Keeping immigrants in Cape Breton
Series of public sessions continue across the island
Among the positives: a safe, friendly and beautiful environment.
And for the negatives: language barriers, lack of employment and limited resources and services.
Sydney area residents were invited Wednesday to share their thoughts on what exactly is needed to retain newcomers.
Cape Breton Local Immigration Partnership is leading the project as it looks to create an immigration strategy for the island. The federal initiative was launched last summer and is funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
Kailea Pedley, partnership co-ordinator, said statistics show that only one in 50 people identify as being an immigrant in Cape Breton.
“I hope to hear what the community’s insights are in terms of how we welcome and include new folks and where we need to do more work,” said Pedley.
“Hearing that directly from the community is really going to help the local immigration partnership to understand what’s happening on the ground in different parts of the island.”
Participants taking part in Wednesday’s session said there is a dizzying cause-and-effect system that exits to keep newcomers away. They say a lack of services and a decreasing population go hand-in-hand.
Some of the concerns raised included a lack of physicians and health specialists, lacking government resources, along with transit and retail inconsistencies.
John Danch, 82, came to Canada as a child from a township in what was once Czechoslovakia.
He said about two-thirds of his coastal community of Gabarus is made up of newcomers.
“The newcomers have really changed the whole community because they’re doing all the leadership work,” he said.
Sydney resident Pankaj Joshi, a volunteer with an immigration settlement program offered by the YMCA, said newcomers often repeat the same needs.
“It’s obvious to me whenever I talk to newcomers,” she said. “It’s language training and employment. That’s the two things that everybody talks about and I think that’s what needed if you want to keep people here.”
Joshi said Cape Breton is a beautiful, peaceful place to live and raise a family.
“I wish more people could come and live here,” she added.
Karen Blair executive director of the Adult Learning Association of Cape Breton County, said often newcomers come to her organization when nothing else is available.
“We have very inadequate services here in Cape Breton, it’s just a matter of a lack of resources,” she said.
“And we really need to have adequate language services for newcomers, especially seeing the statistic where only 26 per cent of the newcomers who came in 2010 are still here in Cape Breton.”
There are now nine remaining community meetings that will take place around Cape Breton. Anyone who is unable to attend a session but who still wishes to provide input can complete forthcoming surveys.
Surveys will be made available to the wider community, while a second survey will specifically target local immigrants.