Province tabs $4M for newcomer support organizations

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This article was published 15/05/2023 (885 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Newcomer organizations across Manitoba have received $4 million in provincial funding for projects to support the thousands of immigrants expected in upcoming years.

In February, the province’s Newcomer Community Integration Support Program sought applications for direct-service providers looking to set up or improve their settlement and integration services.

On Monday, it announced 24 such organizations would receive funding. Of those, 12 will get enough to fund their projects for one year and 12 will receive funding for three years.

It’s double what the program offered to applicants last year, speaking to an increased need that has hit organizations working day-to-day with immigrants and refugees, advocates said.

At the Mosaic Newcomer Family Resource Network, wait lists for English language training doubled in just a month after the arrival of Ukrainian newcomers in the past year.

At larger centres, executive director Val Cavers said, such wait lists can be more than 1,000, with people are waiting months just to get their language proficiency assessed.

The funding Winnipeg-based Mosaic has received — $161,000 a year for three years — will go to its training program for newcomer women to work in the child care field. It pays for the 40-hour course required by the province for 30 women a year, along with parent and child programming, and a supervised practicum in a child care centre.

This is the fourth year Mosaic has received provincial funding for the program.

“There’s a huge demand for child care workers. We want to allow as many people as possible to participate in this program and get hired,” Cavers said Monday. “We’re partnering with different daycare units. It’s really a high need.”

The funding has also enabled Mosaic to partner with Robertson College to offer higher-level English as a second language classes, which could then qualify newcomers who pass the class for Robertson’s early childhood education training program.

As Manitoba joins other provinces in preparing for the massive federal promise to bring 500,000 immigrants to Canada by 2025, it should also consider if it’s doing enough to ensure newcomers have the resources to want to stay, Cavers said.

“I compare it to other provinces, we’re way at the bottom in terms of what the province is contributing for settlement services for newcomers,” she said.

“I think it shows in our retention rates — something like 62 per cent of newcomers that arrive in Manitoba stay in Manitoba, because they can go to Ontario or Alberta and get higher-level English classes paid for by the province.”

New Journey Housing in Winnipeg will receive funding for the salary of one additional full-time staff person to work in its newcomer access to benefit program.

This will double its availability for the program, which executive director Codi Guenther said has only become more popular as inflation has risen and the cost of living has gotten more expensive.

“Especially if one of our clients has a language barrier or doesn’t have high computer literacy skills, navigating all those online portals can be very difficult,” she said. “This funding will allow our staff to sit with clients one-on-one, go through those processes, and also advocate to various government departments to try to help them sort things out.”

Both women said the uptick in funding was good but not nearly enough to meet what organizations are facing.

“We know immigration numbers are going to continue to rise and the province is looking to bring in welcome more newcomers, which is great, but we also need to be there to support them, and that means providing supports to the agencies that are meeting with these clients every day,” Guenther said.

Organizations outside the capital city have also noted pressing need for settlement and integration programming.

Regional Connections Immigration Services has offices in Winkler, Morden, Altona and Dauphin, and supports the surrounding communities, as well.

Its $245,000 in funding announced Monday will go to renewing its settlement services program, which ranges from first-day support and referrals to long-term integration support.

“It’s very labour market-driven, it’s very economic development-driven and there’s lots of jobs in the area, and that really pushes immigration and arrivals,” executive director Steve Reynolds said.

Regional Connections has helped people from 130 countries settle in rural Manitoba.

“The diversity of the communities is really growing,” Reynolds said. “And it’s really exciting to see a lot of different ethnocultural communities get established within these towns, and they’re really growing and diversifying over time.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca