Solely about three per cent of immigrants nominated beneath Ontario’s program landed in Northern Ontario over a five-year interval
EDITOR’S NOTE: This text initially appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media web site devoted completely to masking provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Immigrants nominated for everlasting residency beneath Ontario’s provincial program aren’t at all times going to the areas or sectors that want them probably the most, a brand new auditor normal report discovered.
The remark was made by Auditor Common Shelley Spence within the audit of the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) included in her 2024 annual report, which was launched on Tuesday.
In line with the report, about 37 per cent of nominees with job presents supposed to settle exterior of the Higher Toronto Space between 2019 and 2023.
Of these, solely about three per cent of job-offer nominees landed in Northern Ontario.
“The ministry does not have an overall strategy towards a needs-based distribution of nominees across the province and particularly to regions outside of the GTA,” the auditor wrote, including that one in all OINP’s targets is to “spread the benefits of immigration to all parts of the province and help address Ontario’s labour market needs.”
Spence famous that different provinces and the federal authorities have mechanisms to encourage immigration into much less populated areas.
For example, the federal authorities launched the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot “to boost economic immigration to smaller communities and provide a pathway for skilled foreign workers to gain permanent residency,” she wrote.
5 of the 11 taking part communities are in Northern Ontario — North Bay, Sudbury, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay — and, as of Dec. 31, 2023, virtually 4,600 everlasting residents throughout Canada had come by means of this pilot, Spence discovered.
Spence did define quite a lot of applications launched by the Doug Ford authorities meant to encourage nominees to settle exterior of the GTA, like greater scoring for these with presents elsewhere and a two-year regional pilot to deliver 300 nominees to Chatham-Kent, Cornwall and Quinte West/Belleville communities.
The pilot resulted in 147 OINP nominations. Nonetheless, the auditor stated, “No follow-up was conducted to see how successful the individuals were in these communities, or if they continue to reside in these communities.”
The federal government also needs to take a look at particular labour calls for in these areas, that are totally different from these within the GTA, the auditor steered. Nominations haven’t helped tackle the growing job vacancies for registered nurses and registered psychiatric nurses in central Ontario, she famous.
The report stated that throughout the five-year evaluation interval, there have been 1,730 nursing vacancies in Central Ontario and 11 OINP nominations.
The auditor recommends accumulating info on supposed settlement areas for all nominee streams and monitoring progress towards regional targets. The federal government has accepted this suggestion and pledged to “work to integrate available and reliable regional labour market data into our targets where possible.”
What about non-job-offer nominees?
The auditor normal additionally famous that “reliable data is not available to analyze where nominees in the non-job-offer streams intend to settle.” This stream typically applies to worldwide graduate college students who need to keep and work within the province.
In 2023, the variety of nominations for Masters or PhD graduates surpassed nominees with a job supply by 3,408 (58 per cent),” Spence wrote in her report.
The auditor’s report notes these purposes are “less risky and complex and require less verification.”
Regardless of health-related occupations being a precedence for the provincial authorities, the auditor famous that solely about eight per cent of these worldwide college students who apply for everlasting residency beneath OINP are within the discipline. The bulk stem from engineering, pc, enterprise or info sciences.
The auditor additionally discovered that in November 2023, the ministry requested the federal authorities for a big improve in its immigrant allocation, “exceeding its assessment of operational capacity for the next three calendar years.”
“We noted that the ministry’s own analysis showed that it could support additional nominees, but not at the levels ultimately submitted to the federal government,” the report stated.
“For 2026, the request was 236 per cent higher than the ministry identified as operationally feasible. The ministry was unable to provide analysis for how it would support such a large increase.”
‘Weaknesses’ in mechanisms to stop misrepresentations in purposes
Inspectors famous there are “weaknesses” within the ministry’s processes to catch misrepresentation earlier than candidates are nominated for everlasting residency.
Examples of misrepresentation embody falsifying previous work expertise to fulfill eligibility, pretend job presents and language check scores, or having representatives put together purposes with out the data of employers.
The report stated that in 67 per cent of instances the place inspectors really useful financial penalty or program ban, the applicant had already been nominated by means of OINP.
Verification procedures have been additionally not effectively documented or analyzed, with knowledge analytics “limited by the lack of functionality of the ministry’s case management system,” the report stated.
The province has already put ahead new laws that will crack down on these representing newcomers navigating the system to weed out unhealthy actors. These representatives could be required to have a written contract with OINP candidates and supply proof of registration or licence to symbolize immigrants.
Nonetheless, the laws makes no point out of how the system will likely be tailored to stop these misrepresentations from occurring and the way the province will implement any fines these representatives might face because of this.
