Four County Labour Market Planning Board Executive Director Dana Soucie says the federal government’s plan to bring half a million immigrants into the country by 2025 is an option to help boost the region’s labour force.
Earlier this month, federal Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced a goal of bringing in 500,000 immigrants to Canada per year by 2025 to help boost the country’s economy.
This goal comes as the unemployment rate for the Stratford-Bruce Peninsula Economic Region recently fell to its lowest since 2006 — 2.3 per cent.
The region is not the only one experiencing this low unemployment rate. According to Stats Canada, the country saw its unemployment rate rise slightly to 5.2 per cent in October from a record low of 4.9 per cent in June and July.
Soucie says the federal government’s goal needs to be investigated further. She questions if the immigrants will make their way to the region and wants to explore the migration of workers.
“That is something we are going to have to talk to our community partners about as well. There are many organizations that are working on immigrant services and connecting immigrants to jobs in our area and that is actively happening right now where we are trying to attract either immigrant workers or people from outside the region. When you have a low pool, you have to look for outside,” says Soucie.
Soucie says the board has been exploring data relating to the participation rate in employment.
“We have seen a decline in some of the participation in certain groups. Basically what we are seeing, is that we have an aging workforce,” says Soucie.
She says the aging workforce is one of the contributing factors of the low employment participation rate, but is also a culmination of many things.
“Covid has definitely affected the participation of some of the groups. For example, some of the people seem to be retiring a little bit early and that does affect when you have an aging workforce already as it is,” says Soucie.
She says the board is in the middle of compiling a report from a survey targeting those who were not participating, and asking them why. She says the plan is to release the report in January.
“I think without having that report finalized, it is hard for me to say there is not one particular reason why people are not participating, I think it is a multitude of reasons,” says Soucie.
She adds the focus is identifying where there are workers, and figuring out how to entice them back into the workforce.
Soucie says while the low unemployment rate is not unique to the area, they are looking at what is unique to the region.
“The current project that we have underway is talking to people in the local area and what are their barriers to getting back into the workforce and how do we support people who may have barriers,” says Soucie.
