BONNYVILLE – The Town of Bonnyville has elected to re-start their rural immigration program that offers permanent residence to skilled workers wanting to settle in rural communities.
Mark Laver, the Town of Bonnyville’s economic development officer, explained the framework of the program to Lakeland this Week.
“Immigration is a federal jurisdiction - and then they give the province the right to run this particular program, which has six streams, and we're just one part of those six streams.
The Government of Alberta has the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program (AAIP).
“If you look at the AAIP stream on the provincial government website, there are six areas in the Rural Renewal Stream (RRS) - there's a hospitality stream, there's an entrepreneur stream, and the stream we're in is specific to rural communities,” explained Lavar.
According to the Government of Alberta, “the Rural Renewal Stream supports the attraction and retention of newcomers to rural Alberta through a community-driven approach that supports local economic development needs and contributes to the growth of the community. The Rural Renewal Stream empowers rural communities to recruit and retain foreign nationals to live, work and settle in their communities.”
During the April 22 Town of Bonnyville council meeting, Laver explained that the province has made changes to the program that have “significantly affected the efficiency and viability of the RRS program.”
“The biggest recent changes in the program have come from the provincial government. They’ve taken the number of nominations down from 1,900 to 950 across 35 communities that are participating in the program,” said Laver.
Currently in Alberta, there are approximately 3,000 people waiting in the queue for the program
“The program in itself has received some good feedback from the local business community and they’re quite strongly behind it,” said Laver.
Laver told Lakeland this Week that Bonnyville, along with several other communities, suspended the program for various reasons, including recent changes by the province.
“It does take up a significant amount of staff time, and that was a primary reason for pausing it. We wanted to do a deep dive into it to understand more about the program . . . We wrote 300 letters of endorsement for people, but when we paused the program and did some research, we found that 45 per cent of those people aren't even in town yet,” said Laver.
Laver explained that it is a “downloaded program,” which means the municipality must cover all the costs of running it.
“The province doesn't give us any money or resources to run it. So, it's a financial burden on all of these communities as well, particularly with the amount of time that it takes,” said Laver.
He explained that there are secondary effects of the program that need to be taken into consideration.
“There is a rental shortage in town as well, so with 45 of the people still to show up, rental space is going to be a challenge.”
The RRS program was discussed at length during the Town of Bonnyville’s last Economic Development meeting.
“The committee unanimously recommended that the program be re-opened on a limited basis,” said Laver, during the council meeting.
The program will limit the number of employees a business can sponsor to 30 per cent of their workforce if they have more than five employees. If they have less than five employees, they can sponsor two employees.
Deputy Mayor David Sharun commended the Economic Development Committee for bringing the program back to the table.
“Coun. Kushnir, Mark Laver and I attended the economic development conference . . . this winter. When we told the developers franchisee owners that we are involved in this program, it was very well received, because one of their questions is what are we doing about labor shortages. Because of this program we got a lot of positive feedback.”
Coun. Neil Langridge commented on the amount of consideration the Economic Development Committee took in discussing the program.
“There’s a high demand for this program. A lot of the roadblocks and red tape are out of the municipality's hands, they fall on the provincial and federal governments. But we want to support our local business community as much as possible and if [that means] having them apply to the program under the new restrictions, then that's what we definitely want to do,” said Langridge.
The motion to re-open the program with the new restrictions was carried unanimously.
