Ontario East is experiencing a time of exciting growth and recovering rapidly from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, but despite that, our region continues to experience a labour shortage. Immigration is the key to solving this problem and filling this shortage. You work hard to create a healthy and happy workplace for your team and Ontario East stakeholders are doing the same for the region as a whole by creating strategies to promote immigration to Ontario East. Read on to learn about how you’ll get hiring help from these local immigration strategies. 

Local Immigration Strategies for Newcomer Attraction and Retention

The County of Renfrew, the County of Lanark, the City of Ottawa, the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville, Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry Counties, and the United Counties of Prescott and Russell published the Eastern Ontario Immigrant Attraction and Retention Strategy. 

Read it here: Eastern Ontario Immigrant Attraction and Retention Strategy (French: Stratégie d’attraction et de maintien des immigrants dans l’Est de l’Ontario).

The strategy marks the first time these counties came together to address this critical regional challenge with a coordinated approach. Along with the City of Ottawa, the counties sought community consultation to answer questions like:

What Are the Barriers to Entry Faced by Immigrants?

Some identified barriers include: 

• finding adequate employment 
• language barriers
• the importance employers place on “Canadian experience” in the workforce
• racism and discrimination
• adequate transportation
• safe housing

Breakdown Barriers With Important DEI Work:

What Is the Path Forward? 

The vision for this local immigration strategy for a path toward a newcomer based workforce includes: 

• building an equitable, inclusive, and welcoming community 
• involving newcomers as key players in this strategy
• improving the most critical factor for immigrants: economic security
• the creation of the Quinte and Area Regional Rural Immigration Strategy through the combined efforts of: 
  • the Centre for Workforce Development - Trenval
  • the City of Belleville
  • the City of Quinte West
  • the County of Hastings
  • the Corporation of the County of Prince Edward County
  • the County of Lennox and Addington
  • the Quinte Economic Development Commission, and
  • the Bay of Quinte Marketing Board

Read the Quinte and Area Regional Rural Immigration Strategy now. 

The local immigration strategy will provide specific evidence-based recommendations to solve current workforce problems and encourage long-term economic growth and social prosperity in the region. The counties and cities identified these factors as contributing to the “profound demographic shift” leading to the labour shortage: 

• an aging workforce
• youth emigration from the region
• declining birth rates
• accelerated retirement

Through community outreach and research, the region has identified 4 objectives to attract and retain immigrants to mitigate the labour shortage currently experienced:

1. Prepare: stakeholders work together to plan, coordinate, and take action. 
2. See: ensure immigrants recognize the vast economic and community opportunities available to them within the region, matching their skills, education, and preferences. 
3. Act: ensure immigrants become familiar and comfortable with their potential new community.
4. Stay: ensure immigrants feel a sense of belonging in the region, through “meaningful, self-defined participation in the community”.

Build a Robust Workforce, Hire International Students