be employer-driven and assist to develop approaches for immigration that will enhance retention of immigrant workers in the Atlantic provinces.

Through this project, up to 2,000 immigrants and accompanying families are expected to be admitted in the 2017 year.  The hope is to raise these numbers in the following years, depending on performance. This is a sizeable increase, amounting to almost half the current Atlantic provincial nominee numbers.

The pilot would be launched in early 2017 and run for three years.

For more information on the Federal Skilled Worker Program, please click here.