Would you want to settle in a small rural community in Canada?
From: Kathryn Dennler, The Conference Board of Canada
Image credit: Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
An impact paper by Kathryn Dennler for The Conference Board of Canada looks at what it takes to make immigration work in Canada’s small and rural communities (fewer than 40,000 residents, located more than 70 kilometres from a census metropolitan area) and at the challenges they face in attracting and, importantly, retaining immigrants.
Settlement service provision in small and rural communities is challenging because service providers are expected to serve a wide range of settlement needs with limited funding and few opportunities to refer people to other local social service organizations.
There were nearly 100 communities where no services had been provided in 2019-20 but where five or more unique services were provided in 2020-21 with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) continuing to expand the reach of settlement services.
While immigration policies aim to increase the distribution of immigrants across Canada, IRCC funding priorities for settlement services do not adequately support this goal.
Digital service provision can improve access to settlement services, especially among those for whom transportation or child care is a barrier, but it works best as a complement to in-person services, not a replacement.
Excerpts from the impact paper:
In Canada, immigrants disproportionately settle in urban areas. The three largest cities – Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver – are home to 35 per cent of Canada’s population but receive more than half of all arriving immigrants.
Canada aims to increase regionalization, the distribution of immigrants across Canada’s regions. Although settlement services improve retention of immigrant residents, many small and rural communities lack local settlement services. Canada needs a strategy to establish and fund settlement services in small and rural communities that can benefit from immigrants who bring new ideas and contribute to multiculturalism, population growth and the local economy.
These benefits make the most meaningful difference if immigrants remain in the community, which allows their contributions to endure. Federal, provincial, and municipal governments must think beyond just attracting immigrants to small and rural communities and plan for retention. Infrastructure, including settlement services, is integral to retention of newcomers.
Settlement services improve the immigrants’ economic integration and their health and well-being.
By supporting immigrants, settlement workers support the economic development of their communities and region. Although settlement services in small and rural communities serve a small number of immigrants, they make a large impact because they affect many communities across Canada.
Past research shows that availability of IRCC-funded settlement services has not kept up with changes in settlement patterns of new immigrants.
Research shows that numerous small and rural communities have unmet needs for settlement services arising from the funding model, the difficult fit between IRCC and provincial funding priorities, and the challenges of establishing settlement services in a new location. Geographic gaps in service provision are exacerbated by difficulties finding settlement services and limited access to the full range of service types in small and rural communities.
This is an opportune time to study the extent of geographic gaps in settlement services and possible solutions. Following the 2021 federal election, the Canadian government renewed its commitment to immigration to small and rural communities. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic created a natural experiment to study the efficacy of digital service provision, one possible solution to address geographic gaps.
Settlement service providers may receive funding from numerous sources, including all three levels of government, foundations, and donations. But IRCC is the largest funder of settlement services in Canada. As a result, federal policies and priorities significantly shape the settlement sector.
Settlement service providers view IRCC funding as the “gold standard” funder in Canada because of the breadth of services it funds, the stability it provides through long service agreements and its high level of engagement with the settlement sector.
IRCC funds a comprehensive set of direct services, support services to improve access to settlement services, as well as indirect services to build capacity and facilitate knowledge sharing within the sector, including local immigration partnerships and associations of immigrant-serving agencies.
IRCC offers service agreements of up to five years and a consistent funding cycle.
By comparison, provincial and municipal funding opportunities often have a shorter duration, and they shift focus depending on political or economic priorities.
Research participants in New Brunswick and Manitoba reported that they regularly serve clients who live up to 150 kilometres away.
Analysis of IRCC data also indicates that there are communities in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia where immigration is on the rise but the nearest IRCC-funded settlement service is more than 70 kilometres away.
The gaps in availability of settlement services are more pronounced when considering individual service types. Immigrants in small and rural communities need the same range of services as their urban peers. But many service providers in small and rural communities are funded to provide only a narrow range of service types.
Among 45 small communities with small but growing numbers of immigrants, 18 had three or fewer service types delivered in 2020-21.
Language training and employment services are common gaps. Jelissa, the director of a settlement service provider, said, “Employment – that would be gap number one. And I’m sure if you asked anyone in our region in any position similar to mine, they would also say employment services is such a gap.”
Needs for a new era of immigration. Two changes in immigration policy shape needs for settlement services in small and rural communities.
Firstly, the Canadian government has launched programs and pilots to attract immigrants to smaller communities beyond Canada’s traditional gateway cities, with a municipal pilot on the horizon.
Secondly, since 2006, more people have been granted temporary residence permits than permanent residence each year. Temporary residents are an increasingly important source of permanent residents.
In 2019, 74,500 people transitioned from temporary to permanent residence, making up nearly 22 per cent of new permanent residents that year.
The pandemic has amplified the trend even further, at least temporarily.
Two-step immigration is especially common in many small and rural communities, which often first attract people as temporary foreign workers or international students and then retain them as permanent residents.
The rise in two-step immigration and regionalization has significant implications for settlement in Canada. Although IRCC implements both immigration and settlement policy, the two areas have not developed in tandem. Rather, settlement service priorities have remained consistent as immigration has evolved. This has contributed to gaps in settlement services in small and rural communities.
Supporting regionalization through settlement services. Canada lacks a strategy to ensure that settlement service infrastructure supports regionalization goals.
IRCC prioritizes funding organizations that will be able to meet settlement service targets. It does not direct settlement service funding to communities to strengthen an emergent settlement trend or to increase the attractiveness of small and rural communities.
Howard, a regional representative from IRCC, captured this dynamic when he said, “We are not set up or entitled to ‘build it and they will come.’ It is absolutely the opposite. It’s ‘move the money to where the clients are.”
Responding to major settlement trends rather than anticipating them creates a lag in the availability of settlement services. The lag is exacerbated by the five-year service agreements, which offer stability to funded organizations but delay funding to new locations. A persistent lag contributes to the amenity gap that makes small and rural communities less attractive to many immigrants.
Limited eligibility for IRCC-funded settlement services. IRCC-funded settlement services are available to permanent residents, not temporary residents or naturalized citizens. Settlement service providers, organizations of immigrant-serving agencies, and scholars consistently call out IRCC’s narrow eligibility criteria as a key concern. Lack of access to settlement services heightens vulnerability among people who may already experience increased challenges based on their temporary visa.
As the number of people with temporary residence has increased dramatically, the gap in services affects more people.
Small and rural communities may have many temporary foreign workers and international students who need services but settlement service providers struggle to meet these needs because of funder restrictions, limited capacity, and no local organization where they can refer temporary residents. There is currently no national plan for how to address the needs of these people who are admitted into Canada by IRCC.
Successful settlement involves the whole community. Settlement services support immigrant retention, but they must be complemented by support and engagement from all levels of government, as well as from the community itself. Community involvement in immigrant settlement not only amplifies the impact of settlement services, it also makes immigrants feel welcome and part of their new community.
Settlement services benefit from being visible and well-connected to the community.
A big part of settlement work is introducing someone to the community where they live.
As interviewee Chloe explained, “Successful integration of newcomer, refugee, and immigrant families is determined by their experiences when they’re accessing those broader community services.”
Investing time into outreach to local stakeholders may seem counterintuitive when a small service provider is under pressure to find clients and deliver the number of services required in the service agreement. But without those connections, the settlement work is much more difficult.
“Speaking rurally, that connection to the community is first and foremost, it’s going to be your way to success,” Jelissa explained. “Your community buy-in is so important.”
Jelissa worked in a community where stakeholder knowledge and buy-in were particularly low.
She had the experience of stakeholders cancelling meetings with her or refusing to refer newcomers to the organization.
Nonetheless, she said that her relationships to the community were what made the success of those aspects that were working well, and she found it more difficult to provide effective and impactful services to immigrants living in surrounding communities where she did not have those personal relationships.
Settlement service providers address the needs of an immigrant that require specific expertise on immigration, whereas it is the responsibility of the community to make newcomer families feel welcome.
Recommendations on how to support immigrants in small and rural communities include suggestions for IRCC, provinces and territories, municipalities, government departments and other levels of government, and settlement service providers in small and rural communities.
Meaningful settlement occurs when numerous stakeholders participate in the process, the study concludes.
When settlement service providers build relationships with the local community, it increases the community buy-in, as well as opportunities to partner on projects that support both settlement work and the mission of the partner organization