Restaurants, food processors and other businesses that rely on immigrants to take hard-to-fill jobs may find themselves unable to operate in the coming year because of a federal policy decision, New Brunswick’s immigration minister says.
Jean-Claude D’Amours has provided more specifics to employer groups on the impact of cuts to provincial allocations under federal immigration programs.
Ottawa said last month it was cutting allocations in half under the Provincial Nominee Program and the Atlantic Immigration Program.
“For some of them it will be very difficult in the near future,” D’Amours said.
“They really need those employees. Without that they’ll have to close shop.”
The federal decision reduced the number of allocations under the two programs from 5,500 last year to 2,750 this year.
D’Amours said the New Brunswick government must open the programs for applications and has been forced to decide which sectors will get the spots.
“The main three sectors will remain health, education and trades,” he said.
“Then we will need to evaluate the other ones and see how we can accommodate each sector. But for sure, based on the fact we were cut by 50 per cent, we will have to cut some numbers in some sectors.”
The lobby group representing restaurants said the decision will be devastating, especially for fast-food restaurants in smaller, older communities where the number of young people locally is small.
“These employers will have to figure out how to staff these places in older communities and smaller communities,” said Janick Cormier, the Atlantic vice-president for Restaurants Canada.
“It might lead to some closures, quite frankly.”
The organization representing food and beverage processors and manufacturers agreed, saying small-scale businesses in rural areas will be hard hit.
“A lower number of folks is going to disproportionately hurt those people,” said Dwayne Boudreau of Food and Beverage Atlantic.
He said his 60-odd members in New Brunswick often won’t chase a good opportunity to expand because they can’t be sure they’ll have to people to supply the demand they’ve identified.
Last month, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said he could be flexible with the allocations if provinces were willing to accept a greater share of asylum seekers in Canada, people who now disproportionately await processing in Ontario and Quebec.
The Newfoundland and Labrador government said last week it had agreed to take 290 asylum seekers and in return, it would get 83 per cent of its allocation numbers from last year instead of 50 per cent.
D’Amours said he’s ready to talk about a similar arrangement, but there’s been no proposal from Miller for him to consider.
“We have not received anything new from the federal government,” he said.
“It’s not because we have not asked them to provide us something. It’s because they didn’t provide us with anything else. … That letter has not yet arrived.”
D’Amours said ideally, asylum seekers would speak English or French and would be able to fill one of the vacant jobs in the province.
Cormier said that’s difficult to imagine in the restaurant sector, where language barriers among most asylum seekers make it difficult for them to work.
But she said the federal government should send a proposal to New Brunswick soon to see if something can be worked out.
“If the province is wiling to accept asylum seekers and the trade-off from Ottawa is to up the numbers in the other streams, then why not? Let’s do it.”
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Miller said, “work to finalize a deal is ongoing” and contradicted D’Amours’s assertion Ottawa has not sent a proposal.
“We can confirm that we’ve shared our letter with our provincial counterparts. We will share updates publicly in due time.”
