UCP Leader Jason Kenney announced a new plan on Monday to reduce immigration backlog and attract entrepreneurial immigrants to smaller communities in Alberta.
“As we work to get Alberta’s economy back on track, we need to use the power of immigration as one strategy to restore investor confidence and to build new businesses to create prosperity for all Albertans,” said Kenney. “If elected, a United Conservative government will launch extensive consultations to develop a new Alberta Advantage Immigration Strategy to be completed by the end of this year for implementation at the beginning of 2020.”
Kenney says the goal of the Alberta Advantage Immigration Strategy is to speed up processing and end backlogs, while attracting talented entrepreneurs from oversees to help rural economies.
“It will focus on a smart, fast-moving immigration policy that attracts the best and brightest, while encouraging immigrant entrepreneurs to create jobs here,” he said.
The Rural Entrepreneur Immigration Program is part of the initiative and is intended to pair prospective immigrants, who are willing to live and work in rural Alberta and who meet ‘minimum net worth and investment thresholds’, with interested communities.
“When the owner of the local hardware store in a small town decides to retire and no one buys it, that hardware store is not coming back. Those services are vital to the future of our rural communities. We already have large populations in Edmonton and Calgary, with over 1.1 million people in both cities, and immigration will continue to benefit our larger cities but we need to make sure it does more to generate growth, jobs and opportunities in smaller communities,” he said.
They would then be nominated for permanent residency under the Alberta Immigrant Nominee Program.
“If they meet those and some other criteria, we would invite them to come to Alberta, nominate them for a two year work permit, through the federal government and then if they’ve shown good-faith effort to start a small business, we would grant them permanent residency, which is the next step towards citizenship,” Kenney said.
Kenney was Canada’s immigration minister for five years. During that time, he says he quadrupled Alberta’s allotment under the provincial nominee program and helped to double new, permanent residents to Alberta from about 21,000 to 42,000 a year.
“Those new comers went on to succeed with the highest levels of income in Canada and the highest levels of employment, so that has been a success story,” he said.
He says the current NDP government has neglected Alberta’s immigration program.
“Alberta has the least innovative provincial nominee program in Canada. We’re one of the only provinces that does not proactively recruit top talent from around the world. We’re one of the only provinces that does not encourage entrepreneurs to come and create jobs through a provincial nominee immigration program.”
The Alberta Advantage Immigration strategy also calls for a Rural Renewal Program, which will allow for faster processing for applicants who are sponsored by participating communities.
“Participating communities would be able to proactively recruit, screen and nominate candidates and if they do so they would get extra points in what’s called express entry, which is the main Canadian economic immigration program, and they would get faster and preferred processing.”
The program is modeled after a similar one in Manitoba and Kenney says the goal is to bring at least 32,000 newcomers to rural communities over the next four years.
Kenney says they will immediately launch consultations on the Alberta Advantage Immigration Strategy if an election is called and that Monday’s announcement was to introduce some of the programs.
