The Town of Bonnyville will be pausing its Rural Renewal Stream (RRS) program.
The goal of the program is to attract and recruit newcomers to address labour needs and settle newcomers. Workers get the opportunity to immigrate to Alberta as provincial nominees with the formal support of the municipal government.
Bonnyville became designated under the RRS under the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program (AAIP) in October 2023.
Since that time the economic development officer has written 300 referral letters and responded to 150 emails and telephone inquiries.
Roughly 275 jobs have been filled through the RRS program. Some people have quit, others did not show up and some are still working through the immigration program.
Changes have been made to the program that have a major impact. A cap on the AAIP has been instated of 1,900 per year for the entire province. Potential workers must now submit a worker’s expression of interest through an online portal where it is evaluated and ranked according to provincial needs. This online portal opens and closes quickly as there is an automated monthly quota.
“On top of the Government of Alberta changes we do see this one a little bit higher ranking than the municipality. I know the Government of Canada has also made some significant changes to their immigration through their recent announcements from the minister. Which are obviously affecting the Government of Alberta when it comes to that as well,” said Coun. Neil Langridge.
Langridge says there was a severe shortage of workers in the area.
“I did note as well when we started this we had a severe shortage of workers in the area. A lot of the positions were in the accommodation business and the retail positions,” he said. “Speaking to some of the business owners a lot of those have been filled so the program did work for what we intended it to do.”
Administration brought this item forward to council and requested direction on the next steps with the program.
“Obviously with all the changes I would agree with potentially pausing or closing the program for the time being,” said Langridge.
Administration informed council there is quite a backlog at the provincial level of roughly six to 12 months.
Langridge would like to see the economic development officer’s time freed up for other work.
“Also note that economic development, this council, (that’s) one of their top priorities along with recreation and wellness and to see our economic development officer we only have one. Then 50 per cent of his workload going to this, which right now is facing severe backlogs. I would like to see that time freed up to address some of our other concerns in economic development,” he said.
Coun. Byron Johnson was in favour of pausing the program.
“I would be more in favour of pausing it just because if it gets as busy as it potentially can around here, that we still have that available to us to start up again if there’s a lot of job openings and there’s not a lot of people coming in,” he said.
Mayor Elisa Brosseau said she wanted to see this item come to the Economic Development Committee before coming to council.
“I’m a little disheartened to hear it’s coming straight to council, the request to put this on pause without it coming to the economic development committee. I think we were quite clear, and we have a member on our economic development committee who sits on the same committee in Cold Lake and they have a separate committee and they’re the ones who deal with all of the applications and not their economic development officer,” she said.
She says the goal was to never bog down the economic development officer.
“I tried to be quite clear on that. That we didn’t want it to take up the majority of our economic development officer,” said Brosseau.
Brosseau wanted this item to be presented at an economic development meeting to have some conversations regarding the topic.
“I wish it would have come to the economic development meeting first and (have) some open and transparent conversations there,” she said.
Whether the program should be closed or paused, Brosseau agreed with the sentiment around the table.
“It has been so successful in town I don’t want to see it close, so I do agree with you maybe pausing it,” she said.
Discussion rounded out with Coun. Brian McEvoy making a motion to pause the program and send it to the economic development committee for full review before reporting back to council.
This would give council a chance to make a final decision.
Council voted in favour of the motion putting a pause on the immigration program.
Read more: Bonnyville updates old bylaw
