Immigrants are increasingly choosing to stay in Quebec, according to a new report from Statistics Canada, but the same isn’t true in the Atlantic region, which continues to lose newcomers to the rest of the country.
Catherine Xhardez, assistant professor of political science at Université de Montréal, said the StatCan report is welcome news for Quebec because unlike in the rest of the country, the provincial government controls its economic immigration stream.
“It’s also a question of competition. You want the best and brightest to stay because if you invest in them, if you select them, you do not want them to go to Ontario,” said Xhardez, who also directs ÉRIQA, a research group that studies immigration to Quebec.
Decades ago, when the Quebec unemployment rate was much higher than the current 5.7 percent, immigrants were leaving the province at a much higher rate, Xhardez pointed out, saying job opportunities and social programs are key to keeping newcomers.
“It really depends on living conditions and opportunities for migrants. That is the biggest factor for people moving from one province to another province,” she said.
However, Atlantic Canada offers a stark contrast. The four provinces recorded decreases in one-year retention rates for immigrants admitted in 2020 compared with 2021. Newfoundland and Labrador recorded a 14.1 percentage point drop, Nova Scotia saw a 11.7 percentage point decrease, the drop in Prince Edward Island was 8.9 percentage points, and in New Brunswick it was 2.2 percentage points.
“Immigrants who left their intended Atlantic provinces were increasingly likely to settle in Ontario,” the report said.
Meanwhile, the statistics agency also looked at five-year retention rates, analyzing how many immigrants admitted in the country between 2013 to 2017 were still in their intended provinces five years later.
“Among immigrants admitted from 2013 to 2017, those who intended to live in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec were the most likely to reside in the same province five years after their admission,” the report said. Five-year retention rates were highest in Ontario at 93.5 percent, B.C. at 87.5 percent, Alberta at 87.3 percent and Quebec with 79.7 percent.
Once again, the retention rates in Atlantic Canada were among the lowest in the country. In Nova Scotia, 61.7 percent of immigrants admitted in 2013 were still in the province five years later, rising to 62.1 percent for the cohort of newcomers who came in 2017. In New Brunswick, 51.7 percent of immigrants admitted in 2017 were in the province five years later, a rise of 3.9 percentage points compared with the cohort who came in 2013.
For the cohort of immigrants who arrived in 2017, 45.6 percent of them were still in Newfoundland and Labrador five years later; 25.7 of them were still in Prince Edward Island.
Those figures come as no surprise to Tony Fang, economics professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, who said “lack of meaningful employment or perceived lack of it” was primarily to blame. “That’s the number one reason why they don’t stay in the region,” he said in an interview Monday.
“The second is family ties …. The third reason is a lack of community support,” he said, explaining that close-knit communities in the region can be difficult for newcomers, making them sometimes feel like outsiders.
Newcomers can more easily find their cultural communities and families in big cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, Fang said, adding that the region would do well to accept larger numbers of immigrants at once, as Newfoundland and Labrador did with Ukrainian and Syrian refugees.
And while immigration may be outpacing housing and social services in the country, he said the Atlantic region desperately needs newcomers to boost its economic development.
“We have the oldest population. We have the most severe labour demographic deficits. We have more severe skilled labour shortages, so immigration certainly has more positive impact for Atlantic Canada,” Fang said.
