ARCHIVED – Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot: Community application criteria

Eligibility

The pilot will launch in a small number of communities. This means your community may not be selected, even if it meets all the criteria.

To be eligible to apply to participate, communities had to:

• have a population of:

• 50,000 people or less and be located at least 75 km from the core of a Census Metropolitan Area

  or

• up to 200,000 people and be considered remote from other larger cities (using Statistics Canada’s index of remoteness)
• be in:
  • Alberta
  • British Columbia
  • Manitoba
  • Northwest Territories
  • Nunavut
  • Ontario
  • Saskatchewan
  • Yukon
• have job opportunities
• have an economic development plan
• have a local economic development organization that can manage the pilot for your community
• be able to settle new immigrants in the community by having or developing:
  • relationships with local or regional immigrant-serving organizations
  • opportunities to connect newcomers with established members of the community, such as through mentoring or networking
  • access to key services like:
    • education
    • housing
    • transportation
    • health care
• have letters of support from:
  • the municipality (local leaders) and
  • a local or regional immigrant-serving organization

We encourage communities with French-speaking populations to apply and identify themselves in their application.

Economic development organizations

An economic development organization has:

• economic development as a central part of its mandate
• an economic development or strategic plan, or would fall under a broader economic development plan
• available resources to participate in the pilot

This organization could be:

• a community futures organization
• a chamber of commerce
• another independent or not-for-profit economic development organization
• a hybrid organization of a municipality with an independent board of directors made up of community stakeholders