MBiz

15 SUMMER 2023 IMMIGRATION HELPING THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY The provincial Immigration Advisory Council came out with a report this year highlighting 70 recommendations to improve immigration policies and programs and to address labour shortages. Recommendations aimed at labour market needs and business investment include: • Align nominations of skilled workers and business inves- tors through the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP) with strategic industry growth areas for Manitoba. • Encourage businesses to help with recruitment and integration of international skilled workers. Providing a subsidy to employers would help develop those programs. When developing these programs, consider the needs of smaller organizations without human resources capacities or departments. • Establish a single-source recruitment portal for Manitoba employers and global talent to connect. • Increase sector-specific nominee draws. Work with regions to ensure MPNP's expression-of-interest draws will ad- dress their unique local labour market. • Create a list of trusted employers to facilitate an expe- dited process to fill labour market needs. • Encourage international entrepreneurs to invest in com- munities outside the capital region by creating new busi- nesses and purchasing existing businesses. • Reduce or remove the language requirement for the busi- ness investor stream and explore ways of providing inter- pretation services as needed to business investors. • Create virtual options for potential business investors. Al- though exploratory research trips are not mandatory, they can be beneficial. When issuing letters of advice to apply, the MPNP could include a preliminary virtual submission to move the process forward. Manitoba Minister of Labour and Immigration Jon Reyes says recommendations are being prioritized, but some are already underway such as special draws targeting occupations and a "work-in-Manito- ba portal" for employers and potential employees. a regional committee. If the candidate passes the review, an endorsement letter will be sent to the province recommending the person be nominated through the MPNP. "I'm hoping it'll be a positive pilot project and it'll be a permanent program we can have in other parts of the province to address the labour shortage," Reyes says. The nominee program also began sector-specific draws based on federal and provincial data, he says. For example, there have been draws this year for truck drivers, retail sales and service supervisors, technical trades and transportation officers and controllers. The council's report pointed to the Manitoba La- bour Market Outlook, which predicted the province will need 15,500 more workers per year due to retire- ments and deaths. "Addressing the labour shortage, we can do it domestically; we can do it through graduates from post-secondary education, but immigration is also a key component to addressing that labour shortage as well," Reyes says. As part of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada's multi-year allocation plan, Manitoba had its nominee program's spaces boosted to 9,500 for this year, an increase of 3,175 from last year. "If we are going to get a significant number of al- locations, we must communicate and work together with the federal government to ensure that we have the support systems in place," Reyes says, citing housing and health care as examples. More than 21,000 immigrants and their families land- ed in Manitoba last year, with 13,915 arriving through the nominee program. Other individuals came through federal immigration categories, such as federal-spon- sored family, federal skilled workers and government- assisted and privately sponsored refugees. The federal government announced last November a plan to bring 500,000 newcomers to Canada in 2025, up from the 465,000 expected this year and 485,000 next year. "What I can tell the business community is that my (department) is working hard with a sense of urgency so that we can ensure that we address labour needs, through immigration in this case — and by doing that, we have to streamline the process," Reyes says. "(We have) 70 recommendations, really good recommendations, from our Immigration Advisory Council members. My door is always open to other suggestions on ways that we can improve the pro- gram we created here in Manitoba." ■

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