Are foreign workers moving to rural communities?

It’s been over a year since the Rural Renewal Stream program was announced but the question remains whether rural communities are benefiting.

In February 2022, the province created two immigration programs to encourage growth in rural communities, the Rural Renewal Stream and Rural Entrepreneur Stream.

The programs enabled communities to recruit foreign workers. Workers who qualified for the program would be eligible to receive permanent residence in Canada.

In an email, Michael Kwas, press secretary to Muhammad Yaseen, minister of immigration and multiculturalism said currently there are 67 rural areas designated in the Rural Renewal Stream program and over 780 nominations have been issued since late last year.

Adam Vanderwekken, communications and special project coordinator with the County of Barrhead, said employers and candidates both already in the community and outside of Canada have showed a lot of interest in the Rural Renewal Stream.

“There's been more of an uptake than we had expected when we were first considering the program. Which is good to see,” he said.

The County of Barrhead has been in the program since November 2022, and Vanderwekken said they have endorsed 59 candidates to date and 39 were outside of Canada when they had them endorsed and 20 of those candidates were in Canada already working on a temporary work permit.

The County did, however, decide to change the program until the end of 2023 and will only be issuing endorsement letters to candidates that are already in Canada on a temporary permit.

“It's a little quicker for our employers to get people in the door because they can start work under their temporary permit while they wait for their provincial nomination and permanent residency applications. It's more helpful to our employers to focus on temporary foreign workers,” he said.

Most of the workers are being endorsed in food services, with the next most prevalent industry being disability support services, and then retail.

The County decided to join the program after they were approached by an employer looking to expand their operation and needed around 50 additional employees.

“They were looking at talking to the County about avenues to attract workers in and this was one idea that they had actually brought to us,” he said.

The County then reached out to other businesses in the community through the Chamber of Commerce. Businesses in both the town and county of Barrhead expressed difficulties in attracting and retaining workers.

“The economic development of the region is so tied between the Town and the County of Barrhead. We decided to go into the program together. The Barrhead region is a designated community which includes the Town of Barrhead and the County of Barrhead, with the county being the administration for the program,” he said.

Vanderwekken notes some challenges they have had include finding housing for candidates.

“That is pretty much priority number one here is you know, we're not required to find them a house to live in, but any support we can help in compiling lists of available places to rent or making it more attractive for landlords to you know, open more places to rent — how we can change our processes to support the housing needs in our community,” he said.

As for success, Vanderwekken said there is a real love for the “small town rural kind of life” from the candidates.

“Which kind of surprised me. People especially temporary foreign workers that are already in the community that I've spoken with, a lot of them are just excited to be able to stay in the community or have the opportunity to try stay in the community.

“I think is the end goal of this program,” he said.

Gordon Shaw, manager of community development services for the Town of Innisfail said the program has been a success in that it now offers businesses an opportunity to be able to draw people from outside the community who are interested in the program and interested in becoming a permanent resident.

“Businesses in smaller rural communities have difficulty attracting and retaining staff members.

“We felt that this was a good program to belong to in order to be able to attract individuals who might be interested in a smaller center as opposed to a Calgary or an Edmonton,” he said.

Shaw said the program has had 132 applicants so far, but he couldn’t say if any of applicants were from overseas.

“We found with that there was already quite a number of individuals in the community that might have been working for the businesses themselves, but they saw this as an opportunity to be able to get permanent residency in Canada,” he said.

The town of Innisfail partnered up with the Town of Bowden and the Town of Olds for the program.

“Each of those communities have like their own process to determine the eligibility of a candidate and then they submit information to us with a recommendation to issue a command a support letter for the candidate,” he said.

Shaw said they have issued 12 community support letters for Bowden and 23 for Olds — with candidates applying generally from the food and beverage industry.

Shaw said the fast-food sector is seeing the greatest number of people come in through the program and the accommodation sector has also benefited.

“We did have a couple of our manufacturers reach out to be able to fill few positions but primarily the applications have been in the food and accommodation sector of the economy,” he said.

As for improvements, Shaw would like to know what happens to individuals after the town has issued support letters to them.

“The province is contacting us asking whether or not we have issued that community support letter to the individual. And then we don't know what happens after that step,” he said.

Overall, Shaw thinks it’s been a good program.

“It's a way to be able to bring in new individuals into the community and to be able to help build up the not only the business community itself, but also the community in general,” he said.