Immigrant Settlement Policy in Canadian Municipalities 9780773585850

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immigrant settlement policy in canadian municipalities

fields of governance: policy making in canadian municipalities Robert Young, Editor Policy making in the modern world has become a complex matter. Much policy is formed through negotiations between governments at several different levels, because each has particular resources that can be brought to bear on problems. At the same time, non-governmental organizations make demands about policy and can help in policy formation and implementation. In this context, works in this series explore how policy is made within municipalities through processes of intergovernmental relations and the involvement of social forces of all kinds.   The Fields of Governance series arises from a large research project, funded mainly by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, entitled Multilevel Governance and Public Policy in Canadian Municipalities. This project has involved more than eighty scholars and a large number of student assistants. At its core are studies of several policy fields, each of which was examined in a variety of municipalities. Our objectives are not only to account for the nature of the policies but also to assess their quality and to suggest improvements in policy and in the policymaking process.   The Fields of Governance series is designed for scholars, practitioners, and interested readers from many backgrounds and places. 1 Immigrant Settlement Policy in Canadian Municipalities Edited by Erin Tolley and Robert Young

Immigrant Settlement Policy in Canadian Municipalities Edited by

erin tolley and robert young

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2011 isbn 978-0-7735-3877-1 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-3888-7 (paper) Legal deposit fourth quarter 2011 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Immigrant settlement policy in Canadian municipalities / edited by Erin Tolley and Robert Young. (Fields of governance ; 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-7735-3877-1 (bound). – isbn 978-0-7735-3888-7 (pbk.) 1. Immigrants – Government policy – Canada. 2. Immigrants – Services for – Canada. 3. Urban policy – Canada. 4. Municipal government – Canada. 5. Canada – Emigration and immigration – Government policy. i. Tolley, Erin ii. Young, Robert, 1950– iii. Series: Fields of governance ; 1 jv7233.i44 2011   325.71   c2011-900729-0 Typeset by Jay Tee Graphics Ltd. in 10.5/13 Sabon

Contents

Preface vii 1  Introduction: Who Invited Them to the Party? Federal-Municipal Relations in Immigrant Settlement Policy  3 erin tolley 2 Federal Policies on Immigrant Settlement  49 caroline andrew with rachida abdourhamane hima 3 From Government to Multilevel Governance of Immigrant Settlement in Ontario’s City-Regions  73 daiva stasiulis, christine hughes, and zainab amery 4 Quebec Immigrant Settlement Policy and Municipalities: Fine-tuning a Provincial Template  148 guy chiasson and junichiro koji 5 Multilevel Governance and Immigration Policy in Nova Scotia 192 rodney haddow 6 Immigrant Settlement Policy in British Columbia  241 serena kataoka and warren magnusson 7 Conclusion 295 robert young Contributors 321 Index 323

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Preface

This is a collection of papers about immigrant settlement policy in Canada. We think that this is an intriguing area for students of public policy. It involves a complicated set of relations between governments – federal, provincial, regional, municipal, and, in some places, at the neighbourhood level. It also involves dense networks of organized interests that represent immigrants, ethnocultural communities, and individuals interested in refugees and other immigrants; some of these organizations actually deliver most services to immigrants to Canada. So it is interesting to analyze both this complex system of governance and also the policy outputs that it produces. Immigrant settlement is also a very important policy area. It is crucial to Canada’s future development, as it has been central to the past evolution of the country. The current immigrant experience is often very different from that of the past, when coming to Canada entailed a permanent rupture with the home society and with family. Now many immigrants retain links with “home,” and they have alternative possible destinations, so policies about attracting and retaining immigrants are more important than ever. Part of the objective of the research reported here is to suggest how such policies can be improved. This is a collection of research that stands alone and makes a significant contribution to our knowledge about immigrant settlement in Canada. It is also, however, part of a much larger project. For some time, many scholars have been working on aspects of research within the framework of this project – Multilevel Governance and Public Policy in Canadian Municipalities. The project has many components, but the bulk of the work has been done on policy

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in various provinces and in municipalities of different sizes, as in the studies collected here. Very briefly stated, the objective of this work is to document what policies exist in a variety of fields and to explain their nature: first, as a function of the processes of intergovernmental relations through which they are shaped; second, as a function of how various “social forces,” or organized groups, are involved (or not) in the policy process. More information about the overall project is available at www.ppm-ppm.ca. Here, various acknowledgments are in order. First, we wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for support through the Major Collaborative Research Initiatives program. The University of Western Ontario and other universities contributed generously to the project. In particular, Jim Davies and the Economic Policy Research Institute at Western supported the study of immigrant settlement in Ontario. We thank McGill-Queen’s University Press for its continued interest in our research and for assigning to us as editor the remarkable Carlotta Lemieux. We are indebted to two anonymous reviewers for suggestions that have improved the book. Andrea D’Souza worked with great diligence to compile the index. Finally, Kelly McCarthy has served as manager for the larger project. She coordinated various research meetings of the team, and she helped prepare this manuscript. We acknowledge her efforts with thanks.

immigrant settlement policy in canadian municipalities

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1 Introduction Who Invited Them to the Party? Federal-Municipal Relations in Immigrant Settlement Policy erin tolley In January 2007 the rural hamlet of Hérouxville, Quebec, caused a stir when its town council passed a code of conduct aimed at informing potential new­comers of various social norms. Among its provisions, the code prohibits the stoning of women and the covering of one’s face (except at Hallowe’en), as well as advising immigrants that residents drink alcoholic beverages, decorate Christmas trees, and that it is “normal” for men and women to enjoy leisure activities together. The code of conduct – and the outcry it created – was instrumental in the province’s decision to launch a commission of inquiry into the “reasonable accommodation” of minorities in Quebec. Later that year, Windsor, a southern Ontario border city, struggled to deal with an influx of refugee claimants – largely of Mexican and Haitian origins – who, in the wake of a crackdown on illegal immigration in the United States, had fled to Canada to seek asylum. As refugee claimants waiting for their cases to be processed, they were eligible for social assistance and other forms of support, as provided by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (2001). Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis reported that by September 2007, the influx of refugee claimants had cost the city about $230,000, about 20 per cent of its annual $1 million emergency shelter budget (ctv.ca News Staff 2007). Council voted to petition the province and various departments in the federal government to work toward an improved funding formula and the expedition of work permits

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for refugee claimants to reduce dependence on social assistance, and to revisit legislation related to the immigration of refugee claimants who have been residing illegally in other countries. The council also sought the support of other border communities and petitioned the Association of Ontario Municipalities and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to lobby on behalf of all municipalities, evidence of the inter- and intragovernmental nature of immigrant settlement (City of Windsor 2007). Then, in March 2008, the mayor of Edmonton, Stephen Mandel, embarked on an eight-day trip to Central and Eastern Europe in an effort to attract skilled immigrants to the city (Kent 2008). Just a few days earlier his counterpart, Don Atchison, the mayor of Saskatoon, had returned from a week-long visit to Southeast Asia, part of a Saskatchewan delegation aimed at recruiting nurses, foreign students, and business investors (Purdy 2008). The visit followed on the heels of a memorandum of understanding between the Province of British Columbia and the Government of the Philippines, which would establish guidelines for training, certifying, and assessing migrants from the Philippines, as well as streamlining applications and providing support to Filipino workers (Lee-Young 2008). As these examples illustrate, the governance of issues related to immigration and settlement increasingly involves – perhaps even demands – the involvement of more than one level of government. Collaboration between governments, whether in the form of fiscal resources, cooperation agreements, or provisions for power sharing, is referred to here as “multilevel governance.” Provisions for a multilevel approach are outlined in section 95 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which identifies immigration (and agriculture) as concurrent powers of the provinces and the federal government, although it is noted that the laws of the province must not be “repugnant to” – in other words, they must not contravene – any Act of Parliament. In spite of this constitutional provision for the sharing of powers, provincial involvement in immigration policy has, until recently, generally been minimal. The involvement of municipalities, moreover, was hampered by limited jurisdictional authority, by the municipalities’ status as creatures of the province, and by an absence of direct funding – a situation that belied the cities’ position as the primary recipients of immigrants to Canada. The 2006 census revealed that 95 per cent of Canada’s foreignborn population was living in urban areas. Among immigrants who

Introduction 5

had arrived in the previous five years, the urban proportion was even higher, at 97 per cent. These figures compare to 78 per cent of the Canadian-born population living in urban areas (Chui, Tran, and Maheux 2007). However, the settlement of immigrants is not a uniform phenomenon. Immigration levels vary across provinces and cities, and the demographic profiles of new­comers differ dramatically, with a wide range of source countries, uneven levels of immigrants and refugees, and settlement patterns that may include a high degree of suburbanization or residence outside the downtown core. Thus, a “one size fits all” approach to immigrant settlement is simply untenable; regional variations, municipal differences, and community initiatives require a multilevel approach. This volume stems from that recognition and is part of a larger project on multilevel governance and public policy in Canada. The project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council as a Major Collaborative Research Initiative, is wideranging, but at its heart is an investigation of variations in public policy in six fields: emergency planning, federal property, municipal image building, infrastructure, urban Aboriginal policy, and immigrant settlement. Two factors are specified as particularly central to the investigation: intergovernmental relations and the role of “social forces” in the formation of public policy. In the first instance, the project aims to gain a better understanding of the structure of intergovernmental relations within each policy field and the effect of the interactions between officials and politicians at the relevant levels of government. Here, municipalfederal relations are emphasized, in part because of increased interaction and interrelationships, and in part because it is an area that has received minimal treatment in the literature (Public Policy in Municipalities 2005). The volume seeks to understand the roles and responsibilities of each level of government, the resources that each brings to the table, the level of collaboration, the involvement of politicians and public officials, the effect of ideological differences, and the impact of New Public Management principles, such as flatter bureaucracies, the downloading of responsibilities, and increased discretion and authority for public servants. In the second instance, the project explores the factors that influence public policy in municipalities. These include initiatives undertaken by federal and provincial governments, local economic conditions, and the attitudes of local politicians and bureaucrats that

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are instrumental in the approaches adopted by different communities. These top-down forces prove to be important in most of the municipalities examined in this volume. At the same time, however, we see bottom-up social forces mobilizing to influence settlement policy. These social forces may include “community organizations, business associations, trade unions, interest groups, voluntary associations, and members of social movements” – actors who “make policy demands, take some decisions, implement policy, and represent clients and citizens” (Public Policy in Municipalities 2005) but whose interaction with officials and politicians and impact on public policy are not yet well understood. Here, we are concerned with the social forces that are (and are not) involved in the policy field, as well as the character of their involvement, the stage at which they become involved, and the role of coalitions of interest. In this collection, we reflect on intergovernmental relations and on the factors, external pressures, and social forces that affect the field of immigrant settlement. Four of the chapters examine immigrant settlement in four different provinces, and one looks at the federal approach. The case study approach allows for an assessment of variations, as well as an exploration of the ways in which provinces and cities have responded to the challenge of immigrant settlement. It is a research design that examines policy outcomes using variations in intergovernmental relations as one of the key explanatory factors. The cases selected include the province with the longest and most formal involvement in immigration policy (Quebec), two provinces with the largest immigrant populations in the country (Ontario and British Columbia), and one whose entry into immigrant settlement policy is relatively recent (Nova Scotia). Although each province has a role in immigrant settlement as well as a decidedly “unique” approach, not all are covered in this volume. Most noticeably absent, perhaps, is Manitoba, which has in the past decade pursued an aggressive immigration strategy, one that a number of other provinces have copied in recent years. The omission does not reflect our assessment of Manitoba’s role in immigrant settlement policy. Rather, it is because this volume is situated within a larger project that examines the making of public policy in six different fields across Canada’s ten provinces. To maximize geographic coverage across this larger project, we have opted to use case studies to examine the development of immigrant settlement in just four provinces. This inevitably means that a number of interest-

Introduction 7

ing approaches have been excluded. Nonetheless, what we may have sacrificed in coverage has been made up for in depth, with this volume providing a rich overview of cross-country variation, interprovincial diversity, and immigrant settlement in nineteen municipalities. Each of the chapters in this volume tells a story about immigration to the province, settlement in its cities and towns, and the interaction of governments and social forces in recruiting immigrants, responding to the influx of diverse new populations, and working to ensure the successful integration of the new­comers. In all cases, the authors rely heavily on insights drawn from more than 170 in-depth interviews with government officials, non-governmental actors, and others involved in the settlement of immigrants. These supplement and add texture to statistics, policy documents, and other secondary source materials. The paths that each author has taken are somewhat different, but their destinations nonetheless converge. In this collection, we see several common threads emerge, including the complexity of immigration; the diversity of views about settlement, integration, and what constitutes successful integration; the effects of new migration patterns; and the important interplay of governments, the public, and non-state actors. Nonetheless, this is not simply a mundane examination of the mechanics of governance or the tedious technicalities of public policy making. Rather, there is also a human dimension to this study, one that includes the experiences of new­comers struggling to make a life in Canada, as well as the voices of policy makers, settlement workers, and community members who are working to balance the needs of immigrants with those of more established Canadians, whose attitudes toward immigration may range from fearful to cautious to overly optimistic. Immigration is not a stand-alone policy field. Rather, it is interwoven with the economy, foreign affairs, education, health care, the criminal justice system, infrastructure, the arts, and myriad other areas. Immigration cuts across jurisdictions and policy areas, and this collection thus explores issues and challenges that are likely to resonate with nearly all Canadians. These include rising levels of poverty, the difficulties associated with securing stable employment in one’s field, the desire to live in a safe neighbourhood and to have access to quality schools, the challenge of finding a doctor and suitable care providers, the shortage of affordable and appropriate housing, and the changing complexion of Canadian communities.

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This chapter provides a conceptual basis for the chapters that follow and offers a preliminary look at some of the volume’s findings. It begins with a discussion of settlement and the ways in which settlement, integration, and other aspects of the immigration experience have been conceived within the academic literature and policy communities. This is followed by an overview of the history of immigration and settlement in Canada, which highlights the ways in which past choices, policies, and legislative developments have set the stage for the multilevel but somewhat “silo-like” approach to immigrant settlement that exists today. It concludes with a brief summary of the volume’s chapters and an overview of some of the principal debates and themes.

conceptualizing immigration, settlement, and integration Since its inception, Canada has experienced not just the arrival of millions of new­comers but the growth of an entire industry around immigration, settlement, and integration; this “industry” includes service providers, educators, academics, advocacy groups, lawyers, employers, recruiters, real estate agents, and entire bureaucracies. All of these players have somewhat different understandings of what it means to immigrate, to settle, and to integrate successfully. Moreover, as Frideres (2008) notes, the needs of immigrants and the host society may vary at different points in the immigration, settlement, and integration process. Consequently, providing a precise yet encompassing definition of these concepts is a significant challenge. Within the scholarly literature and in a number of policy documents, discussions of the immigration experience tend to gravitate toward the metaphor of a continuum. George (2002) characterizes this understanding as a “theory-based model” of the stages of immigrant adaptation. Her literature review uncovers various conceptualizations of the continuum, including a four-stage model proposed by Cox (1985), consisting of pre-movement, transition, resettlement, and integration, as well as Drachman’s (1992) threestage model, which consists of pre-migration and departure, transit, and resettlement. Caidi and Allard (2005) draw on Mwarigha (2002) to suggest that the continuum includes initial reception, ­followed by the securing of housing and long-term employment, followed by full engagement as an active citizen. Others go further,

Introduction 9

including H ­ erberg (1988) and Richmond and Shields (2005), who suggest that full integration can take generations. The understanding of integration as a continuum is mirrored in policy documents, which provide similar characterizations (see, for example, Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2001; Canada 2006). Although the idea of a continuum is fairly consistent, the precise points and measures along the way are contested. The chapters in this volume thus reflect various understandings of settlement and integration, and I will focus here on just a few key stages: pre-arrival, settlement and adaptation, and integration. I also discuss new forms of migration and integration challenges that immigrants may face. Pre-arrival As has been suggested, immigration is a process, and the experience typically begins long before a potential migrant sets foot in the new country. Pre-arrival can be thought of as the stage after which an immigrant has decided to migrate, during which the visa application and other paperwork are approved and information about the destination country is sought. Indeed, with the availability of information, as well as the presence of vast and knowledgeable co-ethnic networks, immigrants typically begin the process of integration well in advance of their departure for their new home. They have access to myriad online resources. These include websites to help immigrants navigate the process, such as www.canadaimmigration.com, as well as less-glowing reviews, such as those at www.notcanada. com, which warn new­comers about the difficulties they may face in the labour market, the presence of subtle racism, and the reality of Canada’s harsh climate. Recognizing the potential of online media, in 2005 the Government of Canada launched its ambitious “Going to Canada Portal,” which provides potential migrants with a “onestop shop” for information on immigration to Canada (Canada 2005). Most provinces have similar online resources. These may be supplemented by, for example, guidance provided by immigration consultants who, while not officially mandated to assist immigrants in the integration process, indirectly act in this capacity through the provision of information about immigration laws, application procedures, and the acquisition of necessary documents and paperwork (Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants 2008). Immigrants are also likely to rely on ethnic networks, which can be instrumental

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in the provision of information about life in the destination country (Stark 1991; Tilly 1990). Following the completion of their application but prior to leaving for Canada, new­comers may take advantage of Canadian Orientation Abroad courses, which have been delivered by Citizenship and Immigration Canada since 1998. These are a means of introducing new­comers to Canada, describing various stages in the settlement period and providing information about employment, the climate, housing, education, and life in Canada (Canada 2008a). Immigrants who have applied under the Federal Skilled Worker Program may have access to the Canadian Immigrant Integration Project, an initiative that is funded by the Government of Canada and administered by the Association of Canadian Community Colleges. It is a voluntary program for immigrants in the final stages of the application process. First introduced as a pilot in India, China, and the Philippines, it offers information sessions on the Canadian labour market and steps to facilitate labour market integration, and oneon-one counselling and the preparation of an individual integration plan; it also identifies organizations that can assist with credential recognition, licensing, language and skills training, and the job search (Association of Canadian Community Colleges 2008). Such pre-arrival information is now viewed as central to immigrants’ integration. Unfortunately, however, availability remains a problem; a recent evaluation notes that pre-arrival programs do not necessarily meet the needs of all immigrants (particularly skilled workers), that class sizes are too large, that awareness is a problem, and that materials are not translated into as many languages as would be desirable (Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2005). Settlement and Adaptation Once immigrants have completed their applications and secured their entry documents – a process that can take as long as six years, depending on the class of entry and country of application – they may make their way to Canada. They are typically met at the airport by officials from the Canada Border Services Agency, where they are processed and admitted into the country. This is when the settlement period begins. Within policy documents and the academic literature, settlement is typically thought of as lasting from arrival until three years after arrival, a definition that partly stems from

Introduction 11

the ­parameters of the federal government’s provision of funding for settlement services but that is viewed as arbitrary by many in the settlement sector (Lim et al. 2005; Sadiq 2004). In the settlement stage, new­comers secure housing, enrol their children in school, seek health-care providers, and make preparations for entry into the labour market. Data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (lsic), which followed immigrants’ experiences during their first four years in Canada, suggest that they face some settlement challenges. In the first six months in Canada, for example, language barriers are prevalent; these tend to lessen over time, while financial constraints appear to become more pronounced over time (Ruddick 2008). The provision of services is a key feature of this settlement period, and the literature is rife with examples of such services. Generally, services include housing and employment assistance, language training, referrals, and overall support. Lim et al. (2005) enumerate more than one dozen different kinds of settlement services, including advocacy, counselling and support groups, education, emergency food services, language training, form filling, health and medical programs, housing assistance, information and referrals, legal support, orientation, recreation and leisure programs, and translation and interpretation. The chapters that follow provide a thorough and context-specific survey of settlement services in each of our case areas; suffice it to say, the range is broad and the variation great. Integration The lsic suggests that over time, immigrants do find employment, purchase homes, and become engaged in their communities. They thus move from a period of settlement to one of integration ­(Ruddick 2008). As Will Kymlicka admits, the definition of “integration” can be somewhat elusive, but he notes: We can piece together some of the things which they see as ­crucial ingredients of integration: adopting a Canadian identity rather than clinging exclusively to one’s ancestral identity; participating in broader Canadian institutions rather than participating solely in ethnic-specific institutions; learning an official language rather than relying solely on one’s mother-tongue; ­having inter-ethnic friendships or even mixed-marriages rather

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than socializing entirely within one’s ethnic group. These sorts of criteria do not form a comprehensive theory of “integration,” but ... they are a good starting-point. (Kymlicka 1998, 17–18) Here, then, integration is viewed as the full and active participation in Canadian life and institutions and a commitment to the broader society. The Migrant Integration Policy Index, which is produced by the British Council and the Migrant Policy Group, looks at the social, economic, and civic dimensions of integration; its definition sees integration as the possession of equal rights and opportunities, the extension of justice, dignity, and independence, and recognition of the mutual obligations shared by immigrants and the host society (Niessen et al. 2007). The index measures policies related to labour market access, naturalization and citizenship, family reunification, political participation, and anti-discrimination. In a report prepared for the European Commission, Entzinger and Biezeveld (2003) argue that integration is a societal characteristic that refers to the frequency and intensity of relationships between its constituent parts. The number and strength of ties between individuals is thus a marker of integration. They identify four dimensions of integration: socio-economic (e.g., employment, income, social security dependency, education, housing, and segregation); legal-political (e.g., naturalization, dual citizenship, participation in politics and civil society); cultural (e.g., social networks, intermarriage, language fluency, delinquency, attitudes toward the host country’s basic norms and values); and the attitudes of recipient societies (e.g., reports of discrimination, the host society’s perception of immigrants; the presence and effectiveness of diversity policies; media portrayals). Entzinger and Biezeveld (2003) note that there is much variation in terms of how countries approach each dimension. Socio-economically, some lean toward a conception of integration that sees immigrants as only temporary workers rather than potential citizens. In a legal-political sense, countries may grant citizenship on the basis of one’s ancestry (jus sanguinis, or “by blood”), which excludes many immigrants and ethnic minorities, while others may extend the rights of citizenship to all legal residents regardless of their ancestry or bloodline (jus soli, or “by territory”). Finally, on the cultural dimension, countries may strive for assimilation in which immigrants are expected to blend seamlessly into the host society, an objective that

Introduction 13

can be contrasted with the multiculturalism model, in which immigrants are permitted (and sometimes even encouraged) to retain elements of their cultural heritage and measures are put into place to ensure that the host society adapts and accommodates ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious differences. The multicultural model thus places some onus on the host society to welcome and adapt to the immigrants it accepts as permanent residents. Although not all countries have adopted multicultural models, discourse increasingly recognizes that integration is not solely the responsibility of the new­comers (Biles et al. 2008). Unwillingness on the part of immigrants to integrate or systematic discrimination on the part of the host society can both impede integration (Frideres 2008). Thus, “immigrants must commit to becoming responsible, contributing community members and do their part to promote equal treatment and opportunity for all members. In turn, the host society must ensure that policies and programs reflect values of fairness and equal opportunity, protect civil rights and liberties and create opportunities for immigrants to contribute to Canadian society” (Frideres 2008, 83). As the facilitators of “on the ground” integration, municipalities and local ngos both play a key role, as is demonstrated in the chapters in this volume. Although it is debatable that anyone is ever fully integrated into a society (Joppke and Morawska 2003), the policy objective is for immigrants, over time, to become virtually indistinguishable from the Canadian-born. This convergence of outcomes and life chances is typically regarded as the benchmark of integration success. Indeed, survey research suggests that immigrants are as likely as – and sometimes more likely than – the Canadian-born to express a strong level of attachment to Canada, to become involved in civic life, and to participate in community organizations (Statistics Canada 2003). Kymlicka’s (1998) examination showed that most immigrants speak Canada’s official languages, participate in politics and civic life, take up Canadian citizenship, and marry outside their own ethnic group. These findings are largely supported by more recent evidence. The 2006 census, for example, showed that 98.7 per cent of Canadians have knowledge of English or French, suggesting that even though immigrants are arriving from a wide range of countries where English and French are not the dominant languages, they nonetheless

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are learning one or both of Canada’s official languages (Statistics Canada 2006). In part this is because some new­comers – notably, refugees and those who enter under the family class – are eligible for language training as part of their settlement package; and, in part, because an ability to speak English or French has been shown as key to succeeding in the labour market (Tolley 2007). Immigrants become involved in their communities and in civic life. An analysis of the Canadian Election Study from 1988 to 2004 shows that while, overall, immigrants and the Canadian-born vote at more or less equal rates, immigrants do exhibit a willingness to learn about Canadian politics as well as possessing a “stronger sense of voting duty than other Canadians” (White et al. 2006). Henderson’s (2005) examination of data from the Canadian Election Study and the World Values Survey finds that immigrant voters tend to be more informed than Canadian-born voters, with a greater propensity to seek electoral information, and that they are more likely to watch leaders’ debates and correctly answer questions about Canada’s electoral and political system. However, while immigrants are involved in various aspects of civic life, they remain underrepresented in elected institutions at all three levels of government across the country (Andrew et al. 2008), and longitudinal analysis suggests that there is the potential for a plateau in the representation of immigrants and minorities in Parliament (Black 2008). Moreover, recent research suggests that new immigrants – those who have been in Canada for less than ten years – are much less likely to vote than their more established counterparts; this suggests that immigrants’ political integration may be lagging (Tossutti 2007). Nonetheless, immigrants are likely to become Canadian citizens, which Kymlicka (1998, 18) views as the “most basic form of integration.” Data from the 2006 census show that 85.1% of Canada’s foreign-born population had become citizens, an increase from 83.9% in 2001 (Chui, Tran, and Maheux 2007). Citizenship take-up rates are higher in Canada than in other “traditional” immigration countries, including the United States (40%), Australia (75%), and the United Kingdom (56%) (Tran, Kustec, and Chui 2005). This may be because of Canada’s relatively generous citizenship requirements, but also because of the economic incentives to naturalize; naturalized Canadians tend to have slightly higher earnings, educational attainment, and employment rates than non-naturalized residents

Introduction 15

(Tran, Kustec, and Chui 2005). New­comers may apply for citizenship after three consecutive years of residence in Canada, and they are permitted to hold multiple citizenships, an attractive provision for many recent new­comers and one that is increasingly allowed in other countries. Applicants must also demonstrate some knowledge of Canada’s geography, history, and government, as well as one of the official languages. Although these instrumental factors are important in the decision to naturalize, Bloemraad (2006) suggests that Canada’s “exceptionalism” on citizenship goes beyond this. She argues that unlike many other immigrant-receiving countries, Canada sees new­comers not simply as immigrants but as potential – and likely – citizens. This influences the ways in which Canada structures its citizenship regime, which includes interventions that are both substantive and symbolic. Finally, on interethnic marriages, Kymlicka’s data suggest that not only are they on the rise, but so too is social acceptance. Data from the 2006 census showed that 3.9% of marriages in Canada are mixed unions – defined as a marriage between a visible minority and a white person, or a marriage between people from two different visible minority groups – compared to 3.1% in 2001 and 2.6% in 1991 (Statistics Canada 2008a). Public opinion research suggests that Canadians are largely supportive of interethnic marriages – with only 10% saying that people of different races should not marry – and this support is even higher among younger Canadians. However, more than 30% admit that they would be uncomfortable if a close relative married a Muslim, while just over 10% would be uncomfortable if a close relative married someone who is Jewish, Black, Aboriginal, or of Asian ethnicity; compare this to 86% who would be uncomfortable if a close relative married a white supremacist (Biles, Ibrahim, and Tolley 2005). Challenges Indeed, there are a number of integration challenges. Research on immigrants’ economic outcomes suggests that while their earnings did, at one time, catch up with those of the Canadian-born, immigrants who came to Canada in the late 1980s and early 1990s have experienced significant challenges and have not yet seen their earnings rise to those of the Canadian-born. This is because of the

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difficult economic times during which they immigrated, as well as the declining returns to education and experience obtained outside Canada and the tougher circumstances for new labour market entrants (Grant and Sweetman 2004; Picot 2004; Schellenberg and Hou 2005; Statistics Canada 2008b). Reitz and Banerjee (2007) find that racial minority immigrants face perhaps the greatest challenges, with lower incomes and higher incidences of poverty than other new­comers; they argue that discrimination is at least part of the explanation. Other research raises concerns about the extent to which immigrants and minorities “mix” with other Canadians, with some evidence pointing to an increase in “enclave” neighbourhoods, though generally not the severely impoverished ghettos that can be found in some American cities (Walks and Bourne 2006). Indeed, some researchers argue that such enclaves are an indicator not of a lack of integration but merely an outcome of people’s choices, which reflect a preference to remain close to friends, businesses, and other services (Qadeer and Kumar 2006). Still, these findings are worrying in that they suggest that immigrants may not be as fully or equitably integrated as we might hope. New Forms of Migration New forms of migration may be changing the ways in which immigrants integrate, as well as the incentive and desire to do so. Immigrants are increasingly living more transnational lives, taking up residence in a destination country while maintaining ties – social, economic, cultural, political, or otherwise – in their countries of origin. Immigration is no longer viewed as a “permanent” decision, and technology and transportation have allowed new forms of mobility to flourish (Bloemraad 2006). This has resulted in new conceptions of citizenship, which are no longer based simply on state-centred ideas of “insiders” and “outsiders,” with terms such as “global citizen­ship” and “collective citizenship” signalling the shift (see Byers 2005 for a discussion of the new conceptions). Familial arrangements are changing as well, with terms such as “astronaut families” and “satellite kids” entering the migration lexicon. These families, where one parent – and sometimes both – return to the country of origin while the children remain in Canada, are just one example of the ways in which new­comers are reinterpreting what it means to immigrate, to settle, and to integrate (Waters 2001).

Introduction 17

These new arrangements and new conceptions have had a significant impact on the provision of settlement and integration services, where program delivery is often rooted in guidelines drawn according to traditional understandings of immigration. As the following section demonstrates, Canada’s immigration and settlement landscape is steeped in history, a history that has been incremental, multilayered, at times contradictory, and not always progressive.

historical context In reading Canada’s immigration history, at least five observations can be made. First, it is clear that levels of immigration have ebbed and flowed over time, depending on economic conditions, labour shortages or surpluses, political will, and public opinion about the influx of new Canadians. Second, immigration history is marked by openness and humanitarianism as well as by exploitation and exclusion. This paradox is often obscured by accounts that emphasize Canada’s reputation as a receiver of immigrants while disregarding the discrimination and prejudice that have long coloured immigration, settlement, and integration policy. Moreover, while growth and triumph dominate many accounts of immigration to Canada, these successes are accompanied by detrimental and sometimes deadly consequences for Aboriginal peoples. Third, immigration history is complex and interconnected, touching on issues of national identity, economics, politics, society, and globalization. It is an inherently human process in which people are both decision makers and commodities. Fourth, there are numerous accounts of Canada’s immigration history, not one single unified story. As the chapters in this volume point out, there are many interpretations of what immigration, settlement, and integration mean and how the policy is and was intended to be governed, as well as a diversity of views about the costs and benefits of immigration. Fifth, immigration has rarely involved only a single actor; rather, given the nature of the immigration experience, policy in this field is distinguished by its multilevel or multiscalar character, involving governments, communities, the voluntary sector and businesses, whether formally or informally. Even when the federal government has played a dominant role, the settlement and integration experience is undeniably a local one that involves municipalities and communities.

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Early Beginnings to 1967: From Welcome to Refusal and Then Renewed Openness To describe Canada as a country of immigration is now almost a cliché. From its very beginnings, Canada was a land of visitors, of settlers, of immigrants. As Knowles notes in her overview of immigration to Canada, “The prehistoric ancestors of Canada’s presentday Indians and Inuit became this country’s first immigrants when they journeyed to America by way of the Bering Strait, at a time when a land bridge, now vanished, still connected Asia and America” (Knowles 2006, 11; Kelley and Trebilcock 1998). They were followed intermittently by Vikings in the year 1000, by John Cabot in 1497, by a group of Portuguese who settled on Cape Breton Island between 1520 and 1524, and later by Jacques Cartier, who sailed to the Gaspé and claimed the land for France in 1534 (Kelley and Trebilcock 1998; Knowles 2006). Eventually, in the early 1600s, Samuel de Champlain voyaged to Canada and established a viable French presence in what would come to be known as New France. Champlain was accompanied by an interpreter of African descent, Mathieu da Costa, the first recorded Black person in Canada (Canada 2008b). A wave of immigration followed, with merchants, blacksmiths, carpenters, religious orders, and land seekers joining the fishermen and fur traders, as well as the Aboriginal peoples, who were deeply affected by the influx of new­comers. As would later happen with the settlement of the West in the early twentieth century, many of the new settlers were enticed by the offer of land (Kelley and Trebilcock 1998; Knowles 2006). The population was further augmented by a significant slave population of Antillean and American Indian ancestry (Winks 1997). Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the population of the colony continued to grow, in part because of the influx of European traders as well as through natural increase: but it was also because of the presence of French troops, who until 1763 were regularly dispatched to the colony. The British expulsion of the Acadians, starting in 1755, paved the way for significant immigration from the New England states to Nova Scotia, with “loyal subjects” given the farmland of the now expelled Acadians (Daigle 1982). Here again, we witness Canada’s paradoxical history of immigration, with the hopeful in-migration of some eight thousand New Englanders, many of them impoverished fishermen or farmers, ­precipitated by

Introduction 19

the forced out-migration of the Acadians, who refused to pledge allegiance to the British crown and were thus deemed to be disloyal. Britain formally took control of New France in 1763 and had high hopes of settling its new territory with English-speaking settlers, but it soon realized that this was not realistic. The Quebec Act of 1774 thus allowed for the retention of some vestiges of the French regime, including French civil law in matters related to landholding and marriage, as well as the maintenance of the Roman Catholic Church in the colony (Kelley and Trebilcock 1998; Knowles 2006). In many ways, this policy was the beginning of Canada’s asymmetrical federalism. Colonists in Quebec and the Maritimes were soon joined by Canada’s first political refugees – United Empire Loyalists who fled the United States between 1775 and 1784 – as well as more than three thousand freed slaves (Liston and Carens 2008; Kelley and Trebilcock 1998; Winks 1997). Between 1790 and 1812, Americans continued to migrate to Canada, but this ceased with the War of 1812, which pitted the United States against British North America. From that point, and for the next 150 years, immigrants from Britain would lead the list of “desirables” (Knowles 2006). Immigration to the new colony continued to increase throughout the following decades, largely from Britain but also from Ireland as a result of that country’s famine (Houston and Smyth 1990; Kelley and Trebilcock 1998). It was around this time that a network of immigration agents was established to receive new­comers, to provide initial supplies, and to assist in the search for employment. Funded by the British government and later by the Province of Canada, the agents were based in Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto, and Hamilton (Knowles 2006). This period also marked a shift from the delivery of settlement services by churches, voluntary organizations, the private sector and ordinary citizens to a model characterized by government involvement. Nonetheless, the non-governmental sector remains, to this day, an instrumental feature of the settlement sector (Canada 2006; Amin 1987). Confederation formalized federal-provincial cooperation on immigration matters and ushered in an era of increased government involvement. The first federal-provincial agreement on immigration was signed in 1868, with the federal government given the power to recruit, select, admit, and naturalize immigrants, as well as the responsibility to set immigration levels. The provinces, meanwhile, “could, if they wished, participate in the recruitment and settlement

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of immigrants” and were given the authority to recruit through immigration agents and establish immigrant reception offices as they saw fit (Garcea 1993, 99). At an immigration conference in 1874, however, it became apparent “that separate and independent action by the provinces in promoting immigration had led to waste and inefficiency and, in some cases, to actual conflict with the federal government” (Knowles 2006, 70). It was therefore agreed that the federal government would thenceforth be fully responsible for immigration promotion. This, as Garcea (1993) notes, set the stage not only for federal primacy in immigration planning, recruitment, selection, admission, and settlement but also a degree of asymmetry, as various provinces became more or less involved in some aspects of immigration, namely recruitment, selection, and settlement. Immigration continued to be aggressively pursued, with the 1872 Dominion Lands Act providing prairie homesteads to various new­ comers, including Mennonites from the Ukraine and Scandinavians from Iceland and Norway, as well as Jews and Hungarians. The preference for rural farmers continued from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, with the minister of the interior, Clifford Sifton, musing that “a stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat, born to the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations with a stout wife and a half dozen children, is good quality” (quoted in Dench 2000, online; see also Timlin 1960). Among those recruited were American farmers, including new­comers from Europe who had originally settled in the United States, as well as settlers from Russia, Austria, Germany, Belgium, northern Italy, Romania, Switzerland, Holland, and France (Kelley and Trebilcock 1998; Knowles 2006). The wheat boom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries further fuelled the massive settlement of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta (Kelley and Trebilcock 1998; McInnis, n.d.) However, as Liston and Carens (2008) argue, the economic liberalism of the post-Confederation period “did not translate into a liberal immigration policy,” and amendments to the Immigration Act were introduced in 1872 and 1879 to bar the immigration of criminals, “vicious classes,” paupers and the poor (Knowles 2006). Public pressure led to limitations on immigration from China, which was accomplished following the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway – built, in part, by Chinese labourers – through the introduction of a head tax in 1885 (Carasco et al. 2007; Kelley and Trebilcock 1998; Li 1998). The head tax reaffirmed Canada’s

Introduction 21

e­xclusionary immigration policy as well as providing further evidence of the recurring tendency toward discrimination and exploitation. The Immigration Act (1906) expanded the prohibitions and allowed the government to refuse immigrants on grounds of insanity, infirmity, mental retardation, or epilepsy, as well as giving it the power to deport those who had been hospitalized, incarcerated, or had committed crimes of “moral turpitude” (Dench 2000). Calls for a more selective immigration policy resulted in the introduction of additional exclusions. Among the policies pursued was a “gentleman’s agreement” with the Japanese government to voluntarily cap emigration from Japan to Canada at 400 new­comers per year; also introduced was the “continuous journey” rule, which prevented the entry of immigrants who did not come to Canada on a continuous journey from the country of origin. This was aimed at immigrants from India and Japan, whose voyages to Canada required a stop in Hawaii (Dench 2000). The rule was affirmed in the Immigration Act of 1910, which “conferred on the cabinet virtually unlimited discretionary powers ... to regulate the volume, ethnic origin or occupational composition of immigration” (Knowles 2006, 110). This allowed for the prohibition of immigrants “‘belonging to any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada’” (quoted in Dench 2000). The countries of origin of Canada’s new­comers duly reflected these policies, as is shown in table 1. In the early 1900s and until the 1920s, the federal government and some provinces signed cost-sharing agreements that would help fund new­comers’ transportation and land settlement costs (Garcea 1993). The provinces’ openness to such agreements was, for various reasons, mixed. Quebec, for example, saw the agreements as a means of facilitating British immigration and thus refused to sign on. The governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan believed that settlement costs should be the responsibility of the federal government, and, unhappy with the absence of revenue sharing in the area of natural resources, they refused to cooperate on settlement cost sharing (Garcea 1993). The First and Second World Wars, recession, and the Depression created increased antipathy toward immigration, as well as toward immigrants themselves. Foreign-born Canadians, including those of German, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Czech, and Ukrainian origins, were regarded as “enemy aliens” during the First World War and faced outright hostility and even disenfranchisement (Liston

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Table 1 Top Countries of Origin of Immigrants to Canada, 1901–2006 Date

Top countries of origin of immigrants to Canada

1900 to 1910

  1.  British Isles   2.  United States  3. Russia  4. Austria  5. Galicia

1911 to 1920

  1.  British Isles   2.  United States  3. Russia

1921 to 1930

  1.  British Isles   2.  United States  3. Poland  4. Russia  5. Czechoslovakia  6. Finland

1931 to 1940

  1.  United States   2.  British Isles  3. Poland  4. Czechoslovakia

1941 to 1950

  1.  British Isles  2. Poland   3.  United States  4. Netherlands  5. Italy  6. U.S.S.R.

1951 to 1960

  1.  British Isles  2. Italy  3. Germany  4. Netherlands   5.  United States  6. Poland  7. Hungary

1961 to 1970

  1.  British Isles  2. Italy   3.  United States  4. Portugal  5. Greece   6.  Federal Republic of Germany   7.  Other West Indies  8. Yugoslavia

1971 to 1980

  1.  British Isles   2.  United States  3. India  4. Portugal

Introduction 23 Table 1 continued  5. Philippines  6. Jamaica   7.  People’s Republic of China   8.  Hong Kong 1981 to 1990

  1.  Hong Kong  2. India   3.  British Isles  4. Poland   5.  People’s Republic of China  6. Philippines   7.  United States  8. Vietnam

1991 to 2000

  1.  People’s Republic of China  2. India  3. Philippines   4.  Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong   5.  Sri Lanka  6. Pakistan  7. Taiwan   8.  United States

2000 to 2006

  1.  People’s Republic of China  2. India  3. Philippines  4. Pakistan   5.  United States   6.  South Korea  7. Romania  8. Iran   9.  United Kingdom 10. Colombia

Sources: Statistics Canada 2001, 2006; Chui et al. 2007.

and Carens 2008), a move that would be repeated with the dispossession and internment of Canadians of German, Italian, Ukrainian and Japanese descent during the Second World War (Carasco et al. 2007). In a reversal of policies toward Jews, which in the 1920s had seen the immigration of some 3,000 Jewish orphans and refugees to Canada, the government turned its back in 1939 on Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. It notably refused to grant asylum to the 930 passengers aboard the ss St. Louis – the so-called “voyage of the damned” – who were sent back to Europe, where many perished in concentration camps (Abella and Troper 1983). Here again,

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we witness the turn in Canada’s immigration policy, from hope and humanitarianism to racism and refusal. The years following the Second World War gave way to a renewed commitment to immigration and a movement to liberalize policies. The steps forward were measured, with Prime Minister ­Mackenzie King’s 1947 statement on immigration tying the government’s encouragement of immigration to the “absorptive capacity” of the country, a concept that, while undefined, has held sway in immigration discourse ever since (Knowles 2006). Ethnic origin and “undesirability” remained grounds for exclusion, and while some refugees were admitted during this period, it was largely to satisfy the country’s need for labourers. Liberalization continued throughout the 1950s, with further expansion of the admissible classes, more provisions for greater family sponsorship, and the acceptance of increasing numbers of refugees – but with restrictions that were justified on various grounds, including unsuitability and the inability to assimilate (Abu-Laban 1998; Carasco et al. 2007). During this time, the federal government provided some settlement services directly to new­ comers, assisting the foreign-born family members of Canadian soldiers, as well as refugees who were accepted at the end of the Second World War. In 1950 the Department of Citizenship and Immigration was created, along with the country’s first formal settlement service. The new department appointed officials who would receive new arrivals, provide initial settlement support, and remain in contact with them until they had secured housing and employment. As well, funds were allocated to non-governmental organizations for the provision of settlement services to new­comers (Canada 2006). By 1954, Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland had signed cost-sharing agreements with the federal government that allowed for the joint payment of hospitalization and welfare costs (Vineberg 1987). In 1962 regulations were introduced to eliminate blatant racial discrimination within Canada’s immigration policy (Carasco et al. 2007; Kelley and Trebilcock 1998). The regulations allowed for the immigration of new­comers regardless of race, colour, or nationality, provided they had the requisite education, skills, or qualifications, and a job offer or the ability to support themselves until they obtained employment. A final vestige of outright discrimination was removed in 1967, when all immigrants – not just those from Europe

Introduction 25

and the Americas – were permitted to sponsor their relatives through the family reunification policy (Knowles 2006). The move ushered in a new era in Canadian immigration, with the creation of a new department, Manpower and Immigration, which was mandated to fund employment initiatives and human resources development. It also marked a movement away from direct settlement service provision on the part of the federal government to third-party delivery by non-governmental organizations, which continues to be a defining feature of Canada’s settlement sector (Canada 2006). 1967–1990s: The Emergence of the Immigrant Settlement Sector Apart from the removal of racially based provisions in federal immigration policy, the reforms of the 1960s also saw the introduction of the points system, which allowed for the selection of immigrants on the basis of several criteria, including education, age, knowledge of the country’s official languages, family ties, potential economic contribution, and compatibility with labour market needs (Liston and Carens 2008; Carasco et al. 2007). These changes followed on the heels of the 1966 White Paper on Immigration, which recommended that immigration policy be made more consistent with economic policy. While the specifics of the White Paper evoked much criticism, the underlying goal – that immigration be responsive to labour market needs – and the system that it inspired remain more or less intact today (Kelley and Trebilcock 1998). Liston and Carens (2008, 210) point out that during this period, “political mobilization among immigrants and their supporters (nongovernmental organizations as well as ethnic, religious and community organizations) was strong, and they vociferously advocated for a liberal immigration framework.” This was bolstered in 1971 by the introduction of a policy of official multiculturalism, which eventually led to the provision of support for the ethnocultural organizations that formed the backbone of Canada’s emerging settlement sector (Jaworsky 1979). In 1974 the Department of Manpower and Immigration created the Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation Program (isap), which formalized funding to third-party organizations for the provision of settlement services, including reception, orientation, translation, interpretation, and employment-related services (Canada 2007). Short-term grants for immigration-related projects were funded in an ad hoc manner through two additional federal

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programs, the Local Initiative Program and the Local Employment Assistance Program, which provided short-term grants for immigration-related projects (Amin 1987). Moreover, by the early 1970s, it was apparent that the piecemeal approach to reforming Canada’s immigration system – often accomplished through a series of regulatory changes – had resulted in archaic legislation. It failed to define the country’s “immigration philosophy,” to recognize immigration as a shared jurisdiction, or to respond to modern-day realities (Knowles 2006). Seeking to remedy this, the federal government issued a Green Paper on immigration in 1974 and embarked on a series of public hearings to investigate the benefits and potential costs of immigration (Canada 1975; Hawkins 1975). The Green Paper enumerated a number of challenges which it linked directly to immigration, including increased urbanization, the shrinking francophone population, and ethnic tensions, suggestions that provoked debate and considerable criticism during the public hearings (Kelley and Trebilcock 1998). Sixty-four recommendations were made, and these culminated in the passage of the Immigration Act, 1976, which outlined a series of fundamental principles and objectives, including a commitment to intergovernmental cooperation and to the involvement of non-governmental organizations in immigrants’ settlement and adaptation (Canada 1976). In Vineberg’s (1987, 310) words, the Act ushered in a “new era of federalprovincial relations in immigration.” Indeed, in 1978, Quebec signed an agreement with the federal government that would give the province a role in immigrant selection, while Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia signed less expansive cooperation agreements (Seidle 2010). Throughout the 1970s, Tibetan, Ugandan, and Chilean refugees arrived in Canada (Carasco et al. 2007), along with American draft dodgers and others (Knowles 2006). In some cases, the public openly supported extraordinary measures. The immigration of some 77,000 Indochinese “boat people” between 1975 and 1981 was in part a result of pressure from churches and the non-governmental sector, which urged the government to act aggressively in the face of the mounting refugee crisis (Knowles 2006). Ottawa’s mayor, ­Marion Dewar, committed the city in 1979 to accepting up to 4,000 of the refugees, a pledge that was taken up by the media, the voluntary sector, and ordinary citizens who agreed to sponsor many of the families (Ward 2008). Although refugees still comprised a small proportion of Canada’s overall immigrant intake, increases in refugee

Introduction 27

admissions during this period brought about fractious debate and concerns about a “refugee crisis” in light of the country’s economic circumstances (Kelley and Trebilcock 1998). Although immigration slowed somewhat during the 1980s as a result of the recession, in 1990 the federal government introduced its Immigrant Integration Strategy. This provided additional resources for settlement services and introduced the notion of integration as a process that begins prior to arrival and extends through to the acquisition of citizenship. The strategy was grounded in the idea that integration is “a complex, ongoing process involving accommodation and adjustment on the part of new­comers and Canadians” (Canada 2006, 2). This conceptualization came to be known as the “twoway street” model of integration (Biles and Winnemore 2006; Biles 2008). The Federal Immigrant Integration Strategy solidified programs, including isap and Host – a program that was piloted in 1984 to match new­comers with established Canadians – and introduced new ones, such as Language Instruction for New­comers to Canada (linc), which replaced existing language programs (Canada 2006). Additional programs, such as the Resettlement Assistance Program that assists refugees, were added later. These programs, as well as the principles outlined in the Federal Immigrant Integration Strategy, continue to structure the federal government’s work in the area. These developments have also structured the work of the local agencies that deliver services to new­comers on behalf of governments. As Sadiq (2004) observes, the funding arrangements created by the Federal Immigrant Integration Strategy have furthered the creation of a “two-tier settlement sector” that pits large multiservice or umbrella organizations against smaller ethnospecific agencies. This interplay between various agencies, funders, and other “social forces” is a defining feature of the settlement sector and one that is taken up more fully in the chapters that follow. 1990s to Present: Increased Intergovernmental Cooperation The 1990s marked yet another shift in immigration policy, with the signing of several federal-provincial accords. The Canada-Quebec Accord was signed in 1991, and this development led to increased provincial involvement in immigration matters and, accordingly, greater intergovernmental cooperation. Stemming from agreements reached in the 1970s, which gave Quebec some power over the

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selection of immigrants as well as the ability to recruit from abroad, the Canada-Quebec Accord gave the province the ability to provide advice to the federal government about immigration levels in the province and additional responsibility for the provision of settlement and integration services to new­comers (see Canada 1991). As Garcea (1993, 129) points out, the accord “authorized Quebec to supplant the federal government in planning and managing all reception and integration services within that province, and with compensation for doing so.” In their chapter in this volume, Guy Chiasson and Junichiro Koji discuss the impact of this development more fully. By 1998, two other provinces – Manitoba and British Columbia – had signed agreements with the federal government giving them responsibility (and compensation) for the administration of settlement services in their provinces, as well as a say in immigration levels and an agreement to cooperate on some aspects of recruitment (for an overview of these agreements, see Seidle 2010). Agreements were also reached with Saskatchewan (1998), New Brunswick (1999), Newfoundland and Labrador (1999), Yukon (2001), Prince Edward Island (2001), Ontario (2005), Alberta (2007), Nova Scotia (2007), and the Northwest Territories (2009). However, like immigration policy historically, the provisions are a veritable patchwork of different arrangements, and provinces may negotiate new agreements as desired (see Canada 2008c). The agreements with Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and the Yukon provide for cooperation on various matters related to recruitment, planning, and settlement – although unlike in British Columbia and Manitoba, there is no direct funding for the latter – while the agreements with New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Northwest Territories outline cooperation strictly on the recruitment of “provincial nominees,” a class of immigrants selected by the provinces, whose processing is expedited by the federal government; this is a provision common to all the other agreements, with the exception of Ontario. The Ontario agreement paved the way for the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Canada, Ontario, and Toronto, which recognizes the impact of immigration on the city as well as the important role it has played in the development and provision of settlement services. This notable development is taken up more thoroughly by Daiva Stasiulis, Christine Hughes, and Zainab Amery in their chapter. In assessing the role of cities in

Introduction 29

settlement policy, Poirier (2004, 217) notes that municipalities are no longer just service providers but “real political agents.” The multilevel nature of immigrant settlement has been further solidified by the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (2001), which is typically referred to as irpa. Like earlier immigration acts, irpa is framework legislation, meaning that it sets out high-level objectives, principles, and authorities, while the more detailed policies and processes are outlined in the regulations and various operational manuals. Consistent with this, irpa lists a number of broad objectives, among which is the principle of collaboration. Importantly, section 3.3(c) notes that the Act will be applied in a manner that “facilitates cooperation between the Government of Canada, provincial governments, foreign states, international organizations and non-governmental organizations,” while section 3.1(f) notes that the Act will “support, by means of consistent standards and prompt processing, the attainment of immigration goals established by the Government of Canada in consultation with the provinces.” Moreover, section 94.2(a) requires that in the immigration minister’s annual report to Parliament, “the activities and initiatives taken concerning the selection of foreign nationals, including measures taken in cooperation with the provinces,” will be outlined (Canada 2001). The minister is thus held accountable for work that is multilevel in nature. irpa also enshrines an integration model premised on the notion of a two-way street, with section 3.1(e) committing “to promote the successful integration of permanent residents into Canada, while recognizing that integration involves mutual obligations for new immigrants and Canadian society.” While there is disagreement over the extent to which this objective is being met (see Kataoka and Magnusson, this volume, for example), it remains a central prong of the federal government’s official integration story, one that highlights the roles and responsibilities of immigrants and the host society (Biles 2008). The commitment to multilevel cooperation and mutual obligation, as well as the diversity of arrangements that have been established, markedly affect the provision of settlement services in each of the provinces examined in this volume. Indeed, this is a policy field that is almost defined by its multilevel, multisectoral nature, a reality that has given rise to framework legislation, a multitude of intergovernmental agreements, grants and contributions to non-governmental

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service-providers, and policies to guide employers, universities, consultants, and others involved in the business of immigration and settlement. It affects the work of the officials, settlement service providers, and institutions involved, which is a theme that runs consistently throughout the chapters. In Quebec and Ontario, the role of municipalities is becoming increasingly apparent, while in British Columbia we see a “mature” settlement sector. The picture in Nova Scotia is, on the other hand, somewhat more embryonic. The chapters go beyond an overview, however, and take up the difficult task of evaluating settlement policies. How has success been measured? What results have been achieved? Is there evidence of collaboration or competition? What gaps remain?

overview of the volume This volume begins with an examination of the federal role in immigrant settlement in which Caroline Andrew situates immigration as an example of multilevel government and multilevel governance. She notes that the government dimension involves horizontal and vertical coordination within and between federal, provincial, and municipal governments, while the governance dimension involves horizontal and vertical coordination between governments and non-state actors. In her examination of the governmental aspects of immigrant settlement policy, Andrew focuses on municipal involvement in this policy field, while her examination of the governance aspects focuses on the involvement of non-governmental organizations active in the settlement of new­comers in French-language communities outside Quebec (also called “francophone minority ­ communities”). She finds that francophone minority organizations have had some policy influence, particularly in the adoption of the federal Action Plan for Official Languages, which included provisions to support the immigration of French speakers to francophone minority communities. However, there seems to be a lack of coordination between the federal government and the communities themselves, and the initiatives appear vulnerable to changes in government. Andrew describes the municipal role in immigrant settlement as “more certain,” with examples of increased municipal involvement as well as the recognition that communities can play an important role in social, cultural, and economic development.

Introduction 31

An emphasis on “place-based” policy has solidified the view that municipalities are important policy actors (see also Bradford 2007). In their chapter on Ontario, Daiva Stasiulis, Christine Hughes, and Zainab Amery examine immigrant settlement policy in Toronto, Ottawa, and the Peel, Niagara, and Waterloo regions. They look at whether new governance arrangements in the province signal a shift to more decentralized, multisectoral, and collaborative policymaking or, alternatively, whether municipal governments, communities, and local stakeholders are being exploited to achieve objectives identified by other levels of government. They suggest that there has been a shift from immigrant settlement as the sole purview of governments to a model of governance that incorporates a range of social forces and stakeholders. However, funding arrangements, “advocacy chill,” and hierarchies in the ngo community have diminished the achievement of concrete power-sharing and collaborative policy-making. They argue that there is a disconnect between the federal government’s powerful role in immigration selection and the reality that settlement occurs in communities, with municipal governments bearing the brunt of costs associated with poor outcomes and integration challenges. In their chapter, Guy Chiasson and Koji Junichiro chart the development of immigrant settlement policy in Quebec, a ­province that has arguably the longest, most comprehensive, and wellentrenched history of multilevel activity in this policy field. Nonetheless, as Chiasson and Junichiro illustrate, settlement policy has until fairly recently been cast as a “Montreal issue,” with smaller cities and outlying regions only beginning to take an interest in the attraction, settlement, and retention of new­comers. The province has a central role in immigrant settlement and integration, and to the extent that municipalities engage with other levels of government, they tend to do so with provincial, not federal, officials. Largely, however, it is local agencies rather than municipalities that carry out the task of service provision in Quebec, although through the Conférences régionales des élus, the municipalities do play an important lobbying role. This chapter confirms that the details of immigrant settlement policy tend to be dictated by various political and administrative arrangements. As Chiasson and Koji demonstrate, immigrant settlement in Quebec is fundamentally influenced by the province’s unique immigration powers, which allow for the

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selection of a portion of the immigrants destined to the province, its model of interculturalism – which is premised on a common public culture and the adoption of the French language – and its geographic reality as a province with a single metropolis and several peripheral or regional centres. In Rodney Haddow’s chapter, he details the immense difference between Halifax – the destination of most immigrants to Nova ­Scotia and a city with a fairly active immigrant settlement sector – and the smaller municipalities of Cape Breton, Lunenburg, and Truro, where immigration rates are comparatively lower and policy activity in this field is thus quite modest. Although activity in Halifax still remains quite limited, the city has identified immigration as a policy objective, a step not yet taken by the smaller municipalities. In part, the municipalities’ slow foray into immigrant settlement reflects the province’s overall approach to immigration, a field that only recently attracted the attention of policy-makers and where resource allocation and administrative support were initially low. However, as Haddow discusses, the limited involvement of municipalities in immigrant settlement in Nova Scotia is also related to a realignment of provincial and municipal services, which began in the late 1990s and relieved municipalities of the responsibility for social assistance and many social services, including housing and health. These were transferred to the province in what is a rather rare case of fiscal “uploading.” Haddow posits that because municipalities in Nova Scotia have limited administrative and financial responsibility in the areas typically associated with immigrant settlement, they have only minimal interest (and incentive) to pursue issues in this policy field. Nonetheless, concerns at other levels about population decline and economic development have spurred some recent initiatives, particularly through the Provincial Nominee Program, but the retention of immigrants once they arrive remains a hurdle, and efforts to encourage settlement beyond Halifax, where population decline is particularly dramatic, have largely not succeeded. Finally, Serena Kataoka and Warren Magnusson, in their chapter on British Columbia, challenge the perceived “official story” of immigrant settlement policy. They argue for a broader understanding of settlement, one that incorporates dimensions related to international migration but also captures the movement of people within Canada: between provinces, from rural to urban, and from on-reserve to off-reserve. They note that in British Columbia,

Introduction 33

i­mmigrant settlement policy is largely the purview of federal and provincial governments, with the delivery of services relegated to a number of immigrant-serving agencies. They emphasize that while the provision of settlement services to new­comers has fairly broad support, the settlement sector itself tends to be a peripheral player that has limited policy scope and is vulnerable to funding cutbacks, administrative reorganization, and the political winds of the day. Moreover, municipalities are more or less shut out of formal processes, in spite of a mandate to deliver in areas intimately related to settlement, including public health, social housing, policing, emergency services, recreation, and infrastructure. The limited presence of municipal governments and the delivery of services almost exclusively by immigrant-serving agencies help to explain why this chapter, in comparison to the others in this volume, tends to focus more on the latter than the former. Although there is some dissatisfaction with the existing arrangements, as Kataoka and Magnusson suggest, change is hampered by preconceptions and an attachment to policy arrangements which, after thirty-five years, are fairly firmly ingrained.

framing the discussion: debates in the immigrant settlement policy field The discussion in the chapters that follow is framed by a number of common threads – debates in some cases – which I will take up briefly here. The themes outlined here do not necessarily signal new directions in immigrant settlement policy but often represent a revisiting, a strengthening, or reinterpretation of this policy field. Indeed, if one follows the discourse on immigration and settlement, it is clear from the beginning that this is a policy field in which debates continue but in many ways will remain unsettled. This is partly because there is a lack of public and political consensus on the direction that the policy field should take. This should be expected in an area where multiple actors, levels of government, and stakeholders are involved, where there are both domestic and international dimensions, and where human lives and destinies are inextricably bound up in the decisions that are taken. It is also, as Frideres (2008, 87) argues, the result of the “part-planned, partaccidental character of integration.” Freeman (2004) suggests that integration frameworks are never fully cohesive but are a “mixed

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bag” of loosely connected policies, regulations, programs, and institutions. This incoherence can result in inefficiencies, competition, and policy gaps, but it may also create space for flexibility, policy innovation, and collaboration. Politics, moreover, plays a role in decisions about immigrant settlement policy, and debates can become contentious, personal, and fraught with concern about fairness, “special treatment,” and “scarce resources.” An analysis of polling data by Jedwab (2008) confirms the uncertainty that characterizes this policy field. For example, although Canadians express on the whole a positive view on immigration and although the proportion who say that Canada admits “too many” immigrants into the country has declined steadily (from 46% in 1996 to 27% in 2007), opinion about the direction of immigration policy and the appropriateness of particular integration programs is nuanced or more muted. Moreover, most underestimate the number of immigrants that come to Canada each year, and opinions can shift when respondents are made aware of actual immigration levels. Esses et al. (2003) note that negative attitudes toward immigrants may be fostered by perceptions of economic threat and a sense that immigrants are not like “other Canadians.” Nonetheless, Jedwab (2008, 227) suggests that “there is an important degree of convergence in opinion on some matters, notably that immigrants have a responsibility to integrate, that the population has a responsibility to assist them, that the government has an important role to play in this regard, that language and culture are the principal barriers to integration in Canada, and that local communities must be welcoming places for immigrants.” As Bloemraad (2006) points out, integration and multiculturalism are deeply embedded in nation building and the Canadian identity. Where there is divergence is over the costs and benefits of immigration, the extent to which immigrants should abandon their cultures in favour of Canadian culture, and the degree to which communities should adapt to the new­comers in their midst. Moreover, there is little clarity with respect to the appropriateness, effectiveness, and viability of various policy levers and interventions. There are continual debates about the roles of various institutions, actors, and social forces, and each of the chapters takes these up in various ways. There are questions about which organizations are best placed to deliver settlement services. Some advocate more direct involvement by governments, others suggest that third-party

Introduction 35

­ elivery is appropriate. There is debate over the extent to which d settlement services should be consistent across communities or whether local specificities should guide the delivery of programs. Some argue that a national or provincial model – or, at the very least, minimum standards – are needed, while others, as is clear in this volume, contend that improvisation and innovation by municipalities and local agencies can lead to more responsive programs. Even within the same provinces, there are variations in the immigrant settlement field, depending on local priorities and, as Chiasson and Koji note, political will. In the Province of Quebec, Chiasson and Koji observe a focus on intercultural relations in Montreal, immigrant reception in Quebec City, and attraction and retention in Sherbrooke and Rimouski. Stasiulis, Hughes, and Amery note that both Toronto and Waterloo tend to deal with immigrants through a larger “diversity” framework, while the Niagara Region focuses more explicitly on meeting the needs of refugees and temporary workers. Although, comparatively speaking, municipalities in Nova Scotia are far less active in immigrant settlement than municipalities elsewhere, Haddow does uncover some differences between Halifax, which is more urban, economically dynamic, and home to the bulk of the province’s immigrants, and outlying regions, including Cape Breton, Truro, and Lunenburg, which are facing economic stagnation and population decline. In British Columbia, as Kataoka and Magnusson illustrate, there is a wide variation in strategies, ranging from the integration and settlement focus on the metropolitan areas, such as Vancouver and Surrey, which already have significant immigrant populations, to the attraction and retention strategy adopted in such places as Victoria and Kelowna, and to the more wait-and-see approach of rural and outlying areas, which are not yet certain that international migration is a growth strategy they wish to pursue. Some question the ability of umbrella organizations to deliver services to diverse populations, while others view ethnocultural agencies as parochial or ill equipped. This is often couched in the language of “professionalization,” implying that larger umbrella agencies, such as the ywca, the United Way, and the multiservice agencies identified in some chapters, are more highly trained and thus better able to deliver services to new­comers. Certainly, the settlement sector is becoming more professionalized, with accreditation programs and training modules, as well as a graduate program in immigration and

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settlement studies at Ryerson University. Proponents of co-ethnic service delivery argue, however, that immigrants can benefit from this model, which has the potential of increasing a new­comer’s networks and social capital (Li 2004). In British Columbia, co-ethnic service providers like success and the Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society (pics) have morphed into larger umbrella agencies, which maintain ties to the ethnic communities from which they once emerged while being mandated to serve a broader public. This, as Kataoka and Magnusson note, is in part a function of the funding arrangements that characterize immigrant service provision in the province; in effect, the funding process advantages larger organizations, and the settlement sector has adapted accordingly. Across the country, in Nova S­ cotia, Haddow notes that ethnocultural groups are highly fragmented and largely marginalized from this policy field. His research suggests that minority groups are reluctant to politicize their activities, concentrating instead on cultural initiatives, for fear of invoking a negative reaction from a public that has not yet fully embraced visible minorities. The bulk of funding for settlement service provision in the province is thus directed at umbrella or multi­service agencies rather than to co-ethnic service providers. Mixed into the debate on service provision is the suggestion that it is not the host society but the families and immigrants themselves who should be held responsible for the settlement and integration process; this is in fact enshrined in Canada’s family reunification policy, which holds individuals financially responsible for the family members whom they sponsor to migrate (DeShaw 2006). Moreover, there are concerns that immigrants’ declining economic outcomes are straining Canada’s welfare system and that immigrants are becoming a net drain on the system (Grubel 2005). This is an oft-repeated refrain in various letters to the editor, one that reflects a desire for immigration but not at all costs and likely with strings attached. Belkhodja (2008) refers to this as the “discourse of new individual responsibility,” which emphasizes immigrants’ duty to integrate, adopt (or at least respect) the values of the host society, learn the language, become productive, and contribute economically. It is notable that the demands placed on immigrants are sometimes not met even by those born in Canada. We see in the chapters that follow a growing recognition of the intersections between immigration and other policy fields. Stasiulis,

Introduction 37

Hughes, and Amery note that immigrants face varying challenges, depending on their gender, region of origin, and other factors. These need to be taken into account in the provision of services. Kataoka and Magnusson point to the difficulties posed by the settlement of new­comers on Aboriginal lands. Further, Haddow notes that although Nova Scotia has a significant Black population, most of these people are not immigrants; they are citizens with a longstanding history in the province – a fact that diversity strategies must take into account. Meanwhile, Chiasson and Koji examine settlement in Quebec, where French is the language of public life, while Andrew focuses on immigration as a strategy for reinvigorating official-language minority communities. As these and other examples suggest, immigrant settlement does not occur in a vacuum, nor does it involve homogeneous individuals undergoing a solitary and uniform process. Rather, immigrant settlement is dynamic, multifaceted, and sometimes unpredictable. It occurs within the context of immigrants’ lives as well as the societies into which they integrate. Policies must be flexible, responsive and able to adapt to this diversity. The chapters in this volume all suggest in one way or another that independent action in this policy field is neither desirable nor possible; immigrant settlement must be approached collaboratively, with governments, communities, and other stakeholders working together, though with clearly articulated accountability. Stasiulis, Hughes, and Amery identify three categories of intervention in immigrant settlement: those executed by municipalities alone; those executed by “social forces” and ngos in particular; and those that involve a range of actors in multilevel and multisectoral initiatives. Constellations of similar arrangements can be found in the other provinces – although, as Haddow points out, in Nova Scotia the demands for increased local involvement in immigration largely come from the non-governmental sector rather than from the municipalities. This is, in part, because Nova Scotia’s municipalities have such a limited role in the delivery of services related to immigrant settlement, which results in a somewhat different policy landscape. In most cases, however, municipalities have signalled a desire for an active role in the attraction, retention, settlement, and integration of immigrants. Moreover, partnerships with municipalities have been identified as an objective in all federal-provincial immigration agreements, with the exception of those for New Brunswick and

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Quebec (see Canada 2008c). Coordination remains a key challenge, with commitment to consultation and information sharing outlined in federal-provincial agreements, but little in the way of concrete obligations (see Biles 2008). For example, although federal, provincial, and territorial ministers of immigration now meet relatively frequently, this is a recent occurrence and not one that is required in federal-provincial-territorial agreements. While the Canada-Quebec Accord includes provisions for the establishment and annual meeting of a joint committee on immigration co-chaired by the federal and provincial departments responsible for immigration, this is the only agreement with such a concrete obligation (Canada 1991; see also Government of Canada 2008c). Moreover, as the chapters in this volume indicate, communications between all three levels of government are typically rare, with municipalities tending to deal with either the province or the federal government, depending on proximity, funding mechanisms, and program specifics. There is also the question of resources, downloading, and the fiscal imbalance. As many of the chapters note, municipalities are hampered by their limited ability to generate revenue but are meanwhile called upon to address a growing number of needs (see also Poirier 2004). Indeed, these chapters challenge that idea that immigration is solely a federal-provincial responsibility and that “municipalities are mere creatures of the provinces” (see Good 2005, 283). Municipalities are reacting to immigration in various ways, depending on local circumstances and incentives, as well as on relationships with the community sector, the private sector, and other levels of government. The chapters in this volume emphasize Andrew’s distinction between “governance” and “government” and signal the need for activity, even in the absence of jurisdictional authority. Informal channels, innovative service delivery, and an “adhocratist” approach are characteristic of this policy field as a result of multilateral complexities, bureaucratic mazes, and a need to respond – often to desperate needs – long before agreements can be signed or the formal architecture put in place. Program development is, in many ways, a trial by fire, with the challenges of settlement and integration changing with each influx of new immigrants. As the authors in this volume point out, the landscape has been fundamentally changed by neoliberalism and New Public Management initiatives, which have placed additional emphasis on accountability and value-for-dollar

Introduction 39

while in many cases transferring responsibilities from the upper ­levels of government to municipalities. There are questions about the relative weight that should be accorded to various policy instruments, which are often captured in the debate between immigrant “selection” and immigrant “settlement.” As Andrew points out in her chapter on the federal approach, immigrant selection is one of the policy levers on which the government has relied heavily. Hiebert (2002) identifies the trade-off between selection and settlement, arguing that choices must be made among the various policy instruments. Countries with sophisticated selection policies, such as Canada’s policy for skilled workers, are likely to focus their resources on the reviewing and processing of applications according to specific guidelines, while those with less stringent selection policies, such as Israel, are likely to invest in more extensive settlement services. Stasiulis, Hughes, and Amery suggest that while selection policy has ensured a continued inflow of highly skilled and educated new­comers, immigrants’ economic outcomes are declining, and settlement services have not yet closed this gap. This, they argue, has created a new kind of “immigrant in need,” one who is unable to translate his or her skills, education, experience, and language ability into commensurate employment. In a country where immigration has been promoted as a social and economic benefit whose advantages outweigh the costs, there is a real concern about the optics of, and appetite for, a change in focus from selection to settlement. There are various understandings of what it means to be “settled” or “integrated,” and the evolution of migration paths has been instrumental here. Transnationalism, circular migration, and increasing numbers of temporary migrants are changing the ways in which we think about immigration and the delivery of services. There is a movement toward more specialized settlement services that recognize new­comers’ diversity, as well as the diversity of migration itself, although “one size fits all” models do persist. The rural-urban divide is evident here, with discourse often split between the metropolises of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver and the second-, third-, and “other”-tier cities. This is particularly pronounced in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia, which must balance the needs of their immigrant metropolises with those of the smaller cities and towns. Even among the smaller cities and towns, the needs and approaches vary greatly. There are communities such

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as Sherbrooke that are actively attracting and retaining immigrants, while others, such as Halifax, have ventured modestly into the “welcoming” of immigrants but have quite limited responsibilities and authority in areas related to settlement and service provision. Apart from Halifax, which has a small but growing immigrant population, municipalities in Nova Scotia are doing very little in this policy field. There are yet other municipalities, such as Tofino and Ucluelet in British Columbia, whose populations are changing as a result of an influx of immigrants and not always in ways that locals would prefer; as such, there is some trepidation. As Haddow points out, this is a refrain that was heard when Nova Scotia first embarked on its immigration strategy. A report that followed public hearings noted that “immigration is just one tool to stimulate economic and population growth,” a statement that in some ways cloaks sentiments about the appropriateness of encouraging immigration while native-born Nova Scotians are leaving the province to find jobs elsewhere. In spite of this, Bloemraad’s (2006) comparative study of immigrant incorporation suggests that Canada has been more successful than other countries in integrating immigrants because of interventionist policies at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels of government, as well as a policy of official multiculturalism and a normative framework that encourages the acquisition of citizenship. Nonetheless, the definition of “successful integration” remains contested, and the relative importance accorded to “economic integration” versus “social integration” continues to colour the debate. Many critique the continued focus on immigrants’ earnings and incomes to the exclusion of other markers of integration (Andrew et al. 2008; VanderPlaat 2006). These are worrying signs, which suggest an imbalance between the costs and benefits of immigration. The very success of Canada’s immigration program is premised on the ability of immigrants to integrate, contribute, and lead productive lives in Canada. If there are institutions or social, economic, and political impediments that stymie immigrants’ attempts to integrate, this has real implications for the lives of immigrants and the communities that receive them, and it draws the very integrity of the immigration project into disrepute. This volume illustrates the complicated nature of immigration – a human process that is often submerged in bureaucratic wrangling, intergovernmental squabbles, and various bilateral and multilateral

Introduction 41

agreements. Amidst the sometimes too simplistic public discourse is a desire to “unpack,” “debunk,” and better understand immigration, settlement, and integration. This is a task taken up in the chapters that follow.

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Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, for School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University Biles, John, Humera Ibrahim, and Erin Tolley. 2005. Does Canada Have a Multicultural Future? Canadian Diversity 4, no. 1:23–8 Biles, John, and Lara Winnemore. 2006. Canada’s Two-Way Street Integration Model: Not Without Its Stains, Strains, and Growing Pains. Canadian Diversity 5, no. 1:47–66 Black, Jerome H. 2008. Ethnoracial Minorities in the 38th Parliament: Patterns of Change and Continuity. In Electing a Diverse Canada: The Representation of Immigrants, Minorities, and Women, ed. Caroline Andrew, John Biles, Myer Siemiatycki, and Erin Tolley, 229–54. Vancouver: ubc Press Bloemraad, Irene. 2006. Becoming a Citizen: Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada. Berkeley: University of California Press Bradford, Neil. 2007. Whither the Federal Urban Agenda? A New Deal in Transition. cprn Research Report, f/65. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks Byers, Michael. 2005. Are You a “Global Citizen?” The Tyee. www.thetyee.ca (accessed 27 April 2008) Caidi, Nadia, and Danielle Allard. 2005. Social Inclusion of New­comers to Canada: An Information Problem? Library and Information Science Research 27:302–24 Canada. 1975. Green Paper on Immigration. Ottawa: Minister of Manpower and Immigration – 1976. Immigration Act, 1976–77 – 1991. Canada-Québec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens – 2001. Immigration and Refugee Protection Act – 2005. Going to Canada Portal. Ottawa: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/cs/comm/hrsd/ news/2005/050425be.shtml (accessed 21 December 2008) – 2006. Settlement Manual. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada – 2007. Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation Program (isap). Ottawa: Treasury Board Secretariat. www.tbs-sct.gc.ca (accessed 6 May 2008) – 2008a. Canadian Orientation Abroad. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/ orientation.asp (accessed 20 April 2008)

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Entzinger, Han, and Renske Biezeveld. 2003. Benchmarking in Immigrant Integration. Report written for the European Commission. Rotterdam: European Research Center on Migration and Ethnic Relations Esses, Victoria, M., Gordon Hodson, and John F. Dovidio. 2003. Public Attitudes towards Immigrants and Immigration: Determinants and Policy Implications. In Canadian Immigration Policy for the TwentyFirst Century, ed. Charles M. Beach, Alan G. Green, and Jeffrey G. Reitz, 507–36. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, for John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy Freeman, Gary P. 2004. Immigrant Incorporation in Western Democracies. International Migration Review 38, no. 3:945–69 Frideres, James. 2008. Creating an Inclusive Society: Promoting Social Integration in Canada. In Immigration and Integration in Canada in the Twenty-First Century, ed. John Biles, Meyer Burstein, and James Frideres, 77–101. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, for School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University Garcea, Joseph. 1993. Federal-Provincial Relations in Immigration, 1971–1991: A Case Study of Asymmetrical Federalism. Doctoral ­dissertation. Ottawa: Carleton University George, Usha. 2002. A Needs-Based Model for Settlement Service Delivery for New­comers to Canada. International Social Work 45, no. 4:465–80 Good, Kristin. 2005. Patterns of Politics in Canada’s Immigrant-Receiving Cities and Suburbs: How Immigrant Settlement Patterns Shape the Municipal Role in Multiculturalism Policy. Policy Studies 26, no. 3:261–89 Grant, Hugh, and Arthur Sweetman. 2004. Introduction to Economic and Urban Issues in Canadian Immigration Policy. Canadian Journal of Urban Research 13, no. 1:1–24 Grubel, Herbert. 2005. Immigration and the Welfare State in Canada: Growing Conflicts, Constructive Solutions. Public Policy Sources. ­Occasional Paper no. 84. Vancouver: Fraser Institute Hawkins, Freda. 1975. Canada’s Green Paper on Immigration Policy. International Migration Review 9, no. 2:237–49 Henderson, Ailsa. 2005. Ideal Citizens? Immigrant Voting Patterns in ­Canadian Elections. Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiens, Summer, 57–60 Herberg, Denise. 1988. A Framework for the Settlement and Integration of Immigrants. Paper presented at the Settlement and Integration of Immigrants Conference, 17–19 February, in Waterloo, Ontario Hiebert, Daniel. 2002. Canadian Immigration and the Selection-Settlement Services Trade-off: Exploring Immigrant Economic Participation in

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British Columbia. riim Working Paper 02–05. Vancouver: Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis www.mbc.metropolis. net (accessed 28 December 2008) Houston, Cecil J., and William J. Smyth. 1990. Irish Emigration and Canadian Settlement: Patterns, Links, and Letters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Jaworsky, John. 1979. A Case Study of the Canadian Federal Government’s Multiculturalism Policy. ma thesis, Department of Political ­Science, Carleton University Jedwab, Jack. 2008. Receiving and Giving: How Does the Canadian Public Feel about Immigration and Integration? In Immigration and Integration in Canada in the Twenty-First Century, ed. John Biles, Meyer Burstein, and James Frideres, 211–30. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, for School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University Joppke, Christian, and Ewa Morawska. 2003. Integrating Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States: Policies and Practices. In Toward Assimilation and Citizenship: Immigrants in Liberal Nation-States, ed. Christian Joppke and Ewa Morawska, 1–36. Houndsmills, ny: Palgrave Kelley, Ninette, and Michael Trebilcock. 1998. The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Reprinted 2000 Kent, Gordon. 2008. Mayor Out to Spread the Word. Edmonton Journal, 28 March, b1 Knowles, Valerie. 2006. Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540–2006. Revd. edn. Toronto: Dundurn Press Kymlicka, Will. 1998. Finding Our Way. Toronto: Oxford University Press Lee-Young, Joanne. 2008. B.C. Signs Deal with Philippines to Attract More Workers. Vancouver Sun, 30 January, d3 Li, Peter. 1998. The Chinese in Canada. 2nd edn. Toronto: Oxford University Press – 2004. Social Capital and Economic Outcomes for Immigrants and ­Ethnic Minorities. Journal of International Migration and Integration 5, no. 2:171–90 Lim, April, Lucia Lo, Myer Siemiatycki, and Michael Doucet. 2005. New­comer Services in the Greater Toronto Area: An Exploration of the Range and Funding Sources of Settlement Services. ceris Working Paper no. 35. Toronto: Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement

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Liston, Mary, and Joseph Carens. 2008. Immigration and Integration in Canada. In Migration and Globalization: Comparing Immigration Policy in Developed Countries, ed. Atsushi Kondo, 207–28. Tokyo: Akashi Shoten McInnis, Marvin. n.d. Canadian Economic Development in the Wheat Boom Era: A Reassessment. Unpublished paper. http://www.econ. queensu.ca/faculty/mcinnis/ Cdadevelopment1.pdf (accessed 21 ­December 2008) Mwarigha, M.S. 2002. Towards a Framework for Local Responsibility. Toronto: Maytree Foundation Niessen, Jan, Thomas Huddleston, and Laura Citron. 2007. Migrant Integration Policy Index. Brussels: Migration Policy Group and ­British Council. http://www.integrationindex.eu (accessed 7 August 2010) Picot, Garnett. 2004. The Deteriorating Economic Welfare of Canadian Immigrants. Canadian Journal of Urban Research 13, no. 1:25–45 Poirier, Christian. 2004. Ethnocultural Diversity, Democracy, and Intergovernmental Relations in Canadian Cities. In Canada: The State of the Federation 2004. Municipal-Federal-Provincial Relations in Canada, ed. Robert Young and Christian Leuprecht, 201–20. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, for the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen’s University Public Policy in Municipalities. 2005. Project Overview. www.ppm.ca (accessed 19 April 2008) Purdy, Chris. 2008. Mayor Travels to Woo Workers. Saskatoon ­StarPhoenix, 31 March, a3 Qadeer, Mohammed, and Sandeep Kumar. 2006. Ethnic Enclaves and Social Cohesion. Canadian Journal of Urban Research 15, no.2:1–17 Reitz, Jeffrey G., and Rupa Banerjee. 2007. Racial Inequality, Social Cohesion, and Policy Issues in Canada. In Belonging? Diversity, Recognition, and Shared Citizenship in Canada, ed. Keith Banting, Thomas J. Courchene, and F. Leslie Seidle, 489–545. Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy Richmond, Ted, and John Shields. 2005. ngo-Government Relations and Immigrant Services: Contradictions and Challenges. Journal of International Migration and Integration 6, no. 3–4:513–26 Ruddick, Elizabeth. 2008. Portrait of an Integration Process: Evidence from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada. Presentation to Citizenship and Immigration Canada DG Research Forum, 21 April. Ottawa: Citizenship and Immigration Canada

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Sadiq, Kareem. 2004. The Two-Tier Settlement System: A Review of Current New­comer Settlement Services in Canada. ceris Working Paper no. 34. Toronto: Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement Schellenberg, Grant, and Feng Hou. 2005. The Economic Well-Being of Recent Immigrants to Canada. Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiens, Spring, 49–52 Seidle, Leslie. 2010. The Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement: Assessment and Options for Renewal. Mowat Centre Paper. Toronto: Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation Stark, Oded. 1991. The Migration of Labour. Cambridge: Blackwell Statistics Canada. 2001. One Hundred Years of Immigration to Canada (1901 to 2001). http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/ analytic/companion/etoimm/time.cfm (accessed 21 December 2008) – 2003. Ethnic Diversity Survey: Portrait of a Multicultural Society. ­Statistics Canada catalogue 89–593-xie. Ottawa: Minister of Industry. www.statcan.ca (accessed 8 May 2008) – 2006. 2006 Census of Population. Statistics Canada catalogue no. 97–555-xcb2006015. Ottawa: Minister of Industry. www.statcan.ca (accessed 26 April 2008) – 2008a. Canada’s Ethnocultural Mosaic, 2006 Census. Statistics Canada catalogue no. 97–562. Ottawa: Minister of Industry. www.statcan.ca (accessed 26 April 2008) – 2008b. Earnings and Incomes of Canadians Over the Past Quarter Century, 2006 Census. Statistics Canada catalogue 97–563-x. Ottawa: Minister of Industry. www.statcan.ca (accessed 8 May 2008) Tilly, Charles. 1990. Transplanted Networks. In Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology, and Politics, ed. Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, 79–95. New York: Oxford University Press Timlin, Mabel. 1960. Canada’s Immigration Policy, 1896–1910. Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 26: 517–32 Tolley, Erin. 2007. The Skilled Worker Class: Selection Criteria in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. In Immigration and Refugee Law: Cases, Materials, and Commentary, ed. Emily Carasco, Sharryn J. Aiken, Donald Galloway, and Audrey Macklin, 333–41. Toronto: Emond Montgomery Tossutti, Livianna. 2007. The Electoral Participation of Ethnocultural Communities. Elections Canada Working Paper series on Electoral Participation and Outreach Practices. Ottawa: Elections Canada.

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http://www.elections.ca/loi/res/paper/ethnocultural/ethnocultural_e.pdf (accessed 8 August 2010) Tran, Kelly, Stan Kustec, and Tina Chui. 2005. Becoming Canadian: Intent, Process, and Outcome. Canadian Social Trends, Spring: 8–13 VanderPlaat, Madine. Immigration, and Families: Introduction. Canadian Issue/Thèmes canadiens, Spring: 3–4 Vineberg, R.A. 1987. Federal-Provincial Relations in Canadian Immigration. Canadian Public Administration 30, no. 2:299–317 Walks, R. Alan, and Larry S. Bourne. 2006. Ghettos in Canada’s Cities? Racial Segregation, Ethnic Enclaves, and Poverty Concentration in ­Canadian Urban Areas. Canadian Geographer 50, no. 3:273–97 Ward, Bruce. 2008. How Ottawans Saved 4,000 People in Distress. Ottawa Citizen, 3 May, d1 Waters, Johanna L. 2001. The Flexible Family? Recent Immigration and “Astronaut” Households in Vancouver, British Columbia. riim Working Paper 01–02. Vancouver: Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis. www.mbc.metropolis.net (accessed 15 May 2008) White, Stephen, Neil Nevitte, André Blais, Joanna Everitt, Patrick Fournier, and Elisabeth Gidengil. 2006. Making Up for Lost Time: Immigrant Voter Turnout in Canada. Electoral Insight 8, no. 2:10–16 Winks, Robin W. 1997. The Blacks in Canada: A History. 2nd edn. ­Montreal & Kingston: McGill Queen’s University Press

2 Federal Policies on Immigrant Settlement caroline andrew with rachida abdourhamane hima Federal policies on immigrant settlement affect us all. They do so directly for those who receive services that are part of federal policies, and they do so indirectly for all Canadians in that the success of immigrant settlement is central to the success of Canada in the twenty-first century. For this reason, understanding who is influencing the direction of federal policy, who plays a central role, and who has little or no influence over the policies is an important social and political question. It is also a very large and complex question, one that cannot be covered adequately in one chapter. For example, one could look across different immigrant communities and see whether certain communities have greater influence over settlement policies than others. Or one could look inside immigrant communities and try to understand who within these communities has more influence and why. Another perspective would be to look across Canadian society and ask who influences settlement policies: Is it economic actors, social actors, or political actors? Our decision was to focus this chapter on two questions, one relating to political and administrative actors, and one relating to social actors. This allows us to ask questions about who makes the decisions and who structures the concrete settlement activities while at the same time restricting the scope of the chapter to manageable dimensions. In terms of the political and administrative actors, our interest is in which levels of government play an increasing role in immigrant settlement and why. More specifically, the chapter will document the growing role of municipal governments in settlement activities and settlement policy. In terms of social actors, we will focus on the role of francophone minorities and their associations in

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trying to influence the direction of federal settlement policies. These are clearly only two of the many threads one could follow about recent federal immigration policy, but they are the ones chosen here – the story of municipal involvement and that of francophone minorities and their associations. Clearly, increasing the involvement of municipal governments and civil society actors does not eliminate the role of the federal government; it simply increases the number of significant governmental and non-governmental players involved in immigration policy. The field of immigration policy can be seen as a particularly interesting example of multilevel government and multilevel governance, in that it clearly incorporates important economic, social, and cultural dimensions and therefore involves horizontal coordination within levels of government as well as vertical coordination between levels of government. The governance dimension adds additional levels of complexity, as both horizontal and vertical coordination involve a large variety of non-state actors, along with the governmental players. Of central interest to policy analysts and to the interested public is the relative weight of the state actors and non-state actors and the ways in which they influence the overall policy direction of, in this case, the Canadian federal government (see, among others, Dirks 1995; Kelley and Trebilcock 2000). Scholars of multilevel governance can be criticized for according more weight to state actors in their vision of governance than to non-state actors. It is argued elsewhere (Mahon, Andrew, and Johnson 2007) that the literature on scalar analysis has been better framed to consider that this is a question for empirical research and that, in the development of a theoretical framework, state and non-state actors should be situated on the same level. Determining the actual influence of the different categories of actors, and indeed specific actors within state and non-state categories, is an empirical question and one that this chapter will attempt to address. As we have just articulated, in order to focus the chapter, we have chosen to look at the increasing multilevel governance of federal immigration policy in two ways: at the involvement of municipal government in federal immigration policy, and at the involvement of minority francophone communities and their organizations in multilevel governance. One of these leads to multilevel government and one to multilevel governance, but as we will discover, the distinction between these two is not clear cut.



Federal Policies on Immigrant Settlement 51

The formal involvement of municipal government in federal immigration policy stems from the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (coia), signed in November 2005, since it is the first federal-provincial immigration agreement to include municipal governments specifically.1 However, to understand the context of this agreement, it is necessary to situate the provincial government’s growing role in immigration as the route to an official municipal role. We will therefore look at the changing federal perspective on provincial involvement in immigration policy but will focus on the governance arrangements in the Ontario case and, in partic­ular, on the evolution of these arrangements as they affect municipal involvement. The involvement of francophone minority communities and their associations is particularly interesting in the context of multilevel governance because they operate at federal, provincial, regional, and community levels, and their involvement in federal immigration policy has therefore been both horizontal and vertical: horizontal in the relations between the national association of francophone minority communities (fcfa – Fédération des communautés francophones et acadiennes), Citizenship and Immigration Canada (cic), and other federal bodies, and vertical in the relationships between provincial associations, regional associations, and community associations, their provincial governments, and the federal government. Here, as with municipal involvement, some contextual information is important in order to situate the genesis of the minority francophone communities’ interest in immigration policy. As stated in the opening paragraph, the theme of the increasingly multilevel governance of federal immigration policy is only one of the possible perspectives on recent federal immigration policy, and our choice of focus affects the nature of the central questions of the chapter. We are interested in understanding why and how municipal-provincial-federal arrangements have come about and what the consequences of municipal involvement have been, both in terms of federal administrative arrangements and in terms of policy, program, or project orientation. Similarly, with minority francophone community involvement, we want to look at federal administrative arrangements, and with policy, program, or project impact. Indeed, in looking at these two dimensions, it is also possible to see whether there are tensions or complementarities between multilevel government and multilevel governance. Does the inclusion of municipal

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Table 1 Government of Canada: Planned Spending by Program Areas, 2008–2009 Economic Affairs Social Affairs International Affairs Government Affairs Other expenditures Total planned spending

$101,186,098 $ 47,787,447 $ 27,356,088 $ 12,487,898 $ 34,821,575 $223,639,106

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2006, 55

Table 2 Social Affairs’ Planned Spending, by objectives, 2008–2009 Healthy Canadians Safe and secure communities Diverse society that promotes linguistic duality   and social inclusion Vibrant Canadian culture and heritage Total

$28,179,942 $10,424,536 $ 6,008,812 $ 3,174,157 $47,787,447

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2006, 55

governments make the participation of non-governmental actors more likely and more significant? Or is municipal involvement an alternative to civil society involvement? No definitive answers can be drawn, but this does not make the question less important. Our interest in understanding the impact of the increasing relations between the federal government, municipal governments, and francophone associations in the field of immigration also allows us to situate the role of the lead ministry, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, within the evolution of federal activity in the field of immigration and also within the evolution of federal activity in relation to the provincial governments. It is to these questions that we will now turn. Clarifying the federal context will allow us to gain a better understanding of the emerging roles of local governments and of minority francophone interests.

immigration within the federal government Citizenship and Immigration Canada (cic) is not one of the large federal departments in terms of expenditures. The Government of Canada categorizes its expenditures into five categories; the planned



Federal Policies on Immigrant Settlement 53

Table 3 Citizenship and Immigration Canada: Planned Expenditures by Program Activity, 2008–2009 Grants and contributions

Total main estimates

Program activity

Operating

Immigration Program Temporary Resident Program Canada’s role in International Migration   and Protection Refugee Program Integration Program Citizenship Program total department

183.8 59.7 1.7

0 0 2.3

183.8 59.7 4.0

97.5 53.2 59.2 455.1

0 729.9 0 732.2

97.5 783.1 59.2 1,187.3

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2006, 55

spending for each of these for 2008–09 is given in table 1. As can be seen, Social Affairs is a poor cousin of Economic Affairs, and within Social Affairs (see table 2), Health expenditures are clearly the most important. The federal government describes its Social Affairs as falling into four objectives.The one relating to immigration comes in third place, as part of the objective of creating a diverse society that promotes linguistic duality and social inclusion. Within this objective, the largest expenditures are those of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and the Canadian Polar Commission ($4.2 billion), followed by cic ($995 million). So federal expenditures on immigration are relatively small. Moreover, as table 3 indicates, over 60 per cent of departmental expenditures take the form of grants and contributions rather than operating expenditures. This is most evident in the case of the integration program, by far the most important expenditure area for cic. Table 4 gives details of the transfer payment programs and illustrates the impact of the signing of the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement. Planned federal spending was to increase by $212 million between 2006–07 and 2007–08, and of this increase, almost half ($102 million) represented the amount allocated to Ontario. So not only is immigration a relatively small federal expenditure, but the majority of the expenditures are grants and contributions to third parties, both non-governmental and governmental. Table 4 also indicates the major programs within the integration section, in terms of expenditures; for 2008–09, Language Instruction for New­comers to Canada (linc) and the Immigrant Settlement and

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Table 4 Details on Transfer Payment Programs Program Activity

Forecast spending, 2006–2007

integration program: grants Grant for the Canada-Quebec Accord citizenship program: grants Institute for Canadian Citizens2 total grants canada’s role in international migration and protection:  contributions Migration Policy Development3 International Organization for Migration integration program:  contributions Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation  Program Host Program Language Instruction for New­comers to  Canada Contributions to provinces4 Resettlement Assistance Program total contributions total transfer payments

Planned spending, 2007–20081

194.9

224.4

3.0 197.9

0 224.4

0.3 1.1

0.3 2.0

72.8

173.6

5.2 119.7

10.1 174.7

77.6 46.3

97.6 49.5

323.0 520.9

507.8 732.2

Source: Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2006, 62

  Includes Main Estimates plus Supplementary Estimates, including the transfer of the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Initiative to the Treasury Board Secretariat.   Explanation of the change: Planned spending for 2007–2008 increases by $212m over 2006–2007 and includes new resources of $102m for the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement, $74m for the extension of Settlement services nationally, $28m for increased costs under the Canada-Quebec Accord and $20m for additional Settlement funding. These increases were partially offset by sunsetting funding of integration costs related to the processing of parents and grandparents totalling $12m. 2 Represents resources approved for 2006–2007 for the payment of a new grant to establish the Institute for Canadian Citizenship 3 Migration Policy Development provides funding to several organizations, including the Regional Conference on Migration (rcm, or “Puebla”) and the Intergovernmental Consultations on Asylum, Refugee and Migration Policies in Europe (igc). 4 Contributions to provinces include contributions to British Columbia and Manitoba. 1



Adaptation Program (isap), both at around $175 million, and the comparatively very small Host program at around $10 million. These programs have been well described in Biles (2008) and are also described on the cic website (www.cic.gc.ca/english/new­comer/isapfs.html; www.cic.gc.ca/english/new­comer/host-new­comer.html).



Federal Policies on Immigrant Settlement 55

There is a clear distinction in mandate between cic’s responsibility for immigrant settlement during the first three years of arrival in Canada and Canadian Heritage’s responsibility for programming the following three years; but in reality, the settlement period is less clearly defined. Immigrant-serving agencies give service to a considerable number of people who have been in Canada for more than three years.2 It is not clear whether these are people who have been in ongoing contact with the agencies since their arrival or whether conditions have changed and/or new problems have emerged after a longer period in Canada. This distinction between the first three years as being settlement oriented and a later period as relating to full integration has been further complicated by the recent transfer of the Multiculturalism Program from Canadian Heritage to cic. Following the federal election of 2008 and the appointment of Jason Kenny as minister of citizenship and immigration, the responsibility for Multiculturalism went with Minister Kenny from Canadian Heritage (where he had been the minister prior to the election), to his new portfolio in Citizenship and Immigration. At the time of writing this chapter, the implications of this transfer in broad policy terms are not clear. To what extent will it mean the lessening of the distinction between policies for the initial three-year period and for a longer-time horizon or the elimination of this distinction? As we reported above, the immigrant-serving organizations deliver services to people well beyond the initial three-year period, but there are also clear differences in the program priorities between the language training and settlement programs of cic and the focus on the adaptation of Canadian institutions that has marked the Multiculturalism program. Its recent policy goals have been identity, social justice, and civic participation; the building of capacity within immigrant and visible minority communities to participate in Canadian society; eliminating barriers within Canadian institutions that prevent the participation of the full diversity of Canadian society; and encouraging debate and action in combatting racism (Biles 2008, 149).

canadian heritage Turning to Canadian Heritage, the focus, as noted earlier, is more on the capacity of the host society to offer an environment that allows for the successful integration of all Canadians, including e­thnic, racial, linguistic and religious minorities. This is the idea of the

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“two-way street” of Canadian immigrant integration – that immigrants will adapt and so will the host society. There has been much debate about the two-way street, particularly in terms of the extent to which there really is one. Has Canadian society been willing to transform itself, to adapt itself, to consider that immigration will produce a new Canadian society? And a whole different set of arguments: Should Canadian society transform itself, and should the goal be a new Canadian society or a society where the new­comers have adapted to the existing Canadian society with perhaps only marginal alterations at the edges? (See, for example, Banting, Courchene, and Seidle, 2007.) A lot has been written on these questions, much of which is polemic in tone. There is also considerable survey data that suggest (see, among others, Abu-Ayyash and Brochu 2006; McDonald and Quell 2008) that Canadians, in the majority, feel that immigration has a positive effect on Canadian society. However, some of the survey results certainly suggest that born-inCanada Canadians do not see the two-way street as involving equal adaptation; they prefer a situation where more adaptation is done by immigrants than by themselves. These questions are important backdrops to an understanding of the programming done by Canadian Heritage. The major program that relates to immigrant integration is the Multiculturalism Program which, as we have just described, is now part of cic. Another important area within Canadian Heritage that increasingly relates to immigrant integration is the Official Languages Program. We will discuss this involvement in much greater detail in terms of the influence of the minority francophone communities and their associations. Issues of coordination and of policy directive within Canadian Heritage have emerged in terms of the department’s role as leader in the cross-government anti-racism plan. The Action Plan against Racism was designed to build links across federal departments, including cic, Canadian Heritage, Human Resources and Social Development Canada, and Justice Canada, and therefore to build horizontal coordination.

other federal departments If cic and Canadian Heritage are the main policy players in terms of immigrant settlement and integration, they are certainly not alone.



Federal Policies on Immigrant Settlement 57

Human Resources and Social Development Canada has responsibilities in the area of foreign credential recognition, cited as a significant barrier to immigrant economic integration (Ikura 2007), and in relation to the Homelessness Partnering Strategy, an indication of the increasing problem being faced by some immigrant families in finding adequate housing. Several research projects have been done by the Homelessness Partnering Secretariat focusing on immigrant status, indicating growing problems in immigrant access to affordable housing (Klodawsky et al. 2005). Immigrant health raises the question of the involvement of Health Canada in federal immigration policy. Health has been an interesting area in that there has been much debate, and much data, around the question of the “healthy immigrant” effect. Immigrants are in better health on arriving in Canada then they are after being in Canada for several years. There has been a vigorous debate about measurement, results, and policy implications (Chen et al. 1996 a and b; Guruge and Collins 2008; Hyman 2001; Parakulam et al. 1992; Tracey and Wheaton 2006; Vissandjee et al. 2004). Other relevant federal departments include Status of Women Canada, Public Safety Canada, Industry Canada, and Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities. Coordination issues across the federal government can take several forms, and these can be measured in different ways. One can look to see which government programs have highlighted immigrant issues and which have not. One example is Status of Women Canada, where the emphasis on immigrant women has been relatively clear, and immigrant women are one of a limited number of priority groups, along with Aboriginal women, disabled women, and elderly women. This is, however, not so much the result of direct coordination between cic, Canadian Heritage, and Status of Women but the result of the internal dynamics of the women’s movement, the importance of intersectional analysis both in theory and in practice, and the relations between the women’s movement and Status of Women Canada. Another coordination mechanism in federal immigration policy is the Metropolis Project, founded more than ten years ago. One of its goals is the funding of research on immigrant settlement, and it created four (and later five) regionally based research centres that bring together university-based researchers, community agencies, and government policy makers in order to produce and disseminate policy-relevant research. Metropolis acts as a coordination

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Caroline Andrew with Rachida Abdourhamane Hima

­ echanism in at least two ways. First, general funding for Metropm olis as well as specific funding for conferences and special projects come from a whole variety of federal departments and therefore involve coordination across the departments. Second, Metropolis’s annual conferences bring together policy-makers along with the ngo community and university researchers. This is essential for the linking of research and policy as well as for knowledge transfer and mobilization (often referred to as kt and km). As John Shields and Bryan Evans conclude in their description of Metropolis as a case of kt and km, “the achievements and initiatives of this working experiment in research partnering is worthy of study. It offers valuable lessons for forging even deeper and more meaningful institutionalized km/kt relationships” (Shields and Evans 2008, 23). From this description, it is clear that even within the federal ­government, coordination of immigration policy is a highly complex process. The recent transfer of the Multiculturalism Program to ­Citizenship and Immigration may signify the consolidation of some of the most important programs, but this is not yet clear. And even if this is the case, there are still a large number of federal departments that have relevant immigration-related programs. All the challenges described in Bakvis and Juillet’s (2004) analysis of horizontality within the federal government are certainly present in the immigration field. As Canadian society becomes increasingly aware of the challenges of immigrant integration in Canada (Sweetman and Warman 2008), the pressure for better horizontal coordination increases. As we turn to the provincial and then the municipal role, these coordination challenges simply expand.

provincial involvement and coordination As was noted at the outset, the question of growing provincial activity in the field of immigration is a necessary foundation for an understanding of federal-provincial-municipal arrangements. Quebec was the first province in the recent period to want to expand its activity in the field of immigration and with a clear objective: increasing francophone immigration to Quebec and integrating immigrants into a French-speaking host society (for a description of Quebec immigration policy, see Chiasson and Koji, this volume). The beginning was marked by conflict between Quebec and the federal government, but over time the two governments worked out a



Federal Policies on Immigrant Settlement 59

more harmonious working relationship, beginning with the CullenCouture agreement in 1978. Since the Canada-Quebec Accord of 1991, Quebec has had powers in the area of immigrant selection and full responsibility for all settlement and integration services. After the federal government’s initial hostility to giving important powers to Quebec in the area of immigrant settlement, it offered full control over immigrant settlement to the other provinces as part of its program review in 1995–96 (Vineberg 2010, 40). The Department of Citizenship and Immigration had to come up with savings of over $60 million, and the settlement services seemed to be the best option. Federal immigration activity overseas and federal activity relating to border services were seen to be clearly federal responsibilities, and in any case the settlement services had only been back as part of Immigration since 1993, having been part of the Manpower portfolio for several decades (Vineberg 2010, 38). There was also a logic to offering settlement services to the provinces in that this was in line with their responsibility for social services and education. Discussions were held with the provinces in 1995 and 1996, and following federal promises to increase spending outside Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia accepted the federal offer and signed settlement realignment agreements in 1996 and 1998, respectively (Vineberg 2010,42) Manitoba has been seen as the success story of a provincial role in settlement services. Any initial concern of the settlement sector was soon over, for the province quickly began to improve the services. Manitoba developed an ambitious Provincial Nominee Program, the first province to do so. The aim of its program was both demographic, to use immigration to counter population decline, and economic, to use immigrants to stimulate economic and employment growth. Manitoba has played a major role in advancing the active provincial role as a model for Canadian immigration policy (Amoyaw 2008; Burstein 2007). British Columbia’s agreement with the federal government also undertook to take over responsibility for all integration and settlement programs, but the settlement sector in British Columbia was worried by the fact that a large part of the federal funds were put into general revenue and not clearly allocated to settlement services (Vineberg 2010, 43). The other provinces were not initially interested in taking over control of settlement services, arguing that the federal government was not putting enough money on the table. The

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Table 5 Federal-Provincial/Territorial Agreements Type of agreement

Provinces/ territories

Date signed or renewed

Responsibility for immigrant selection and management of settlement services is devolved to the province.

Quebec

1991

Province is responsible for planning and delivering settlement services on behalf of the federal government; compensation provided.

Manitoba British Columbia

(1996) 2003 (1998) 2010

Planning of settlement services is co-managed by provincial and federal governments, but federal government is responsible for delivery; formal consultation mechanisms exist and partnerships with municipalities are identified as an objective.

Ontario Alberta

2005 2007

Provincial and federal governments cooperate on immigrant recruitment and planning of settlement services, but without formal consultation mechanisms in place; settlement services are managed and delivered by federal government.

Saskatchewan Nova Scotia Prince Edward  Island Yukon

(1998) 2005 2007 (2001) 2008

Provincial and federal governments cooperate on recruitment only (e.g., nominee program); settlement services managed and delivered by federal government.

New Brunswick Newfoundland   and Labrador Northwest  Territories

(1999) 2005 (1999) 2006

(2001) 2008

2009

Source: Adapted from Tolley (2009) and Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2006, 51

Quebec agreement had always been a point of comparison for the provincial governments. This was clearly the case for the Ontario government, which held out for an agreement comparable in financial terms to the agreement with Quebec. In 2005, with the approach of a federal election, the federal government agreed to Ontario’s demands, and this led to the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (coia), signed in November 2005 (Vineberg 2010, 45). Table 5 gives the dates of the various federal-provincial agreements. The Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement included municipal governments for the first time in a federal-provincial immigration



Federal Policies on Immigrant Settlement 61

agreement. One of the sub-agreements to the agreement is on partnership with municipalities: The Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement includes a provision to involve municipalities in planning and discussions on immigration and settlement. This marks the first time all three levels of government have worked together to meet the needs of immigrants across Ontario. Canada and Ontario will work with the City of Toronto, as well as the Municipal Immigration Committee, which has been established with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (Andrew 2008). The agreement set up a Joint Steering Committee composed of the deputy ministers (dm) of cic and Ontario’s Ministry of Citizen­ ship and Immigration (mci). The Steering Committee oversees implementation of the coia, approves joint priorities annually, resolves disputes, and establishes the Management Committee. The Management Committee reports to the Steering Committee and is composed of the assistant deputy ministers (adms) of cic and mci. Its mandate is to recommend priorities and direct the development of annual work plans and establish and manage working groups related to the implementation of the annexes (as of September 2008 there was a Research and Accountability Working Group and two subcommittees: Evaluation and Research). Below this management structure, there were three divisions: integration initiatives, economic initiatives, and municipal partnerships. The Municipal Immigration Committee is co-chaired by mci, cic, and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (amo) and includes a representative from the Association française des municipalités de l’Ontario (afmo). It has two working groups: Attraction and Retention, and Settlement and Integration. Municipal participation is also allowed in other coia working groups (such as settlement and integration or language training). Also included in the municipal partnerships is the tripartite memorandum of understanding (mou) with the City of Toronto; signed in October 2006, it is managed by a Steering Committee composed of the Toronto city manager and the adms of cic and mci. The Steering Committee identifies priorities for joint action/initiatives and oversees the mou. It allows for Toronto representation on other coia working

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groups. The p ­ riorities as of September 2008 included data sharing and research on temporary foreign workers (Andrew 2008). The municipal involvement has led to a new program initiative, local immigration partnerships (lips), which offered support to initiatives bringing together municipal and non-governmental bodies to improve access to, and coordination of, effective services that facilitate immigrant settlement and integration. In the case of Toronto, there was a specific call for proposals focusing on the neighbourhood level, whereas outside Toronto it was at the level of the municipality. At the time of writing this chapter, more than thirty lip initiatives exist across Ontario. To understand the coia it is important to begin with the very special position of the City of Toronto in regard to immigration, but also in terms of civil society initiatives in post-amalgamation Toronto to rejuvenate economic development in the city and put pressure on the senior levels of government in order to give Toronto a greater say over its own destiny. To begin, Toronto has attracted an extremely high percentage of recent immigrants, and even though the most recent period saw a slight decline in the number of immigrants going to the City of Toronto, the Greater Toronto Area is certainly the focal point of immigration in Canada. Recent immigration has transformed the demography of Toronto, with approximately 50 per cent of the population being foreign-born. The city had been active, both in adopting policies and in developing programs and establishing projects (Siemiatycki 2008). One example was the Break the Cycle of Violence grants, where the city administration had taken a proactive role in seeking out recent immigrant groups and encouraging them to apply for grants to develop projects that would improve culturally appropriate services around violence prevention. Both the demographic weight and the municipal activity made the case for Toronto’s exceptionality. Added to this were the series of civil-society initiatives to increase the role of Toronto, starting with the Toronto Charter Movement – the mobilization against the Harris government’s imposed amalgamation and the subsequent Toronto City Summit Alliance, which brought together a broad coalition of business and labour, cultural, educational, social, and civic leaders to develop initiatives to rejuvenate Toronto and to try and re-establish the economic, social, and cultural dynamism of the



Federal Policies on Immigrant Settlement 63

pre-amalgamation period. One of the programs falling under the Toronto City Summit Alliance was triec, the Toronto Regional Immigration Employment Council (Alboim and McIsaac 2004). It has an Intergovernmental Relations Committee, chaired by Naomi Alboim of Queen’s University (and a former deputy minister with the Ontario government), that includes representatives from four departments of the federal government (cic, Service Canada, Canadian Heritage, and Industry Canada), three departments of the Ontario government (mci, Training Colleges and Universities, and Economic Development and Trade), the City of Toronto, and the regions of York, Peel, and Halton. triec recognized the importance of local labour markets and local coalitions that bring business and labour together with government representatives. It served as a model and again illustrated the importance of Toronto in immigration policies and programs. It is important to underline the interrelated nature of the nongovernmental and governmental initiatives. For example, in 2004 the United Way of Greater Toronto, in collaboration with the Canadian Council on Social Development (ccsd), published Poverty by Postal Code, which linked visible minority status and poverty; for its part, the Toronto Metropolis project did research and disseminated the research findings on the need for more regional activity on the part of the city. In partnership with United Way the city also undertook such projects as the Strong Neighbourhood Task Force, which recommended neighbourhood-based programming that would be sensitive to the particular make-up of specific neighbourhoods. This is not to say that there are not tensions and differences between the City of Toronto and the Toronto City Summit Alliance, but the importance accorded to Toronto in relation to immigration policy is the result of both civil-society activities and those of the City of Toronto. If Toronto was the impetus for the recognition of the role of municipal governments within coia, it was not the only factor. Municipal governments all across Canada, often in partnership with civil-society organizations, were becoming more interested in the attraction and retention of immigrants. The issues of Our Diverse Cities (2004–08) and the 2009 special issue of Plan Canada have described a number of municipal initiatives across a wide variety of municipal policy areas. Local policies on housing, public transportation, recreation, public health, policing, culture and, of course,

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education all have significant impact on the success of integration, and in all these areas there has been the good practice of culturally sensitive policy adaptations and transformations. Factors that influence the likelihood of adaptation include demographic changes (the size of the immigrant population), administrative capacity, political will, and community mobilization and pressure. A recent Université de Montréal doctoral thesis comparing Montreal and Laval in terms of their policies on immigration emphasized the importance of local definitions of the legitimacy of various political actors by analyzing the difference between Laval, where group-based identities of all kinds were not recognized as legitimate by the municipal government, and Montreal, where immigrant group identities have been recognized as legitimate for many years (Fourot 2008). Municipalities all across Canada were becoming more active, but clearly the inclusion of Ontario’s municipalities in coia opened up new spaces for local activity; coia included a program to fund municipalities to create websites, and as of September 2008, seventeen municipalities had received funding. In addition, the funding of the lip proposals across Ontario increased municipal interest in developing immigration initiatives. All this led the deputy minister of mci to state, “Municipalities are becoming more involved with immigration attraction and immigration initiatives” (Andrew 2008, 4). At present, only the Ontario and Alberta immigration agreements explicitly mention partnerships with municipalities as an objective. While other provinces’ agreements note the importance of involving municipalities as stakeholders in immigrant settlement, they do not include mechanisms for formally constituted federalprovincial-municipal collaboration. Nonetheless, municipal activity will continue to grow and will necessarily influence the environment of provincial and federal policy and of program and project development. “What makes local involvement critical is the emphasis on retention and the influence of local authorities in the domain” (Burstein 2007, 43). As research indicates growing problems in the integration of recent immigrants, the importance of involving local government and local communities can only grow. In pursuing the idea of community involvement, we turn now to the role of minority francophone communities and their associations, and their influence on federal multilevel governance of immigration settlement and integration.



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minority francophone communities and immigration The official beginning of federal involvement in promoting immigration in minority francophone communities occurred in 2002 with the amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The 2002 amendment included the objective of favouring the development of official-language minority communities while conforming to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and therefore assuring the equality of French and English as official languages (Farmer 2008, 125). This led to the creation in 2002 of the Citizenship and Immigration Canada–Francophone Minority Communities Steering Committee, followed by the creation of subcommittees for Alberta, Ontario, and Manitoba in 2003 and for British Columbia in 2004. The federal government’s support for this policy development was strengthened by the adoption in 2003 of the Action Plan for Official Languages, which included federal support for encouraging and promoting French-language immigration to francophone minority communities. The federal government’s interest was in fact the result of the growing activity of the organizations of the minority francophone communities. The Société franco-manitobaine can be seen as the initiator of this activity (Farmer 2008, 126), paralleling the leadership role of Manitoba in provincial government activity in immigration policy. This activity was then picked up by the national association, the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne (fcfa), which played a leadership role in promoting the francophone immigration dossier. Many factors lay behind this growing interest: a movement to go beyond the traditional area of education, in which basic rights had more or less been won; a recognition that additional efforts had to be made to integrate francophone immigrants successfully; and an increased preoccupation with levels of assimilation and the aging of the minority francophone communities. Diane Farmer has outlined the development of the fcfa’s position through its major briefs (2001, 2004, 2006, 2007) to the federal government articulating the argument for the promotion of francophone immigration and for the appropriate federal role. The 2003 plan allocated some federal funds for this objective, and these led to some specific projects, including public

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e­ ducation, the p ­ reparation of educational material, and municipal and school projects. The cic and the francophone community’s national committee produced a strategic framework in 2003 and a strategic plan in 2006. The objectives of the framework and the plan include increasing the number of francophone immigrants, improving the capacity of francophone minority communities to welcome francophone immigrants, assuring the economic integration of the francophone immigrants, assuring their social and cultural integration, and fostering the regionalization of francophone immigration. The political context was also extremely favourable during the Chrétien and Martin years, with Mauril Bélanger as minister in charge of the Official Languages Act. The study of the structures of joint governance by Cardinal, Lang, and Sauvé (2005) discussed the potential and challenges of these structures across the various policy fields, including immigration. Although these structures remain, the political context is less favourable for federal initiatives in this area. Municipal involvement took place through the activities of the organizations that represent francophone and/or bilingual municipalities in Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Ontario. In the case of New Brunswick, the Association francophonie des municipalités du Nouveau-Brunswick obtained funds from the Canada–New Brunswick agreements for francophone municipalities to organize projects aimed at welcoming new immigrants and raising community awareness of the importance of attracting and retaining immigrants. The municipalities were for the most part small and the projects limited in terms of funding. In Manitoba the organization representing francophone municipalities focused its activity on economic development projects, and it feels that these were successful. The small rural francophone communities had for the most part made small gains in population, compared with the long-standing rural population loss in Manitoba. In Ontario the Association française des municipalités de l’Ontario (afmo) has carried out, over the past few years, a number of research projects relating to the role of visible minority and foreignborn francophones active in municipal government in Ontario. Although both Toronto and Ottawa are members of afmo, the majority of the member municipalities have had little recent immigration. However, the annual conferences of afmo have maintained the question of francophone immigration as an area of interest for the organization.



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Several of the federal-provincial agreements make specific reference to minority francophone communities and to the specific needs of these communities to be considered in immigration attraction and integration. This is true of the British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario agreements. However, with the arrival in power of the Conservative Party under the leadership of Prime Minister Harper, the priority given to minority francophone communities has lessened. The federal government did renew the Action Plan, but without expansion. What have been the results of the efforts to increase francophone immigration in minority francophone communities and to retain them in these communities? Research done in Ontario (Andrew and Burstein 2007) demonstrated the considerable challenges involved in this policy. Francophone immigrants arriving in Ontario discover that English is a requirement for the vast majority of employment in the province, which many of them felt had not been explained clearly to them before coming to Canada. Moreover, given the relatively small amount of public services in French in most if not all Ontario communities, francophone immigrants choose English-language services. There is also little evidence of a medium- or long-term clearly articulated federal plan for the development of francophone immigration in Ontario and for a strategy of working with provincial, municipal, and community partners to develop a greater capacity to attract and retain francophone immigrants. One example of the absence of developed partnerships is a reference, within the federal documentation, to designated Ontario communities that had been chosen for the development of French-language services. These communities had not been consulted or even informed of this designation, and therefore it is not surprising that the designation has not had any impact on service delivery. In terms of process, minority francophone communities and their organizations have had an impact on federal policy; a national steering committee has been set up, and it has met and articulated plans (Belkhodja 2008). In terms of policy impact, there appears to have been some effect in Manitoba, but this seems to be more related to the proactive nature of Manitoba’s provincial immigration policy. The arrival of the Harper government also seems to have lessened the influence of the minority francophone organizations. However, it is too early to tell the extent of their influence on federal policy related to a specific political context and whether

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the demographic and community mobilization factors that remain important will re-establish a capacity to influence federal immigration policy. The impact on Federal immigration policy of the municipalities’ increasing involvement in activities aimed at attracting and retaining immigrants seems to be more certain than that of the minority francophone organizations. This impact is, in part, a consequence of the provincial government’s increasing role in immigration policy, but it is also a product of the growing importance of “placebased” policy (Bradford 2007, 2008) and therefore an expanded local and municipal role (particularly in the case of the larger cities and metropolitan regions) in economic development and in the policies for social and cultural development that are increasingly understood as necessary for economic development. Immigration is a necessary base for economic development, and the appropriate activities of local government, in partnership with the full range of local community actors, are seen to be crucial in attracting and retaining immigrants. Municipal governments in Canada are only just beginning to see that this can lead to greater municipal involvement in federal immigration policy, potentially through federalprovincial collaboration and coordination – including not only governments but also civil-society organizations. Federal policies on immigration settlement will increasingly interact with municipal activities; what remains to be seen is whether this will occur through collaboration and coordination actively engaged in and supported by the federal government. The argument in this chapter is that this would be the route for improved policies for immigration settlement.

notes 1 Information on coia comes specifically from a slide presentation, ­“Immigration Governance: Ontario’s experience,” presentation to the uk Study Tour by Joan Andrew, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, Government of Ontario, 9 September 2008. 2 Interviews with Berna Bolanos, Catholic Crosscultural Services, Peel Region, and with Mohammed Dalmar, Catholic Immigration Centre, Ottawa.



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references Abu-Ayyash, Caroline, and Paula Brochu. 2006. The Uniqueness of the Immigrant Experience across Canada: A Closer Look at the Region of Waterloo. Our Diverse Cities 2:20–6 Alboim, Naomi, and Elizabeth McIsaac. 2004. triec: A Research Proposal in Action. Our Diverse Cities 1:146–7 Amoyaw, Benjamin. 2008. Manitoba Immigration Policy and Programs, inscan 21–3:6–12 Andrew, Caroline, and Meyer Burstein. 2007. Fostering Francophone Immigration to Ontario: A Strategy in Attracting and Retaining ­Immigrants. Report to Citizenship and Immigration, Ontario Region Andrew, Caroline, Katherine Graham, and Susan Phillips, eds. 2002. Urban Affairs: Back on the Policy Agenda. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press Andrew, Joan. 2008. Immigration Governance: Ontario’s Experience. Presentation to the uk Study Tour Bakvis, Herman, and Luc Juillet. 2004. The Horizontal Challenge. Ottawa: Canada School of Public Service Banting, Keith, Thomas J. Courchene, and Leslie Seidle, eds. 2007. The Art of the State. Vol. 3: Belonging? Diversity, Recognition, and Shared Citizenship in Canada. Montreal: Institute for Research in Public Policy Belkjodja, Chedly. 2008. Immigration and Diversity in Francophone ­Minority Communities: Introduction. Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiens, Spring, 3–5 Biles, John. 2008. Integration Policies in English-speaking Canada. In Immigration and Integration in Canada in the Twenty-First Century, ed. John Biles, Meyer Burstein, and James Frideres, 139–86. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, for School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University Biles, John, Meyer Burstein, and James Frideres, eds. 2008. Immigration and Integration in Canada in the Twenty-First Century. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, for School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University Bradford, Neil. 2007. Whither the Federal Urban Agenda? A New Deal in Transaction. cprn Research Report, f/65. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks

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– 2008. Rescaling for Regeneration? Canada’s Urban Development Agreements. Presentation to the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 4–6 June, Vancouver Burstein, Meyer. 2007. Promoting the Presence of Visible Minority Groups across Canada. Our Diverse Cities 3:42–6 Cardinal, Linda, Stéphane Lang, and Anik Sauvé. 2005. Apprendre à travailler autrement: la gouvernance partagée et le développement des communautés minoritaires de langue officielle au Canada. Ottawa: Chaire de recherche sur la francophonie et les politiques publiques Chen, J., E. Ng, and R. Wilkins. 1996a. The Health of Canada’s Immigration in 1994–1995. Health Reports 7, no. 4:33–45 – 1996b. Health Expectancy by Immigrant Status. Health Reports 8, no. 3:29–37 Citizenship and Immigration Canada (cic). 2006. Report on Plans and Priorities 2007–2008. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/immsystem.asp – 2008. Backgrounder: Legislative Amendments to Immigrant and Refugee Protection Act. Ottawa: cic Citizenship and Immigration Canada and Fédération des communautés francophones et acadiennes du Canada. 2008. Immigration: A Concrete Contribution to the Vitality of French-speaking Minority Communities. Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiens, Spring, 18–20 Dirks, Gerald E. 1995. Controversy and Complexity: Canadian Immigration Policy during the 1980s. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press Esses, Victoria M., Joerg Dietz, Caroline Bennett-Abu Ayyash, and Uhetan Joshi. 2007. Prejudice in the Workplace: The Role of Bias against Visible Minorities in the Devaluation of Immigrants’ Foreign-Acquired Qualifications and Credentials. Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiens: Foreign Credential Recognition, Spring, 114–18 Farmer, Diane. 2008. L’immigration francophone en contexte minoritaire: entre la démographie et l’identité. In L’espace francophone en milieu minoritaire au Canada, ed. J-Y Thériault, A. Gilbert, and L. Cardinal, 121–59. Montreal: Fides Fourot, Aude-Claire. 2008. Gestions politiques de l’intégration des immigrants et des minorités ethnoculturelles à Montréal et à Laval (1960–2008). ph d Dissertation, Université de Montréal Guruge, Sepali, and Enid Collins. 2008. Working with Immigrant Women: Issues and Strategies for Mental Health Professionals. Toronto: camh



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Hawkins, Freda. 1988. Canada and Immigration: Public Policy and Public Concern. 2nd edn. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press Hyman, I. 2001. Immigration and Health. Ottawa: Health Canada Ikura, Justin. 2007. Foreign Credential Recognition and Human Resources and Social Development Canada. Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiens: Foreign Credential Recognition, Spring, 17–20 Kelley, Ninette, and Michael Trebilcock. 2000. The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Klodawsky, F., T. Aubry, B. Behnia, C. Nicholson, and M. Young. 2005. The Panel Study on Homelessness: Secondary Data Analysis of Responses of Study Participants Whose Country of Origin Is Not Canada. Report prepared for the National Secretariat on Homelessness, March 15 McDonald, Mark, and Carsten Quell. 2008. Bridging the Common Divide: The Importance of both “Cohesion” and “Inclusion.” Canadian Diversity 6, no. 2:35–8 Mahon, Rianne, Caroline Andrew, and Robert Johnson. 2007. Policy Analysis in an Era of “Globalization”: Capturing Spatial Dimensions and Scalar Strategies. In Critical Policy Studies, ed. Michael Orsini and Miriam Smith, 41–64. Vancouver: ubc Press Metropolis. 2004–2008. Our Diverse Cities 1–5. Ottawa: Metropolis Parakulam, G., V. Krishnam, and D. Odynak. 1992. Health Status of Canadian-born and Foreign-born Residents. Canadian Journal of Public Health 83:311–14 Shields, John, and Bryan Evans. 2008. Building a Policy-Oriented Research Partnership for Knowledge Mobilization and Knowledge Transfer: The Case of Metropolis Canada. Presentation to the Canadian Political ­Science Association meetings in the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 4–6 June, in Vancouver Siemiatycki, Myer. 2008. Reputation and Representation: Reacting for Political Inclusion in Toronto. In Electing a Diverse Canada, ed. C. Andrew, J. Biles, M. Siemiatycki, and E. Tolley, 23–45. Vancouver: ubc Press Sweetman, Arthur, and Casey Warman. 2008. Integration, Impact, and Responsibility: An Economic Perspective on Canadian Immigration Policy. In Immigration and Integration in Canada in the Twenty-First Century, ed. John Biles, Meyer Burstein and James Frideres, 19–44.

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Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, for School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University Tolley, Erin. 2009. Expanding the One-Man Show: Intergovernmental Relations in Immigrant Settlement Policy. Presentation to the Institute of Public Administration of Canada’s Conference on Cities and Public Policy, 24 September, in Toronto Tracey, Jacinth, and Blair Wheaton. 2006. Ethnoracial Differences in Mental Health in Toronto: Demographic and Historical Explanations. In Inside the Mosaic, ed. Eric Fong, 169–98. Toronto: University of Toronto Press United Way of Greater Toronto and ccsd. 2004. Poverty by Postal Code. Toronto: United Way United Way of Greater Toronto and City of Toronto. 2004. Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force. Toronto: United Way Vineberg, Robert. 2010. A History of Canada’s Immigrant Settlement Program, 1974–2010. Unpublished report for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Ottawa Vissandjee, B., M. Desmeules, Z. Cao, and S. Abdool. 2004. Integrating Ethnicity and Migration as Determinants of Canadian Women’s Health. bmc Women’s Health 4:s32

3 From Government to Multilevel Governance of Immigrant Settlement in Ontario’s City-Regions daiva stasiulis, christine hughes, and zainab amery introduction The characterization of Canada as an immigrant settler society (Stasiulis and Jhappan 1995) – a country that has largely repudiated its Aboriginal societal foundations and whose growth and dynamism depend upon a continuous flow and economic contributions of immigrants – is nowhere more apparent than in Ontario, Canada’s largest and most populous province. In 2006, Ontario received 50 per cent of the more than 250,000 new permanent residents to Canada, and the percentage of its population constituted by foreignborn residents increased from 26.8 per cent in 2001 to 28.2 per cent in 2006 (Statistics Canada 2003e, 2009). Moreover, for some of the province’s municipal centres – most notably, Toronto and the adjacent Region of Peel – half of the population is foreign-born. Summarizing some of the realities of immigrant integration in Ontario,1 Myer Siematyicki and his colleagues refer to the sheer number and diversity of immigrants, “the very different skills and expectations of the modern immigrant, the suburban and dispersed nature of settlement, the diminishing and redefining role of the public sector in supporting the settlement process, and the increasing racialization of inequality and immigrant poverty” (2003, 417). In line with Siemiatycki et al.’s observation about the diminishing and redefined role of the public sector in settlement services, one discernible trend among Ontario city-regions is their ­participation

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in multiscalar “partnerships,” reflecting intergovernmental, crosssectoral, public-civil society cooperation. These undertakings have joined more traditional governmental service schemes as well as new government initiatives, most notably in the form of digital governance, resulting in a complex pattern of immigrant settlement initiatives and services in Ontario’s cities that defy the more orderly and vertical division of labour in policy-making institutional arrangements and governments implied by Canadian federalism. In addition, notably in the larger urban centres, a “shadow state” has been developing for some time in the immigrant settlement sector – a subsidiary or auxiliary system of non-governmental organizations that delivers social services to new­comers through purchase-of-service agreements, some of which were formerly provided by state-run public-sector agencies (Sadiq 2004, i; Wolch 1990). Smaller centres that attract fewer immigrants are attempting to meet new­comer needs through a considerably more fragmented and less robust organizational infrastructure. In many such cityregions, municipalities are acting upon a perceived priority to attract skilled immigrants for the purpose of better positioning themselves in the globalized competition among cities and mixed urban-ruralsuburban regions for talent and investment. Another important element of the framework for governance of immigrant settlement in Ontario pertains to the long-awaited intergovernmental agreements – the 2005 Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (coia), which is up for renewal in 2011, and the 2006 Canada-Ontario-Toronto Memorandum of Understanding on Immigration and Settlement (mou). These agreements, which are discussed below, commit upper-level governments to work with municipal governments, and in the case of the coia, with community and privatesector stakeholders as well, to develop and offer policies, programs, and infrastructure for immigrant integration so that municipalities can better realize the benefits of immigration. The coia is written in such a way as to promote the participation and partnership of community-based organizations and the private sector in immigrant recruitment and in the settlement and integration of immigrants. Thus, there has been a discernible movement in Ontario’s immigrant-receiving centres from government to multilevel, multisectoral governance in the policy area of immigrant settlement. This occurred first and most prominently in the area of economic integration of immigrants, though the recent infusion of funds through the coia



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has fostered a more diverse set of local immigration partnerships (lips) to strengthen the capacity of local and regional communities to attract, integrate, and retain new­comers. This chapter seeks to identify and comprehend the particular character of these emergent governance relationships and municipal government initiatives, and the role of social forces in Ontario’s settlement service sector, and to explore their variations across five centres: Toronto, Ottawa, and the Peel, Niagara, and Waterloo regions. We also ask to what extent the emergent forms of governance signal a new era of intergovernmental, multisectoral, and collaborative policy-making on immigrant settlement. Do the implied horizontal cooperative and consultative relationships involved in these governance schemes lead to a meaningful decentralization and democratization in policy-making – one that is more attuned to local and situated forms of knowledge about the issues and challenges involved in the settlement and integration of immigrants in local communities? Or is the intensified involvement in the settlement processes of both municipal governments and local social forces being harnessed to certain trends in “urban neoliberalism” (Keil 2002, 580) that are possibly out of sync with the pressing needs of new­comers to Ontario? These are important questions to ask in a policy field where the national government has historically held sway and which has been largely impervious to reform from the more democratic and open elements of Canadian liberal democracy and federalism. This is not to say that in the immigration policy field there has not been some significant devolution of responsibilities to the provinces. Under the Canadian constitution, the federal government has power over immigration concurrently with the provinces, and under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act the minister of citizenship and immigration can negotiate agreements with provinces to coordinate and implement immigration programs and policies; such agreements have been signed in one form or another with all provinces and territories, with the exception of Nunavut (see Andrew, table 5, this volume). The most comprehensive of these is the CanadaQuebec Accord, signed in 1991, whereby the Quebec government selects independent immigrants and refugees who wish to settle in Quebec, with cic issuing immigrant visas to those selected who have met all other requirements, including security and medical checks. Manitoba, meanwhile has a devolution agreement which,

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according to Seidle (2010, 5–6), has been successful in both encouraging immigrants to settle in smaller communities and in producing lower unemployment rates for immigrants than any other province. Although devolution was offered to Ontario in the mid-1990s, the Conservative government was uninterested in pursuing its own immigration agreement (Seidle, 2010, 9). In the mid-1990s, the federal government began to negotiate settlement renewal agreements with individual provinces, downloading the administration of new­comer services to the provinces via federal and provincial service agreements (Sadiq 2004, 14). In addition, most provinces and territories select small numbers of applicants who are anticipated to make immediate economic contributions through the employer-driven Provincial Nominee Program (pnp). As Ontario has remained the provincial destination of choice for immigrants to Canada, it does not rely on pnp to attract immigrants, as some other provinces do (ocasi 2009). Despite this hybrid pattern of devolution and reform, greater pressure to respond at local political levels has as yet produced little in the way of discernible influence among the immigrants and refugees themselves, or indeed the associations that advocate on their behalf, in the shaping of policies that “assist” but also regulate their existence. The federal government retains a firm grip on designing the direction and mechanism of immigration selection policy, based on, first, the belief (which exists not only in Canada but in all advanced nation-states) that control over its borders has been foundational to the defence of the territorially based sovereignty of the nation-state (Bosniak 2007, fn.11; Spiro 2004, 87; Stasiulis and Bakan 2002, 274). Second, while federal immigration policies are underpinned by several objectives, including family reunification and humanitarian response to the global refugee crisis, recent federal governments have clearly privileged objectives associated with Canadian economic development and global economic competition. While the prioritizing of economic over social or humanitarian goals has historically been a mainstay of Canada’s immigration policies, the rise of neoliberalism has intensified this ordering of priorities. As AbuLaban and Gabriel (2002, 80–1) have argued, the directions of federal immigration policy in the new millennium have been informed by certain neoliberal precepts, such as state non-interference in the management of the labour market. Reforms written into the 2008 budget bill by the Harper federal government, heightening the immi-



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gration minister’s discretionary authority to hand-pick economic immigrants by bypassing the department’s own lengthy process of selection, illustrate the privileging of economic goals over all other immigration objectives. It is also an admission of the severe limitations of the current federal policies in meeting these goals. As analysts of neoliberalism contend, “neoliberalism,” like its conceptual cousin “globalization,” is not a monolithic affair as practised by any state or as existing in any policy area (Keil 2002), and it often coexists with other ideologies and technologies of governance. Much of the pressure for reform within the public service has come not only from proponents of businesslike efficiency but also from underserved constituencies, popular movements, and leftist scholars. This political struggle is apparent in the immigrant settlement sector in which advocates of New Public Management rub up against people with other objectives about how things should be organized. The federal rhetoric of evolving immigration policy “responsiveness to a rapidly evolving environment” (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002, 78) is undermined by several factors. The development of effective economic integration policies for skilled immigrants is notably hampered by rigidity in the recruitment and credentialing processes. While the federal government continues largely to make policy on recruitment, it has only limited powers over accreditation, where many players (including provincial bodies, professional associations and other regulatory bodies, and employers) are involved. After decades of consultation, in November 2009 the federal government, supported by provincial and territorial governments, ushered in a new Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications. The federal government has pledged to work with provincial and regulatory bodies to streamline foreign qualification recognition processes, initially targeting eight occupations in 2010 and an additional six occupations in 2012 (Human Resources and Skills Development Canada 2009). As well as jurisdictional barriers to the recognition of immigrants’ foreign qualifications, there are issues of structural racism and discrimination, such as employer devaluation of overseas work experience. Such issues are ignored or depoliticized in Ontario’s city-regions’ new partnership initiatives to address immigrant unemployment (Fong 2008). While immigrants (and probably nonimmigrants as well) expect local governments2 to deal with local problems related to immigrant integration, local governments are

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forced to tackle these problems without municipal constitutional jurisdiction, sufficient resources, or capacity, and often without sufficient political will. Just as important, however, is that the strategies developed to address such glaring problems as the high rates of poverty and the underemployment of skilled immigrants are hindered by their neoliberal premises, which focus almost exclusively on the individual actions of immigrants and employers rather than on mechanisms producing the systemic inequalities. In the discussion that follows, we begin by providing some context to the development of a pattern of governmental, multigovernance, and civil-society initiatives in the policy field of immigrant settlement in the five Ontario municipalities. In this section, we give a brief overview of the traditional and changing role of municipal governments vis-à-vis immigration, and refer to a major shift in Canadian immigration policy that has shaped the types of service sought by new­comers, which has created a novel type of “immigrant in need.” We then examine the relative importance of immigration to the five centres and the types of new­comer these localities receive. The second part of this chapter attempts to explain variations that our study revealed about the shape that municipal-level initiatives are taking and the actors involved therein. We review the literature to account for three categories of intervention in immigrant settlement policy and programs: by municipalities alone, by social forces (non-governmental actors), and by multiple actors in multilevel, multisectoral initiatives. The complexity of factors that account for the particular responses made by municipalities and local constellations of social forces, in their effort to meet the new­comer needs for settlement and integration assistance, defy explanation offered by any one analytical perspective or one parsimonious set of variables. However, drawing on the most salient explanations provided by the literature, we then turn to our study centres and shine a searchlight on what appear to be the major determinants of municipal government involvement and the key factors explaining the focus on immigrant employment within the partnership-based initiatives. We conclude our chapter by asking two questions: first, whether the recent prominence of the involvement of Ontario municipalities in the settlement field reflects a novel type of relationship between levels of government and a greater role – or indeed leadership – of municipalities (and local social forces) in immigration policy; second, whether the policies of municipalities have been (or are



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likely to be) effective in responding to new­comers’ settlement and integration needs. Our answer to this second question will focus primarily on the employment-related partnerships that have sprung up in most of the centres in this study, whose limits in effecting systemic change are established by the neoliberal premises that inform them, but also by the limits to intervention at the local level in responding to forces that are global and multiscalar.

context for municipal involvement in immigrant settlement: jurisdictional issues The cities and suburbs of Ontario, whose growth is attributable in large part to immigration, currently face formidable challenges in providing appropriate, accessible, equitable, and comprehensive forms of settlement and integration assistance to a large and diverse infusion of new­comers. Importantly, “immigration and government programs targeted at immigrants are not policy areas that are normally identified with municipal governments” (Frisken and Wallace 2002, 2). Rather, this is a policy area where the federal government and the provinces share constitutional jurisdiction but the federal government has legal ascendancy and policy-making primacy (see Good 2005a, 262; Wayland 2006b, 39). Thus, while municipalities “are on the front lines when it comes to the reception of new­comers” (Wayland 2006b, 14), immigration policy – recruitment and integration – is constitutionally outside their jurisdiction and largely cordoned off from their field of influence. Moreover, despite sharing jurisdiction with the federal government on immigration matters and attracting the largest number and percentage of immigrants among all Canadian provinces, Ontario has been a relative latecomer in taking a more proactive role in immigration issues; while some provinces, such as Quebec, Manitoba, and British Columbia, have played a more dynamic role in immigrant recruitment and settlement since the 1990s, the Ontario government has been remarkably lagging in this respect. One possible reason for Ontario’s passivity in the immigration field may well have been that both the Ontario government and parliamentarians have been aware that immigrants gravitate to Ontario regardless of what settlement assistance the provincial government provides. Seidle (2010, 1), in his assessment of the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement, supports this perspective, noting that since 1960,

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Ontario has been the preferred destination for approximately half of all immigrants to Canada. Additionally, the Ontario government has historically remained less compelled to provide any form of settlement assistance other than language training, partly because of the historical reliance of new­comers on family, community, and “old country” ties. Many immigrant groups relied heavily on chain migration, particularly in the period between the late 1960s and 1990, when family reunification was a higher priority of immigration policy and family immigration was facilitated by sponsorships. Consequently, the brunt of assistance for economic and social adjustment and integration rested on extensive family and community social networks that provided new­comers with initial orientation to their new home and assistance in employment, housing, banking, loans, interpretation and translation, and sponsorship of additional family members (Goldstein 1996; Troper 2000). Finally, the 1990s, when the federal government was willing to devolve some responsibilities over immigration, was a period of diluted interest in settlement and integration for the Ontario government. The changing name of the provincial ministry charged with immigrant settlement reflected this diminished interest and also was suggestive of the Conservative ideology of individual “responsibilization” of immigrants – “from Ministry of Citizenship, to Ministry of Citizenship, Culture and Recreation, to Ministry of Citizenship” (ocasi 2009, 3). The 1995–2003 years of the Common Sense Revolution of the Conservative government of Mike Harris represented a period of complete obliteration of provincial policy voice on immigration and immigrant services (ocasi 2009, 9). While the Harris government can be seen as part of “neoliberal medicine ... prescribed across the country by New Democrat, Progressive Conservative, and Liberal governments alike,” it also represented the most uncompromisingly neoliberal provincial government, “creating a political environment reminiscent of Thatcherism and Reaganism” (Keil 2002, 588). The Thatcher and Reagan governments embraced “marketization” – the belief in the value and power of markets to set and administer policies and services – and introduced the mantras of neoliberalism, such as “private and personal responsibility and initiative, deregulation, privatization, liberalization of markets, free trade, downsizing of government, draconian cutbacks in the welfare state and its protections” (David Harvey, quoted in Keil 2002, 580).



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During the Harris era, most provincial immigrant support programs were dismantled or funding was severely reduced (Frisken and Wallace 2003; Sadiq 2004, ocasi 2009). A set of institutionalized relationships involving funding, service delivery, and advocacy between government and the non-profit sector was thereby undermined. In the 1990s and early 2000s, as part of the neoliberal erosion of Keynesian social welfare arrangements experienced at all levels of the Canadian state, the province’s municipalities had to grapple with devastating cuts in federal and provincial transfers and the downloading of major responsibilities, which dramatically affected services for immigrants and refugees.3 This period of dismantling and deregulation of public support for immigrants corresponded to what Peck and Tickell (1994) refer to as the “roll-back neoliberalism” phase in the short history of neoliberalism, where many of the gains made by equity-seeking groups representing marginalized populations were hastily swept aside (cited in Keil 2002, 580). Settlement organizations in Ontario also were concerned to avert an erosion in commitment to investment in settlement services once devolution of immigration policy to provincial levels occurred. Specifically, they observed that the governments of British Columbia and Quebec had moved federal transfer payments for settlement into general revenue rather than spending these funds on immigrant settlement and integration (ocasi 2009, 3). One reason for the recent negotiation of an immigration policy with Ontario has been the perception by the federal government and community groups that the Ontario government (under Liberal leadership as of 2003) was committed to supporting immigrant settlement and integration. According to the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (ocasi), the Liberal government under Dalton McGuinty has reversed some but not all of the decisions implemented by the previous Conservative government, particularly those that have had a harsh effect on immigrants and refugees. With the change in government in 2003, the Ministry of Citizenship became the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration (mci), with a specific focus on immigrant settlement and integration. The new government also demonstrated a commitment to invest in the labour market integration of immigrants in its decision to move its Labour Market Integration unit from its former location in the Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities to mci (ocasi 2009, 3). The time had come for the federal government, which had the blessing of the

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community settlement sector, to negotiate an agreement with this province (ocasi 2009, 2). The energetic formation of partnerships in Ontario’s centres, particularly aimed at assisting the labour market integration of immigrants, reflects the relative consensus among provincial authorities, immigration advocates, and researchers regarding several matters. These include the dire need to redress the Ontario government’s shirking of leadership and financial support for immigrant policy and program issues since the mid-1990s, concern that the level of federal funding for Ontario had remained unchanged for some time and required “fair share” adjustments in relation to the size and annual growth of Quebec’s grant, and, finally, the declining job and income outcomes for new­comers (Seidle 2010, 9). But the flourishing of such partnerships also instantiates Peck and Tickell’s second period of neoliberalism – “roll-out neoliberalism” – the active creation of new institutions on a governance terrain where distinctions between state, civil society, and market become blurred and where “marketization” rules each of these domains and the relationships between them (Keil 2002, 582). The new activity and infusion of funds in the settlement sector has caused many service providers in Ontario to express a spirit of cautious optimism about the funding and delivery of settlement services. This optimism is attributable to the more serious attention recently paid by the provincial McGuinty government to settlement issues, the new infusion of federal immigrant settlement funding promised in the November 2005 signing of the landmark CanadaOntario Immigration Agreement (coia), and the assumed enhanced capacity which such new resources might buy in terms of services to integrate immigrants in Ontario successfully. Thus, the five-year agreement, which officially ended in March 2010 but was extended until March 2011, promised $920 million in additional funding for settlement services in Ontario. These agreements are governmental catalysts to encourage municipalities to invest in multisectoral forms of governance. The emergent governance relationships in immigrant settlement are markedly in conformity with a number of trends. These include the paradigmatic shift in local governance in Western liberal democracies to neoliberal welfare regimes, the embrace of New Public Management, and the development of multisectoral networks, alliances, and local partnerships (discussed below) (Geddes 2005; Lazar and Leuprecht 2007).



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Within the framework of fiscal federalism, immigrant settlement is for Ontario’s municipalities one of their key “unfunded mandates,” whereby they administer policies made at upper levels, acting on things for which central governments have not made legal provisions, and using “whatever resources they can muster or whatever experience they can call on” (McMillan 2006, 47; see also Frisken and Wallace 2003, 158). The federal government’s presence in the municipalities’ settlement services is indeed felt through the funding which service provider organizations administer through Citizenship and Immigration’s settlement and official languagetraining programs. Since 1985, Ontario’s Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration has had lead responsibility for integration and new­comer settlement and has been involved in settlement service contracts and purchase-of-service agreements brokered through the New­comer Settlement Program (nsp) (Sadiq 2004, 11). The nsp funds “core services” that include assessment, referral, information and o ­ rientation, and general settlement assistance, as well as ­“employment-facilitation services” to help new­comers access jobtraining programs and acquire professional certification and recognition of foreign academic credentials (Sadiq 2004, 11–12). The 1995 shift of the Ontario government from direct investment in the public sector to competitive contract and purchase-of-service agreement with non-profit and for-profit operators has exemplified the infusion of neoliberal ideas of marketization and business efficiency into the delivery of immigrant settlement services. Notwithstanding these constraints, municipalities feel less constrained than the federal government about following rules of client eligibility (such as years in Canada and immigrant status) in the types of service they provide to immigrants. Indeed, they can and have played a major role in raising attention and attempting to forge strategies to deal with often hidden issues, such as the impact on immigrant communities of domestic violence, the isolation of immigrant women, hiv/aids, and the complex impact that immigration policies have had on people of colour and women (Richmond 2004, 5).

the construction of immigrants in need of settlement assistance In her path-breaking analysis of immigrant women in Canada conducted during the early 1980s, Roxana Ng (1986, 269) asked, “Who

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is the ‘immigrant woman’?” Ng proceeded to answer this question by arguing that it was not primarily the person’s legal status that identified her as an immigrant. Rather, capitalist development and the Canadian labour market, stratified by gender and race/ethnicity, plus a “host of institutional processes,” were at work in a variety of institutional locations (professional organizations, labour unions, educational and health sectors, and community associations), including the state, in pursuit of its goal of assisting capital accumulation, to constitute “immigrant women” as a visible social category. Ng argues, “Our common-sense understanding of the term usually conjures up an image of a woman who is visibly different (that is, from a different ethnic or cultural background); who cannot speak English properly; who does not behave appropriately in public situations; and who occupies a certain position in the [class]/occupational hierarchy (for example, a cleaning-lady or a sewing-machine operator in a sweat-shop)” (1986, 269). Some twenty years later, the popular understanding of “the immigrant” still distinguishes her (or him) sharply from the Canadian-born or Ontario-born “just Canadian/Ontarian,” yet the characteristics of the present-day immigrant who shows up at the offices of immigrant service agencies are much more diversified. As one in-depth study of municipal response to immigrant settlement in the Greater Toronto Area, conducted in the early 1990s suggests, there is “no typical immigrant client. Clients may range from poor and unskilled persons with little or no English to very skilled English speakers who lack Canadian experience” (Frisken and Wallace 2000, ix, emphasis added). Not all immigrants seek a specialized set of “settlement services,” and indeed many depend solely on families and relatives for support in accessing job contacts, housing, and subsistence (Statistics Canada 2003a, 17). The segment of the foreign-born that requires most settlement assistance, however, has become increasingly diversified and includes points-tested, professional, and highly skilled immigrants entering through the economic stream who were specifically selected by Canadian immigration policy for their assumed ability to readily achieve economic integration and contribute to the Canadian economy. The problems associated with the economic integration of immigrants and underutilization of immigrants’ skills amount to one of the most disquieting contemporary issues and increasingly chronic



Immigrant Settlement in Ontario’s City-Regions 85

problems connected to immigration (Reitz 2005). As Jeffrey Reitz states, although education credentials are higher than average and are rising among recent immigrants compared with the Canadianborn workforce, and despite the relative stability over time in recent immigrants’ official-language fluency, skilled immigrants are working in occupations below their skill levels and have experienced a downward trend in their earnings (2005, 3). Indeed, the impact of the federal government’s selected skilled worker programs is as likely to be associated with poverty and unemployment outcomes as with economic development. According to Statistics Canada in 2004, the low-income rate for immigrants who had been in Canada less than one year was 42.2%, compared with 14.2% in the general population. While their low-income rates decline the longer immigrants have been in Canada, recent immigrants with up to ten years in Canada still face a low-income rate of approximately 32.9%, more than double that of the total Canadian population (Picot et al. 2007). The unemployment rate in 2007 for immigrants aged 25 to 54 with five or fewer years in Canada was 11%, compared with 4.9% for the Canadian-born population (Gilmore 2007). New­comers also face significant underemployment: in 2003, among skilled workers aged 25 to 44, more than half (52%) had not found a job in their intended field within their first two years in Canada (Statistics Canada 2005). Rates of both unemployment and underemployment among immigrants are consistently higher for women than for men (Statistics Canada 2003b). Such high levels of immigrant poverty, unemployment, and underemployment are unsettling for several reasons, but their significance is heightened by the knowledge that poverty affects so many immigrants who were specifically recruited because the federal immigration policy had deemed them as highly likely to succeed economically. Many centres of destination are consequently losing these immigrants to other cities, provinces, or countries. Rather than immigrants settling permanently in Canada, many either return to their home countries or engage in “onward” or multiple migration, moving to other countries where employment prospects appear less dim. Thus, in a study conducted for Statistics Canada, Aydemir and ­Robinson (2006) found that among male immigrants 25 to 45 years of age who landed in 1981, about one-third left the country within the first twenty years after arrival. As one agency employee stated, “The transnational trend has been growing with many skilled

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i­mmigrants returning to their native countries ... In some respects they want to be here, but the downside is that they do not have a job commensurate with their skills and so they want to go back to their country of origin. So, we have a ‘to-ing’ and ‘fro-ing.’ The issue really is that we are losing people going back because they are not getting the jobs and are not integrating economically” (interview, tor 4). Another agency employee noted, “Suitcases are under the bed. We have helped that to happen” (interview, wat 1). The vast majority of new­comers to Ontario are non-European or “visible minorities” who are encountering systemic racialized barriers within the process of settlement,4 lending a distinct racial cast to immigrant poverty and the entire matrix of new­comer needs. The barriers to accessing local jobs are subject to multiple – economic, political, and cultural – determinations that are also multiscalar and global as well as national and local. According to Picot et al. (2007, 5), “within the context of a ‘knowledge-based’ economy, immigrant selection procedures [in Canada] were altered in 1993 to encourage the immigration of more highly educated immigrants. As part of this impetus, the number entering in the ‘family’ and ‘refugee’ immigrant classes was reduced, replaced by economic immigrants in the ‘skilled’ class.” The share in the economic class (including principal applicants, spouses, and dependants) increased from 29% in the 1992 entering cohort to 55% in 2001, rising to 60% in 2006 (cic 2007; Hawthorne 2008; Picot et al. 2007). Indicative of these trends is the contrast between the formal educational levels of the immigrant and Canadian-born populations. Thus in 2006, while 36% of immigrants between the ages 25 and 54 had at least a bachelor’s degree, only 22% of the Canadian-born population had this level of educational attainment (Statistics Canada 2007b). The skilled worker immigration program has been critiqued for its rigidity and unresponsiveness to particular skill shortages and needs in the labour market. All skilled workers are evaluated against the same standard, based on their human capital, language, age, education, work experience, job offer, and adaptability, without any consideration given to fluctuating labour market needs and occupational demand. Considerable misalignment exists between immigrants’ expectations and actual employment opportunities. A number of factors collude to produce this situation, key among them being the volatile nature of the globalized economy and labour market conditions, the time lag between immigration selection



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­ ecisions and the actual process of immigration to Canada,5 and d then the extremely lengthy process and obstacles that skilled and professional immigrants face in Canada in obtaining recognition for their foreign credentials and work experience. Reitz (2005, 13) identifies a number of areas requiring institutional support for the sustainability of the Canadian immigration program in the evolving global labour market, including bridge-training programs, subsidized workplace internship and mentoring programs for immigrants, and ethnic diversity training built into human-resource-management training programs. The devaluation of immigrant credentials and overseas work experience, while not reducible simply to racism on the part of employers, human resources personnel, or corporations, are nonetheless part of structural forms of discrimination and systemic exclusionary processes. In addition, since the terrorist attack on the United States on 11 September 2001, the ideological and discursive work of a host of media and security agencies has racialized the “immigrant” in specific ways to vilify and conjure up mass fear of Arabs and Muslims. The global rise in Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment most certainly has had a negative impact on the hiring of Muslims and Arabs in Ontario, as elsewhere. Recent immigrants also lack the personal and professional networks that are tapped in contemporary Canadian hiring practices, especially for managerial and higher-level jobs (Fong 2008, 7). These processes have constituted a novel form of immigrant in need of new­comer settlement and integration programs – the immigrant who arrives with plentiful human capital, yet is unable to translate his/her specialized skills and advanced education into a commensurate job and income. It is perhaps not surprising that this degree-qualified immigrant has become the focus of the majority of multilevel governance projects, the first crop of such immigrant integration experiments in Ontario city-regions, described below.

a five-municipality study Our study includes five centres: Toronto, Ottawa, Peel, Niagara, and Waterloo. We sought to include in our research cities and municipalities with large foreign-born populations (50% in Toronto and 48.6% in Peel in 2006) and also those with smaller immigrant populations that are growing at varying rates (22.0% in Ottawa, 22.3%

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Table 1 Immigrant Population Indicators for Five Ontario Centres, 2006 and 2001 Census Data

Ontario Toronto Ottawa Peel Region Niagara   Region Waterloo  Region

Change in immigrant population, 2001 to 2006

Percentage of immigrants arrived between 2001 and 2006

Total population, 2006

Total immigrant population, 2006

Immigrants as percentage of population, 2006

12,028,895 2,503,281 812,129 1,154,070 427,421

3,398,725 1,237,720 178,545 561,240 75,835

28.3% 50.0% 22.0% 48.6% 17.7%

+12.2% +1.9% +7.1% +32.1% +6.5%

17.1% 21.6% 16.6% 21.1% 10.4%

473,260

105,375

22.3%

+13.4%

16.1%

Sources: Statistics Canada 2003c, 2007c

in the Waterloo Region, and 17.7% in the Niagara Region, where growth is considerably slower than the provincial average) (Statistics Canada 2007c; Niagara Training and Adjustment Board 2006).6 We selected regions where the profiles of foreign-born populations diverged, with a large proportion made up of refugees in Ottawa and Niagara,7 in contrast to economic and family class immigrants in Toronto, Peel, and Waterloo, thus creating diverse integration and policy challenges. Our selected municipalities also ranged in overall size of population, from the largest metropolitan city (Toronto, with a population of over 2.5 million) to mid-sized cities (Waterloo and Niagara, with populations under 500,000), and Ottawa and Peel in between (each relatively large municipalities with populations of about 1 million). Table 1 gives a summary presentation of key immigration-related demographics in each centre. Regionally, four of the five centres (Ottawa being the exception) are in the southern, densely populated “extended Golden Horseshoe,” precisely because this region has attracted the vast majority of recent and historical immigration and faces the greatest challenges in immigrant integration. By comparison, the current challenge for many of the province’s northern and rural areas is to attract greater numbers of immigrants to sustain and (re-)build their precarious resource-based agricultural and service-based local economies and communities.



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As part of the restructuring of governance in Ontario according to the neoliberal tenets of New Public Management (referred to as “Alternative Service Delivery” in Ontario), the two largest centres in this study – Toronto and Ottawa – underwent the process of provincially imposed municipal restructuring, consolidation, and/or amalgamation in the 1990s and early 2000s in the name of efficiency and lower expenditures. New Public Management (npm) refers to an approach to restructuring the public service that emerged in the mid-1980s (Dunleavy et al. 2005). A strategy for organizing governmental activities in a way that mimics successful strategies in the private sector, npm is steeped in neoliberal ideology that arguably creates “post-bureaucratic environments” (O’Brien 2006, 13). Governments restructure their bureaucracies in order to improve service delivery, premised on the overall notion that the traditional roles and responsibilities of government should be questioned. Trust is put in the private sector and increasingly in the non-governmental community sector to produce service outcomes more efficiently. To this end, advocates of npm aim to streamline the bureaucracy through the expenditure of fewer public resources (including taxpayer dollars), greater reliance on technology, and more private-sector involvement (O’Brien 2006). npm often involves “amalgamations, decentralizations, downsizing, privatization and contracting out alongside calls for greater public accountability, efficiency and lowered expenditures” (O’Brien 2006, 2). The amalgamation of the City of Toronto in 1998, whereby the city claimed annual savings (in 2003) of $136.5 million (Kitchen 2003, 10) is a prime example of npm. Critics, however, have expressed skepticism about claims of “massive savings” stemming from the amalgamation of Ontario’s municipalities. Sancton argues that the idea that every city-region needs a single municipal government, thus creating a large-scale publicsector monopoly, runs into the same problems of inefficiency and inattentiveness to the needs of the citizen as large-scale private monopolies do vis-à-vis the needs of customers (Sancton 1999). Moreover, it is disingenuous to equate amalgamation with smaller government when in Toronto, for instance, the number of municipal employees has grown since amalgamation (Keil 2002, 588). Kushner and Siegel (2005), who conducted extensive interviews with residents in three amalgamated municipalities, found that local residents did not feel that there had been a major deterioration in the

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level of service or sense of community since the amalgamation. They discovered, however, that amalgamations did not result in major efficiencies or tax reductions and concluded that structures might not matter very much to residents, who are simply concerned about whether or not their garbage gets collected. The creation of fewer municipalities was also meant to increase the global competitiveness of city-regions. Thus, when he was Ontario’s opposition party leader, Dalton McGuinty was quoted as saying that the Ottawa-Carleton region could only compete in the global marketplace as one city (Sancton 1999, 55). Amalgamation took place in Ottawa in 2001. The municipal governments that emerged from these amalgamations now assumed jurisdiction over an increasing mixture of urban, suburban, and in some cases rural spaces, such that as a result of these processes of restructuring, it makes more sense to speak of “cityregions” rather than “cities” per se. The city-regions in our study fell into two types: single municipalities (cities) with one-tier governments made up of city councils (Ottawa and Toronto), and regional municipalities, made up of smaller municipalities (cities, towns, and townships) that are presided over by two-tier governments composed of individual municipal councils and a regional council. Niagara, Peel, and Waterloo are regional municipalities established by provincial law in 1970, 1973, and 1974, respectively. Niagara has twelve individual municipalities, the largest of which are the cities of St Catharines and Niagara Falls; Peel has two cities (Mississauga and Brampton) and the town of Caledon; and Waterloo has three cities (Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge) and four townships. In terms of municipal services, the two-tiered structures have a clear jurisdictional division of labour between the municipal and regional levels. In designing our research, we focused our government interviews at the regional level because services most important to immigrant settlement (social assistance, housing, and health services) are delivered at this level. That being said, we did find some cases, either in available literature or anecdotally through interviews, of immigration- or diversity-related initiatives at the individual municipality level, and where these were deemed significant, we highlight them in our discussion. Unlike some researchers (e.g., Good 2005a, 2009; Poirier 2006), we focus our policy analysis on immigrant settlement and integration policies rather than merging immigrant settlement with multi-



Immigrant Settlement in Ontario’s City-Regions 91

culturalism. This was a deliberate choice, built on a recognition that policies may attend to the diversity and equity issues of a multiethnic and multiracial population that may in fact have been ­Canadian-born for two, three, or more generations and that it is therefore problematic to conflate “immigrants” with “ethnic/racial minorities.” Certainly, the development of the policy of multiculturalism at the federal level occurred separately from the policy of immigration and immigrant settlement (Stasiulis 1988). This is not to say that some municipalities do not themselves use a multicultural or diversity management approach to issues of immigrant integration or subsume immigrant settlement under diversity management. Not all of them do, however, which further reinforces the need to analytically retain the distinction between immigrant settlement/integration and multiculturalism policies. The specificity of racialization, exclusion, and the settlement and integration needs of immigrants differs across our five centres, where immigrants are drawn from different regions and different source countries, as well as arriving under different immigration statuses. In two of the five centres, Toronto and Peel, the top five immigrant source countries are non-Western (India, China, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka), whereas in Niagara and Waterloo, the United States figures in the top five, as does the United Kingdom for Niagara.8 With respect to visible minority populations, 2006 census statistics revealed an increase in all five centres, most notably in the Peel Region, from 39% of the total population in 2001 to 50% in 2006. Visible minorities made up 47% of the population in Toronto, 20% of the population of Ottawa, 13% of the population in the Waterloo Region, and 6% of the population in Niagara, the lowest percentage of visible minorities in our study (Statistics Canada 2007d). However, migrant seasonal agricultural and tourism workers, most of whom are racialized minorities recruited from the global South, are numerous in the Niagara Region – yet unaccounted for statistically, because they are not captured by census data, and generally ignored in immigrant settlement or integration policies and programs. (See table 2 for a summary of this information on visible minorities, the countries of origin of recent immigrants, and languages spoken in immigrant homes.) In seeking to understand how immigrants are governed through settlement and integration policies in Ontario, we conducted semistructured interviews in each municipality with executive directors

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Table 2 Visible Minority Population, Recent Immigrants’ Countries of Birth, and Languages in Immigrant Households, 2001 and 2006 Census Data Visible minorities as percentage of total population, 2006

Change in visible minorities as percentage of total population, 2001 to 2006

Toronto

46.9%

Ottawa

Top 5 countries of birth among recent arrivals, 2006

Top 5 languages spoken in immigrant households, after English, 2006

 +4.1%

cma:1 India China Pakistan Philippines Sri Lanka

Chinese Italian Tamil Spanish Portuguese

20.2%

 +2.2%

China India usa Philippines Colombia

Chinese Arabic French Spanish Vietnamese

Peel Region

50.0%

+11.5%

Only cma data available

Panjabi (Punjabi) Chinese Urdu Polish Tagalog

Niagara Region

 6.3%

 +2.0%

Colombia usa China India United Kingdom

Italian Spanish Chinese Polish German

Waterloo Region

13.1%

 +2.9%

India China Pakistan Romania usa

Portuguese Chinese Serbian Spanish Polish

Sources: Statistics Canada 2003d, 2007d, 2007e, 2007f 1

The Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (cma) includes the Peel Region.

and front-line workers in mainstream, multi-ethnic, ethnocultural, and faith-based organizations that provided services to immigrants. We interviewed those in charge of providing immigrant services or formulating policies for new­ comers or particular immigrant populations in organizations dedicated to immigrant ­ ­ settlement



Immigrant Settlement in Ontario’s City-Regions 93

s­ ervices, school boards, community health centres, immigrant em­ployment organizations, representatives from municipal and provincial governments, and chambers of commerce or boards of trade. We also interviewed immigration and other federal and provincial government representatives. In total, we spoke to 71 people in 64 interviews that lasted from one to two hours, conducted over a 26-month period, from August 2005 to November 2007. We sought information about how different levels of government and public, private, and civil-society actors were involved and interacted with one another in producing and administering policies, programs, and strategies for immigrant integration and settlement. We asked for assessments of what these experts felt were immigrants’ most pressing needs, what type of policies and services existed for immigrant settlement, who was privileged and disadvantaged by these policies, and the type and adequacy of resources available to assist them in their integration or settlement. We questioned respondents about how they felt these policies were made and which priorities, interests, and groups they felt held sway in formulating these policies. Thus, we make no claim to comprehensiveness in our choice of policy areas, agencies that deliver them, or actors that have a role in shaping policies that potentially have an impact on the shortand long-term integration of immigrants within these Ontario cities or communities. Our chapter also is unable to capture, in more than a superficial way, the rich community assets and diversity of activities engaged in by the settlement sector – in partnership with government agencies or working on their own (Social Planning Council of Ottawa 2004). Our objective here is more modest – to explore and provide insight into whether there are identifiable patterns emerging in municipal initiatives, in intergovernmental relations, and the involvement of social forces (interest groups, voluntary organizations, business associations, etc.) in policy-related undertakings in the five selected Ontario centres in the immigrant settlement policy field.

immigrant settlement initiatives in the five centres In the following discussion, we examine the character of emergent initia­ tives and ongoing undertakings focused on immigrant

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s­ettlement in “municipal spaces” in the five centres. We identify initiatives according to the actors and spheres involved: municipal/ regional government only (or where municipalities take the lead role), intergovernmental, “social forces,” and intersectoral and multilevel initiatives. We draw on an analytical distinction between “government” and “governance” approaches in addressing social and economic issues to assist in the differentiation, and conclude this section with a summary of the similarities and differences among the five centres in the patterns of their immigrant settlement undertakings. Municipal/Regional Government Activity The first observation to be made about local-level initiatives is that none of the municipal or regional governments in the study have made policy on or related to immigrant settlement, where “policy” is understood in a law or legislative sense, an understanding that most respondents drew upon. A lack of mandate is the key explanatory factor here. Our respondents, both governmental and nongovernmental, often repeated the refrain that while municipal ­governments may want more involvement in immigrant settlement decisions and outcomes, they lack the mandate to enact immigration-related public policies of their own. However, in order to grasp what is going on in municipalities, we forward an idea of “policy” understood more broadly, in the sense of decisions or responses taken by governments in order to address particular issues or problems. These decisions and responses can materialize in outwardoriented initiatives, strategies, or projects, or inward-looking guidelines to manage affairs internal to government structures. If we look for these types of activity, we find municipalities increasingly active in the immigrant settlement field. Municipalities have increasingly recognized the need to respond – and indeed in some cases to be proactive – to immigration issues at the local level without legislative capacity in order to achieve benefits and minimize negative outcomes in how government policies at higher levels play themselves out on the ground.9 We encountered a veritable flurry of activity in the five centres as municipalities and regions, to a greater or lesser extent, develop strategies to attract new­comers to facilitate local economic development. They are also devising networks of services, adapting programs to the ethnocultural and linguistic diversity of local populations, and



Immigrant Settlement in Ontario’s City-Regions 95

tackling the problems of integration and exclusion as they present themselves to front-line agencies. So instead of immigration policies per se, municipal actors are focusing on strategies, initiatives, and delivery and/or support of settlement services. We have divided these undertakings into two categories, referring to the principal focus of the municipality: immigrants or diversity more generally. Immigrant-Focused Initiatives: Peel and Ottawa Indicative of recent undertakings focused explicitly on the immense challenges faced by immigrants/new­comers in economic integration, is the Position Statement on Immigration issued by the Region of Peel’s Human Services Department, with the support of the regional council. The position statement acknowledges the central contributions that immigrants make to the region’s rapid growth and to its economy and also outlines the immense challenges that recent immigrants face in successful economic integration. Acknowledging that “Peel does not have the long history of settlement agencies and supports that are based in Toronto,” the position statement pledges the department to support the regional council in its advocacy for essential services and access to jobs for immigrants in Peel; to ensure that programs are fully accessible to clients of all backgrounds; to support the inclusion of new­comers in community and economic life; and to design innovative services that meet the needs of residents of diverse backgrounds. Furthermore, the region’s Planning Department has embarked on a project called Liveable Peel, which includes immigrants/immigration as one of three strategic areas of focus in research on managing and capitalizing on population growth over the next thirty to fifty years. Regional planners in Peel have been fairly forward thinking with respect to how immigration is and will be affecting land use and community planning in their area. Over the past decade, in response to the continuing ballooning of the number of new­comers to the area (equivalent to about 24,000 immigrants annually between 1991 and 2001), planners have begun to conduct extensive demographic analysis and collaborative research on the potential benefits and challenges that immigrants bring to the planning process (Prasad and Yeh 2009). Through their research and action plans, they have striven to be “change agents” (ibid., 70) by providing input to service providers and decision makers, including the regional council

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and the Peel New­comer Strategy Group, discussed below. “Educating and making our leaders aware of the issue was paramount” (ibid.). In this instance, it was municipal staff rather than municipal politicians who took the initiative. Although regional planners have been engaged with immigrant settlement issues, and although Peel Region’s position statement clearly reflects a recognition that lack of integration has severe consequences for the half of the region’s population that is foreignborn (citing, for example, the fact that new­comers earn 40 per cent less than Canadian-born residents), some immigrant-serving associations have perceived the region as lacklustre in its development of initiatives to redress the dire situation for new­comers. Thus, the director of a settlement service agency targeting African Canadian immigrants characterized the policy response of the region as “kneejerk” and lacking a “well-integrated plan and vision,” and compared the response of Peel Region and some of its municipalities (e.g., Brampton) with Toronto’s proactive policies, concluding: “I have not come across a single policy from the Region itself that defines what to do for new­comers or [that] had any visioning on how to assist new­comers. Most of it is guided by, okay, we have money for Ontario Works, let’s provide that service” (interview, peel 2). Peel Region’s position statement details intentions and principles rather than ameliorative actions and programs; however, its focus on new­comers contrasts significantly with the municipal government of one of its three constitutive cities, Mississauga, which has been resistant to engaging in the immigration and diversity policy fields (Good 2005b), despite the obvious reshaping of the ethnic and racial composition of the city and the contribution that new­comers have made to its remarkable growth (Urbaniak 2006). The reasons for this relative inactivity may not be restricted to the municipalregional division of labour; they may have more to do with the inordinate power of Mississauga’s mayor, who has held that position since 1978, having been re-elected eight times and acclaimed twice, with a consistent 90+ per cent of the popular vote. Kristin Good (2009, 105–6) attributes the high degree of popularity of Mayor McCallion to her reign during a period of exceptional growth and revenue generation and her enthusiastic participation in Mississauga community events. In her comparison of the municipal responses to immigration of Mississauga and other cities in the Greater Toronto Area, Good (2009, 132–4) argues that Hazel McCallion’s personal



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opinions on diversity and immigration largely govern how the city responds, cautioning, however, that McCallion has won inordinate respect and backing from civil-society groups, many of which are fearful of the financial consequences of challenging her. The mayor has been identified as having a less than welcoming attitude toward immigrants. In a 2001 National Post article, ­McCallion was quoted as complaining about the immigrant clientele of one of the local hospitals, saying it was “loaded with people in their native costumes” (Urbaniak 2006, 275). And explaining Mississauga’s policy against translating municipal documents into languages other than English, she stated, “If they [immigrants] come to Canada, they should adopt the Canadian way” (Good 2005b, 9). Good also argues (2005b) that McCallion has adopted a nonresponse to immigration as a political strategy aimed at holding Mississauga’s ground against the federal government, which has fiscal responsibility for the costs of immigration but has downloaded many immigration-related services to municipalities without additional funding. The Mississauga City Council has placed the onus on the immigrant rather than on the municipality to adapt and has largely limited the city’s acknowledgment of its ethnocultural diversity to uncontroversial events, such as sponsoring multicultural festivals (Good 2005a). In Ottawa, most non-governmental respondents were in agreement that the city had provided little leadership in immigrant settlement initiatives, leaving it to non-governmental organizations to provide assistance to new­comers and coordinate their services. Thus, while two spots on the recently formed Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership Council (olipc) are to be taken by staff members of the City of Ottawa, the council is chaired by the Catholic Immigration Centre, which has also applied for funding on behalf of Local Agencies Serving Immigrants (lasi) and other agencies (Catholic Immigration Centre of Ottawa, n.d.). The relative invisibility of the City of Ottawa on immigration issues belies its more activist history. Almost three decades have passed since then-mayor Marion Dewar showed how proactive the local government could be in responding to the plight of Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian refugees, and in exerting pressure upward to effect federal refugee policy action.10 However, the city maintains that efforts are currently underway to raise awareness both within the city as a corporation and among the city’s residents about the importance of immigration to the area’s

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economic strength and the need to improve immigrants’ settlement and integration experiences. Thus, the Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee (edac) was formed in 2001, coinciding with Ottawa’s amalgamation and mandated to address discrimination (Biles and Tolley 2008, 130). In 2007 the city completed a report called Faces of Ottawa to convey a thorough understanding of the immigrants who have chosen Ottawa as their new home by examining the experiences and indicators of immigrants’ labour market integration (City of Ottawa 2007). The report was intended to inform the recently formed Immigration Ottawa Initiative, whose objective is to develop a city-wide strategy to improve social inclusion and labour market integration for the residents of Ottawa, including immigrants, linked to local economic development priorities. While the Economic Development Department at the city produced the report, the impetus came from actors outside municipal government, notably the Social Planning Council of Ottawa and the Metropolis Project, a federally funded policy research initiative, which conducted research on immigrants’ experiences in Ottawa. A number of cross-sectoral, consultative meetings with expert panels on “Ottawa: Our Diverse Cities” were held between 2004 and 2007, preceding the city’s recognition of the need for and development of the report. Writing about similar Ottawabased exercises in broader public consultation, Biles and Tolley (2008, 131) note that while they permit inclusion of more ethnically diverse voices in policy decisions taken by Ottawa’s elected officials, who are decidedly unrepresentative of such diversity, there remain troubling questions about the efficacy of these non-electoral forums in actually shaping policy and outcomes. Immigrants as a Subset of “Diversity Management”: Toronto, Waterloo, and Niagara The response to immigration by municipal governments in Toronto, Waterloo, and Niagara demonstrates an approach that envelopes immigrants into the management of ethnocultural diversity more generally, efforts that often focus inward on the operation of government services. The “managing diversity” approach originates in the management and human resources literature in the 1980s, and its major motivation is to tap new markets, both internally to a national labour market and, more importantly, globally, through



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the construction of a diverse workplace (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002, 153–5). As Abu-Laban and Gabriel argue, diversity management is shaped by business strategies and goals. Thus, while it may not ignore equity issues altogether, it tends to treat diversity in a manner that fails to acknowledge “the privilege and power that some groups have enjoyed, [as well as] the very real effects [of] racial and gender inequality” (ibid. 2002, 156). It also “neglects the larger dynamics – employment practices and systemic barriers – within an organization that produce and reproduce systemic dis­advantage” (ibid.). In Niagara, the Community Services Department, under a “We Value Diversity” banner, is responding to diversity among its clientele by training staff, increasing outreach to diverse communities, and promoting community cultural events. This is based on an inclusive notion of diversity that includes “persons of colour” but also references Aboriginal populations, francophones, and people with disabilities (Region of Niagara Community Services 2007). Most recently, in March 2010, the Niagara Regional Council passed the Niagara Culture Plan. There is no mention of new­comers or immigrants in this plan, which is aimed at enhancing the economic, social, and ecological benefits of culture (broadly understood) for the area and contributing to Niagara’s planning priorities: “The Culture Plan supports the Region’s commitment to integrated planning for sustainability through the more rigorous integration of culture in existing and future planning and initiatives” (Niagara Region 2009, 7). The plan, which outlines a multi-year agenda, identifies the importance of leveraging Niagara’s cultural assets, including people, places, and identities, and of further cultural development. It is the culmination of work undertaken since 2005 on the part of the regional government in consultation with business, foundations, community agencies, and educational institutions. Of the stated goals, one that exemplifies Niagara’s focus on cultural diversity is to “build shared understanding and promote culture in order to make Niagara a place where people want to live, work, learn, play, visit and invest” (Niagara Region 2009, 5). The proposed activities include facilitating cultural learning, supporting initiatives that promote shared identity, and engaging the community in its support of cultural activities. In Waterloo, the regional government’s Employment Income Support Department conducted a review of its services between 2005

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and 2007, examining how accessible and effective they were for different client groups, including immigrants and refugees, who make up 31 per cent of the caseload (Region of Waterloo 2007). The department recommended the adoption of policies aimed at ensuring equitable treatment of all clients, and more diversity awareness and sensitivity training and resources for staff (ibid. 2005). In contrast to Peel, where the regional government was more active than its constitutive cities, the City of Kitchener has developed a strategic plan on diversity (interview, wat 7), with an activities timeline from 2006 to 2011. While this strategy defines diversity in broad strokes, including disability, for instance, it explicitly includes new­comers among its target populations. This strategy addresses both government and community-focused issues: diversity among city employees and within city functions (including processes for recognition of foreign credentials and availability of bylaws in other languages), development of a corporate access, equity, and inclusion policy, support to new Canadians looking to start small businesses, and communication and outreach strategies to reach diverse audiences. Walton-Roberts (2007, 18), however, has critiqued the municipal governments of Kitchener, especially Waterloo, for “failing to encourage diversity within various sub-committees and community panels formed to advise the government.” Like the other municipalities, Waterloo’s regional government has recently given more focus to immigrant settlement through its application and successful receipt of coia funding for a Local Immigration Partnership, contracting the Centre for Community Based Research to facilitate the process (Centre for Community Based Research n.d.) Toronto, whose official motto is “Diversity Our Strength,” has the most developed and long-standing set of diversity strategies of the centres studied, and likely of all Canadian cities. It has committed itself in its access and equity statement to operationalizing this mantra in the management of both its own government and the larger community. Dating back to the 1970s, the city’s bureaucracy has demonstrated historical leadership in human rights and employment equity policies that aim to make the city bureaucracy an inclusive workplace, even at top levels such as city manager and deputies (Siemiatycki 2008, 43).11 However, Siemiatycki (2008, 43) contends that recent leadership and initiatives supporting the immigrant and refugee populations and diversity strategies have come



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from non-visible minority politicians, including Toronto’s former mayor and councillor, David Miller, who is of Anglo-Saxon ancestry. Siemiatycki suggests, however, that the commitment to diversity and inclusion evident among Toronto politicians of all backgrounds would not have been possible without the prior existence of a large, diverse, and vocal civil-society network of identity-based service and advocacy organizations (2008, 44). Good (2009, 128–9) deploys Alan Cairn’s concept of the “embedded state” to characterize the interdependence between the City of Toronto and civil-society organizations, some of which are funded to lobby the city to be more responsive to the needs of immigrants and to address equity and diversity policies. With respect to outward-looking policy, Toronto’s overall strategy has been to envelope new­comers into the management of diversity more generally and to meet the needs of immigrants as residents of Toronto, rather than as a separate group needing special treatment. Since 2001, the city has had an Immigration and Settlement Policy Framework, whose stated goals are (the seemingly unnecessary one of) attracting new­comers as well as the provision of support to enable new­comers to integrate and to participate in the political, economic, social, and cultural life of the city (City of Toronto, n.d.) However, it is notable that the members of the city staff whom we interviewed did not mention this framework and stated instead that the settlement and integration needs of new­comers are not specifically approached as immigrant issues: “In order to address immigration/refugee issues, we also have to address a whole range of other issues: human rights, access and equity, civic participation, [and] citizenship.” (interview, tor  6). In short, the municipal governments that adopt a diversity management approach see immigrants’ needs as integrated into the broader needs of the population, and a civic culture embracing various forms of cultural and structural diversity (Frisken and Wallace 2000). The representation of its multiculturalism and diversity are also key to Toronto’s self-branding, its global city strategy, and its claim of global prominence as a location for international tourism and capital accumulation (Keil 2002, 592). E-Governance of New­comers in All Five Centres Many Ontario municipalities are also increasingly taking up the opportunities presented by digital era governance to target

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­ ew­comers. Dunleavy et al. (2005) point to the rising salience of n websites and electronic services for different client groups, including immigrants. All five centres in the study have websites aimed at attracting and assisting new­comers, some of which have links to multilingual telephone information services (211 or 311).12 These sites demonstrate initiative on the part of municipalities – city councils in Ottawa and Toronto, and regional governments in Waterloo, Peel, and Niagara – and by other community stakeholders, in part assisted by coia funding. The coia devotes $2 million in annual funding to municipalities for the development of these websites and their coordination with those at the provincial and federal levels. Increasing reliance upon this self-serve style of digitized information and service provision often challenges new­comers, as elaborated on by our City of Toronto respondents. They pointed out that this model, aimed at those who are savvy in the ways of the Internet and self-service more generally, disadvantages those who “need that human contact” for the human services being delivered: “There’s a danger that you leave people to get lost in cyberspace, because the better these things get connected, there’s no shortage of information out there, and people just go from one cyber world to another. And are they getting the guidance that they need?” (interview, tor  7). They raised the risk of new­comers getting lost in the website maze with link after link, akin to automated phone systems that often deny the opportunity to speak with an actual, helpful person. This trend in e-governance of immigrants also exemplifies a neoliberal strategy of rule, encouraging “people to see themselves as individualized and active subjects responsible for enhancing their own well-being” (Larner 2000, 13). Intergovernmental Consultations In addition to taking steps on their own to attract new­comers and assist in experiences of settlement, municipal and regional governments are also engaged with other levels of government through avenues of intergovernmental conversation to voice their opinions and concerns with respect to immigration and settlement policies. With the major exception of Toronto, whose size and power has enabled it to shirk alliances with other municipalities, the primary forum for municipalities to explore immigration-related municipal interests in dialogue with provincial and federal immigration



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a­ uthorities has been the Municipal Immigration Committee, established by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (amo). The Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement commits the provincial and federal governments to work with municipal governments on immigration issues through this avenue. In addition, representatives from three municipalities in the study – Ottawa, Peel, and Toronto – converse with the provincial and federal governments through participation in the language training and/or settlement working groups formed out of the coia. Toronto, which meets separately with the provincial and federal governments, has made the greatest strides in the area of intergovernmental conversation and cooperation on immigration-related matters. This is not surprising, given the magnitude of immigration to Toronto, the accompanying challenges for service delivery, the city’s long experience, and the extensive infrastructure it has developed to respond to these challenges. A separate framework for Toronto was envisioned in the coia (cic 2005). This framework, the Canada-Ontario-Toronto Memorandum of Understanding (mou) on Immigration and Settlement, was signed on 29 September 2006 (cic 2006) by the federal and provincial ministers of immigration – Monte Solberg and Mike Colle, respectively – and the mayor of Toronto, David Miller. The mou provides a trigovernment framework for consultation on immigration issues affecting the City of Toronto (cic 2006). It is envisioned as the basis for partnership on policy, programs, and service delivery that enables immigrants settling in Toronto to have “the opportunity to become full participants in a diverse and equitable society” by being able to access a seamless supply of services and resources (cic 2006). Rather than an agreement with specific promises or commitments, the document reads more as a general intention among the three levels of government to work together and communicate more effectively. It lays out principles to guide intergovernmental work in four areas of activity: access to employment, education and training, services, and citizenship and civic engagement. The intent of the mou was not to alter jurisdictional responsibilities for immigration but to provide room for the City of Toronto at the policy-making table in conversation with upper levels of government. The mou was an exercise in empowerment for Toronto, an attempt to enlarge the city’s “power, money, and respect” (­ interview,

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tor  6). Unlike the coia, the mou is not a funding agreement, although it may provide the basis for future joint projects with some funding attached (interview, tor 6). Perhaps more importantly, “this is a way of enabling three institutions to become comfortable with each other’s ways of working and with each other’s ways of thinking” (interview, tor  6). From an intergovernmental relations perspective, the mou is strategically an important milepost changing the scalar relations of government, representing for the municipality “a little Trojan horse” (interview, tor 6).13 The relative recency of the agreement makes it difficult to evaluate the impact of the mou in decentralizing power in immigration policy. The idea that the agreement had challenged the federal government primacy in immigration policy, however, was put to a test in May 2008 when Immigration Minister Diane Finley used City of Toronto meeting rooms to sell the Harper government’s proposed amendments to federal immigration policy to Toronto’s ethnic community media without consulting the city about the controversial changes (Gray 2008). The proposed amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (since passed in Parliament on 10 June 2008 as part of the government’s budget legislation) are aimed at streamlining the recruitment process and shortening processing times for selected immigrants. They would permit the minister to arbitrarily and without oversight give priority to certain groups of immigrants, thus leading critics to charge that they increase the discretionary power of the minister, permit “cherry-picking” of immigrants based on criteria such as originating country, obstruct family reunification, and create unfair disadvantage to those immigrant applicants who had met the policy’s selection criteria and would now possibly be denied entry (Akin 2008; ocasi 2008). When Toronto Mayor David Miller raised an objection to the lack of consultation with Toronto through the mou regarding such far-reaching immigration reforms, the federal minister responded that she was unaware of the agreement that had been signed in September 2006 by her predecessor from her own party, Immigration Minister Monte Solberg! Moreover, a spokesperson for the federal Department of Citizenship and Immigration reinforced Finley’s implicit suggestion that the mou had not won Toronto a place on the policy-making table by stating that “Ottawa had no obligation to consult Toronto under its immigration ­agreement with the city, but would consult it and



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other stakeholders” about its implementation only once the bill had passed (Gray 2008). Social Forces: The “Settlement Sector” Governments are clearly not the only actors in immigrant settlement. Since the mid-1990s, Ontario’s settlement sector “has evolved into a para-state system that is financed by contractual arrangements between the state and non-governmental settlement agencies” (Sadiq 2004, i). This para-state system is characterized by its two-tier vertical structure, whereby large multiservice immigrantserving agencies (isas) are financially dependent on government purchase-of-service agreements, which in turn contract out services to smaller isas (ibid.). isas can also be categorized according to whether services to immigrants constitute their only or principal focus, or are included in a wider array of community programs, and whether clients are from one or several ethnocultural groups and/ or immigrant categories. Thus, across the five city-regions there are ethnospecific immigrant-serving agencies, multi-ethnic multiservice agencies, multi-ethnic refugee centres, etc. A common way of delineating multiservice community organizations from immigrantfocused ones is to call the former set “mainstream,” the ymca being a good example. In addition to the immigrant-serving organizations, the business sector and organized labour can be found among the “social forces” active in aspects of immigrant settlement, such as chambers of commerce, boards of trade, companies and corporations, and city and district labour councils. Some business groups have advocated for policies that they thought would lead to better immigrant employment integration. For example, in Peel Region, the Brampton Board of Trade had been active in advocating for the Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act (provincial legislation) through the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. However, we found the principal involvement of these actors was in intersectoral immigrant employment initiatives, discussed below. We focus here, therefore, on community service-providing organizations and their umbrella groups, outlining their services, type, funding, coordination, and policy voice. Respondents in the settlement sector expressed broadly similar interpretations of what settlement services were, who was funding

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them, who the major players were, and who should deliver services. Most immigrant settlement agencies suggested that a broad spectrum of settlement services existed in all five city-regions. The services most commonly mentioned were counselling, housing help and advocacy, language training, health services, child care, employment help (generic and specialized), programs for women (including domestic violence, workplace training, and other programs addressing isolation), programs for seniors and youth, reception houses, information/orientation sessions, referrals, and settlement workers in schools. In all centres, settlement agencies were also contending with the unanticipated increase in workloads created by an unexpected type of client – namely, the skilled or professional immigrant who faces difficulties in finding a job commensurate with his or her qualifications. Various analyses were offered on the reasons for this unanticipated client pool, such as the absence of pre-arrival screening of credentials (like that done in other immigrantreceiving countries, such as Australia and New Zealand); deficiencies in pre-arrival information about labour market realities; the often complicated process of foreign credential recognition; the inordinately long processing time of immigrant applications; the gate-keeping of professional associations, notably in such fields as medicine; and the inadequately filled need for job-appropriate official language competence. There are some significant differences in which different organizations deliver services across city-regions and the pattern of interorganizational relations. As there were more than 108 isas in the Toronto area alone at the time of our research, many respondents in other centres commented on the “Toronto-centric model” for extensive coordination, collaboration, and delivery set up as the ideal by government funders. For smaller regions, such as Niagara and Waterloo, however, limited resources constrain delivery of a broad range of services as occurs in Toronto by costi, an organization that began in the 1960s to serve Italian new­comers and has since become the largest immigrant-serving organization with a multiethnic clientele in Toronto (Canadian Council for Refugees 1998, 13), and in Ottawa by the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization (ociso), a non-profit, multiservice agency that has been assisting immigrants and refugees with settlement issues since 1978. In addition, smaller and more dispersed ethnocultural



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g­ roupings in the smaller centres, such as Niagara and Waterloo, have meant that settlement services tend to be delivered by multi-ethnic (“multicultural”) or mainstream organizations. In Waterloo, there are two major agencies – the ymca and the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre – that serve a majority of the settlement needs. A distinction was made in the Waterloo Region between Kitchener as “a hardworking town and Waterloo as an academic community” (interview, wat 1) in the provision of settlement services in the region. This was the explanation provided for why there were no settlement services in the City of Waterloo, which had to be serviced by Kitchener agencies. In Niagara, in addition to the ymca, there are four multicultural centres offering settlement services, one in each of the four largest municipalities, as well as other mainstream agencies – such as those involved in housing and employment help – that serve immigrant clientele. While some Niagara clients cited duplication of services across the agencies (interview, niag 8, for example), this should be interpreted in light of a dearth of affordable transportation services between the region’s cities, meaning that the more services there are available in one city, the better. The character and work of immigrant-serving agencies in Niagara are changing somewhat in response to the needs of refugee claimants, a new and emerging priority voiced by several of the Niagara area respondents. One respondent suggested that there had been an increase in refugee claimants at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, in that this crossing was the site of a higher percentage of refugee claims than Pearson International Airport (interview, niag 1).14 While the refugee movement is transitory in nature as refugees use Niagara, a border region, as a gateway to the province, these new­comers nonetheless require immediate assistance at the time of entrance. In response, the Peace Bridge New­comer Centre was established at Fort Erie in 2007. Although the presence of refugees is not as acute, a similar situation emerged in Waterloo, where “the Mennonite Centre ... focuses on refugee claimants ... to help the individual through the immigration tunnel. A person comes in, they help them with legal aid, with clothes etc., an apartment” (interview, wat 1). Peel’s emergent settlement sector was also dominated by a small number of multicultural and mainstream organizations, though we did interview one pan-African multiservice organization. Given the growing number, concentration, and electoral involvement of Sikhs and other South Asians in the Peel Region, it is likely that more

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ethnospecific associations will be formed there in the near future to deliver new­comer services. These large new­comer communities are translating their numbers into electoral influence, a factor that increases their visibility and the influence of their associations. As one Toronto respondent remarked, “Today, we see the emergence in Halton and Brampton of a very powerful Sikh community ... ­politically. All three candidates in Brampton in the last four elections were Sikhs ... [Also,] when we look at the last municipal, provincial, and federal elections, there were more Tamil-speaking candidates fielded than all the other ethnic groups put together. Certain communities are becoming aware politically” (interview, tor 5; see also ­Siemiatycki 2008, 41). As we delineate below, funding, especially from government sources, is a key determinant in accounting for the shape of inter­ organizational relations in the non-governmental sector and for which voice(s) get heard in policy deliberations. Funding pressures also play a large role in shaping the incorporation of the ngo settlement sector in multilevel governance and thus in imparting a particular character to the emergent forms of public-private partnerships, discussed below. Since the mid-1970s, many ethnospecific and ­immigrant-serving agencies have relied heavily on federal immigration settlement funds – chiefly through the Immigration Settlement and Adaptation Program (isap), established in 1974 in the immigration department’s settlement branch. Since 1992, several of these organizations have also been funded to provide immigrants with official-language training through the federal government’s Language Instruction for New­comers to Canada (linc), one of cic’s first tendered programs. However, given the several restrictions attached to federal settlement and official-language funding (pertaining to years in Canada, immigrant status – e.g., refugee claimant), agencies regularly supplemented isap funding with extensive fundraising efforts (from foundations such as the Toronto-based Maytree Foundation, United Way, business, and individual donations) and other non-isap government sources of funding. The latter include grants from the federal government (e.g., Secretary of State, now the Department of Canadian Heritage, which funds integration programs beyond the initial so-called settlement years), provincial government (Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration, which provides funds through the New­comer Settlement Program), and (minimally) municipal government sources.



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Several agency workers commented on the perceived adverse effects on both associations and immigrant clients of the adoption of business efficiency models in the administration of settlement funding – the whole process of networked statistical programs that are now administered on behalf of each client from the first time he or she enters an office: “We’re moving to a self-mechanized, computerized way of identifying scanned criteria in applications. No matter how good I am it doesn’t matter, I don’t have a f—— clue how to do this. It’s terrible that it depends on whether you write a good application or not, but [it] should be if you are a good service provider” (interview, wat 1). Computerized tracking and statistical accounting by agencies was regarded as a means of justifying agencies’ provision of services to clients at the expense of other more important goals. Thus, as one agency worker in the Waterloo Region stated, “Bean counting is the importance (sic). There is no allowance for social development” (interview, wat 1). Similarly, a frustrated settlement worker in the Niagara Region exclaimed, “Everything is a numbers game. Instead of looking at the quantitative situations, we need to look at the qualitative work that is being done. Numbers do not give the best results for new­comers” (interview, niag 2). Some organizations spoke of the unevenness of funding and the distinction “between the haves and have-nots” (interview, wat  1). As an Ottawa settlement worker said, “Larger organizations and companies have the staff to do the work to get the money. However, many [smaller] ngos have limited ability to apply for complicated funding ... So we may screen ourselves out of the system, or we may end up in a system that is so difficult for us to be a part of that we can’t take advantage of it” (interview, ott  1). Larger agencies were perceived to engage in “empire-building” by acquiring more funding, programs, and staff simply by virtue of having an already resource-rich base through which to apply for and deliver programs. In recognition of the benefits to be gained from combining forces in service coordination and consultations with government, interagency working groups or committees are present in most of the centres, focused on one or more immigrant-related issues. Coalition building was most apparent in Toronto. An umbrella organization is also in place in Ottawa, called lasi (Local Agencies Serving Immigrants). In the context of funding imperatives, we can see that some of the horizontal cooperation among service organizations is driven

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by financial necessity. Some smaller, emergent organizations, representing newer immigrant and refugee groups lacking their own community infrastructure (Afghan, Tibetan, Roma, etc.), sustain themselves by establishing a “trustee” relationship with larger agencies. Culture Link was the result of initially eight settlement agencies joining a coalition in the southwest area of Toronto in order “to coordinate our services in terms of areas of specialization and to avoid duplication of services to new­comers” (interview, tor  5). Some of these organizations united to gain strength in funding competitions: “Being medium-sized organizations and smaller, it gives us a greater leverage in terms of dealing with larger settlement agencies like the ym/ywca and costi” (interview, tor 12). It was the complexities and volatility of the provincial settlement sector related to funding, defunding, and shifting policies that some three decades earlier (in 1978) had led to the formation of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (ocasi). From the onset, ocasi served as a “meta-umbrella,” or coalition, of diverse, community-based immigrant-serving agencies, whose mission was “to achieve the full equality of immigrants in every aspect of Canadian life” (Richmond 2004, 4). It has emerged as a strong, wellorganized lobby group, advocating to government departments, on behalf of the immigrant/refugee communities and member agencies, for changes to policies, programs, and services and for the expansion of sustaining operational and program funding for settlement. The Ontario Settlement and Integration Program, which provided core funding, was created in 1984–85 as a direct result of lobbying by ocasi and its member agencies. Currently, ocasi boasts a membership of 189 paid members, with 108 of them in the Toronto area, where ocasi’s offices are located. While ocasi receives a large amount of government funding, this financial dependence appears not to have constrained the organization from being a forceful critic of government policy. Indeed, ocasi’s website contains well-articulated and highly critical position papers on immigrant policy matters, challenges to the 2008 immigration policy changes, information about Iraqi refugees, and foreign professional credentialing, among other issues. ocasi has also played a central role in the professionalization of immigrant social services, including pushing forward initiatives to encourage certification and quality control of programs in the aftermath of the settlement and immigration reforms in the late 1980s and



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1990s – efforts that have been perceived as “very, very fragmented, not comprehensive” (interview, ott 1). However, ocasi also serves as a consultative partner to the government as it advertises rfps (Requests for Proposals), provides links for documents, and shares information from the government with its member agencies. We can surmise that the stable, multistranded working relationship between ocasi and the federal and provincial governments, wherein ocasi also engages in institutionalized lobbying, is permitted to continue because government generally finds it preferable to consult with one coordinated voice in the settlement sector rather than dealing with the cacophony of a thousand disgruntled agency voices. We would make the same argument in the field of refugee policy for the Canadian Council for Refugees (ccr), which is a forceful critic of the federal government’s refugee determination and settlement policies, yet enjoys an institutionalized form of consultation with immigration authorities. Federally funded organizations are permitted and at times encour­aged to voice their criticisms of government policy. But not all funded organizations escape the punitive consequences of voicing political positions that are at odds with government policy or individual ministers’ beliefs. The decision taken in March 2009 by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to withdraw almost half a million dollars in funding for immigrant settlement programs from the Canadian Arab Federation, which has been highly critical of the Harper government’s foreign policy in the Middle East, is a jolting reminder that immigrant and refugee services can indeed become “discretionary services subject to the vagaries of political agendas” (Shakir 2009).15 This raises the issue of the policy input of those agencies that are not members of ocasi but provide services to new­comers. The criteria for voting membership status in ocasi include having a mission statement identifying immigrants and/or refugees as a primary target group, and having immigrants/refugees represented in organizational decision making (ocasi, n.d.). Some organizations, such as employment help centres, provide services to new­comers but do not meet the criteria required for ocasi membership. They therefore lack the ability to formally take advantage of the policy voice that ocasi provides other immigrant-serving agencies. More generally, ngos in the settlement sector have expressed skepticism about the impact of consultations with associations in

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effecting real policy change: “So we can’t even keep up with the number of consultations that are happening. And then they are getting quite directive in that change at the same time that they are trying to consult. So consultations are often becoming information dispersal and not really consultation. So how much is being heard I don’t know” (interview, wat 8). Cross-Sectoral Multilevel Initiatives: From Government to Governance While we encountered some instances of activity on the part of municipal or regional governments alone, and many more by community-based organizations working alone or in concert, we found more complex initiatives taking place as well. In all five centres, some type of collaborative multisector – and sometimes multilevel – initiative was developing or was underway in which the municipal and usually other levels of government and a variety of other stakeholders were working in a coordinated fashion to address recognized gaps and deficiencies in settlement and integration services in an effort to attract and also retain new­comers. Recent efforts in Ontario municipalities to improve conditions for new­comers to Canada have increasingly involved partnership-based arrangements, many of which focused on employment. The differences between single-government initiatives or multigovernmental arrangements, on the one hand, and multisectoral partnership-based initiatives, on the other, stem from a distinction between “government” and “governance” approaches to addressing social and economic issues. While “government” approaches are carried out within the formal governmental system (defined by specific administrative boundaries and the clear exercise of powers, duties, and public resources by government), “governance” approaches involve both governmental and non-governmental actors and institutions, and tend to blur the lines that demarcate boundaries and responsibilities for certain social and economic issues. Some authors (Geddes 2005; Lazar and Leuprecht 2007) have identified a “shift from local government to local governance” in program development and delivery, and to some extent policy making, in many social and economic issue areas. The age of governance is the age of “networks, partnerships and joined up services” (Considine, quoted in Geddes 2005, 359), in which intersectoral groups of organizations,



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united by shared values and common interests, increasingly define and implement objectives in a given policy area. The reshaping of the policy-making environment also is multiscalar, in which sets of actors – both state and non-state – may operate in subnational or supranational spheres. In many explorations of governance, its emergence is closely associated with neoliberalism, though other considerations have contributed to its emergence, for instance, pressures from within the public service among civil servants pushing for reforms that could lead to greater efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of services. At the local level, governance is an element of the “neoliberalization of urban space” (Geddes 2005, 373, 360) and accompanies the three other key elements of neoliberal local state restructuring: a shift from welfare to workfare, fiscal austerity, and supply-side economic policies. Within these shifts, governance involves new forms of local state apparatus, amounting to an “attack on the old bureaucratic ‘silos’” (ibid., 360) and the creation of networked institutions to take their place. Private and/or community sectors play an increasing role vis-à-vis the public sector in service provision and local leadership, and by participating in “policy partnerships.” The focus of policy objectives shifts from redistribution to economic competitiveness through entrepreneurship and enterprise (working with the grain of market forces). Through partnerships as the key forums in which local governance decisions are made, horizontal networks rather than hierarchies influence policy development, while politicians and political parties decline in influence (Geddes 2006). Examples of multisectoral governance are proliferating in Ontario’s handling of immigrant settlement. The most recent of these, embraced by four of the five centres (all but Peel, which had already forged a comprehensive integration plan through its Peel New­ comer Strategy, discussed below) are the cic-funded local immigration partnerships (lips) that attempt to take a broad approach to immigrant integration. The lips fit well the governance category of activity insofar as they are partnership-based, involving cross-sectoral collaboration and input. In two of the four centres, the regional government rather than immigrant agencies applied for funding. Waterloo has since contracted the projection to a civilsociety group, Community Based Research. In the case of Niagara, all the lip funding has gone to local agencies. However, the recency of these partnerships (funding deadlines occurred in spring 2008)

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make it difficult to assess their efficacy in meeting goals, and their development occurred long after our interviews. Moreover, there is a real question about their durability once the increased federal funding that accompanied the coia dries up. The lips were preceded by an earlier experiment in multisectoral governance that focused on the employment and economic integration of new­comers and on addressing the disconnect between immigrant selection policies and economic integration outcomes. Indeed, four of the five major collaborative initiatives we encountered in our research were focused on immigrant employment. The Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (triec),16 the Niagara Immigrant Employment Council (niec), the Waterloo Region Immigrant Employment Network (wrien), and Hire Immigrants Ottawa (hio) have all been developed since 2003. These initiatives are meant to address both sides of the potential employer-employee contract: skilled new­comers who would benefit from help in finding work in their field, and employers in need of labour who require assistance in locating, hiring, and integrating new­comers. The overall goals are to improve labour market integration outcomes for skilled immigrants, enhance economic competitiveness for businesses and vitality for the community, and (in Waterloo and Niagara) attract and retain future immigrants with specialized skills. The actors involved in these initiatives are from the government, non-governmental, and corporate and organized labour sectors. They include the municipal/ regional government, usually the provincial and/or federal governments, immigrant-serving agencies, large corporate employers, occupational regulatory bodies, chambers of commerce or boards of trade, district labour councils, and post-secondary institutions. The actors involved meet regularly, are led by a steering committee, and seek to coordinate their strengths in a common effort. Activities on which they collaborate include research, information provision, workshops, mentoring and bridging programs for new­comers, cultivating access to labour pools, awareness raising, and training for employers. Provincial and/or federal governments are generally involved in a funding capacity, but with an expressed interest in learning from the experiences of local-level actors. The central importance of the business sector in immigrant settlement through these initiatives was repeatedly raised in interviews. A social-services approach was perceived as being ineffective in economically integrating skilled immigrants: “We tried it out from



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the social service end, and they haven’t gotten where they want to get and so now with business at the table they’re saying ‘we really need to rock-and-roll here’” (interview, wat 4). Services for employers as part of these initiatives are aimed at not only changing their common practice but also their attitude in order to increase their knowledge of the assets that new­comers can bring to their workforce and thus increase their willingness to hire them. Immigrants are perceived “as representing a latent pool of talent that employers would be wise to tap into. At the same time, skilled immigrants are encouraged to find mentors in their fields, who may help them learn job-specific terminology, Canadian workplace culture, or give them personal references to specific employers” (Fong 2008, 22). In contrast to these employment-focused strategies, actors in Peel Region have developed a cross-sectoral initiative to address the gloomy picture of the high rates of poverty existing among the municipality’s 118,220 new arrivals between 2001 and 2006 – a demographic that represented 70 per cent of Peel’s net population growth (Keung 2008). The Human Services Department’s Position Statement on Immigration, highlighted earlier, also commits the department to engage with local businesses and community groups to support improved access to information about employment and settlement services for new­ comers in Peel. The Peel New­ comer Strategy (pns) is broader in scope and stakeholder involvement than the employment-focused initiatives, and includes involvement from the health care, child care, legal, housing, and language-training spheres, as well as community funders. Shelley White, of Peel’s United Way, suggested that “issues of employment, language training, housing, child care and poverty are intertwined, and can greatly affect the well-being of new­comers and that of the broader community” (Keung 2008). Three levels of government are also represented – regional, provincial (including Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration and Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities) and federal (Citizenship and Immigration Canada). The impetus for this strategy came from regional bureaucrats and was picked up by the United Way, starting in the summer of 2005. The poverty statistics showing that one-third of the region’s new­ comers lived in poverty – a rate that was 2.5 times higher than for the total population – no doubt set alarm bells ringing among the region’s civic leadership (Keung 2008). New­comers in the region had been identified as one of five groups most at risk of living in poverty,

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with new­comer families comprising one-quarter of the social assistance caseload at that time (interview, peel 7); service organizations were finding it increasingly difficult to cope with this situation. The pns was to address new­comer issues using the model of “success by 6,” a collaborative, intersectoral early childhood initiative. The two key objectives the pns group sought to accomplish were to reduce poverty rates and to prepare the community for the incoming dollars flowing from the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement. The role of the municipal/regional governments differs between the employment networks/councils and the Peel New­comer Strategy. In the employment-focused initiatives, municipal or regional government involvement is confined to representation and to limited financial and in-kind support, which is often outweighed by provincial and federal funding. In the pns, the regional government exercised greater leadership in getting the initiative off the ground, and it continues to be active in guiding the core group of stakeholders; a region representative and the chief executive officer of United Way are co-chairs of the group. While Peel’s elected regional council has endorsed the pns, it is regional bureaucrats who have the greatest involvement. This leadership is ascribed to the regional staff’s responsibility for delivering social and community services (and thus their familiarity with the issues) and their relationships with community service providers. The board of trade recognized the benefits to both its membership and the strategy group of being involved: “It was a no-brainer for us to want to be part of it” (interview, peel 8). But the board sees itself as a relatively new actor in immigration issues and is taking part in order to learn as much as to contribute. A number of benefits were perceived as accruing to actors participating in these partnership-based initiatives and, by extension, to the immigrant and non-immigrant communities at large. These include improved dialogue, cooperation, coordination, and resource sharing in and across sectors and across levels of government. Notably, these initiatives have provided participating new­comers with concrete benefits. The Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, in particular, shows positive results in this respect. With its location in the main economic centre of Canada, triec has access to many head offices and large employers such as the big banks, which have the capacity to take on immigrant interns (Fong 2008, 18). It has proved more of a challenge for triec to influence small



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and medium-sized employers, who have fewer resources to dedicate to tasks such as the assessment of immigrant qualifications and are thus less inclined than large employers to consider immigrants as potential employees (Fong 2008, 18). From its inception in September 2003 until December 2007, triec and its partners placed 740 immigrants in bridging internships with Toronto-area employers, and 80 per cent of the participants found full-time employment in their field (triec, n.d.). Undoubtedly, greater numbers of skilled immigrants will benefit from the province’s promise, announced in August 2009, to invest $5.2 million in York University programs designed to help highly skilled new­comers become licensed and find jobs in their fields more quickly (triec 2009). A couple of caveats and considerations are worth noting, however, that may complicate both the immediate and longer-term success of these governance approaches in general and immigrant employment in particular. It is worth asking who sits at “the table,” a question that is so often mentioned with respect to these initiatives, especially by “social forces,” and what the effects of the intentional or incidental exclusions are. By and large, these groups seem to be closed loops, and as Good notes, “insiders determine who is in and who is out” (2005a, 263). This characterization comes out strongly in the Peel New­comer Strategy. Some 120 stakeholders were referred to, but clearly there are several organizations not represented. The membership group consists of twenty-four “key stakeholders around the table” (interview, peel  7), only five of which are service-providing organizations (Peel New­comer Strategy Group, n.d.). There are no ethnospecific organizations represented, and the executive director of the pan-African organization interviewed in Peel seemed to have no knowledge of the pns four months after the first key stakeholder meeting had taken place. A non-governmental Ottawa respondent made a similar observation about partnered activity there: “It is kind of like the club has been established ... There is a regular set of thinkers from a regular set of organizations who influence what happens. There are some high-level agencies and some established corporate players that do quite well and they’re already in the door” (interview, ott 1). The lack of involvement of many service-providing organizations in ­partnership-based initiatives calls into doubt the extent to which organizations serving immigrants and, by extension, their clients can derive substantial benefits from these arrangements.

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Furthermore, with respect to the pns, the Peel New­comer Strategy Group has been involved in various research and analytical ventures, developing “social risk” indicators to map and evaluate neighbourhoods in terms of their concentration of new immigrants, visible minorities, and poverty and their relative ability to settle new­comers. The analysis is framed in a way that mixes social work goals with social marketing intentions for new­comers and businesses (Peel New­comer Strategy Group 2008). Moreover, its vision for “a coordinated service strategy to develop a client-focused service model” conforms to the neoliberal reliance on “clientelism,” which positions immigrants as clients consuming services rather than as one of the major parties making changes in how they are governed (Keil 2002). All in all, it is difficult to predict where the new­comer strategy will lead. Examining the employment-related partnerships, even the most successful, such as triec, are unlikely to redress the systemic problems of unemployment and underemployment among skilled and professional immigrants and the high incidence of poverty and social distress among new­comer families. As Fong (2008, 20) has astutely argued about triec, it adopts “a very solution-oriented but de-politicized approach to the issue of poor economic outcomes for skilled immigrants.” The individual internalization of responsibility is one of the key principles of neoliberalism (ibid., 26). In triec’s guiding statements, the challenges faced by skilled immigrants and the proposed strategies focus on individual perceptions and individual actions – for example, the statements that “more individual employers should hire immigrants; and more individual immigrants should adapt to the Canadian workplace” (ibid., 20). In framing its communications to be palatable to important stakeholders, especially employers, triec avoids an examination of the more complex and difficult discussions of systemic inequalities in the workforce and the racialized dimensions of these inequalities. Thus, there is “no mention of the words ‘racism’ or ‘discrimination’ in any of triec’s literature or with stakeholders” (ibid.). triec’s programs are thus designed to help immigrants adapt to arguably unfair hiring standards (for example by helping them gain Canadian work experience) rather than naming and challenging these structural barriers, such as the discriminatory effect of the demand for Canadian experience (ibid.). In this manner triec and the other immigrant employment-related partnerships, which similarly avoid explicit



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engagement with structural racism, are illustrative of the limitations of neoliberal assumptions underlying the new governance arrangements. These new partnerships, in which business stakeholders are preeminent, address themselves to assisting immigrants. Yet their overarching framework is meant to encourage market competitiveness rather than to create more equitable hiring practices and more equitable workplaces (ibid., 27–9).

comparisons among the five centres: toward an explanation of key differences While none of the five centres has an immigration or immigrant settlement policy in a legislative or regulatory sense, explained by a lack of constitutional mandate, municipal governments are engaging in a number of activities to try to manage and improve the outcomes of upper-level immigration policy. If we were to briefly characterize each of the five centres, the account could be written in the following manner. The City of Toronto has an active local government focused on e-governance, diversity management and intergovernmental empowerment, a large, diverse, and well-coordinated settlement service sector, with some variations in funding, and an employment-focused initiative (triec) that is the largest and most established of the five centres. Peel’s regional government has fairly recently focused on incorporating and serving new­comers better through both government-only and a broadly-focused intersectoral initiative (the pns), and the region’s settlement sector is struggling to keep up with increasing demand. In Ottawa, there is an employment-focused initiative in place (hio). Ottawa’s city government has been somewhat slow to respond to immigrant issues, but is using e-governance to attract new­comers, and has become more involved in settlement initiatives, largely through the impetus of a fairly well-developed and well-coordinated settlement sector and lobby. Niagara – where the needs of refugees and temporary workers are particularly relevant and settlement services are provided through multiservice agencies – has a comparatively inactive regional government but one that recognizes the need both to manage diversity and to attract and retain skilled new­comers to the area and is supporting the employment-focused initiative (niec). Finally, Waterloo’s regional government, to the limited extent that it has been addressing immigrant settlement, has been doing so largely through

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a diversity framework and its involvement in wrien, and the majority of services in the area are provided through multiservice agencies. Four of the five centres (the exception being Peel) have capitalized on the injection of new federal funding through the coia to develop lip structures and broad-based plans to enhance their current immigrant integration strategies. Because of its size and its robust network of community agencies, Toronto has lips in different areas of the city, with each project hosted by a different funding agency (including the Social Planning Council of Toronto and the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture). Accounting for variations among the five centres in their local responsiveness to and influence on immigrant settlement policy – explaining why certain arrangements have arisen and the relative involvement and influence of different governmental and civil society actors – presents formidable analytical challenges. Several authors have identified factors that may influence the extent and shape of activity on immigrant settlement and the management of ethnocultural diversity among local populations more generally (Good 2005a, 2005b; Thompson and Dunn 2002). First, there are the factors that influence whether and how municipal governments take action (or alternatively ignore) issues of immigrant settlement and integration. These include, first, demographic and associated factors connected with size, especially the size of the city in terms of population, which correlates strongly with the size of the foreign-born population and the ethnic/racial diversity of the population (Good 2005a, 2009); the attention the municipality receives from upper levels of government with respect to immigration (Agranoff 2007); the size of its council and bureaucracy and therefore the relative ease of reaching agreement on, coordinating, and implementing any given activity; and the human resources that can be drawn on for an activity or initiative (Frisken and Wallace 2003). A second set of factors contributing to municipal government (in)activity are political in nature; they include the importance of immigrant settlement issues to the municipality and its government (a matter influenced by the size and sources of the foreign-born population and the history of immigration), the strength and cohesiveness of the ethnocultural/immigrant lobby (Poirier 2006), council priorities, personalities, budgets, culture, the council’s ethnocultural representativeness (Good 2005a; Siemiatycki 2008), and the municipal government’s overall orientation toward or lens through which



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it sees immigrants and settlement (Frisken and Wallace 2003; Poirier 2006; Siemiatycki 2008; Urbaniak 2006). Third, also highlighted in the literature, are factors pertaining to the structure and character of the municipal government – how the municipality is governed and run, including type of government (one- or two-tier), the extent to which New Public Management has been embraced (Young and Leuprecht 2006), and the normative value of multilevel governance (Lazar and Leuprecht 2007). In examining the extent and type of involvement among social forces, the key influences include the numbers and types of organizations in the “business” of immigrant settlement; their source of funding and how well they are funded; and the extent of coordination, cooperation and/or competition between them (Frisken and Wallace 2003). Finally, additional variables may influence the emergence and shape of intersectoral initiatives, such as the policy orientation and goals of influential local actors (Urbaniak 2006); mutual identification of potential solutions to mutually recognized problems; and the overall rationale behind the potential collaboration (Frisken and Wallace 2003). While it is impossible to distill these many contributing factors into a parsimonious model, or a “typology of municipal responsiveness to immigrants” (Good 2005a, 261), without doing injustice to the complexity and historicity of multiple determinations across the five centres, we do draw on combinations of these factors to account for two dimensions of patterns of activity on immigrant settlement across the five centres: variations in the nature and extent of activity on the part of municipal governments, and the overall tendency in multilevel governance in the settlement/integration field to focus on employment in partnership-based initiatives. First, with respect to municipalities’ involvement, as we have seen, the quantity and quality of action – undertaken alone, intergovernmentally, or in intersectoral partnerships – differ across the five centres. Toronto’s city government has undoubtedly developed the most responsive policies attuned to the many issues that arise for new­comers, largely incorporating immigrants into a broader notion of diversity for the purpose of government-only activity. The City of Toronto is also the only centre in the study to have direct intergovernmental interaction on immigrant settlement issues through the mou. Peel’s regional government has more recently turned its focus to addressing issues pertaining to new­ comers specifically,

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through both government-only and intersectoral initiatives. Ottawa has (lately) been an emerging actor on immigrant issues, largely encouraged by non-governmental actors. The Waterloo and Niagara regional governments have been relatively inactive on their own, largely confining their activity to diversity management. To consider why these differences emerged, using Toronto as an example and drawing relevant comparisons with other centres, we examine factors associated with the size of the city and its foreign-born population, the importance to the municipality of immigrants and new­comer needs, and how the municipality is governed and run. We have made three key observations about Toronto: while it has been relatively active on its own, initiatives have focused on managing ethnocultural diversity instead of immigrants qua immigrants; where immigrants constitute the explicit focus, the city has worked largely in partnership with other actors; and it is the only city in the study to have direct intergovernmental relations on immigration. The size of Toronto’s foreign-born population contributes in part to its government’s considerable activity. Officially, half of Toronto’s total population are foreign-born; it has become home to approximately one-third of all Canada’s immigrants (Troper 2003, 19); and in 2006, almost eight of ten new immigrants arriving in Ontario (between 2001 and 2006) were reported to reside in Toronto (Ontario Ministry of Finance 2008). City officials argue that addressing immigrant settlement is a priority and is “salient” to every area of policy development in Toronto: “Certainly in terms of social programs, you can’t develop policy without taking immigrant needs and concerns into consideration. It’s just not possible” (interview, tor 8). Indeed, for Canada’s largest city, branded in the North American media as the “most multicultural city in the world,” the significance of immigration is undeniable in shaping its cityscape, culture, economy, and institutions, as well as in playing a central role in defining its most persistent challenges, problems, and conflicts (Troper 2003, 20).17 Immigration-related matters have also climbed steadily in the municipality’s list of priorities. This is ostensibly not due to the ethnoracial representativeness of City Council, given that the council is by and large “white” and Canadian-born; it is more attributable to the strength and remarkable coordination on common issues of various ethnocultural lobby groups and the interest of particular council leaders and members, notably Toronto’s former mayor,



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David Miller, who championed the cause (Good, 2005b; Siemiatycki et al. 2003; Siemiatycki 2008). Another factor contributing to the city’s involvement in these issues is the single-tier government, which means that no other government is going to address immigration issues for Toronto, as is the case in Mississauga and Niagara Falls, for instance, which have regional governments. The sheer size and diversity of the foreign-born population make it difficult for the City of Toronto alone to design initiatives that will address new­comers’ needs comprehensively. Moreover, while a huge bureaucracy in terms of people and departments provides a large pool of human resources to draw on (Frisken and Wallace 2003), our respondents emphasized the challenges of coordinating any strategy across departments or responsibilities, especially following amalgamation. Many of the former suburban municipalities that were joined together with Toronto in the amalgamation would not have had formal policies in place or the experience of dealing with immigrant settlement and integration issues which the more urban-focused officials had in the Toronto local government before amalgamation (Frisken and Wallace 2000, xiii). We also see considerable development of the New Public Management philosophy in how Toronto manages its affairs – efforts to replace the traditional rule-based hierarchical bureaucratic silos with horizontal networks that emphasize innovation, risk taking, quality service, and a more results-oriented focus. These factors may contribute to the tendency of the city government to work in partnership, through triec, for instance. As Good (2005a) and Siemiatycki et al. (2003) point out, the relative ease with which coalitions develop among settlement and other ethnocultural organizations on issues of common concern reflects long traditions of cooperation among civil society groups in Toronto, and this intercommunity solidarity has served to keep pressure on the city to be responsive to ethnocultural minority, antiracist, and new­comer concerns. Also worthy of consideration is why Toronto, notwithstanding its 2001 Immigration and Settlement Policy framework, tends to focus on “diversity” instead of “immigrants” in its corporate and outward-looking policy and initiatives. Poirier (2006) emphasizes that we need to consider discursive factors, the models that inform government action for the management of immigrants and ethnocultural heterogeneity. Our City of Toronto respondents emphasized that immigrants are considered, first and foremost, as residents of

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Toronto. Services are often not targeted toward immigrants but are made accessible to immigrants by the people who provide them. In general, “immigrants are a part of the general population with special needs ... That’s how that’s dealt with” (interview, tor 9). A key concern behind this inclusive approach is image management: “There’s been this fairly conscious effort not to identify and isolate services for immigrants out of the concern that then immigration is only seen in terms of what it costs and that has been a very conscious policy decision for many, many years in the city not to look at immigration that way” (interview, tor 6). Among other factors, immigration and the multicultural diversity to which it has given rise are central to the “branding” of Toronto to attract tourism and capital investment as Canada’s largest city positions itself in the current environment of “competitive urbanism” (Fong 2008, 28; Keil 2002, 592). While Toronto’s size complicates what it can do – alone or in intersectoral partnership – size provides it with advantages in other respects. Intergovernmentally, Toronto tends to get more attention from and interaction with higher orders of government than other municipalities: “Toronto has a say because it is big” (interview, tor 3). This is particularly the case when Toronto’s economic development goals are aligned with those of the provincial and/or federal government, or when the city lobbies upper levels of government strongly and persuasively. Toronto has been a strong and active player in lobbying for more “power, money, and respect” (interview, tor 6) from the provincial and federal governments. It has adopted a blueprint “for a bold future within the federation,” the Greater Toronto Charter, which emphasizes the city’s wish to be recognized as an order of government, empowered in several policy areas, and able to raise more revenues (Courchene 2006, 108). Toronto is also a member of the c5 group of mayors who have been lobbying for a stronger role of municipal government and more federal support for urban issues. Furthermore, in the early 2000s, Toronto developed a document, Towards a New Relationship with Ontario and Canada, and launched a national campaign entitled “Canada’s Cities: Unleash Our Potential” (Poirier 2006). A now formalized example of the attention and interaction resulting from these efforts is the Canada-Ontario-Toronto Memorandum of Understanding on Immigration and Settlement (mou), highlighted earlier.



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To make some brief comparisons with other regions on the topic of municipal government involvement, the Region of Peel has recently emerged to take a more proactive role vis-à-vis new­comers, in part because it is the regional government that has predominant contact with immigrants in terms of service delivery, compared with the constituent city governments. This is affected by the upper tier’s responsibility for social services rather than by a strong settlement sector lobby, which is relatively undeveloped compared with that of Toronto or Ottawa, or by the representativeness of the regional council, which has only two immigrants and one member of an ethnocultural minority among twenty-five councillors (Region of Peel Council, n.d.). The smaller regional bureaucracy may make it easier to coordinate the Liveable Peel project, for instance, but the more limited human resources may also have made the region more likely to work on new­comer issues more generally in partnership, through the pns, rather than through regional governmental bureaucracies alone. In Niagara and Waterloo, while coordination and implementation of a strategy might come more easily with smaller bureaucracies, the factors limiting government involvement include a smaller proportion of foreign-born residents, therefore less-developed lobbies, an ethnoculturally non-representative municipal government, and fewer human resources in government. Ottawa deserves special mention as the nation’s capital. While it has a significant and growing foreign-born population, a sizable and reasonably coordinated settlement sector, and a single-tier government, the federal government is the most visible governmental player in Ottawa (Poirier 2006); its activities and offices, not to mention its responsibility for immigrant settlement, overwhelm and overshadow the city. The various organizations in the settlement sector can access federal funding fairly readily, which may make the city see less of a need to engage with such bodies or act on its own. One of the largest organizations in the settlement sector in Ottawa characterized the municipal government’s involvement in immigrant settlement services as “kind of behind the times,” depicting the municipal government’s focus as being on infrastructural issues, such as sewage and roads (interview, ott  12). Several other settlement organizations spoke to the incipient role of the Ottawa government in addressing issues of immigrant services or in acting to attract immigrants through the Immigration Ottawa Initiative to “improve

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social inclusion and labour market integration for the residents of Ottawa, including immigrants” (interviews, ott 13, ott 14). Like the other immigrant-receiving centres, Ottawa has a demographically unrepresentative city council that does not reflect the diversity of the city’s population. As Biles and Tolley (2008, 123) point out, “the archetypal elected official in Ottawa is ... a welleducated, middle-aged, Christian, White male with British, French, or Canadian ethnic origins.” Poirier suggests that the “lens” through which the municipal government in Ottawa sees new­comers and ethnocultural diversity more generally has contributed to its relative inaction until recently in this policy area. Ottawa has tended to adopt a universalist discursive model when it comes to ethnocultural diversity: “Every policy and discourse put forward by the city stresses the equality of all citizens,” grounded in the universalist idea that all citizens should be on an equal footing with respect to the rules and values of collective life (Poirier 2006, 210). The recent increased activity and initiative may relate to economic rationales. Like several other smaller Ontario cities, such as Waterloo, the compulsion of the municipal government to address the needs of immigrants is the link made by city officials between immigration and local economic development. Ottawa’s minority and anti-poverty associations have also stepped up pressure on the government to integrate into its policies the city’s diversity and the recognition of racialized inequalities. The second trend we seek briefly to explain is the overwhelming focus on employment-related initiatives in at least the first crop of new governance projects, and very likely those most zealously pursued. The key explanatory factors here are, first, the prioritization of local economic development, driven by neoliberal logic, over more socially progressive goals or the valuing of ethnocultural diversity as an end in itself; and second, developments in upper-level government policy related to immigrant employment. There is an acknowledged tendency in urban areas to focus on economic development goals, on maintaining market competitiveness in the contexts of globalization, rather than on broader or more socially progressive goals. “Developmental” goals or policies aim to attract business and bolster the prosperity of a city. The focus of municipalities on economic development is in line with the neoliberal dynamic of “competitive urbanism” as business and local governments seek to compete with each other for talent and capital investment. In



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discussing the urban policy goals of Mississauga, Paul Peterson has termed this tendency the “city limits” thesis, arguing that it exists because of the structural constraints within which cities must operate (Urbaniak 2006). This tendency may be particularly acute, affecting intersectoral initiatives when non-governmental or business actors seek the collaboration of municipal governments or if those governments have the opportunity to shape a given initiative significantly. They often can do little but implement pro-business development policies, given the extent to which their small scale and policy impotence constrains them (Young and Leuprecht 2006). Municipalities depend on local property taxes for a significant share of their revenue, so local governments place priority on how their decisions will affect businesspeople who own or who might invest in properties in their communities (Frisken and Wallace 2003). If these investors see improvements being made in the quantity and quality of the labour force – which these employment initiatives strive to effect – they may be more likely to remain in or set up businesses in a given locality. Overall, then, while they may use “sympathetic public rhetoric” (Urbaniak 2006, 291) about social policies, we would expect to see municipal governments and the business sector participate in initiatives focused on economic development. It is notable that a triec official interviewed by Karen Fong (2008, 28) eschewed social justice concerns as informing triec’s programs. Rather, triec was said to be centrally concerned with the “business case for hiring skilled immigrants ... There are no obligations or rights involved, just common sense” or what Roger Keil (2002) has termed “common-sense neoliberalism.” It is not only local prosperity prospects that propel this tendency but also a desire on the part of local actors for federal government support to fund the initiative, and the interests of these two levels of government align most in promoting economic development: “When a formally dormant issue becomes entangled with the municipality’s development interests it rises accordingly on the agenda” (Urbaniak 2006, 286). The coia and the accompanying infusion of federal funding for the underfunded Ontario region was a recognition, however, that employment and labour market initiatives were not enough and that if there is to be improvement in the levels of poverty and the multiple issues hampering the integration of recent immigrants, a broader-based strategy was desirable. This resulted in the local immigration partnerships, with governance structures

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reflecting a broader array of social interests in immigrant settlement beyond that of employment. The reasons local actors give for wanting to attract new­comers to their communities often provide a lens through which we can discern whether or not an economic focus dominates their orientation toward new­comers or addresses ethnocultural diversity more generally. Courchene (2006) and Poirier (2006) argue that economic competitiveness language often dominates over considerations of “an enhanced quality of urban life” (Poirier 2006, 206). We found evidence of this among our government and business sector respondents in particular. For example, the Niagara regional government representative emphasized that while there is a desire to have a more diverse population “and all of the benefits and strengths that that brings to a community” (interview, niag 7), it is labour market requirements that drive the government’s and the community’s activities on immigrant settlement. Waterloo is also focused on attracting people who are “able to use their skills” (interview, wat  6), especially in the region’s high-tech industry. Second among the key factors explaining the priority given to employment-focused initiatives are developments in upper-level government policy that have to some extent forced the hand of local governmental and non-governmental actors, and have shaped the initiation of these locally situated immigrant employment partnerships. Of importance federally is the impact of the 1993 policy shift mentioned above, aimed at increasing the number of immigrants entering Canada under the economic class relative to other classes. While the distribution of types of immigrant varies among them, municipalities have been receiving an increasing proportion of highly educated skilled immigrants.18 The municipalities are also faced with persistent and increasingly severe unemployment and underemployment among the skilled new­comers, and with an increasing number of skilled immigrants among the clientele of service-providing agencies. Respondents in all five centres emphasized these trends, and some recognized the loss of skilled immigrants who out-migrate when their hopes and expectations have been dashed. Other developments and initiatives at the provincial and federal levels, however, largely postdate the establishment of employmentfocused initiatives in our Ontario centres. It remains to be seen how more recent policy developments, focused specifically on the



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chronic underutilization of immigrants’ skills, will affect municipalities. Provincially, a lengthy and complex set of discussions and consultations – involving a huge number of stakeholders across jurisdictions – have taken place over many years to address one of the central roadblocks that professional and skilled immigrants face in obtaining jobs commensurate with their qualifications, namely, obtaining recognition for their foreign credentials. This culminated in the 2006 legislation, the Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act (farpa), which provides provincial oversight of more than thirtyfour regulatory bodies governing credential recognition in such professions as medicine, architecture, accountancy, engineering, and teaching. The legislation mandates the appointment of a fairness commissioner, who will be a champion of new­comers going through the regulatory and credentials-recognition process. Federal level developments include the establishment in 2007 of the Foreign Credentials Referral Office (fcro) by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, whose goal is to help internationally trained individuals find the information and access the services they need to put their skills to work quickly in Canada (Canada 2007). Most recently, federal-provincial cooperation and coordination of multiple stakeholders led to the much-awaited Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Credentials, announced in November 2009, whereby the federal government has pledged $50 million over two years to develop a framework to speed the assessment and recognition of foreign credentials (Canada News Centre, 2009). These institutional innovations and supports may ease the employment integration difficulties of new­comers seeking to work in skilled professions and therefore reduce the burden on local settlement services, but it is too early to comment on outcomes. Finally, an even more increased focus on fast-tracking skilled new­comers, as a result of changes introduced in the Harper government’s 2008 budget legislation, may alter the profile of the new­comer populations which municipalities are dealing with, but we are unsure as yet in what ways. Critics are concerned about the increased unfairness of the current points system and the callous disregard of all the foreign applicants who qualify yet may be denied entry. The new measure may provide greater assurance of jobs commensurate with skills and credentials for skilled workers selected by the minister.

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The uncertainty of this measure’s success may, however, lead to a general increase in skilled workers that will continue to tax local actors’ settlement programs. We argue that the presence of these recent provincial and federal initiatives does not signal a trail-blazing role by these upper-level governments. Three of the four immigrant employment initiatives at the municipal level were established in the early 2000s, and the upper-level policies just mentioned – farpa, the fcro, and the PanCanadian Framework – lagged until 2006, 2007, and 2009, respectively. When asked why establishing a workable process to deal with foreign credentials recognition was taking so long, the Citizenship and Immigration Canada official interviewed suggested that it might be because “the challenge is there are so many ... players” (interview, fed 2). We argue, however, that many of these players, especially at the local level, have been pivotal in recognizing and acting to redress some of the vulnerabilities new­comers face in local labour markets, in some cases before the onset of upper-level government activity in this area. In summary, it seems that local-level actors are often largely being acted upon directly and indirectly by upper-level government policy, such as by the key 1993 shifts in immigration policy and the demands of neoliberal economic development. However, the timing of the establishment of the four centres’ employment-focused strategies suggests a certain level of initiative and creativity by locallevel actors in the absence of upper-level government leadership. We need to recognize the limitations on these activities, however; current governmental arrangements hold local-level actors back somewhat and limit their powers. Under different jurisdictional and fiscal arrangements, they would likely provide more direction with respect to local labour markets and take more action in terms of launching particular initiatives to facilitate the mentoring and internships of professional and skilled immigrants, and identify and educate businesses to hire these immigrants. However, this is an area that is clearly multiscalar in its determinations – encompassing global to local processes, a provincial level of jurisdiction over regulation of professions, and a federal level that has chosen not to exercise oversight, such as requiring credentials recognition as a prerequisite for immigrating in the skilled worker class, and that under the current Harper government has tended to pursue its policy decisions in a highly reactive and frequently partisan fashion.



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conclusion We conclude that the shift from government to governance that emerged as the most notable pattern in Ontario municipalities in immigrant settlement (especially in the economic integration of immigrants) provides for dialogue among a range of governmental and civil-society actors and perhaps greater flexibility and responsiveness in the administration of immigrant settlement services. However, governance initiatives in this policy field do not signal a major shift in decentralization or power sharing in immigration (recruitment and settlement) policy making. One constraint faced by local or ethnocultural advocacy organizations in the settlement sector is a familiar one – namely, such organizations depend on government funding and thus experience “advocacy chill” or tensions between “resolving immediate service issues and developing broader advocacy” (Richmond 2004, 7). The March 2009 decision by the immigration minister to cut off almost $500,000 in settlement funding to the Canadian Arab Federation because of sharp political differences provides a glaring illustration of this point. While funding imperatives have not impeded the lobbying of federal immigration authorities, the policy input of “social forces” in Ontario’s field of immigration and settlement policies has been notably diminished and been sifted through a hierarchical structure in the nongovernmental sector of service agencies. More critical (e.g. antiracist, no-border) pro-immigrant social forces have yet to recover from the Harris era, when the government did away with such provincial policies as employment equity that were directed at addressing the more systemic forms of inequality encountered by immigrants and racial minorities. Our interviews with civil-society actors also reflected a transitional time as far as relations with the provincial government were concerned, whereby the province had yet to earn the trust of these actors in demonstrating a sustained commitment to supporting effective settlement assistance. The character of the new partnership initiatives are consequently a mixture of horizontal and hierarchical relations, where the voices of larger and more organized immigrant and ethnoracial communities are far better represented than those of newer and smaller communities, including those in dire need of settlement assistance (Frisken and Wallace 2003). In addition, in shifting responsibilities and funding downward to local actors in the integration of new­comers, federal ­immigration

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authorities have shown few signs of devolving responsibility for the recruitment and selection of immigrants in Ontario, despite “partnership” agreements such as the coia and the mou. We concur with Poirier (2006) that “there is a contradiction between the discursive environment, which places the emphasis on the political role of municipalities, and the unchanged intergovernmental context of the actual Canadian political system” (214). Indeed, if the rebuff to the involvement of the City of Toronto, the largest of the municipal players, in the Harper government’s significant 2008 immigration policy reform is any indication, the federal government is not acting as if it has an obligation to consult municipalities prior to the stage of policy implementation and indeed shows few signs of loosening its iron grip on immigration policy making. Devolution of the mandates on immigration policy affairs to municipalities and local actors is not in itself a public good for new­ comers. Local governments may be unresponsive or conservative in their orientation to immigrants and may exacerbate barriers in the successful integration of new­comers, rather than serving to mitigate the exclusionary impact of upper-level policies and local conditions. Mississauga is a case in point, where a power-house mayor has clearly opposed initiatives that examine the settlement concerns of immigrants in any serious and systemic way, has imposed her own assimilationist views onto the city, and has engaged in an outmoded celebratory type of multiculturalism. However, municipal governments – and even more obviously, the extensive network of civil-society actors that form the shadow state in Ontario’s cities’ settlement sector – are more attuned than upper-level governments to the complexity of local conditions that assist or impede the economic, social, and political incorporation of immigrants. Moreover, ngos and scholars who form part of urban-based social movements, many of whom reflect the precept of “working locally, thinking globally,” are also highly attentive to the larger global and systemic processes that have a local impact and are often ignored in the “common-sense neoliberalism” exemplified by the employmentrelated partnerships. If the shift to multiscalar, multisector governance in immigrant employment matters that is strongly evident in Ontario is to benefit more than a handful of immigrants, the federal government will need to show greater responsiveness and democratic openness to more localized forces on immigration selection as well as



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settlement policies. The disconnect between immigrant selection, which is directed by the federal government and in some cases also controlled by provincial governments, and immigrant settlement, where the brunt of the responsibility and impact is felt at the local levels of government and communities, has created the new immigrant in need. The traditional conceptualization of the municipal government’s role as supplicant to higher levels of government will have to be overcome in order to see the spheres of government as capable of working in partnership with each other and ­civil-society actors in ways that will substantially improve the life chances of new­comers.

notes We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (sshrc) through its Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (mcri) program. We also wish to thank André Lyn, Lilian El-Zein, Paul Bakker, David Dorey, and Susan SverdrupPhillips for their excellent work in conducting and transcribing the interviews. We benefited from the close readings of Serena Kataoka, Warren Magnussen, Erin Tolley, and two anonymous readers who provided us with insightful comments and suggestions for revision, and from the editorial stewardship of Bob Young. We also express our gratitude to all the respondents who participated in our research. An earlier version of this paper was delivered to the 2nd International Congress on Global Migrations, organized by the Autonomous University of Sinaloa, Mazatlan, 24–26 April 2008. 1 Siemiatycki et al.’s description is about immigration to Toronto but can equally apply to immigration to Ontario more generally. 2 As Tindal and Tindal (1990) point out, there are several different types of local government, ranging from municipal to regional governments, to specialized agencies, boards, and commissions. The most common type of local government is municipal. 3 Indeed, a 1997 Metropolitan Toronto-based survey of the impact of government funding on community agencies found that a whopping “43 per cent of all programs for immigrants or refugees were at high risk of being eliminated,” whereas another study found that funding cuts varied from 20 per cent for larger multiservice agencies to 40 per cent for smaller, ethnospecific agencies (cited in Siemiatycki et al. 2003, 416).

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4 Ornstein’s (2000) study of unemployment and poverty in Metropolitan Toronto found that adults of non-European origins have an 80 per cent higher unemployment rate than adults of European origin, with Torontonians of African, Black, and Caribbean origins being particularly disadvantaged. The family poverty rate for all non-European groups was 34.3 per cent, twice as high as for Torontonians of Canadian or European origins/identification (cited in Siemiatycki et al. 2003, 418–19). 5 Ross (2007) reported that “applicants for admission to Canada as independent class or economic immigrants – 60 per cent of all immigrants – face an 18- to 30-month processing time. The waiting list is more than 800,000.” 6 Leamington, which draws on seasonal migrant workers for its agricultural economy, was originally one of the municipalities selected for the study. Despite our persistent attempts, we were unsuccessful in arranging any interviews with governmental officials in Leamington and thus dropped this centre from the study. 7 According to the Social Planning Council of Ottawa (spco), 29 per cent of the immigrants to the Ottawa region were refugees during the period 1997–2002. This exceeds their relative numbers of 11 per cent in Toronto, 10 per cent in Vancouver, and 19 per cent in Montreal – the three major areas of immigrant settlement (spco 2004,17). 8 Four of the top five source countries in Ottawa and Waterloo are nonWestern, whereas only three of the top five are in the global South for the Niagara Region. 9 It is important to distinguish between policies determined by municipalities and those established at higher levels of government and delivered within municipal boundaries. 10 In response to the plight of these refugees, Mayor Marion Dewar of the City of Ottawa called a meeting of community organizations, church groups, and social service agencies in the city. As a result, Project 4000 was formed with the objective of campaigning for the admission of up to 4,000 Boat People to the City of Ottawa through private sponsor groups. Similar community initiatives followed elsewhere in Canada. Subsequently, the federal government, under Prime Minister Joe Clark, decided to accept 50,000 refugees, mostly Vietnamese, but also including Cambodians and Laotians who had fled the newly established Communist regimes in their countries (Vietnamese Canadian Centre 2008. http://www.vietfederation. ca/PressRelease/May2008). 11 As our focus here is on immigrant settlement policies rather than on multiculturalism or employment equity, a detailed analysis of the historical



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development and current array of anti-racist, multicultural, and equity policies in the City of Toronto is beyond the purview of this chapter. 12 The websites of Toronto, Peel, and Niagara offer this link to 211 or 311 services. 13 In Greek mythology, the Trojan horse appears in the tale of the ten-year Trojan War, in which the Greeks were fighting against the inhabitants of the city of Troy. In order to enter the walled city, the crafty Odysseus had the Greeks build a large wooden horse, in which many hid, and they left it outside the city gates, masking it as a peace offering to the Trojans. When the Trojans brought the wooden horse into the city, the Greeks hiding in the horse slipped out of a trapdoor and opened the gates to other Greek combatants. The Trojan horse is credited with the subsequent victory of the Greeks over the Trojans. In popular culture, labelling something as a Trojan horse signifies the disguise of something that is introduced by stealth that brings victory or benefits to its builders. 14 We have not been able to verify the accuracy of this perception on the part of the Niagara association. However, the proportion of asylum seekers who travel across land versus those who come by air may have spiked, given that Canadian visa restrictions tend to dampen the number of refugee claims made at airports. However, the Safe Third Country Agreement, which came into effect in 2004, has reduced the percentage of claims made at US–Canada border crossings. 15 On 30 March 2009 the Canadian Arab Federation (caf) asked the Honourable Justice Kelen of the Federal Court for an interim order so that it could continue to receive the funds it needs to operate its English-language training program (funded by linc) until its challenge to the cancellation of this funding is heard by the court. The court did not issue this order, because it concluded that the harm caused by the immediate loss of funding could be recovered later in damages if the caf ultimately wins its case in court. In his judgment, however, Justice Kelen agreed that the Canadian Arab Federation had raised a serious issue with respect to the duty to act fairly in submitting that “the Minister can be reasonably apprehended to have been biased” against the caf (Federal Court of Canada, 2009). Justice Kelen further argued, “Being a target of public criticism is part of holding political office. If the Minister decided to cancel the English as a Second Language funding contract for the Canadian Arab community simply because he was called a name in the heat of a political protest against the Israeli attacks in Gaza, his decision should not stand. It was not unexpected that the Arab community would be repulsed by Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Naturally, the Arab community was upset that the

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­ anadian government did not strongly protest this attack. Many reputable C Canadian Jews were similarly opposed to Israel’s attack on Gaza. However, the Court recognizes that Mr. Kenney alleges that the Canadian Arab Federation is racist, anti-Semitic, and a supporter of a terrorist organization and that it was for these reasons that he cancelled the contract, and not because he was called a name” (fcc 2009, 11–12). 16 Note that representatives from the Peel Region participate in triec. 17 Troper (2003, 20) calls the assertion that Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world an “urban myth,” based on the mistaken yet oft-repeated assumption that unesco has distinguished Toronto in this manner. 18 Among the centres in the study, Ottawa, with its large refugee population, and Niagara, with its disproportionate number of low-skilled new­comers, such as temporary agricultural and tourism workers, likely see the lowest proportions of skilled immigrants. This may in part have contributed to the later start of the employment initiatives in these two centres.

interviews All interviews were conducted with the mutual understanding of confidentiality and that the names of interviewees would be withheld in publication. The interviews have been coded by region, interview number, and date. fed 2 wat 1 wat 4 wat 6 wat 7 wat 8 niag 1 niag 2 niag 7 ott 1 ott 5 ott 6 ott 12 ott 13 ott 14 peel 2 peel 7 peel 8

Audiotaped interview, 19 November 2007 Audiotaped interview, 18 August 2005 Audiotaped interview, 19 July 2006 Audiotaped interview, 18 August 2006 Audiotaped interview, 17 October 2007 Audiotaped interview, 19 October 2007 Audiotaped interview, 19 April 2006 Audiotaped interview, 26 April 2006 Audiotaped interview, 16 October 2007 Audiotaped interview, 2 August 2005 Audiotaped interview, 14 August 2007 Audiotaped interview, 23 August 2007 Audiotaped interview, 5 September 2007 Audiotaped interview, 11 September 2007 Audiotaped interview, 11 September 2007 Audiotaped interview, 21 June 2006 Audiotaped interview, 18 October 2007 Audiotaped interview, 29 October 2007



tor tor tor tor tor tor tor

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3 Audiotaped interview, 25 January 2006 4 Audiotaped interview, 14 March 2006 5 Audiotaped interview, 23 May 2006 6 Audiotaped interview, 18 October 2007 7 Audiotaped interview, 17 October 2007 9 Audiotaped interview, 18 October 2007 12 Audiotaped interview, 11 September 2007.

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in Ontario. ceris Policy Matters, no. 3. Toronto: Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement Ross, Arthur. 2007. Small Step to Immigration Sanity. TheStar.com. 1 June. http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/220159 (accessed 12 March 2008) Sadiq, Kareem D. 2004. The Two-Tier Settlement System: A Review of Current New­comer Settlement Services in Canada. ceris Working Paper no. 34. Toronto: Joint Centre for Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement Sancton, Andrew. 1999. Globalization Does Not Require Amalgamation. Options Politiques, November, 54–8 Seidle, F. Leslie. 2010. The Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement: Assessment and Options for Renewal. Toronto: Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, University of Toronto. http://integration net. ca/ English/offsite.cfm?urle=http%3a%2f%2fwww.mowat centre. ca%2fpdfs%2fmowatResearch%2f12.pd Settlement.org. n.d. Results of the isap Request for Expressions of Interest and Pre-qualification. http://atwork.settlement.org/sys/atwork_library_ detail.asp?doc_id=1004266 (accessed 10 June 2008) Shakir, Uzma. 2009. Canadian Arab Federal Loses Federal Funding. Rabble.ca. http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/uzma-shakir/canadianarab-federation-lose-federal-funding (accessed 25 August 2010) Siemiatycki, Myer. 2006. Opinion: Time to Rethink Right to Vote in Civic Elections. Toronto Star, 27 October, a21 – 2008. Reputation and Representation: Reaching for Political Inclusion in Toronto. In Electing a Diverse Canada: The Representation of Immigrants, Minorities, and Women, ed. Caroline Andrew, John Biles, Myer Siemiatycki, and Erin Tolley, 23–45. Washington: University of Washington Press Siemiatycki, Myer, Tim Rees, Roxana Ng, and Khan Rahi. 2003. Integrating Community Diversity in Toronto: On Whose Terms? In The World in a City, ed. Paul Anisef and Michael Lanphier, 373–456. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Social Planning Council of Ottawa (spco). 2004. Immigrants in Ottawa: Socio-cultural Composition and Socio-economic Conditions. Ottawa: United Way Ottawa and Centraide – 2009. Immigrants’ Economic Integration: Successes and Challenges. A Profile of Immigrants in Ottawa Based on the 2006 Census. Ottawa: United Way Ottawa Spiro, Peter J. 2004. Mandated Membership, Diluted Identity: Citizenship, Globalization, and International Law. In People Out of Place:

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­ lobalization, Human Rights, and the Citizenship Gap, ed. A. Brysk G and G. Shafir, 87–105. New York: Routledge Stasiulis, Daiva. 1988. The Symbolic Mosaic Reaffirmed: Multiculturalism Policy. In How Ottawa Spends, 1988–89, ed. Katherine Graham. Ottawa: Carleton University Press Stasiulis, Daiva, and Abigail Bakan. 2002. Negotiating the Citizenship Divide: Foreign Domestic Worker Policy and Legal Jurisprudence. In Women’s Legal Strategies in Canada: A Friendly Assessment, ed. Radha Jhappan, 237–94. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Stasiulis, Daiva, and Radha Jhappan, 1995. The Fractious Politics of a Settler Society: Canada. In Unsettling Settler Societies: Articulations of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class, ed. N. Yuval-Davis and D. Stasiulis, 95–131. London: Sage Statistics Canada. 2003a. Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada: Process, Progress, and Prospects. Catalogue no. 89–611-xie. http:// www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89–611-x/89–611-x2003001-eng.pdf (accessed 2 August 2010) – 2003b. Low-income Rates among Immigrants, 1980 to 2000. The Daily, 19 June. http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/030619/d030619a. htm (accessed 12 May 2008) – 2003c. Immigrant Status by Period of Immigration, 2001 Counts, for Canada, Provinces, Territories, and Census Divisions: 20% Sample Data (table). Immigration and Citizenship Highlight Tables, 2001 Census. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/ products/highlight/Immigration/Page.cfm?Lang=e&Geo=cd&View=2 &Code=35&Table=1&StartRec=1&Sort=2&b1=Counts (accessed 2 August 2010) – 2003d. Visible Minority Groups, Percentage Distribution, for Canada, Provinces, Territories, and Census Divisions: 20% Sample Data (table). Ethnocultural Portrait Highlight Tables, 2001 Census. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/ highlight/Ethnicity/Page.cfm?Lang=e&Geo=cd&View=2&Code=35& Table=2&StartRec=26&Sort=2&b1=Distribution (accessed 2 August 2010) – 2003e. Immigrant Status by Period of Immigration, Percentage Distribution, for Canada, Provinces and Territories: 20% Sample Data (table). Immigration and Citizenship Highlight Tables, 2001 Census. http:// www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/highlight/Immigration/ Page.cfm?Lang=e&Geo=pr&View=1&Code=0&Table=2&StartRec=1 &Sort=2&b1=Distribution (accessed 2 August 2010)



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– 2005. Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada: Progress and Challenges of New Immigrants in the Workforce. Catalogue no. 89–615-xie. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89–615-x/89–615x2005001-eng.pdf (accessed 2 August 2010) – 2007a. The Canadian Immigrant Labour Market in 2006: First Results from Canada’s Labour Force Survey. The Immigrant Labour Force Analysis Series, Vol. 1, no. 1 – 2007b. Canada’s Immigrant Labour Market. The Daily, 10 September. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/070910/dq070910a-eng.htm (accessed 2 August 2010) – 2007c. Population by Immigrant Status and Period of Immigration, 2006 Counts, for Canada and Census Divisions: 20% Sample Data (table). Immigration and Citizenship Highlight Tables, 2006 Census. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/hlt/97–557/t403-eng.cfm?Lang=e&t=403&gh=1&s c=1&s=0&o=a (accessed 2 August 2010) – 2007d. Visible Minority Groups, 2006 Counts, for Canada and Census Divisions: 20% Sample Data (table). Ethnic Origin and Visible Minorities Highlight Tables, 2006 Census. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. http:// www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/hlt/97–562/pages/ page.cfm?Lang=e&Geo=cd&Code=01&Table=1&Data=Count&Start Rec=226&Sort=2&Display=Page&csdfilter=5000 (accessed 2 August 2010) – 2007e. Place of Birth for the Immigrant Population by Period of Immigration. 2006 Counts and Percentage Distribution, for Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations: 20% Sample Data (table). Immigration and Citizenship Highlight Tables, 2006 Census. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/ dp-pd/hlt/97–557/t404-eng.cfm?Lang=e&t=404&gh=8&gf=932&sc =1&s=1&o=d (accessed 2 August 2010) – 2007f. Language Spoken Most Often at Home by Immigrant Status and Broad Age Groups. 2006 Counts, for Census Divisions: 20% Sample Data (table). Immigration and Citizenship Highlight Tables, 2006 Census. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. http://www12.statcan.ca/censusrecensement/2006/dp-pd/hlt/97–557/t405-eng.cfm?Lang=e&t=405&g h=1&gf=1001&sc=1&s=1&o=d (accessed 2 August 2010) – 2007g. Population by Immigrant Status and Period of Immigration, Percentage Distribution (2006), for Canada, Provinces and Territories: 20% Sample Data (table). Immigration and Citizenship Highlight Tables, 2006 Census. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. http://www12.statcan.

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ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/hlt/97–557/t403-eng.cfm?sr=1 (accessed 2 August 2010) – 2008. Ethnocultural Portrait of Canada Highlight Tables. 2006 Census. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/ data/highlights/ethnic/index.cfm?Lang=e (accessed 4 August 2010) – 2009. Facts and Figures, 2009. Immigration Overview: Permanent and Temporary Residents (table). Canada: Permanent Residents by Province or Territory and Urban Area, 2005–2009. Ottawa: Statistics Canada. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2009/permanent/ 02.asp (accessed 2 August 2010) Success by 6 Peel. n.d. What Is Success by 6 Peel? http://www.successby6peel.ca/Page.asp?IdPage=5342&WebAddress=successby6peel (accessed 1 May 2008) Thompson, Susan, and Kevin Dunn. 2002. Multicultural Services in Local Government in Australia: An Uneven Tale of Access and Equity. Urban Policy and Research 20, no. 3:263–79 Tindal, C.R., and S.N. Tindal. 1990. Local Government in Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson triec. n.d. About triec : Overview. Toronto Regional Immigrant Employment Network. http://www.triec.ca/index.asp?pageid=1 (accessed 15 May 2008) – 2009. Province Invests 5.2 Million in York Programs for Skilled New­ comers. http://www.triec.ca/news/story/230 (accessed 15 May 2008) Troper, Harold. 2000. History of Immigration to Toronto since the Second World War: From Toronto “the Good” to Toronto “the World in a City”. ceris Working Paper no. 12. http://ceris.metropolis.net/Virtual %20Library/Demographics/troper1.html (accessed 4 August 2010) – 2003. Introduction: Immigration and the Accommodation of Diversity. In The World in a City, ed. Paul Anisef and Michael Lanphier, 3–18. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Urbaniak, Tom. 2006. Rhetoric and Restraint: Municipal-Federal Relations in Canada’s Largest Edge City. In Canada: The state of the ­federation, 2004. Municipal-Federal-Provincial Relations in Canada, ed. Robert Young and Christian Leuprecht, 273–96. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, for the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen’s University Walton-Roberts, Margaret. 2007. Immigration, Regionalization in Ontario: Policies, Practices, and Realities. Our Diverse Cities, 4:13–19 Wayland, Sarah. 1995. Immigrants into Citizens: Political Mobilization in France and Canada. phd dissertation, Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland



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– 2006a. Collaboration and Conflict: Immigration and Settlement-Related Advocacy in Canada. ceris Policy Matters 3 (June) – 2006b. Unsettled: Legal and Policy Barriers for New­comers to Canada. Literature Review. A Joint Initiative of Community Foundations of Canada and the Law Commission of Canada Wolch, J. 1990. The Shadow State: Government and Voluntary Sector in Transition. New York: Foundation Centre Young, Robert, and Christian Leuprecht. 2006. Introduction: New Work, Background Themes, and Future Research about Municipal-FederalProvincial Relations in Canada. In Canada: The State of the Federation, 2004. Municipal-Federal-Provincial Relations in Canada, ed. Robert Young and Christian Leuprecht, 3–24. Montreal & Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, for the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen’s University

4 Quebec Immigrant Settlement Policy and Municipalities: Fine-tuning a Provincial Template guy chiasson and junichiro koji introduction Immigration has undeniably been an important issue for Quebec society and has strongly influenced provincial politics for a number of years. No other recent event so closely speaks to the politicization of immigration than the heated and thorny public debates over reasonable accommodation in the province.1 These public debates revealed that immigration could no longer be considered a Montreal-specific issue but had become a provincewide issue. While Quebec’s immigrant population is still concentrated in and around Montreal,2 citizens in regional cities with no or a small number of immigrants have demonstrated strong interests in, and concerns for, immigration and immigrant settlement in Quebec society. The City of Hérouxville,3 a case mentioned in the introduction to this volume, demonstrates that people from small urban centres often express views different from those in the Montreal region. This basic observation provides us with two insights. First, it is important to study the question of immigration at a city level. Second, we should expand the scope of our research beyond metropolises and include second- and third-tier cities as full-fledged research subjects in order to explore how they construct immigrant settlement issues and develop their policy responses. This chapter will examine immigrant settlement policies in four Quebec cities: Montreal, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, and Rimouski. At the outset, some concepts need to be defined. First, it is important



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to distinguish between “immigrant settlement policy” and “immigration policy.” As Ron Schmidt (2007, 103) alerts us, the two types of policy have different goals. While the latter aims to regulate and control immigration influx into the country, the former “refers to efforts by states to regulate and facilitate the ways in which – and the processes through which – recent international migrants become integrated into the host society.” We shall keep this distinction in mind, not only for conceptual clarity but also for the need to pay attention to the relationships between different levels of government. Immigration policy is normally an exclusive jurisdiction of the central government. In the Canadian case, however, it is a shared jurisdiction between the federal and provincial governments. Municipal governments play little role in terms of the selection and admission of immigrants, except some recruitment activities through promotion of their cities to foreign investors, high-skilled workers, and students. In contrast, immigrant settlement policy can cut across different levels of government. It includes what Schmidt (2007, 109) calls “formal immigrant assistance programs” – policies that are explicitly aimed at immigrant settlement, such as language training and job market adaptation. Immigrant settlement policy can also include different universalistic social policies, such as social housing and social assistance. Although they are not immigrant-specific policies, they have an important effect on the process of immigrants’ settlement into their new society. These policies are not exclusive jurisdictions of senior governments, and there is substantive room for municipalities to play an important role. Different studies on American (Ellis 2006; Schmidt 2007; Gilbert 2006) and German (Eckardt 2006) immigrant settlement policies have confirmed the necessity of looking beyond national (or federal) policies in order to understand this policy field better. In both cases, the weak involvement of the federal government in what Schmidt calls “formal immigrant assistance” leaves municipal governments with some room to manoeuvre and an ability to respond to local priorities. When it comes to Quebec, the provincial government has played a key role in immigrant settlement since the establishment of its own Department of Immigration in 1968. As the only Canadian province in which the majority of the population is French speaking, the Quebec government has seen immigration and immigrant integration into French-speaking society as a vital condition for its

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­ evelopment. In this vein, Quebec has been interested in repatrid ating powers in immigrant selection, settlement, and integration. The province began to choose economic immigrants based on its own selection grid after the Cullen-Couture agreement, a federalprovincial agreement signed in 1978. Quebec obtained its exclusive responsibility for immigrant settlement policy (including reception, adaptation, and integration) in 1991 by another federal-provincial agreement, the McDougall-Gagnon-Tremblay agreement. The provincial government has subsequently developed a set of immigrant settlement policies that range from French-language training to support programs for labour market integration, and to the policy of immigration regionalization. Quebec’s settlement policies have attracted considerable scholarly attention. A major strand of this research has been a comparative study of federal and provincial policies to assess the distinctiveness of Quebec’s model. Some scholars (Gagnon and Iacovino 2003, 2007; Labelle 2000; Rocher et al. 2007) argue that the province’s policies follow an “intercultural” approach, a sharp contrast to the multicultural approach pursued by the federal government. These authors put emphasis on a “common public culture” as the reference of integration for new­comers. In other words, immigrants are expected to integrate into Quebec’s common public culture, that is, to participate fully in a society in which French is the official language. Gagnon and Iacovino (2007, 101–2) describe the essence of Quebec’s interculturalism as follows: [I]nterculturalism attempts to strike a balance between individual rights and cultural relativism by emphasizing a “fusion of horizons” through dialogue and consensual agreement. Through the participation and discourse of all groups in the public sphere, the goal of this approach is to achieve the largest possible consensus regarding the limits and possibilities of the expression of collective differences based on identity, weighed against the requirements of social cohesion and individual rights in a common public context. The recognition of cultural differences is assumed in such a view – the sources of meaning accrued from cultural identity are acknowledged as an explicit feature of citizen empowerment – yet an obligation is placed on all parties to contribute to the basic tenets of a common public culture.



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For these authors, this model is different from the “multicultural model” put forward by the federal government, which does not take for granted a common public culture as the basis of Canadian identity (Gagnon and Iacovino 2003, 432). However, others question this line of argument and argue that both approaches are very similar when we compare Canadian and Quebec policies in place. Therefore, some consider Quebec’s intercultural model as no more than a provincial version of the multicultural model (Anctil 1996; Dewing and Leman 2006; Garcea 2006). For Nugent (2006), however, the difference between the two approaches is a question of perception. Both of these perspectives on Quebec’s immigrant settlement policies, regardless of their differing interpretations, confirm the undeniable role that the Quebec government plays in immigrant settlement. However, their analyses are limited to the provincial level and do not take into account municipal activities in immigrant settlement. These studies also tell us little about the relationship between broader provincial policy-making and actors involved at the local level. A much smaller number of studies (Graham and Philips 2006; Paré et al. 2002; Peyton and Paré 2001; Poirier 2006; Ray 1999; Simard 2003) have given more attention to municipalities as important sites of immigrant settlement policy making. For example, Annick Germain and Martin Alain (2006) put forward the idea that Montreal’s experience can best be described by an “adhocratist” approach. According to this approach, city officials “proceed by trial and error according to the problem to be resolved, often without referring to a clear philosophy of action” (Germain and Alain 2006, 255).4 The case of Montreal suggests that municipal actors seem to have some autonomy vis-à-vis provincial policies. At least, it suggests the importance of local dynamics in order to get a more comprehensive picture on immigrant settlement. At the same time, it is not clear whether this autonomy is specific to Montreal and to what extent it can be observed in more peripheral cities in Quebec. Based on these considerations, this chapter seeks to explore the dynamics of multilevel governance in Quebec’s immigrant settlement policy. On the one hand, we are particularly interested in the effect of provincial policies on the dynamics of immigrant settlement governance at the city level. What kind of urban actors do these policies empower or restrain? On the other hand, we believe

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that a proper understanding of these dynamics also requires a more detailed analysis on each city. We then chose four cities – Montreal, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, and Rimouski – and examined the local dynamics of multilevel governance. Our analysis is based on two sets of semi-structured interviews. A first set of interviews was conducted with municipal civil servants in the four cities as well as higher level (federal and provincial) civil servants. This first set was concerned with general issues of multilevel governance. The second set of interviews (ten in total, see list at end of chapter) was more focused on immigrant settlement issues. They were also conducted with local actors (both local officials and ngos) who were more directly responsible for that policy field. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first will discuss the major characteristics of Quebec’s immigrant population as well as the historical development of Quebec’s powers over immigration. The second section will present the contours of interventions of the Quebec government in immigrant settlement. It will show how provincial policies vertically integrate and institutionalize a number of different local actors, namely, ngos and local municipalities but also a Quebec-specific institution, the Regional Conferences of Elected Officials (Conférences régionales des élus, cre). The third section will look at the urban dynamics of immigrant settlement in Montreal, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, and Rimouski in order to see the extent to which the configurations of actors involved in settlement vary across cities.

quebec as a host society Immigration has been part of Quebec’s history, and the number of immigrants continues to grow. The 2006 census shows that there were 865,100 immigrants living in the province, and these comprised 11.5% of its total population. This is the highest proportion in provincial history. Indeed, the provincial immigrant population rate has doubled during the last half-century (fig. 1). Even though the proportion of immigrants in Quebec is much lower than in Ontario (28.3%) and British Columbia (27.5%), Quebec recorded the highest immigrant population growth rate in Canada (20.5% compared with the pan-Canadian average of 13.6%) during the last five years (Chui, Tran, and Maheux 2007) (fig. 2).5



Quebec Immigrant Settlement Policy and Municipalities 153

Figure 1 Proportion of Immigrants in Quebec Population, 1951–2006 % 14 11,5

12 10 8

7,4

7,8

8,2

8,2

1961

1971

1981

1986

8,7

9,4

9,9

5,6

6 4 2 0

1951

1991

1996

2001

2006

Sources: Quebec, mrci (2004c, 20); Chui, Tran and Maheux (2007, 15)

Figure 2 Number of Immigrants Admitted to Quebec, 1985–2007 60 000 50 000 40 000 30 000 20 000 10 000 0 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 Source: Institut de la statistique du Québec (2008)

The increase of the immigrant population during the last halfcentury has contributed to the diversification of the immigrant population. This has been especially pronounced since 1967, when the Canadian government abolished an immigrant selection policy based on racial and ethnic criteria, which had favoured immigrants from European countries. The points system introduced in the late 1960s selects immigrants based on individual attributes, such as age, education, experience, and language ability (see Tolley, this volume).

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Figure 3 Proportion of Immigrants by Regions of Origin and by Immigration Period 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Asia Africa America Europe

Before 1961 1961–1970 1971–1980 1981–1990

1991–2001

Source: Adapted from Piché and Laroche (2007, 17)

Since then, as figure 3 demonstrates, the proportion of immigrants coming from Asia and Africa has continued to grow at the expense of European immigrants. Further, the diversification of immigrants’ countries of origin has increased the number of immigrants whose mother tongue is neither French nor English. According to a bulletin prepared by the Department of Immigration and Cultural Communities (Ministère de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles, micc), about 40% (39.3%) of the immigrants who arrived in the first trimester of 2008 declared that they were not able to communicate in French (Quebec, micc 2008a, 2). As a French-speaking society in a country and continent where English is dominant, the province has been greatly preoccupied with the linguistic integration of allophone immigrants into its French-speaking society. In this context, it is important that new immigrants have some knowledge of the French language, and Quebec has, since the 1970s, made efforts to recruit such immigrants. As figure 4 shows, the proportion of immigrants who have a knowledge of French has significantly increased from below 40% in the early 1980s to 60.4% in 2007 (Quebec, micc 2008b, 11). Immigrants’ acquisition of the language has been a major priority in the province’s immigrant settlement policy as well as a justification for having a distinct immigration policy. Finally, as mentioned earlier, a large proportion of Quebec’s immigrant population are concentrated in the Montreal Census Metropolitan Area (cma).6 According to the 2006 census, 86.9% of the



Quebec Immigrant Settlement Policy and Municipalities 155

Figure 4 Proportion of Immigrants by Official Language Ability, 1980–2005 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% Neither English only French & English French only

50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1980– 1984

1985– 1989

1990– 1994

1995– 1999

2000– 2004

2005

Source: Piché and Laroche (2007, 19)

provincial immigrant population live in this area. This is higher than in either of Canada’s other two major immigrant destination metropolitan areas: the Toronto cma holds 68.3% of the immigrant population of Ontario, while the Vancouver cma contains 74.2% of British Columbia’s immigrants. Outside Montreal, immigrants settle in the Quebec City area (3%), Gatineau (2.4%), and the Sherbrooke area (1.2%).7 This disproportionate distribution of the immigrant population in the province suggests that the province is divided into the multicultural Montreal metropolitan area and a number of more homogeneous regions. While one out of five residents in the Montreal area is an immigrant (20.6%), this proportion drops rapidly in the other three principal immigrant-receiving areas – Gatineau (8.6%), the Sherbrooke area (6.3%), and the Quebec City area (3.7%). In the case of the Rimouski area, immigrants account for only 1.7% of the total population. Quebec’s Powers over Immigration In Canada’s current immigration policy regime, Quebec is not a province like others. Compared to other provinces, Quebec enjoys more extensive powers over immigrant selection, settlement, and integration (see Andrew, this volume; Tolley, this volume). Its c­ urrent

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Table 1 Immigrant Population in Quebec and Selected Municipalities, 2006 Census Immigrants arrived 2001–2006

2006 population (census)

All immigrants as % of 2006 population

16,675 364,820 575,010 14,675 17,765 490 1,005 5,540 1,630

5105 126,180 165,345 7485 8,440 225 715 3,615 1,085

239,980 1,593,725 3,518,520 482,545 704,180 41,305 14,1685 144,595 123,555

 8.6% 30.8% 20.6%  4.6%  3.7%  1.7%  1.2%  6.3%  2.1%

657,655 5,076,970 12.9%

193,905 1,109,980 17.5%

7,435,900 31,241,030 23.8%

11.5% 19.8%

Immigrants before 2001 Gatineau Montreal (city) Montreal (cma) Quebec (city) Quebec (cma) Rimouski Saguenay Sherbrooke Trois-Rivières Quebec Canada Quebec % of Canadian

Source: Statistics Canada 2006

Table 2 Visible Minority Population in Quebec and Selected Municipalities, 2006 Census Census visible minority group

Canada

Quebec

Montreal

Quebec City

Sherbrooke

Black Arab Chinese South Asian Latin American

783,795 265,550 1,216,565 1,262,865 304,245

188,070 109,020 79,825 72,850 89,510

122,880 68,600 47,980 51,255 53,970

4550 2595 1480 425 2725

1780 910 530 310 2005

270 110 80 0 65

Total vm total as % of 2006 population

5,068,095 16.2%

654,355 8.8%

27,645 26.0%

14,290 2.9%

6690 4.6%

615 1.4%

Rimouski

Source: Statistics Canada 2006

powers derive from the Canada-Québec Accord Relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens (hereafter the CanadaQuebec Accord), signed between the Canadian and Quebec governments in February 1991. First, this bilateral agreement allows the province to set the annual number of immigrants coming into the province (Young 2004). While the federal government fixes the overall number of



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Table 3 Selection Grids for Skilled Workers: Quebec and Canada, August 2010 Criteria Education Language proficiency Work experience Age Arranged employment Adaptability   Ties to Quebec  Spouse  Children   Financial autonomy   Overall adaptability pass mark ⁄ total Single candidate: Candidate with spouse or common law  partner:

Quebec

Canada

28 22 (French 16; English 6) 8 16 10

25 24 21 10 10

8 16 8 1 6

10

55 ⁄ 107 63 ⁄ 123

67⁄100

Source: Quebec, micc 2010; Canada. cic 2010

immigrants who will be admitted to Canada, Quebec may select a proportion of them, so long as its share does not exceed more than 5% of the province’s share of the Canadian population. In other words, if Quebec’s share was 24% of the Canadian population, the province could select up to 29% of immigrants destined for Canada in that year. Second, Quebec can select economic immigrants and refugee claimants from outside Canada based on its own selection criteria. Quebec chooses economic immigrants according to its own selection grid. As table 3 shows, the province uses selection criteria that are similar to those employed by the federal government, including education, language proficiency, work experience, age, arranged employment, and adaptability. Still, Quebec shows its specificity in the distribution of points to each criterion. One of the most salient features can be found in the points regarding language proficiency. As the province looks for French-speaking immigrants, it gives far more points to French proficiency (16 points) than to English (6 points). Quebec also stresses the adaptability of new immigrants and their families by establishing more detailed criteria, such as their ties to the province and family profile, while the federal grid includes them within a sole adaptability criterion. The province also can

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select refugees suitable for its needs from those already admitted by the federal government. The Canadian government keeps its responsibility for family reunification and refugee claimants sur place. Third, the Canada-Quebec Accord gives the province exclusive responsibility for the reception, settlement, and integration of new immigrants. In return for Canada’s withdrawal from these services, the federal government provides Quebec financial compensation each year. For instance, the province received $188.4 million in 2007–08 to deliver reception, settlement, and integration services (Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2007, 55). Quebec’s unique status in the Canadian immigration policy regime is the result of a series of federal-provincial negotiations in which the province has been involved since the late 1960s. According to section 95 of the British North America Act, 1867, immigration is a shared responsibility between the federal and provincial governments, though provincial legislation remains in effect only so long as it is not “repugnant” to any Act of Parliament. On the basis of this constitutional power, the province was active in recruiting immigrants for a short period in the late nineteenth century, especially those from France and Belgium, and in repatriating French Canadians who had migrated to the United States. These were attempts to preserve the French character of the province (Pâquet 2005). The initiatives were largely unsuccessful, however, and the Quebec government subsequently withdrew from an active role in immigration policy until the 1960s. Immigration re-emerged on the political agenda in the 1950s in the face of significant immigration waves following the Second World War. On observing the integration of immigrants into English-speaking communities, some Quebec nationalists recognized the importance of integrating new­comers into French-speaking society so that the province would remain predominantly francophone. The province thus established the Department of Immigration (Ministère de l’Immigration du Québec, miq) in 1968. The miq was preoccupied with the adaptation and integration of immigrants into French-speaking society (Latouche 1989, 187–8), but the province did not have the power to control immigration flows into its territory. To fill this power void, Quebec tried to obtain (or repatriate) its authority to select immigrants through a series of administrative agreements with the federal government (Gagné and Chamberland, 1999; Kostov, 2008). The first agreement was the Lang-Cloutier



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agreement, which was signed in 1971 and allowed the province to send “orientation officers” to the federal government’s immigration offices abroad. Their role was to inform new immigrants interested in settling in the province about the specific nature of Quebec society. The second agreement was the Andras-Bienvenue agreement of 1975, which recognized the official power of Quebec officers to give advice to federal immigration agents in terms of the selection of immigrants coming to the province. Still, Quebec’s role remained consultative. In 1978 the two orders of government signed the Cullen-Couture agreement. This historic agreement allowed the province, for the first time, to select economic immigrants according to its own selection criteria. A decade later, after the failure of the Meech Lake constitutional accord, which included a constitutional status for Quebec powers in immigration, the two governments signed the Canada-Quebec Accord. As mentioned above, it gave the province exclusive responsibility over immigrant reception, settlement, and integration.

quebec’s immigrant settlement policy Thanks to the Canada-Quebec Accord and the historical involvement of the province in immigration, the Quebec government developed its own immigrant settlement policy long before other provinces developed an interest. The current provincial programs are largely defined by the latest action plan on the integration of the immigrant population, published in 2004: Shared Values, Common Interests: To Ensure the Full Participation of Quebecers from Cultural Communities in the Development of Québec (Quebec, mrci 2004a, 2004b). This action plan is based on a 1990 policy statement (Quebec, mcci 1990). Provincial interventions in immigrant settlement policy can be grouped into the following five fields: initial settlement services, language integration, socio-economic integration, diversity management, and regional development. While the micc plays a central role, different governmental departments and agencies, mostly in collaboration with the micc, also run various programs and offer different services. INITIAL SETTLEMENT SERVICES The micc runs the New Arrivals ­Support Program (Programme d’accompagnement des nouveaux

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arrivants, pana). This program, introduced in 2004, is intended to help new­comers settle in and adapt to Quebec society and also to integrate into the provincial labour market. Under this program, the province provides financial aid to non-profit organizations that offer support services to new arrivals, such as personalized settlement services (i.e., identification of personal needs and orientation in initial socio-economic settlement and integration process) and information sessions on Quebec society and on the job market, including work customs, labour standards, and the writing of one’s curriculum vitae. The department also offers the Refugee Reception and Establishment Program (Programme d’accueil et d’installation des réfugiés, pair) to facilitate the initial settlement of refugees. Finally, the Recognition and Support Program for Autonomous Community Organizations Working in Areas (Programme de reconnaissance et de soutien des organismes communautaires autonomes, prsoca) gives financial aid to community organizations working for the settlement and integration of new immigrants. LANGUAGE INTEGRATION  The acquisition of French by nonFrench-speaking immigrants has always been the first priority of Quebec’s immigrant integration policy in order to maintain the French character of the province. Learning the province’s official language is also crucial in immigrant settlement, allowing smoother insertion into the labour market and into Quebec society in general. In the long term, the acquisition of a common language is an essential condition for the exercise of citizenship, allowing non-Frenchspeaking immigrants to participate in and contribute to various aspects of Quebec society. As mentioned above, around 40 per cent of new­comers do not have knowledge of the French language. In order to support their acquisition of French, the micc administers the Financial Assistance Program for the Linguistic Integration of Immigrants (Programme d’aide financière pour l’intégration linguistique des immigrants, pafili). SOCIO-ECONOMIC INTEGRATION  Provincial interventions in this field are designed to facilitate the insertion of new immigrants into the labour market. In addition to the pana, the Department of Employment and Social Solidarity (Ministère de l’emploi et de la solidarité sociale, mess) runs the Employment Integration Program for Immigrants and Visible Minorities (Programme d’aide à



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l’intégration des immigrants et des minorités visibles en emploi, priime). A lack of Canadian job experiences is, among other factors, known to be an important obstacle to immigrants’ economic integration (Renaud and Cayn 2006). Financial incentives, in the form of a wage subsidy from the province, are offered to small and medium-sized businesses that hire new immigrants. In 2008 the provincial government announced that it would double the number of participants in this program (Quebec, micc 2008c, 16). The mess also administers the Plural Quebec Program. This program specifically targets members of visible minorities who are between 16 and 24 years of age, as well as young immigrants who belong to a “cultural community.”8 The program aims to strengthen their employability by providing mentorship, counselling services, and workshops. Launched in 2004 in Montreal and Quebec City, the program is now also available in Gatineau, Laval, Longueil, and Sherbrooke and is offered by local non-profit organizations such as the Young Employment Forum (Carrefour jeunesse-emploi). In addition, the Quebec government emphasizes the question of foreign credential recognition. Even though Quebec actively recruits highly skilled immigrants, they often have difficulty in quickly finding a job commensurate with their qualifications, partly because of difficulties they have in getting their professional credentials recognized. The micc has signed partnership agreements with more than twenty professional bodies and provides them with financial aid to disseminate information to new­ comers better, to elaborate more efficient mechanisms for recognizing foreign credentials, and to facilitate these immigrants’ access to training through the Support Program for Projects to Facilitate Admission to Professional Orders (Programme de soutien aux projets visant à faciliter l’admission aux ordres professionnels) (Quebec, micc 2008d). DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT The micc runs the Intercultural Relations Support Program (Programme d’appui aux relations interculturelles, pari) and provides financial aid to non-profit organizations working to develop and maintain harmonious relations between ethnocultural communities in the province. The program has four main goals (Quebec, micc 2008e). First, it aims to strengthen immigrants’ and ethnocultural minorities’ understanding of Quebec society. Second, in exchange, the program seeks to make majority Quebecers aware of pluralism and of the contribution of

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ethnocultural minorities to Quebec. Third, it combats prejudice and discrimination. Fourth, it pursues conflict resolution based on intercultural rapprochement between various ethnocultural communities. The Program to Support Full Participation and Openess to Diversity (Programme de soutien à la pleine participation et à l’ouverture à la diversité) pursues similar objectives. In addition, the 2004 action plan introduced a liaison officer for each ethnocultural group in Quebec in order to reinforce their relationships with the provincial government (Quebec, mrci 2004a, 84). The province has also invested in Employment Equity Access Programs (Programmes d’accès à l’égalité), which aim to increase the representation of immigrants and ethnocultural minorities in the workplace. These programs are based on the Employment Equality Access Act and the Contractual Compliance Program. The former addresses public institutions, while the latter addresses private companies seeking to have a contract with the government. Finally, the province promotes intercultural education in schools in order to achieve a better integration of students from immigrant and ethnocultural minority families (Quebec, mrci 2004a, 91). REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT  It was the 1990 policy statement that clearly associated immigration with regional development. The province advanced three arguments to justify this connection. First, a high concentration of immigration in the Montreal area does not allow other regions to take advantage of the economic and demographic contributions brought by immigrants. Second, it is unfair to burden Quebecers residing in the Montreal area with a large part of the responsibility for integrating new­comers; other regions should also contribute to the integration of immigrants into Quebec society. Finally, a large concentration of immigration in the Montreal area could divide Quebec into two parts: multiethnic Montreal, on the one hand, and homogeneous regions, on the other. This could create social tension in the future (Quebec, mcci 1990, 64–5). On this basis, the province has concentrated its efforts on regionalizing immigration flows. In an attempt to relaunch the regionalization project, the government introduced in the 2004 action plan the Regional Integration Program (Programme régional d’intégration, pri), which supports initiatives to attract and receive immigrants outside the Montreal area. However, all of these efforts have not yet seriously challenged the large proportion of Quebec immigrants



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Table 4 Expenditure Budget for Financial Aid Programs of the Department of Immigration and Cultural Communities, 2008–2009 Fields Initial settlement services

Progams New Arrivals Support Program Refugee Reception and Establishment  Program Recognition and Support Program for   Autonomous Community Organizations

Amount $8,835,000 $2,250,000 $854,000

Language integration

Financial Assistance Program for the   Linguistic Integration of Immigrants

$11,088,000

Socio-economic  integration

Support Program for Projects to Facilitate Admission to Professional Orders

$4,000,000

Diversity management

Intercultural Relations Support Program Program to Support Full Participation and   Openess to Diversity

$2,400,000 $1,150,000

Regional development

Regional Integration Program

$4,416,500

Source: Quebec. Conseil du trésor 2008, 135

going to Montreal. The most recent compilation (Quebec, micc 2008a, 2) published by the micc shows that almost three-quarters (73.7%) of all the immigrants arriving in the first half of 2008 were planning to settle on Montreal Island. The other two preferred regional destinations – Montérégie (6.9%) and Laval (5.1%) – are also in the Greater Montreal Area. Ron Schmidt (2007, 104–6) has developed a typology based on three dimensions of immigrant settlement policy: policy intervention styles (prescriptive, proscriptive, proactive, and laissez-faire); immigrant adaptation nature (economic, cultural, social, and political); and immigrant integration goals (assimilative, pluralist integration, segregative, and transnational). Borrowing from this analytical framework, we can note that Quebec’s provincial policy is comprehensive and proactive, and seeks a pluralist integration of immigrants. In the first place, the Quebec government has developed a policy framework that covers a broad range of fields and offers a wide range of services to new immigrants. It is also comprehensive, for these services are intended to support all aspects of reception, settlement, and integration into Quebec, including immigrants’ social, economic, cultural, and political (or civic) integration.

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Quebec’s immigrant settlement policy is also proactive because it encourages immigrants to accept and eventually internalize the values inherent in Quebec’s society. The 1990 policy statement, Let’s Build Québec Together (Au Québec pour bâtir ensemble), which still constitutes the bedrock of Quebec’s immigrant settlement policy, is explicit in this regard. In this document, the Quebec government clearly asks new­comers to honour a “moral contract” with the host society. This moral contract is based on reciprocity between immigrants and Quebec society. In other words, new­comers are to respect the fundamental values that underpin Quebec society and institutions, while the host society accepts immigrants as full-fledged citizens and supports their process of integration. Recently, the Quebec government has formalized the moral contract into a written declaration (Quebec, micc 2008f), to be signed by potential immigrants as a part of their request for a selection certificate. In this declaration, immigrants have to accept the following seven common values of Quebec society: French is the official language; Quebec is a free and democratic society; the state and religion are separate; Quebec is a pluralist society that values different cultural backgrounds; Quebec recognizes the supremacy of the law, and no form of discrimination should be tolerated; men and women have equal rights; individual rights and freedoms should not be at the expense of others’ rights and freedoms. This “moral contract” expresses the integrationist nature or what Schmidt (2007, 113) calls the “explicitly proactive” nature of Quebec’s approach. According to Schmidt’s typology, both federal and Quebec policies are comprehensive and proactive. What makes Quebec unique is the fact that the province plays a central role in immigrant settlement in Quebec, whereas the federal government is the principal actor in other Canadian provinces (Bloemraad 2002; Schmidt 2007; Andrew, this volume). This central role of Quebec policies is nowhere more manifest than in the ability of these provincial policies to incorporate a far-reaching network of local actors. Local Actors as “Partners” of the Provincial Public Policies Our overview has presented the array of Quebec’s immigrant settlement policies. However, the application of these policies goes beyond the provincial bureaucracy and relies on a series of actors, especially



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those operating at the local level. We now turn to the presentation of these actors and their links to provincial settlement policies. It is a common trait of the Quebec state to integrate other actors into its program delivery. Since the 1980s, in a wide range of public health and social services programs (Savard and Chiasson 2001; Laforest and Phillips 2001), in workplace training policies (Comeau et al. 2001), and in regional (Lévesque 2004; Simard and Leclerc 2008) and industrial development (Bourque 2000) policies, the Quebec government has provided its services through ngos as well as through local and regional public actors. In these sectors, local actors are usually organized in Quebec-wide networks and manage to acquire some leverage to participate in the definition of relevant public policies. As some scholars describe, a close partnership between the provincial government, regional/local public actors, and non-governmental actors is a defining characteristic of the “Quebec governance model” (Caillouette 2001; Rouillard et al. 2004; Hamel and Jouve 2007). The Quebec governance model is also present in immigrant settlement policy. Liette Gilbert (2006, 186) argues that local ngos (or “community organizations,” according to the more common usage in Quebec public terminology) have played a significant role in terms of service delivery. Gilbert notes: In Quebec, such partnerships exist between the micc and a network of community agencies offering numerous services to immigrant populations. Immigrants are also directed toward these organizations, funded by an array of the department’s programs related to immigrant settlement and control. These community organizations therefore act as intermediaries between the State and immigrants, between the bureaucracy and individuals. (2006, 186) This corresponds to what Irene Bloemraad (2002) has observed in the federal government, where several departments involved in immigrant settlement rely upon and fund ngos to deliver programs directly to immigrants. This is often referred to as third-party service delivery (see Tolley, this volume). As in the other sectors where the Quebec model of governance is in place, service delivery is almost exclusively taken care of by ngos

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and, to a lesser extent, by local public actors. Although the local private sector may be involved in local forums to promote immigrant attraction,9 businesses are rarely involved in for-profit service delivery. This is a common trait of the Quebec governance model. At the provincial level, the influence of ngos on policy outcomes is relatively limited. A few reasons can be mentioned. First, most ngos are financially dependent on the micc and share the difficulty of keeping their autonomy vis-à-vis the department. Second, there are too many ngos working in the domain to mobilize them under a few umbrella organizations. The dispersed relations among ngos do not help increase their influence over the micc. Still, there are a few Quebec-wide networks of ngos, such as the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes (tcri), which are more effective in terms of lobbying toward the micc. A list compiled by the micc (Quebec, micc 2008g) reminds us, however, that if ngos are important relays in most settlement programs established by the department, it also relies on local public “partners.” This is mostly, but not exclusively, in the confines of the regionalization policy and more specifically the regional integration program (pri). This program, created in 2004, attempts not only to divert immigrants to outside the Montreal region but also to promote immigration (and immigrant settlement) as a tool for regional development (Quebec, mcci 1990; Quebec, mrci 2004a). As the summary document of the 2004 action plan (Quebec, mrci 2004b, n.p.) maintains, “immigration must become a major component of regional development” for different regions of Quebec as well as for the provincial capital (the Quebec City area) and Montreal. Public actors involved in regional development policy – namely, local municipalities and Regional Conferences of Elected Officials (Conférences régionales des élus, cre) – are also considered major partners in the government’s efforts to promote the regionalization of immigration. The role played by the cres10 is pivotal in the regionalization strategy adopted by the provincial government. A cre is a regional body governed by a council of mostly local elected officials. In Quebec’s regional policy, the cres play a central role. Not only do they manage regional development funds for this policy, but they also can negotiate specific agreements (ententes spécifiques) that are



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regionally specific monetary agreements with specific departments of the Quebec bureaucracy. While immigration may have a lower priority for many cres compared with other more pressing issues, such as the plummeting of the forest industry, they have used the mechanism of the specific agreements to access government funding for immigrant settlement. This goes to show that the regionalization of immigration is also considered important, even among local actors. Using this funding, some cres, such as those in the Quebec City region and the SaguenayLac-Saint-Jean region, have elaborated their own regional programs in order to provide financial support to local projects that are delivered by ngos as well as by municipal governments. In addition to regional agreements, some major municipalities, such as Gatineau, Sherbrooke, Montreal, Saguenay and Quebec, have also negotiated separate financial deals directly with the provincial government. In most cases, local (or regional) public actors play a different role from ngos. Neither municipalities nor cres venture much into the actual delivery of provincial services. Most of these services, such as French-language acquisition and foreign-credential recognition, are not under their jurisdiction. Municipal interventions are usually limited to their jurisdictions, such as housing, recreational activities, and various municipal and community services. Within this scope, some municipalities have developed their own policies. Like the provincial government, they often prefer to leave the task of service delivery to ngos while sometimes offering them support (either financial or in other forms). cres also seem to prefer a more removed role as a regional coordination body and sometimes a funder of local projects. At the same time, local actors are fairly integrated into provincial policy framework. This is salient when we examine different regional plans agreed on by the cres and the Quebec government. While these plans aim to define regional priorities in matters of immigration, their similarities are striking. Although the specific measures differ from region to region, they fall into four main orientations set by the provincial government: immigration corresponding to regional needs and respecting Quebec values; reception and long-term integration; French-language acquisition; and pride in the community’s diversity. This suggests that the province keeps a fairly tight grip on immigrant settlement initiatives at the regional level

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and that regional actors are fairly well integrated, at least into the provincial settlement policy. The integration of local actors into provincial programming is reinforced by the fact that municipalities and local ngos receive the bulk of their funding from the Quebec government. Some ngos receive funding from Canadian Heritage for certain project activities (interview, qc 3; interview, rim). However, most ngos that we interviewed in different cities receive their funds mainly from provincial programs. This is understandable, since the core of the Citizenship and Immigration Canada funding for Quebec is funnelled through the maze of Quebec government. In contrast, the municipalities and the cres receive virtually no funding from the federal government. Since the 1970s, provincial law in Quebec actually forbids a municipality to negotiate a deal with the federal government without previous authorization from the Quebec government (Turgeon 2006). This section has demonstrated that the Quebec government plays a dominant role in formal immigrant settlement policy. The province not only maintains an interventionist stance through a far-reaching set of policies, but it also integrates local and regional actors into its policy framework. The almost total absence of the federal government in Quebec immigrant settlement policy since the 1991 CanadaQuebec Accord contributes to the increase in importance of the Quebec government.

immigrant settlement policies in four cities The previous section provided a global picture of Quebec’s immigrant settlement policy and its governance structure. Now let us turn a spotlight on immigrant settlement policy in four Quebec cities. This allows us to bring some nuance on the global picture and stress the context-specific nature of immigrant settlement policy dynamics at the city level. We can observe in the four cities the patterns presented in the previous section. In other words, local actors are integrated into the provincial policy framework. However, as our interviews suggest, significant differences between local trajectories remain. The four cities selected for this study follow different patterns of immigration. Montreal, as mentioned above, is a city of destination par excellence for immigrants coming to Quebec. The city has a long history of immigration as one of Canada’s major ­metropolises,



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and the issue of diversity management is always present. In recent years, the development of the global economy has added another meaning to immigration – namely, worldwide competition between major cities to attract highly skilled workers. Quebec City was chosen because the Quebec government announced its intention to make the provincial capital the second pole of immigration after Montreal. Sherbrooke is another second-tier city designated by the Quebec government as a regional pole of immigration. In addition, Sherbrooke has a history of receiving refugees from Southeast Asia in the late 1970s. We added Rimouski, a third-tier city in the BasSaint-Laurent region, because it has been interested in recruiting new immigrants for regional development purposes. To what extent do these different patterns affect policies at the city level? Montreal In the history of Quebec and Canada, the Montreal region has been a major immigrant destination. Between 2003 and 2007, an average of about 32,000 new­comers arrived in the region every year (Quebec, micc 2008b, 34). According to the 2006 census,11 490,200 immigrants live within the territory of the City of Montreal. They represent 30.7 per cent of the city’s population, and one out of four immigrants (25.7 per cent) arrived between 2001 and 2005. There have been successive waves of European immigration since the early twentieth century (Eastern European Jews, Italians, Portuguese, etc.), and since the 1970s more diversified cohorts have arrived in the city, largely from non-European countries (Germain et al. 2003, 1–2). These newer waves of immigration have diversified the social fabric of Montreal (Graham and Phillips 2006). Currently, we can count at least seventy ethnic groups and more than a hundred languages in Montreal.12 The City of Montreal has intervened in immigrant settlement since the late 1980s. As a multi-ethnic and multicultural metropolis, the municipality’s interventions have mainly focused on the development of harmonious intercultural relations and on the smooth socioeconomic integration of the new­comers. This intercultural approach is considered a distinct characteristic of Montreal’s immigrant settlement policy when compared with those of other Canadian cities (Poirier 2006; Graham and Phillips 2006). Montreal’s immigrant settlement policy apparatus represents this well. First, the city

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established in 1988 the Montreal Intercultural Office (Bureau interculturel de Montréal, bim). The bim’s initial role was to provide the information on municipal services in several languages (Germain et al. 2003, 39). Later, the bim became the Office of Intercultural Affairs (Bureau des affaires interculturelles), with a horizontal mandate to promote harmonious intercultural relations in service delivery and other municipal interventions (Ville de Montréal 2000). The office was replaced by the Department of Social Diversity (Direction de la diversité sociale), which is currently responsible for immigrant settlement policies. Second, Montreal has developed its own policy framework, which emphasizes respect for human rights, intercultural rapprochement and dialogue, and the elimination of racism and xenophobia. Starting with the Montreal Declaration against Racial Discrimination (Déclaration de Montréal contre la discrimination raciale) in 1989, the city has for the last two decades observed the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (Journée internationale pour l’élimination de toutes les formes de discrimination raciale) on 21 March. Along the same lines, the city put forward the Montreal Declaration for Cultural Diversity and Inclusion (Déclaration de Montréal pour la diversité culturelle et l’inclusion) in 2004 and the Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities (Charte montréalaise des droits et responsabilités) in 2006. Third, Montreal created a consultative body, the Intercultural Council of Montreal (Conseil interculturel de Montréal, cim) in 2003. The cim is composed of fifteen people from both ethnocultural groups and French-speaking Quebecers who are nominated by the city council. The cim is obliged by its regulations to hold at least eight regular meetings a year, and eleven meetings were held in 2009 (Ville de Montréal, 2002; Conseil interculturel de Montréal, 2010) The cim is to give the city council and administration advice and opinions on intercultural relations and on the life of ethnocultural groups. The council is usually considered by the municipal administration as a “wise people committee,” but it sometimes acts as a pressure group (interview, mtl 1). Montreal’s interventions on the ground are mostly confined to domains under municipal jurisdiction. While provincial programs are largely directed at individual immigrants, Montreal’s programs “are more dedicated to communities and neighbourhoods” (interview, mtl 1). Current city interventions are based on the S­ trategic



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Planning on Ethnocultural Diversity (2007–10) (Planification stratégique en matière de diversité ethnoculturelle (2007–10)) (Ville de Montréal 2007). This new municipal policy is conceived under an intermetropolis competition perspective to bring highly skilled workers to Montreal. According to the city, In the actual context of competition between world major cities to welcome and retain an increasing number of immigrants, Montreal’s major issue is to distinguish itself. To attract more immigrants and take advantage of their incalculable contributions in many aspects, the city has to be capable of continuing to offer adequate municipal infrastructure, effective community services, and a renowned quality of life. (Ville de Montréal 2007, 3; emphasis in the original) In order to achieve this global objective, the municipal interventions are organized around six major priorities: economic development; integration into the labour market; housing; services to citizens and communities; the fight against discrimination, exclusion, and xenophobia; and leadership vis-à-vis other governments and partners. Montreal also plans to take the leadership in immigrant settlement governance within its territory and emphasizes the importance of partnership and coordination with different governmental actors and ngos. To begin, boroughs play an important role. They enjoy significant autonomy in community and neighbourhood service delivery (Belley et al. 2009). In matters of immigrant settlement, the central administration works closely with boroughs, for they have “detailed knowledge of the ground” (interview, mtl  1). Based on the information and suggestions from boroughs, the central administration decides global municipal orientations. Policy-making and policy-implementation processes are based on “consultation and dialogues” (ibid.). At the regional level, the cre not only facilitates communications between different municipalities but also puts in place its own programs on immigration and develops particular relationships with the Quebec government, especially through negotiations of specific agreements on the regionalization of immigration. The division of work between the cre and the city is decided through negotiations. At the provincial level, the city has a close collaboration with different departments, including the micc, the Department of

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Health and Social Services (Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux), the Department of Education (Ministère de l’Éducation), the Department of Municipal Affairs and Regions (Ministère des Affaires municipales et des Régions), the Department of Public Security (Ministère de la Sécurité publique), etc. Since 1999, the city has had a strong tie to the micc through different financial support agreements. The latest three-year agreement, signed in 2007, doubled the annual amount of provincial funding up to $1.5 million and gave more flexibility and autonomy to the city (Quebec, micc 2007). The city also has close relationships with different ngos at the community level, such as Centraide, Fondation Lucie et André Chagnon, and the Foundation of Greater Montreal. The relationships between the city and local ngos are interdependent. According to one municipal officer, ngos “are often our arms, eyes, and ears on the ground. In return, we try to find more available money to allow them to realize the actions that they can do the best. We try to see where we should put priority” (interview, mtl 1). At the neighbourhood level, thirty local tables assure the coordination among governmental and social actors and serve as sources of inspiration for the central administration. To sum up, Montreal’s involvement in immigrant settlement policy began with the goal of making sure that intercultural harmony would develop in the city. The municipal policy framework and different policy measures are intended to encourage intercultural contact, dialogue, and understanding. The latest strategic planning emphasizes on economic development in the context of globalization and increasing competition between major cities to attract foreign investment and highly skilled workers. The municipal governance structure is based on a complex relationship, leaving some autonomy to boroughs, on the one hand, and to community organizations, on the other. Apart from the guarantee of access to municipal employment and services, boroughs can elaborate different projects suitable to local situations. Community organizations are also invited to launch projects and make recommendations through local meeting tables placed in each neighbourhood. When it comes to municipal-regional-provincial relations, there is close collaboration between these different-level authorities, notably because local elected officials sit on the board of the cre.



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Quebec City Quebec City and the surrounding area attract the second-largest contingent of immigrants to the province. However, with the number of immigrants amounting to only about 3 per cent of the provincial total, the region remains in a very distant second place (Bourget 2006). Lucille Guilbert (2006) adds that while Quebec City receives a fairly important number of immigrants (at least compared with cities other than Montreal), it has had some difficulty in keeping these immigrants in the region. Quebec City’s difficulty in both attracting and retaining large numbers of immigrants has been the central problem faced by immigrant settlement actors in the region. The Quebec government, along with regional and municipal officials, have thus focused their efforts on making the city a more attractive place for immigrants. Increasing the number of immigrants settling in Quebec City has been an important goal of the micc for some time. As part of its regionalization policy, the department has over the years “sent” fairly important cohorts of refugees to the provincial capital region. As Guilbert (2006, 94) recalls, this has not always been successful in the long run. According to her, “Migrants in the ‘Refugee Class’ were directed to the regions and to medium-sized cities with a low immigrant population, including the Quebec City region ... In the relatively long term, the rate of retention among these immigrants is low.” The Quebec government, however, is not the only actor to play in the regionalization field of Quebec’s immigration. The cre for the provincial capital is also an important partner of the micc. This is not to say that there is no space for regional autonomy. The Regional Immigration Action Program (Programme d’action régionale en immigration, pari), created by the cre and other regional partners, including Quebec City, is an example of some regional action beyond a simple regional relay role for the cre. Quebec City, especially under the L’Allier administration, plays an active role in the cre (interview, qc 3). Ann Bourget (2006) argues that Quebec City must also become a leader in immigrant regionalization: “Canada’s major cities – not only the provincial capitals – will be called upon to play a vital role in the regionalization of immigration in Canada. Quebec City will

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be no exception and will have to clearly position itself as a leader in this area.” For Bourget, the city has played a “vital role” in matters of immigrant regionalization since 2001, when it signed the first agreement with the micc on immigrant settlement and launched a threeyear municipal action plan. The plan established three domains of municipal interventions: promoting Quebec City as an immigrant destination; facilitating the reception and integration of immigrants; and raising the population’s awareness of immigrants’ contribution to the city. The latest three-year agreement between Quebec City and the micc was signed in 2006. The province financed $300,000, while the city injected $225,000 (Quebec, micc 2006a; interview, qc 3). The city utilizes various policy and institutional tools in order to make Quebec City an attractive destination for immigrants. First, it established the International Relations Commission (Commissariat aux relations internationales, cri), which has played an important role in selling Quebec City to immigrants who have arrived in Montreal as well as those coming from abroad. The cri also has a horizontal mandate for municipal immigrant settlement policy planning, management, and coordination. In 2002 it created a consultative body, the Intercultural Council of Quebec City (Conseil interculturel de Québec, ciq). Like Montreal’s Intercultural Council, the ciq is composed of fifteen members – a mix of immigrants and Quebecers – and gives advice to the city. However, its influence on municipal policy varies, depending on political will and contingency. For example, the ciq had no meeting with the late mayor, Andrée Boucher, who did not put much priority on immigration (interviews, qc 1; qc 3). In contrast, Mayor Régis Labeaume, elected in 2006, has emphasized immigration as a tool of economic development for the Quebec City region, and the ciq has gradually increased its importance and will adopt its action plan in the near future (interview, qc 3). Various ngos take a service delivery role on the ground, and both the micc and the city provide financial support to them through various programs. Municipal funding is intended to support ngos’ activities related to immigrant settlement. Boroughs provide some funding to support their operational costs (interview, qc 3). In the provincial capital, immigrant settlement appears to be a fairly concerted project, with the municipality and its local ngo



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partners (the cre and the micc) coalescing around the objective of making Quebec City a major regionalization pole in the province. Sherbrooke The City of Sherbrooke is, with Gatineau and Quebec City, one of three target cities of provincial regionalization policy. According to the 2006 census data, 9,155 immigrants reside in Sherbrooke and represent 6.3 per cent of the city’s total population.13 In 2004 Sherbrooke became the first Quebec municipality to adopt its own immigrant reception and integration policy (Politique d’accueil et d’intégration des personnes immigrants) (Ville de Sherbrooke 2004). This policy expresses four pillars of municipal intervention in immigrant settlement policy: assuring access to municipal services for immigrants; increasing the representation of immigrants in municipal institutions and activities; promoting intercultural relations; and developing partnerships with local ngos specialized in immigration. Sherbrooke’s immigrant settlement policy has been elaborated and implemented in close collaboration with the provincial government and social forces. When Sherbrooke established its own reception and integration policy, it adopted a “participatory approach,” inviting ngos working on immigrant settlement as well as citizens to associate in the policy-making process (Ville de Sherbrooke 2004, 5). This open approach was maintained when the city created the Intercultural Relations and Diversity Committee (Comité des relations interculturelles et de la diversité, crid). The crid is a consultative body of the city council. However, unlike Montreal’s intercultural council, the crid is a political body chaired by a city councillor. Two other city councillors, municipal officials, a representative of boroughs, representatives from the micc and Employment Quebec, and major ngos working for immigrants are members of the committee and meet regularly to discuss issues related to immigrant settlement. ngos consider the crid an important and effective mechanism to influence agenda setting and policy outcomes by mobilizing their expertise on the ground (interview, sher 4). Their influence is reinforced by the lack of expertise within the municipal apparatus as well as the political will to listen to them (interviews, sher  2, sher  3). The planning, administration, and coordination of municipal policies are assumed by the Sports,

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­ ulture, and C C ­ ommunity Life Service (Service des sports, de la culture et de la vie communautaire). In addition, the city officially recognizes major immigrationrelated ngos, such as the Service d’aide aux Néo-Canadiens and the Fédération des communautés culturelles de l’Estrie, as partners of policy implementation and service delivery. Even though these organizations are largely funded by the province, Sherbrooke also offers a small amount of funding (interviews, sher  3, sher  4). Moreover, the city organized public hearings in 2006 and 2008 in order to assure citizens’ input on municipal interventions (interviews, sher 2, sher 3, sher 4). The private sector is also involved in immigrant settlement. The Chamber of Commerce of Sherbrooke is a member of the crid, and some companies actively participate in job fairs for immigrants (interviews, sher 1, sher 3, sher 4). Sherbrooke has developed a close partnership, or what an interviewee called “beautiful complicity,” with the province, especially with the micc (interview, sher 2). Within the provincial immigrant settlement policy framework, the micc and the city have built a “very open and flexible partnership with a lot of trust” (interview, sher 3). Since 2005, they have signed two three-year agreements on immigrant settlement. These agreements are financed fifty-fifty by the micc and the city; even though they follow provincial orientations, their contents and budget scale were arranged through negotiations. As one interviewee noted, “The city certainly has as much influence as the micc over the contents [of the agreements] because, on the one hand, the micc gives funding, but, on the other, it is we who implement” (interview, sher 2). In contrast, when it comes to the cre and the federal government, the city has not developed a strong partnership with them (interviews, sher  2, sher  3). Some immigration-related ngos are in contact with the cre, but these contacts are not directly related to immigrant settlement, such as gender equality issue and regional economic development. Still, they try to raise awareness of immigrant issues by participating in these forums (interview, sher 4). The case of Sherbrooke shows that municipal political leadership through the crid serves as the centre of multilevel governance structure. The political nature of the crid seems to facilitate deliberations among different actors as well as to increase the council’s influence on immigrant settlement policy. In addition, a close partnership between the city and the micc allows fairly ­harmonious insertion



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of municipal interventions into the provincial policy framework and multilevel governance structure. Rimouski Rimouski is the capital of the Bas-Saint-Laurent region. This area is recognized by the Quebec government as a resource-based region (région ressource), meaning that it is eligible for special regional development funding that is not available to more central regions. Rimouski has recently shown signs of moving toward a more dynamic economy, notably with the emergence of a small marine science cluster (Doloreux and Shearmur 2006), and the regional economy has grown substantially thanks to its recent diversification. In this changing economic context, the City of Rimouski and other cities in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region have recently become interested in receiving immigrants as a source of labour force and regional development. However, the immigrant population in Rimouski is still small. According to the 2006 census, 715 immigrants live within the municipal territory.14 They represent only 1.7 per cent of the municipal population. About half of them arrived in the city between 1996 and 2006, showing that the city is a rapidly growing destination of immigrants in spite of its small size. The City of Rimouski has shown an increasing interest in immigrant settlement during the last few years. The election in 2006 of Mayor Éric Forest, who is more open to the question of immigration, served as a catalyst for the city’s emerging interest in the issue (interview, rim). After his election, Forest organized a large-scale public consultation – “Rimouski 2006: Know How to Navigate Together” (Rimouski 2006: Savoir naviguer ensemble) – between June and November 2006 in order to develop a municipal global vision shared by the citizens. More than 1,700 citizens participated in this exercise, in which the integration of new­comers (both Quebecers/ Canadians and international immigrants) into the local life was raised as an important issue. This question was retained in the final report, showing that a consensus was reached on the need to establish a municipal reception and information policy for new­comers to the city (Ville de Rimouski 2006, 6). This policy-making project went beyond the City of Rimouski when surrounding municipalities also became interested in it. The Rimouski-Neigette Regional County Municipality (Municipalté régionale de comté (mrc) de

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Rimouski-Neigette), which groups ten municipalities in the region, including the City of Rimouski, decided in November 2007 to establish a common policy on immigrant reception, integration, and retention (Dufresne 2007). As of October 2008, the policy-making process was in its final stretch and the policy was to be published soon afterwards (interview, rim). Furthermore, in the middle of the reasonable accommodation debates, the municipality affirmed its intention to become an inclusive city when the city council unanimously adopted the Rimouski Declaration of the Citizen’s Rights (Déclaration des droits du citoyen de Rimouski) on 1 October 2007 (Ville de Rimouski 2007). This declaration comprises six elements. First, the reception and integration of new­comers will be part of the municipality’s vision and strategic planning. Second, the preoccupations of ethnocultural groups will be taken into account in municipal policy-making and service provision. Third, the City of Rimouski is an open city welcoming all new­comers independent of their origin, religion, language, and culture, and it encourages their integration into different aspects of municipal life. Fourth, the municipality builds partnerships with other organizations in order to prevent isolation and to respect individual dignity. Fifth, the city fights against all forms of prejudice and exclusion and asks citizens to develop harmonious relations between citizens and different groups. Sixth, the city recognizes gender equality as a fundamental principle in municipal policies and actions. Rimouski also developed the Welcoming Guide for New­comers (Guide d’accueil des nouveaux arrivants) and organized a welcoming day in September 2008. As mentioned earlier, Rimouski’s immigrant settlement policy is not exclusively for international immigrants but includes Quebecers and Canadians who move to the city. In spite of the municipality’s interest and growing intervention in immigrant settlement, the City of Rimouski still plays a relatively minor role in multilevel governance terms. Unlike the other three cities examined in this study, Rimouski does not have a direct agreement with the micc on immigrant settlement. Instead, the leading partner of the provincial government is the cre of Bas-Saint-Laurent (crebsl), which signed a specific agreement with the micc in October 2006. This three-year agreement of $695,000 is an extension of the provincial policy on the regionalization of immigration and is financed by the crebsl, the micc, the Municipal and



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Regional Affairs Department (Ministère des Affaires municipales et des régions, mamr), and Employment-Quebec (Emploi-Québec). Mayor Forest, who also serves as president of the crebsl board, emphasized the key role played by the crebsl: “This new agreement on immigration, which gives more decision power to the region, will allow the Conférence regionale des élus to play a key role in the implementation of activities in partnership with local and regional authorities” (Quebec, micc 2006b). This agreement structures immigrant settlement policy framework and governance at the regional level. It was followed by a threeyear action plan stipulating five axes of intervention: to develop regional and local coordination structures; to promote the region; to encourage the insertion of immigrant workers into the regional labour market; to support the reception and integration of immigrant workers and international students; and to raise the regional population’s awareness of immigration (crebsl 2007). In addition, the management committee of the agreement created a regional coordination table on immigration (Table régionale de concertation sur l’immigration, trci) composed of both governmental and social actors working in the domains of immigration, economy, education, health, and youth (crebsl 2007). The agreement also seeks to reinforce four local organizations specialized in immigrant reception and integration by giving them financial support for their activities. Three of them are local development centres (Centre local de development, cld) that are specialized in the economic aspect of immigrant reception and integration. The other organization is the Accueil et intégration Bas-Saint-Laurent (aibsl), the sole ngo specializing in the reception and integration of the immigrant population and ethnocultural groups in Rimouski. This funding empowers these organizations in the governance structure as privileged partners of regional and local authorities. In particular, the aibsl enjoys a good reputation, thanks to its comprehensive expertise on immigrants and ethnocultural groups, and it plays an important role in policy-making and the policy-implementation process (interview, rim). For example, it is a member of the committee responsible for the elaboration of a mrc policy on immigrant reception, integration, and retention (Dufresne 2007). The case of Rimouski shows that in spite of its increasing interest in immigrant settlement, the immigrant settlement governance structure goes beyond municipal borders and emphasizes coordination at

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mrc and regional levels. Begun as Rimouski’s initiative, the policy on reception, integration, and retention of new­comers is now established at the mrc level. On the other hand, the crebsl serves as a regional window vis-à-vis the provincial government. Still, the City of Rimouski is part of these entities and plays a fairly important role as the regional capital. Its initiative for a municipal reception and integration policy is a good example. A smaller number of actors facilitate the close relationships between governmental and social actors in policy-making and the policy-implementation process.

conclusion This chapter analyzed immigrant settlement policies in Quebec from two complementary perspectives. First, by adopting a broader perspective, we demonstrated the driving role of the provincial government and its policies in Quebec’s immigrant settlement governance. In Quebec, the provincial government has taken on a role that is probably comparable to the one played by the federal government in other provinces (Andrew, this volume). Like the federal government elsewhere, the Quebec government has developed a comprehensive set of policies aimed at a variety of facets of immigrant settlement (job placement, language training, etc.). These policies, as we have seen, institutionalize two sets of local actors: the local ngos, which take care of service delivery, and the municipality and cre, which often adopt the role of brokers and local planners. In both cases, local actors remain at arm’s-length from the micc, which provides the great majority of funds for these actors. As mentioned before, different studies on Quebec public policies have identified the “Quebec model of governance.” A distinct feature of this model is the close-knit relationship between the provincial state and local non-profit service providers. Our first perspective suggests that such a governance model can also be found in immigrant settlement policy. Second, by taking a more city-specific perspective, we brought some nuance to the broader picture by uncovering subtle differences between cities. Our case study of four cities confirmed the centrality of the provincial government, notably that of the local bureau of the micc, which is not only an important funder but often becomes a partner of local and regional initiatives. These studies have revealed significantly different trajectories between cities.



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The differences between cities were observed in terms of the dynamics of multilevel governance. For instance, in Sherbrooke, as in Montreal, the role played by the municipality seems very important. The interviews show that these municipalities have become a focal point of multilevel governance. Both have fairly well-established policies. While their municipal policies have some links to the initiatives of the cre, they are distinct from the regional policy and are separately funded by the micc. Local ngos in Montreal and Sherbrooke participate quite actively in municipally led forums and try to influence municipal policies and interventions. This confirms that ngos consider that municipalities in Sherbrooke and Montreal are relevant platforms for local immigrant settlement. In Quebec City and Rimouski the role of the municipality seems to be in the process of development. In Rimouski, other levels of the institutional architecture have taken more of a lead, as shown by the active role played by the cre of Bas-Saint-Laurent and the mrc Rimouski-Neigette. The regional coordination table created by the cre to manage the specific agreement on immigration appears as the main forum where the regional multilevel governance is taking place. In the case of Quebec City, the interests of municipal administration in immigration have varied depending on the mayor in office. This has meant that the municipality has not always been the most proactive member in the regional coalition of actors. The differences of municipal involvement in the multilevel governance structure also have an impact on the different settlement approaches of the cities. In Quebec City and Rimouski, local initiatives have focused mainly on attracting immigrants in accordance with the regionalization policy of the micc. Their measures include providing practical information and survival tips to new­comers (for example, how to find an apartment, how to get a social insurance card, etc.) as well as selling the city abroad. The City of Montreal tends to adopt a different approach by adopting a more horizontal policy aimed at developing a harmonious intercultural approach across different municipal services. Sherbrooke has been developing a similar approach since the adoption of its own policy in 2004. The two perspectives combined have given a more comprehensive picture of immigrant settlement governance in Quebec. Immigrant settlement can hardly be understood without due reference to the role of provincial policies and their ability to institutionalize local actors. Still, the central role played by the provincial government

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does not exclude differences in the configurations of multilevel governance at the municipal level. As we have shown, these include differences in local approaches to settlement as well as in the role of municipal actors. Our study was determined to go beyond the metropolitan context in order to see how more peripheral cities grapple with the immigrant settlement issue. Our dual perspective approach proved to be very useful in that context. It allowed us to understand the extent to which the provincial template structures local actors’ activities while giving them some space of autonomy in different local contexts. Our findings may also have some policy relevance. In particular, the different patterns of multilevel governance observed across cities imply that immigration regionalization policies should take into account the local context and empower local actors so that they can customize the provincial template according to local needs. Once the province succeeds in facilitating the development of networks of local actors, these can not only serve as sources of policy innovation but can also help make regional cities home for immigrants.

notes 1 In February 2007 the Quebec government established the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices related to Cultural Differences, co-chaired by two prominent Quebec scholars, Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor. The commission had four mandates: to give a full picture of current reasonable accommodation practices in Quebec; to analyze issues related to reasonable accommodation by considering other societies’ cases; to organize a province-wide consultation; and to make recommendations to the government to ensure that reasonable accommodation would conform to the values of Quebec society as a pluralistic, democratic, and egalitarian society. After a series of public consultations and research, the commission published its final report, Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation, in May 2008. The final report and further detailed information on the commission are available at http://www. accommodements.qc.ca (accessed 4 June 2008). 2 According to the 2006 census data, about 87 per cent of immigrants in Quebec live in the Montreal Census Metropolitan Area. This is much higher than the share of Toronto in Ontario and of Vancouver in British



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Columbia. The data are available at http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/data/highlights/Immigration/index.cfm. 3 In January 2007 the City of Hérouxville, a small town of 1,300 residents in the Mauricie region, adopted a provocative code of conduct for immigrants. The code asks new­comers to accept social customs such as the equality of men and women, individual freedom, and Christmas decorations. For details on this code of conduct, see http://municipalite.herouxville.qc.ca/Standards.pdf (accessed 29 November 2008). 4 Our translation. Hereafter, all quotations from works and documents in French are our translation. 5 Still, the immigration flow between 1994 and 2000 was maintained around 30,000 per year, much higher than the levels of immigration before 1985, which were less than 20,000 per year. 6 The statistics on cities presented here are based on the Census Metropolitan Areas of these cities unless we indicate otherwise. In the case of Rimouski, the area is that of the census agglomeration of Rimouski. 7 Calculated from the 2006 census data available in the Statistics Canada website: http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/data/highlights/Immigration/Table403.cfm?Lang=e&t=403&gh=6&gf=24&g5=0&sc=1 &s=0&o=a (accessed 2 December 2008). The percentage of immigrant population in Gatineau is calculated from the number of immigrants living within the City of Gatineau. See http://www12.statcan.ca/english/ census06/data/highlights/Immigration/Table403.cfm?Lang=e&t=403&gh =7&gf=24&g5=1&sc=1&s=0&o=a (accessed 2 December 2008). 8 The term “cultural community” (communauté culturelle) has been an ambiguous concept, but the Quebec government has used the term since the 1990 policy statement in order to refer to Quebecers who are neither French and British descendants nor First Nations (Quebec, mcci 1990, 4). 9 This was the case in Quebec City as well as in Sherbrooke, where local businesses are preoccupied with the difficulty of finding qualified workers in a growing regional economy. 10 The crés replaced in 2003 the Regional Development Councils (Conseils régionaux de développement, crd). While the crds were mostly governed by civil-society actors, they represent a majority of local (municipal) elected officials. In most cases, the cres operate at the level of the administrative region (for a presentation of the cré, see Chiasson and Robitaille 2004). 11 These census data are available at the following address of the Statistics Canada website: http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/data/highlights/Immigration/Table403.cfm?Lang=e&t=403&gh=3&gf=0&g5=1

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&sc=1&rpp=100&sr=301&s=0&o=a&d1=1 (accessed 15 November 2008). 12 http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/portal/page?_pageid=4637,8891574&_ dad=portal&_schema=portal (accessed 15 November 2008). 13 http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/data/highlights/Immigration/ Table403.cfm?Lang=e&t=403&gh=3&gf=0&g5=1&sc=1&rpp=100& sr=501&s=0&o=a&d1=1 (accessed 21 November 2008). 14 http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census06/data/highlights/Immigration/ Table403.cfm?Lang=e&t=403&gh=3&gf=0&g5=1&sc=1&rpp=100& sr=401&s=0&o=a&d1=1 (accessed 18 November 2008).

interviews mtl 1 mtl 2 qc 1 qc 2 qc 3 rim sher 1 sher 2 sher 3 sher 4

Montreal, 23 October 2008 Montreal, 13 November 2008 Quebec City, 10 October 2008 Quebec City, 10 October 2008 Quebec City, 23 October 2008 Rimouski, 10 October 2008 Sherbrooke, 7 October 2008 Sherbrooke, 15 October 2008 Sherbrooke, 16 October 2008 Sherbrooke, 16 October 2008

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gestion urbaine. Revue administration publique du Canada 45, no. 2:195–216 Peyton, Martine, and Sylvie Paré. 2001. Relations interculturelles, gestion de la diversité et réorganisation municipale. http://www.vrm.ca/ documents/Peyton_Martine.pdf Piché, Victor, and Dominique Laroche. 2007. L’immigration au Québec. Rapport préparé pour la Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles. http://www. accommodements.qc.ca/documentation/rapports/rapport–11-pichevictor.pdf (accessed 10 September 2008) Poirier, Christian. 2006. Ethnocultural Diversity, Democracy, and Intergovernmental Relations in Canadian Cities. In Canada: The State of the Federation 2004. Municipal-Federal-Provincial Relations in Canada, ed. Robert Young and Christian Leuprecht, 201–20. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, for the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen’s University Quebec. Conseil du trésor. 2008. Expenditure Budget 2008–09. Vol. 2. Estimates of the Departments and Agencies. Quebec: Gouvernement du Québec. http://www.tresor.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/ pdf/budget_depenses/08–09/Volume_ii_en.pdf (accessed 20 August 2010) Quebec. Ministère des Communautés culturelles et de l’Immigration (mcci). 1990. Au Québec pour bâtir ensemble: enoncé de politique en matière d’immigration et d’intégration. Montreal: Gouvernement du Québec Quebec. Ministère de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles (micc). 2006a. Communiqué c 4967: Immigration et intégration des personnes immigrantes – Signature d’une entente entre le ministère de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles et la Ville de ­Québec. http://communiques.gouv.qc.ca/gouvqc/communiques/gpqf/ Janvier2006/23/c4967.html (accessed 15 November 2008) – 2006b. Communiqué c5019: Immigration dans la région du Bas-SaintLaurent – La ministre Lise Thériault annonce une entente spécifique de régionalisation avec la Conférence régionale des élus du Bas-SaintLaurent. http://communiques.gouv.qc.ca/gouvqc/communiques/gpqf/ Octobre2006/04/c5019.html (accessed 18 November 2008) – 2007. Entente entre la Ville de Montréal et le ministère de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles sur l’accueil et l’intégration des immigrants. http://communiques.gouv.qc.ca/gouvqc/communiques/gpqf/ Decembre2007/04/c7249.html (accessed 15 November 2008)



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– 2008a. Bulletin statistique sur l’immigration permanente au Québec. 3e trimestre 2008. http://www.micc.gouv.qc.ca/publications/fr/recherchesstatistiques/BulletinStatistique–2008trimestre3-ImmigrationQuebec.pdf (accessed 5 December 2008) – 2008b. Tableaux sur l’immigration au Québec 2003–2007. Montreal: Gouvernement du Québec. http://www.micc.gouv.qc.ca/publications/fr/ recherches-statistiques/Immigration_Qc_2003–2007.pdf (accessed 15 September 2008) – 2008c. Pour enrichir le Québec. Intégrer mieux: Mesures pour renforcer l’action du Québec en matière d’intégration en emploi des immigrants. Montreal: Gouvernement du Québec. http://www.micc.gouv.qc.ca/publications/fr/mesures/Mesures-Integration-Brochure2008.pdf (accessed 15 November 2008) – 2008d. Projets visant à faciliter l’accès aux professions et métiers réglementés mis en oeuvre par le ministère de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles et ses partenaires. Montreal: Gouvernement du Québec. http://www.micc.gouv.qc.ca/publications/fr/dossiers/AccesProfessionsMetiers-Projets.pdf (accessed 20 September 2008) – 2008e. Programme d’appui aux relations interculturelles (pari ): Année financière 2008–2009. Montreal: Gouvernement du Québec. http:// www.quebecinterculturel.gouv.qc.ca/publications/fr/pari/paridescriptif–2008–2009.pdf (accessed 3 December 2008) – 2008f. Pour enrichir le Québec: Affirmer les valeurs communes de la société québécoise. Montreal: Gouvernement du Québec. http://www. micc.gouv.qc.ca/publications/fr/mesures/Mesures-ValeursCommunesBrochure2008.pdf (accessed 30 October 2008) – 2008g. Liste des organismes par régions administrative et arrondissements. Montreal: Gouvernement du Québec. http://www.immigrationquebec.gouv.qc.ca/publications/fr/divers/repertoire-regions.pdf (accessed 10 December 2008) – 2010. Règlement sur la pondération applicable à la sélection des ressortissants étrangers. c. i–0.2, r. 2 Current to 1 August 2010. Quebec: Éditeur officiel du Québec. http://www2.publicationsduquebec.gouv. qc.ca/dynamicSearch/telecharge.php?type=2&fifi=//i_0_2/i0_2r2.htm (accessed 19 August 2010) Quebec. Ministère des Relations avec les citoyens et de l’Immigration (mrci). 2004a. Des valeurs partagées, des intérêts communs: pour assurer la pleine participation des Québécois des communautés culturelles au développement du Québec. Plan d’action 2004–2007. Montreal: Gouvernement du Québec

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– 2004b. Shared Values, Common Interests: To Ensure the Full Participation of Quebecers from Cultural Communities in the Development of Québec. Action Plan 2004–2007. Summary Document. Montreal: Gouvernement du Québec – 2004c. Population immigrée recensée au Québec et dans les régions en 2001: caractéristiques générales. Recensement de 2001: données ethnoculturelles. Montreal: Gouvernement du Québec Ray, Brian. 1999. Plural Geographies in Canadian Cities: Interpreting Immigrant Residential Spaces in Toronto and Montreal. Canadian Journal of Regional Science/Revue canadienne des sciences régionales 22, no. 1–2:65–86 Renaud, Jean, and Tristan Cayn. 2006. Un emploi correspondent à ses compétences: les travailleurs sélectionnés et l’accès à un emploi qualifié au Québec. http://www.micc.gouv.qc.ca/publications/pdf/AccesEmploiQualifie_RapportRenaudCayn.pdf (accessed 17 September 2008) Rocher, François, Micheline Labelle, Ann-Marie Field, and Jean-Claude Icart. 2007. Le concept d’interculturalisme en contexte québécois: généalogie d’un néologisme. Report presented to the Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles (ccpardc). http://www.accommodements.qc.ca/documentation/rapports/rapport–3-rocher-francois.pdf (accessed 15 October 2008) Rouillard, Christian, Éric Montpetit, Isabelle Fortier, and Alain-G. Gagnon. 2004. La réingénierie de l’État: vers un appauvrissement de la gouvernance québécoise. Quebec, Presses de l’Université Laval Savard, Sebastien, and Guy Chiasson. 2001. La gouvernance des services sociaux dans le secteur de la jeunesse et de la famille: quelle participation pour les organismes communautaires? Politique et sociétés 20, no. 2–3:141–58 Schmidt, Ron, Sr. 2007. Comparing Federal Government Immigrant Settlement Policies in Canada and the United States. American Review of Canadian Studies 37, no. 1: 103–22 Simard, Carolle. 2003. Les élus issus des groupes ethniques minoritaires à Montréal: perceptions et représentations politiques, une étude exploratoire. Politiques et sociétés 22, no. 1:53–79 Simard, Jean-François, and Yvon Leclerc. 2008. Les centres locaux de développement (1998–2008): une gouvernance en mutation entre participation citoyenne et imputabilité municipal. Canadian Journal of Regional Science/Revue canadienne des sciences régionales 31, no. 3:615–37



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Turgeon, Luc. 2006. Les villes dans le système intergouvernemental canadien, In Le fédéralisme canadien contemporain: fondements, traditions, institutions, ed. Alain-G. Gagnon, 403–27. Montreal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal Ville de Montréal. 2000. Construire ensemble, orientations 2000–2001– 2002, Relations interculturelles. Montreal – 2002. Règlement sur le Conseil interculturel de Montréal. Règlement 02–044. http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/page/conseil_interc_ fr/media/documents/02–044fr.pdf (accessed 20 August 2010) – 2007. Planification stratégique en matière de diversité ethnoculturelle (2007–2010). Direction de la diversité sociale. Montreal, June Ville de Québec. 2008. La ville de Québec. Mon choix de vie. http://www. ville.quebec.qc.ca/fr/exploration/docs/choix_quebec.pdf (accessed 10 September 2008) Ville de Rimouski. 2006. Rapport final: Rimouski 2006. Savoir naviguer ensemble. http://www.ville.rimouski.qc.ca/decouvrez/communiques/pdf/ Rapport_final_Rimouski_2006_07_12_06.pdf (accessed 10 September 2008) – 2007. Déclaration des droits du citoyen de Rimouski. http://ville. rimouski.qc.ca/decouvrez/communiques/pdf/Declaration_des_droits_ du_citoyen_de_Rimouski.pdf (accessed 10 September 2008) Ville de Sherbrooke 2004. Politique d’accueil et d’intégration des personnes immigrantes. http://www.ville.sherbrooke.qc.ca/webconcepteurcontent63/000023300000/upload/democratique/accueil_fr.pdf (accessed 10 September 2008) Young, Margaret. 2004. Immigration: The Canada-Quebec Accord. Background Paper no. 252e. Ottawa: Library of Parliament

5 Multilevel Governance and Immigration Policy in Nova Scotia rodney haddow This chapter examines intergovernmental aspects of immigration attraction and settlement in Nova Scotia, with particular attention to the role of municipal governments. The federal government, reflecting its priority under the Constitution Act and its historical prevalence in policy making, dominates immigration policy in Nova Scotia. Like other provinces, however, Nova Scotia has recently acquired a larger role. While provincial interventions and supportive federal measures have increased Nova Scotia’s share of Canadian immigrants, the province continues to attract a proportion of new­comers that is far below the national average; this persistent pattern points to Nova Scotia’s traditional economically peripheral standing in the federation and its limited appeal to earlier generations of immigrants. Nova Scotia municipalities remain very modest players in the immigration field, probably more so than municipalities in the other provinces examined in this volume. In part, this reflects the provincial government’s comparatively limited administrative capacity. Nova Scotia’s authority is far more modest than Quebec’s, and the province has not taken on the immigration settlement responsibilities now delivered by provincial authorities in British Columbia. Moreover, Nova Scotia municipalities, which once administered and financed many programs of direct relevance to immigration settlement – as municipalities still do in Ontario – were recently relieved of many of them. With respect to immigrant attraction, the province decided to use other regionally based vehicles to provide local input to its recent initiatives. Municipal involvement with immigration also varies between urban and relatively economically dynamic Halifax, on the one hand, and on the



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other, and the rest of the province, beset by economic stagnation and demographic decline. Municipalities have very different administrative capacities for addressing immigration, though these are very limited in all cases. As immigrants themselves form a small proportion of Nova Scotia’s population, non-government actors play a modest role in shaping immigration initiatives there, especially outside Halifax. Policy making is dominated by governments, though local settlement organizations do exercise some influence. When other nongovernmental actors have been active, moreover, these have usually come from the business community, anxious to attract valuable skills to local economies, rather than from organizations representing immigrant communities. Nova Scotia’s chronically limited ability to attract immigrants reflects its political economy: its marginality within the broader Canadian and North American economic spaces, and the considerable variability of current circumstances and future prospects for its regions. These political-economic realities are relatively entrenched, representing embedded, structural features of the Canadian economy and its historically uneven distribution of economic endowments. Within these limits, recent policies nevertheless show some promise of improving the ability of Nova Scotia to attract and retain immigrants, the goal of recent policy. Municipalities no doubt could, if provided with more resources, assume additional immigration responsibilities; moreover, there is a perception at the local level that federal policy creates unnecessary barriers to immigrants coming to Nova Scotia. Yet recent policy has borne some fruit without changing significantly the role of municipalities. If increased locallevel involvement in the field is to be considered, it is more likely to be in relation to non-governmental agencies now active in the immigration field, not in the direction of municipal governments. Consistent with the methodology adopted throughout this research program, the field research for this study concentrated on four municipalities in Nova Scotia: the Halifax Regional Municipality (hrm), the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (cbrm), Truro, and the Town of Lunenburg. These communities were chosen to reflect the diverse circumstances of municipalities in the province. Halifax and the cbrm have by far the largest populations (table 4); the town of Truro, with a population of just over 11,000 in 2006 is much smaller, but still a municipality of above-average size in Nova

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Scotia. Lunenburg, with 2,400 inhabitants, is one of many very small municipalities located in rural Nova Scotia. Needless to say, these population variations are associated with very different municipal capacities to develop and implement initiatives for immigration. These towns and cities also reflect the very wide range of experiences that municipalities in the province have had in attracting immigrants – well above the provincial norm for Halifax and Lunenburg town, middling by this standard for Truro, and extremely low for the cbrm (table 2). The first part of this chapter elaborates on the context of municipal involvement in immigration attraction and settlement in Nova Scotia. Its first section describes immigration to the province, comparing it with the national picture. The subsequent four sections document the important changes that have occurred in the federalprovincial relationship since the turn of the millennium; they examine Nova Scotia’s immigration strategy during the same period; explain the immigration settlement infrastructure in the province; and explore the implications of these developments for municipalities in the province. The second part then documents the patterns of local immigration policy making in our four municipalities. One section addresses these in the Halifax Regional Municipality, where the city has been more active than elsewhere, where the main non-governmental interests are present and active, and where most immigrants to the province live. Subsequent sections speak to the distinctive realities in the other three municipalities, where immigrant and settlement organizations are very weakly present. These case studies address the perceptions of local actors regarding the suitability of existing federal and provincial policy. In spite of variations, the broad pattern is one of limited municipal involvement. The concluding discussion evaluates changes in immigration governance that have been proposed by Nova Scotia observers to improve policy outcomes there.

context A Profile of Immigration in Nova Scotia Nova Scotia attracts conspicuously few immigrants by Canadian standards (table 1). Indeed, the discrepancy between Nova Scotia and national immigration levels increased for several years after



Multilevel Governance and Immigration Policy in Nova Scotia 195

Table 1 Nova Scotia’s Share of Annual Immigration to Canada, 1991–2007 Year of immigrants’ arrival 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Cumulative, 1991–2000 Cumulative, 2001–2007

Immigrants to Nova Scotia

Immigrants to Canada

Nova Scotia % of Canadian

1,927 2,599 3,084 3,726 3,397 3,111 2,590 1,624 1,674 1,747 1,609 1,257 1,707 1,708 2,197 2,715 2,660

244,281 266,890 235,360 220,738 217,478 224,857 194,459 173,194 205,710 252,527 256,405 199,170 239,083 244,578 254,374 238,125 249,603

0.8 1.0 1.3 1.7 1.6 1.4 1.3 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.6 0.7 0.7 0.9 1.1 1.1

25,479 13,853

2,235,494 1,681,338

1.1 0.8

Source: Statistics Canada, cansim table 510011, vectors 437339 (“Canada; both sexes; immigrants; all ages”) and 438282 (“Nova Scotia; both sexes; immigrants; all ages”).

2002, when Ottawa and the province signed an immigration agreement designed, in part, to reverse the trend. Only 1.1% of all immigrants to Canada between 1991 and 2000 settled in Nova Scotia; over the subsequent seven years, this share was even lower, at 0.8%. By contrast, Nova Scotia’s share of the overall Canadian population remained slightly below 3% in 2006 (table 2). Table 1 reveals considerable instability in Nova Scotia’s attractiveness. Its share of immigrants was consistently above 1% between 1993 and 1997, only to fall drastically in subsequent years. It rose above 1% again in 2006 and 2007 for the first time in nine years. The latter figures clearly are consistent with the main goal of recent federal and provincial immigration policy for Nova Scotia – to increase the province’s ability to attract immigrants – though it is too soon to conclude that this represents a long-term trend and a validation of the federal-provincial efforts described below. Many of the observers of Nova Scotia immigration who were interviewed for this study pointed out that attracting new­comers

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Table 2 Immigrant Population in Nova Scotia: Its Counties and Selected Municipalities, 2006 Census

County / town Annapolis Antigonish cape breton   (reg. munic.) Colchester truro (town) Cumberland Digby Guysborough halifax   (reg. munic.) Hants Inverness Kings Lunenburg lunenburg  (town) Pictou Queen’s Richmond Shelburne Victoria Yarmouth Nova Scotia Canada Nova Scotia % of Canadian

Immigrants arrived before 2001

Immigrants arrived 2001–2006

2006 Population (census)

All immigrants as % of 2006 population

1,190 725

185 85

21,140 18,715

6.5% 4.3% 1.7%

1,580

155

104,660

1,725 525 905 525 130

195 45 70 65 25

49,520 11,405 31,175 18,715 8,950

3.9% 5.0% 3.1% 3.2% 1.7%

22,350 1,400 555 2,385 1,860

5,060 135 55 250 260

369,455 40,860 18,750 59,260 46,610

7.4% 3.8% 3.3% 4.4% 4.5%

175 1,140 255 205 405 290 665

25 125 30 35 50 25 95

2,170 45,815 11,055 9,625 15,405 7,500 25,870

9.2% 2.8% 2.6% 2.5% 3.0% 4.2% 2.9%

38,290 5,076,970 0.75%

6,900 1,109,980 0.62%

903,090 31,241,030 2.89%

5.0% 19.8% 25.3%

Source: Statistics Canada 2006

represents only “half the battle” for the province (for instance, interviews 6 and 10).1 The very high propensity of its immigrants to leave for other parts of the country shortly after arriving, they argued, means that Nova Scotia’s real share of immigrants is even lower than is suggested by annual immigration data. Tables 1 and 2 provide support for this contention and suggest that the problem of out-migration among recent immigrants is substantial. Thus, while 1.1% of immigrants to Canada between 1991 and 2000 first settled in Nova Scotia, only 0.75% of those who immigrated to Canada before 2001 and remained in Canada in 2006 were living in the



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province in 2006. In the middle of the present decade, federal and Nova Scotia authorities estimate that less than 40% of immigrants who initially land in the province are still there several years later (see, for instance, Nova Scotia, Office of Immigration 2005, 1). Table 2 also reveals the extreme unevenness in the distribution of immigrants among the province’s regions and highlights the particular circumstances of the four municipalities examined here. In 2006, 7.4% of Halifax Regional Municipality residents were immigrants; while this was less than half of the national level of 19.8%, it was well above the Nova Scotia average of 5.0%. A substantial majority of immigrants to Nova Scotia live in Halifax. The Town of Lunenburg has a share of immigrants that is well above the provincial average (at 9.2%). In Truro, 5.0% of the population consisted of immigrants in 2006, mirroring the provincial average. At 1.7%, on the other hand, the share of immigrants in Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s population was far below the provincial level, and it tied with rural Guysborough County for the lowest figure among county-level regions. This imbalance is reflected in equally uneven levels of organization among immigrant communities across these municipalities. Such mobilization typically is led by groups representing visible minorities, who form the majority of recent immigrants to Canada. As table 3 indicates, visible minorities are underrepresented in Nova Scotia compared with the national pattern. They are also distributed unevenly across the province in a pattern that reflects the distinctive immigration profiles noted above. In 2006, visible minorities formed 7.5% of Halifax’s population, well above the provincial average of 4.2%, but still less than half of the Canadian average of 16.2%. In the Cape Breton municipality, only 1.7% of the population consists of visible minorities. The distribution of visible minorities among different communities also displays distinctive features in Nova Scotia. The majority of these are black, but most black people in Nova Scotia are not immigrants. By contrast, the province has a disproportionately large Arab community, which is predominately of Lebanese descent and is concentrated in Halifax. The interviewed municipal officials and social actors in Nova Scotia overwhelmingly cited demographic and economic concerns as the primary motivation for recent governmental efforts, including municipal ones, to encourage immigration. Table 4 illustrates the rationale for this preoccupation. Immigration is not the only

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Table 3 Visible Minority Population in Nova Scotia and Selected Municipalities, 2006 Census Census visible minority group Black Arab Chinese South Asian total vm total as % of 2006 Population

Canada

Nova Scotia

Halifax

Cape Breton

Truro

783,795 265,550 1,216,565 1,262,865 5,068,095

19,230 4,505 4,305 3,810 37,685

13,270 3,840 3,105 2,895 27,645

970 105 220 260 1,750

445 105 220 260 645

0 10 10 20 35

16.2%

4.2%

7.5%

1.7%

5.7%

1.6%

Lunenburg

Source: Statistics Canada 2006

Table 4 Census Population Change in Nova Scotia and Selected Municipalities,1986–20061 Census year 1986 1991 1996 2001 2006 Change, 1986–2006

Canada

Nova Scotia

Halifax County

All nonHalifax

Cape Breton County

Truro

25,309,331 27,296,859 28,846,761 30,007,094 31,612,987

873,176 899,942 909,282 908,007 913,462

306,418 330,846 342,966 359,183 372,858

566,758 569,096 566,316 548,824 540,604

123,625 120,098 117,849 109,330 105,928

12,124 11,683 11,938 11,457 11,765

2,972 2,781 2,599 2,568 2,317

+24.9%

+4.6%

+21.7%

–4.8%

–16.7%

–3.1%

–28.3%

Lunenburg

Sources: Statistics Canada, 2006 (for 2001 and 2006 data); idem, 1996 (for 1996); idem, 1991 (for 1986 and 1991). 1  

The Halifax and Cape Breton data are for the counties that bear these names. The populations of the regional municipalities with the same names, created during the mid-1990s, differ marginally from those of the counties. (The regional municipalities exclude small First Nations reservations located within the county boundaries). County data are reported here to create data consistency for the period covered in the table.

cause of p ­ opulation growth and decline in various parts of C ­ anada (native-born Canadians move too, often following patterns that parallel those of immigrants). Nevertheless, attractiveness to immigrants clearly correlates closely with demographic trends for Nova Scotia and its various regions. While Canada’s population grew by 24.9% in the two decades between 1986 and 2006, Nova Scotia’s rose by only 4.6%. Halifax County, the destination for most immigrants, nevertheless did fairly well – its population rose by 21.7% during these years, close to the national average, while the population of the rest of the province fell by 4.8%. Truro, which possesses a fairly



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Table 5 Halifax Regional Municipality’s Share of Annual Immigration to Nova Scotia, 1996–2006 Year of immigrants’ arrival

Immigrants to Halifax R.M.

Immigrants to Nova Scotia

Halifax % of Nova Scotia immigrants

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

2,590 2,157 1,300 1,389 1,414 1,319 1,044 1,376 1,394 1,755 2,188

3,111 2,590 1,624 1,674 1,761 1,615 1,255 1,707 1,708 2,197 2,715

83.3 83.3 80.0 83.0 80.3 81.7 83.2 80.6 81.6 79.9 80.6

Source: Statistics Canada, cansim table 510035, vectors 21618072 (“Nova Scotia; immigrants”) and 21618144 (“Halifax; immigrants”).

strong industrial base and is a short drive from Halifax and its airport, saw its population fall by 3.1%. The figures are much worse elsewhere – 16.7% in Cape Breton County and 28.3% in Lunenburg town. Not unreasonably, then, local actors who are concerned about immigration regard it as an important lever for reversing demographic and, ultimately, economic decline. This same motivation underlay a provincial commitment (see below) to seek to direct more of Nova Scotia’s immigrants to communities other than Halifax. It must be said, however, that the available evidence does not suggest that this effort has yet borne much fruit. Halifax’s annual share of all new Nova Scotia immigrants has remained at or above 80% for each year since 1996, though it dipped slightly below that level in 2005, only to rise above it again in 2006; the city’s relative advantage shows no signs of abating (table 5). The Federal-Provincial Relationship: Breaking the Federal Monopoly After 2002 the federal and Nova Scotia governments modified their relationship in the immigration field, motivated in good measure by a desire to enhance the province’s attractiveness to immigrants. Ottawa compromised its traditional near-monopoly of policy ­making regarding immigration in 1978, when it signed the Cullen-

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Couture agreement with Quebec; it extended that province’s role significantly in the 1991 Canada-Quebec Accord. Quebec now has extensive powers to participate in selecting immigrants according to its own criteria, as long as these are compatible with federal norms; and it plans and administers settlement services within its boundaries. In a series of bilateral agreements since the mid-1990s, Ottawa has agreed to extend the role of other provinces in the immigration sector, where they have traditionally had little if any say, despite the fact that section 95 of the British North America Act identified immigration as a joint responsibility of the two levels of government (albeit with federal paramouncy). In spite of these developments, the authority of the English-speaking provinces remains much more modest than Quebec’s. There have been three key developments. First, agreements with Manitoba and British Columbia, signed respectively in 1996 and 1998, devolved important administrative responsibilities and revenues to them regarding immigration settlement. These provinces must nevertheless deliver the settlement services in accordance with the federal Immigration Act. Federal and provincial immigration officials in Nova Scotia explained, in interviews, that other provinces, including Nova Scotia, were reluctant to accept these responsibilities in the mid-1990s (when they had witnessed a massive withdrawal of federal funds from their health, post-secondary education, and social assistance programs), fearing that Ottawa might subsequently reduce agreed-upon transfer payments to them to defray settlement costs – effectively leaving the provinces “holding the bag.” Second, the Manitoba and B.C. agreements also offered these two provinces a role regarding immigration policy and targets, the delivery of federal services, and information sharing, but this role is purely consultative and has not restricted Ottawa’s continued monopoly of decision-making powers in these areas. The agreements created formal joint federal-provincial committees, which were assigned the task of assuring the agreement’s implementation. Framework agreements with a third group of provinces – Alberta, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, and Ontario – create similar consultative arrangements. The Ontario agreement also commits Ottawa to spending a specified sum ($900 million annually) on settlement there, and it makes explicit reference to a “partnership with municipalities” in administering settlement measures, reflecting



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the traditionally much more prominent role of local governments in delivering social services in Ontario. Until September 2007, Nova Scotia belonged to a fourth group of provinces – also comprising New Brunswick and Newfoundland – where no framework agreement existed; these provinces relied on purely informal arrangements in attempting to influence or share information with federal authorities. In that month, Nova Scotia signed a cooperation agreement with Ottawa, moving it to the third category of provinces, and striking a Joint Program Management Committee (Agreement for Canada-Nova Scotia Co-Operation, 2007). In doing this, it was not seeking a significant change in its existing relationship with federal authorities. One provincial official, interviewed a month before the agreement was signed, spoke of a “close cooperative relationship” between the province’s Immigration Office and federal immigration officials in Halifax and observed that “we kind of like that” (interview 27). Third, going beyond this consultative role and representing a more significant break from Ottawa’s traditional monopoly of immigration attraction in the English-speaking provinces, all of these provinces (including, finally, Ontario after February 2009) signed agreements with Ottawa that permitted them to nominate a number of individuals to federal authorities for consideration as immigrants to their jurisdictions. Provinces develop their own selection criteria for this purpose, but these must be consistent with the rules stipulated for Economic Class immigrants in federal law. Ottawa continues to select immigrants independently of the new provincial arrangement; and federal authorities must screen provincial nominees to determine their health and security status. The Nova Scotia provincial nominee agreement was the last to be signed, in August 2002, and was fully implemented the next year. The agreement envisaged as many as 200 immigrants entering the province annually under its terms (Canada-Nova Scotia Agreement on Provincial Nominees 2002, 2), a ceiling later raised to 400 and then abolished. Only 140 immigrants were nominated in 2003 and 2004 combined, but the number increased to 303 for 2005, to 400 for 2006, and to 405 for 2007 (Nova Scotia Office of Immigration 2007a, 9; 2008b, 15). Together with family members, provincial nominations resulted in 895 immigrants arriving in Nova Scotia in 2007, or about one-third of the 2,520 arrivals in the province that

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year. Since 2005, then, the provincial nominees have represented a significant share of arriving immigrants; those coming as a result of the provincial initiative account for more than 80 per cent of the aggregate increase in Nova Scotia’s annual share of immigrants since descending to a low of 1,415 in 2002. However, the current quantity of immigration to Nova Scotia only roughly restores the level that existed briefly during the mid-1990s; the province continues to attract a proportion of immigrants that is far below the province’s share of the national population. Nova Scotia’s Emergent Immigration Policy Prior to 2001, the Nova Scotia government was only minimally involved with immigration issues; for most of the observers interviewed, this reflected a singular lack of interest in improving the province’s attractiveness to immigrants. As a consulting report prepared for the province in 2006 noted, retrospectively, “immigration had not been a high priority for Nova Scotians” (Halifax Global Management Consultants 2006, 4). The stimulus afforded by Ottawa’s offer of a role in selecting immigrants was not the only cause of the subsequent expansion in the provincial role. But the federal initiative was an important catalyst; the signing of a provincial nominee agreement also required Nova Scotia to move quickly to define how it would identify potential immigrants. The province’s very limited administrative resources in the area before 2003 – divided between its Economic Development and (for settlement purposes) Education ministries – partly explains its tardiness in signing and implementing a nominee agreement. In fact, when it took this step, it was initially determined that, as the same consulting report observed, “administration of the [nominee] program was to be at no cost to the taxpayers of Nova Scotia” (Halifax Global Management Consultants 2006, 1); at the end of 2002, the province’s willingness to address immigration with additional financial and administrative resources remained minimal. This was reflected in the initial design of its Provincial Nominee program. Its three streams were intended to make potential immigrants themselves, or private employers, absorb almost all costs associated with their arrival in Nova Scotia. Rather than developing its own capacity to deliver the program, the province signed a contract with a consulting firm, Cornwallis Financial Corporation, to



Multilevel Governance and Immigration Policy in Nova Scotia 203

perform this task. By 2006, it appeared to most of the interviewed observers, including many within the government, that these decisions had resulted in major problems and had reduced the province’s ability to attract immigrants. The most controversial of the three components, termed the “economic” stream (not to be confused with the federal category of the same name, which encompasses all provincial nominees) required potential immigrants to make a substantial up-front financial commitment. Candidates enrolled in it had to contribute $100,000 to an existing Nova Scotia firm; they also had to pay $30,000 to the Cornwallis Corporation for its immigration consulting services and an additional $500 to the province. In return, an immigrant was assured six months of employment by the Nova Scotia firm (during which it was intended that she or he develop valuable business experience and contacts) and $20,000 in salary; the candidate would acquire no equity in the host firm. As the province frequently claimed, this initiative was truly unique among the measures in Provincial Nominee Programs (Nova Scotia 2005b, 13). Several provinces have created business or investor streams, but these typically require that immigrants invest in a firm which they then entirely or partly own and operate or (in the case of Quebec, whose stream parallels a federal program) that they invest in it passively; fees associated with the programs in these other provinces are also quite low, varying from zero to less than $4,000 (Halifax Global Management Consultants 2006, 17). Despite its costs, the “economic” stream quickly became the largest offered by Nova Scotia. Of 178 immigrants nominated by the end of 2004, 129 were enrolled in it (Flinn 2005a, 5). Candidates for a second, “skilled,” stream had to possess skills that were in short supply in the province, and they had to be nominated by a Nova Scotia employer who was willing to guarantee them employment. This stream had closer parallels in other provinces but, again, stood out because of its required fees: $5,000 to the Cornwallis Corporation and $500 to the province; in most other provinces, fees for the comparable stream, where these exist at all, are well under $1,000. The third stream, termed “community identified,” allows local organizations in the province to select candidates for consideration by the province; these nominees usually already reside in the province. Here, the fee was more modest – $1,700 paid to the province – though this, combined with the candidate’s legal expenses, was much higher than the charges encountered by

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many immigrants going elsewhere (Halifax Global Management Consultants 2006, 40). Only 15 immigrants had passed through the “skilled” stream and 34 through the “community identified” one by the end of 2004 (Flinn 2005a, 5). The latter stream was unique in offering local-level authorities a chance to participate in provincial nominations; however, this task accrued to the province’s network of regional development authorities (rdas), not to its municipal governments. The rdas were established by John Savage’s Liberal administration after it came to power in 1993, and were designed to consolidate existing community and regional-level development boards. They have a mandate to coordinate, under local leadership, economic development projects within their boundaries (which typically correspond to the borders of one or two counties), drawing upon available federal, provincial, and sometimes municipal programs (Haddow 2000, 97–8). Municipalities play no direct role in the Provincial Nominee Program. The initial design of Nova Scotia’s Provincial Nominee Program emerged in a context where the province had not yet thought strategically about immigration and was unwilling to commit additional funds to it. But in September 2003, according to the interviewed sources, the Conservative premier John Hamm wrote to three of his ministers, instructing them to coordinate an immigration strategy for the province. The province’s limited previous experience or bureaucratic expertise in the immigration field caused it to seek assistance from federal officials in the province, who had long been the dominant actors in the area, in preparing the strategy. Ron Heisler, a senior official in the federal Immigration Department’s Halifax office, agreed to be seconded to the province for this purpose, but only after provincial officials promised him that Nova Scotia would abandon its wish to avoid incurring additional expenses to support immigration; he was assured that injecting new resources into the field would be integral to the new provincial approach. Heisler thereupon agreed to serve as director of immigration settlement in the provincial Department of Education during the strategy’s gestation. Participation in the federal nominee initiative was one reason for the new provincial interest in immigration; mounting concern about the appropriateness of its nominee program was another; but there were others. Leading bureaucrats and politicians in the province had now absorbed the findings of the 2001 national census, which



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showed that the province’s population had declined during the previous five years, that population decline was particularly ­precipitous in many of the province’s rural areas, and that this decline had been matched during those years by a fall-off in the number of immigrants arriving in Nova Scotia. The census also made it clear that many immigrants had left the province for other parts of the country shortly after landing in Nova Scotia. As a number of non-governmental observers of the province’s emerging strategy observed in interviews, the province has a direct pecuniary interest in sustaining its population; because Nova Scotia receives sizable transfer payments from Ottawa each year, and the volume of these grants depends on the province’s population, a loss of population entails a direct fiscal penalty for its treasury. One interviewee noted wryly that having “bums in the seats” (people living in the province) has direct fiscal implications for the province (interview 29). This concern was enhanced by a timely discussion of immigration convened by several federal and provincial departments and by the Metropolitan Immigration Settlement Agency (misa), the province’s leading immigration settlement organization, in April 2003; and by a discussion of immigration, led by misa staff, at a meeting of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, the city’s premier business federation, the following January (Nova Scotia Immigration Partnership Conference 2003; Arthur 2003, 2; Walton 2004, 15). The meetings focused attention on the likely long-term consequences of population decline for the province and the potential role of immigration in alleviating these consequences. In August 2004, Heisler’s office released a discussion paper on immigration (Nova Scotia 2004). The document promised an extensive series of consultations to determine the priorities of stakeholders in the area, and (implicitly) to sensitize the province’s residents to a concern that had not previously been high on the political agenda. The consultations included thirty-five meetings across the province between August and October 2004. A lengthy summary of the results was circulated, and the provincial strategy was then ostensibly prepared at least in part on the basis of views expressed at the meetings (Nova Scotia 2005a). But the interviewed officials and non-governmental observers in the immigration settlement field who observed the proceedings responded ambivalently to what they heard during the consultations. Some participants in rural areas wondered why the government would consider

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attracting more immigrants to the province when they personally, or their own children, could not find work in Nova Scotia; and they ­sometimes worried that new­comers would only increase competition for already-scarce employment opportunities (see also Crane 2004, a1). These concerns are alluded to, albeit obliquely, in the consultation summary document, which stated: Most stakeholders agreed that there is a critical need for immigrants in Nova Scotia. However, they also felt that the strategy should recognize that immigration is just one tool to stimulate economic and population growth. The ultimate goal of any immigration strategy should be to better the lives and prospects of all Nova Scotians, whether they were born in Nova Scotia or are immigrants who have chosen to live here. Some written submissions indicated a preference for government to complement the immigration strategy with strategies for encouraging youth to stay in the province. (Nova Scotia 2005a, 2) On this basis, one cannot conclude that views expressed at the meetings significantly affected subsequent provincial action in the field. Provincial and federal officials, along with professionals working in the immigration settlement sector, were the main instigators. Public response to it frequently was indifferent or suspicious. An exception to the pattern of non-governmental indifference existed among the province’s employers, especially in Halifax. A consultation in Halifax on 14 September, at which business representatives played a prominent role, was advised by attendees that many employers saw immigration as a valuable source of new workers. A representative of the Metropolitan Halifax Chamber of Commerce was said to be “very pleased that the Province is moving forward with this Framework” (Nova Scotia 2005a). The Atlantic Provinces Economic Council (apec), a regional business organization, and the Greater Halifax Partnership, a local agency co-sponsored by the province, hrm, and the city’s business community, also issued reports during this period championing the cause of increasing immigration to Nova Scotia (Atlantic Provinces Economic Council 2003, 18; Greater Halifax Partnership 2005, 10). Nova Scotia’s Immigration Strategy, a document largely written by Heisler, was released in January 2005. It set two ambitious objectives for the province: to increase its retention rate for immigrants



Multilevel Governance and Immigration Policy in Nova Scotia 207

arriving in the province to 70 per cent from the current estimate of 40 per cent, and to increase annual immigrant arrivals to 3,600 by 2010. The latter figure was twice as high as the number of immigrants to the province in 2004, but was almost reached in 1995, though this would still see the province attracting a share of immigrants far below its share of the national population (Nova Scotia 2005b, 10). The document made clear that new monies would be available to achieve these goals: a new Office of Immigration would be set up, with its own minister. Moreover, the funding of immigration settlement programs, a task previously largely conceded to the federal government, would now be a provincial priority, with particular attention given to the objective of enticing a larger proportion of new­comers to move to and remain in communities outside Halifax (Nova Scotia 2005b, 17, 23, 25; McLaughlin 2005, 7). After its inception, the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration remained a modest affair, with about sixteen employees in mid-2008, far fewer than the number working for the federal Citizenship and Immigration Department, whose offices were located in the same building in downtown Halifax. Its total budget for fiscal 2007–08 was $3.34 million (Nova Scotia Office of Immigration 2008b, 11). Of this, $1.8 million was allocated to immigration settlement (table 6), with other funds used to administer the Provincial Nominee Program. While modest compared with expenditures in provinces such as Ontario, this budget nevertheless represents approximately a threefold increase in Nova Scotia’s fiscal commitment in only a few years; the federal and provincial officials interviewed estimated that the $1.8 million was about half as large as the budget expended by Citizenship and Immigration Canada in Nova Scotia for the same purpose, though other federal departments also fund immigration settlement in the province. There is no published estimate of total federal settlement spending in Nova Scotia. But misa, by far the largest non-governmental settlement organization in the province, received between three and four dollars from the federal government for each dollar obtained from the province in 2006 and 2007 (Metropolitan Immigrant Settlement Association 2007a, 9); yet federal dollars had previously been overwhelmingly dominant. Anxious to entice more immigrants to settle outside Halifax, the province spends more of its settlement dollars outside that city, but the two governments otherwise generally fund similar programs administered by the same settlement organizations and attempt to

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coordinate their efforts. In a field that previously had been almost a federal monopoly, these outlays represented a significant expansion of provincial capacity. The Immigration Strategy also addressed the role of local “partners” in implementing the policy. Here, a revealingly short passage was devoted to municipalities. “Municipal governments,” it commented, “are the closest to people in communities. They play an important role in engaging citizens about the benefits immigration can bring to Nova Scotia. Municipal governments also play an important role in developing specific strategies at the community level” (Metropolitan Immigrant Settlement Association 2007a, 20). Discussion of the regional development authorities, which, as we have seen, had already taken on an important role in the “community identified” part of the nominee program, was more concrete: “Regional development authorities (rdas) provide leadership and coordination for regional and community growth. rdas recognize the importance of a skilled workforce to regional development and have been important partners in the Nova Scotia Nominee Program (nsnp) through their ability to nominate individual immigrants to match with local needs” (Metropolitan Immigrant Settlement Association 2007a, 21). In discussing this nominee program, the document referred to the likelihood that three new streams would be developed – one each for post-secondary students, business immigrants’ family members, and entrepreneurs (ibid., 14). It was evident from this that the government now shared the unease of many outside observers with the program’s initial implementation. In 2005 and 2006, criticism of the program, above all its “economic” stream, became commonplace in the press and among opposition politicians. It was frequently alleged that the Cornwallis Corporation, which had received the contract to manage the program for the government without tender, was politically closely connected to the governing Progressive Conservative Party through its president, a party donor; that the program’s high fees were deterring immigrants; that in particular, they were discouraging potential immigrants to Cape Breton and other areas outside Halifax, since these individuals would not be able to afford the fees; and that other potentially valuable components, such as the community-identified stream, had not been developed sufficiently (Beaton 2004, a8; Flinn 2005a, 4; Kimber 2005, 17; Boomer 2006, 9). In December 2005 the province tendered a contract for



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an independent review of the fee structure (Flinn 2005b, 6). The report was submitted to the government by the contractor, a Halifax consultant, in March 2006; but it was not released for some months after that because, the opposition parties claimed, the province was in the midst of an election campaign during which the governing Tories wished to avoid the embarrassment of having the document’s criticism of the fees released to the public (Flinn 2006, a7). The consultant’s report, finally released during the summer, developed its critique of the existing streams cautiously but clearly: “The fees associated with the three streams of the Nova Scotia Nominee Program are higher than any other immigration program in Canada [sic]. The Government of Nova Scotia should revisit the premise on which the fees were designed (that of no cost of administration to be born by taxpayers) to ensure they reflect the reality of today’s situation and the retention objectives of the Immigration Strategy” (Halifax Global Management Consultants 2006, 2). On 30 June 2006 the province announced that its agreement with Cornwallis Financial Corporation would expire the next day and the immigration office would thereafter assume direct responsibility for administering the nominee program; moreover, no new applications would be accepted in the maligned “economic” stream (though existing applicants were still being processed in this stream in mid2008), and the $5,000 fee for the “skilled worker” stream was abolished for new applicants (Nova Scotia Office of Immigration 2006a, 1–2). In 2008 the province went further, offering to refund fees paid by many of the immigrants who had entered the province through the “economic” stream if they were still in the province. In the same year, the provincial auditor general reported that in many cases immigrants had paid fees to individuals who had done very little to help them establish themselves in the province; the report was later submitted to the rcmp to determine whether these actions warranted prosecution (Tutton 2008a, 2008b). At this point, the inner workings of the now defunct “economic” stream was the object of much discussion in Nova Scotia, along with a brewing sense of scandal – a development that immigration advocates worried might cloud the future of the program as a whole (Canadian Press 2007; Doucette 2007). With the most egregious elements of the nominee program’s first iteration now out of the way, the immigration office subsequently introduced “family business worker” and “international

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graduates”streams in December 2006 and April 2007, respectively; these had first been proposed in the Immigration Strategy document. Consistent with the province’s new approach, neither would require a fee (Nova Scotia Office of Immigration 2006b, 2007b); a consultation was begun in February 2008 on the possibility of an “entrepreneurial” stream, the remaining option first mooted in the Strategy (Nova Scotia Office of Immigration 2008a). It is also worth pointing out that neither assigned any particular role to municipalities or other local actors, including the rdas, in their implementation. Of the four streams now in place, such a role remains confined to the “community identified” one. Having resolved the fees issue and eliminated a role for the Cornwallis firm, the province now faced much less criticism from observers in the immigration field than it had several years earlier. Nova Scotia’s Provincial Nominee Program was also now mature, attracting from 300 to 400 Principal Applicant immigrants to the province each year; combined with family members, the program was responsible for attracting 863 immigrants to Nova Scotia in 2006, and probably similar numbers in the next two years. The total number of immigrants in Nova Scotia in 2006 was 2,585, about one-third more than two years earlier, with the Provincial Nominee Program accounting for most of the increment (Nova Scotia Office of Immigration n.d., 2–3). Immigration to Nova Scotia is subject to short-term fluctuations, reflecting, among other things, the political climate in the Middle East, traditionally a major source of migrants to the province. In the very short term, nevertheless, the nominee program appears to be helping the province approach the numerical goal of 3,600 immigrants per year set forth in the 2005 Immigration Strategy. The province’s retention rate for immigrants, the other crucial target stipulated in the 2005 Strategy, also increased significantly between the 2001 and 2006 censuses – from 40 to 63 per cent (Nova Scotia Office of Immigration 2008b, 14) – though here, too, it remains unclear whether this represents a short-term fluctuation or a long-term trend. The Immigration Settlement Infrastructure Now funded in a more balanced manner than in the past by both federal and provincial authorities, the infrastructure of immigration settlement providers in Nova Scotia has, nevertheless, not changed



Multilevel Governance and Immigration Policy in Nova Scotia 211

Table 6 Distribution of Provincial Immigration Settlement Funds, 2007–2008 Fiscal Year ($000) total outlays by nova scotia office of immigration To other Public Institutions: Nova Scotia Department of Education Halifax Regional School Board Nova Scotia Community College Halifax Public Libraries Pier 21  Subtotal funds available for non-governmental organizations To misa/hilc To other Halifax-based ngos: Halifax ymca Enterprise Forum Greater Halifax Partnership  Subtotal To Ethnocultural Organizations: Fédération acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse United African Canadian Women’s Association African Diaspora Association of the Maritimes Centre for Diverse Visible Cultures  Subtotal To non-Halifax-based ngos Southwest Shore rda Valley Community Living Association Lunenburg-Queens rda Straits-Highlands rda  Subtotal Miscellaneous

1,804 250 143 74 66 33 566

566 1,238 812

53 50 38 141

141

55 40 25 20 140

140

40 35 30 30 135

135 10

Source: Nova Scotia Office of Immigration 2008c

much in recent years. The province has not directed its settlement funding in radically different directions than Ottawa has. Table 6 itemizes Nova Scotia’s expenditures on immigration settlement services for the 2007–08 fiscal year; similar figures are not released by the federal immigration department, but the interviewed federal and provincial officials, as well as ngo representatives, suggest that the funding configurations are similar. These patterns in turn reflect features of the setting of immigration policy in Nova Scotia described above. Most funded organizations are in Halifax, where the majority of immigrants settle. Among nongovernmental organizations, misa and its sister organization hilc (the Halifax Immigrant Learning Centre) attract the lion’s share of funding – about two-thirds – underscoring their position as the

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province’s leading immigration settlement body. Immigration settlement projects sponsored by ethnocultural organizations receive less than 10 per cent of all provincial monies available for this purpose, evidence of the weakness of mobilization among immigrant communities in Nova Scotia. rdas were foremost among the few nonHalifax organizations to receive funds; they therefore have clearly established themselves as the leading community-level participants in immigration policy in the province, combining roles, albeit modest ones, in both immigration attraction (through the “communitydesignated” stream of the Provincial Nominee Program) and immigration settlement. The distribution of funds to ethnocultural groups itemized in table 6 underscores another feature of the immigrant community in Nova Scotia: not only is it politically marginal; it is also highly fragmented. Interviewed observers from among provincial and federal officials, ngos, and ethnocultural groups themselves identified no organizations that exist to speak on behalf of immigrant or ethnocultural communities as leading influences on immigration policy in Nova Scotia. In these groups, there is a sense of being marginalized in political debates. Among other observers, the view is frequently expressed that these groups are fearful of possible negative public reaction to political mobilization in a province that may not yet be fully accepting of visible minorities, and that they consequently are more predisposed to participate in cultural activities than in politics. These observers also distinguish between organizations that represent well-established groups – above all, Halifax’s Lebanese community – and those that speak for more recently arrived immigrants. The Canadian Lebanon Society of Halifax is judged to be influential in Halifax and Nova Scotia public discussions; but its long tenure and relatively secure economic position in the city means that its members are not primarily interested in the needs of immigrant communities that encounter particular difficulties in adapting to life in Canada or that have few local supports. fane, the Fédération acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse, represents the province’s official-language minority and occupies a unique position in the immigration setting, as does this minority in many other areas touched upon by federal policy. Few of its members are immigrants. Nova Scotia’s long-established French-speaking communities are concentrated in rural areas of the west and southwest of the province, and in small pockets in Cape Breton. In recent years,



Multilevel Governance and Immigration Policy in Nova Scotia 213

the federal government has sought to promote the immigration of francophones to provinces where French speakers are a minority and has inserted provisions to attain this objective into immigration agreements with these provinces (Citizenship and Immigration 2006a, 35–7; Nova Scotia 2005b, 4, 22). Settlement funds are made available to francophone organizations to promote this goal; the interviewed spokespersons for fane pointed out that, as one might expect, attracting and settling francophone immigrants in Nova Scotia communities where French speakers predominate is a major challenge. Organizations that have a vital interest in the needs of recent and more precarious immigrants, and that largely speak for such communities – including recent arrivals from Africa – face quite different circumstances. They are small, possess limited resources, and are not always cohesive. The Multicultural Association of Nova Scotia (mans), an umbrella organization for ethnocultural communities, which might have provided an element of cohesion to these disparate groups, was not, in the view of the interviewees, a prominent participant in immigration policy making; its main preoccupations are more cultural than political. One final point of particular importance to this study is made abundantly clear by table 6: municipalities receive no immigration settlement funds, though a small contract is held by the Halifax Regional Public Library. As we have seen, they also play no formal role in federal or provincial immigration-attraction initiatives. Municipalities and Immigrants in Nova Scotia The municipalities did not, then, see their role in settling and attracting immigrants grow appreciably in recent years. One important reason for this is that a major provincial-municipal service realignment in Nova Scotia during the late 1990s considerably weakened one argument in favour of an expanded municipal role, especially regarding immigration settlement, that can be made in Ontario. There, the municipal role in social-service delivery means that local governments must deal directly, financially, and administratively with many of the settlement concerns that confront new immigrants. Nova Scotia’s municipalities retained a significant role in delivering social assistance and related services until the 1990s. But the realignment, launched in 1998, relieved them of their administrative role and most financial charges by 2003. In 2005,

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consequently, social assistance and related services cost Nova Scotia municipalities only $31,822,000, or 1.4% of all their expenditures, down from $276,708,000, or 16.1%, in 1995 (see table 7). Additional realignments curtailed the municipal contribution to other social measures likely to be of particular relevance to immigrants, such as housing and health. Combined, social services, housing, and health absorbed 17.2% of Nova Scotia municipal expenses in 1995, well above the 9.0% average for all Canadian municipalities. In 2005, by contrast, they represented 1.5% of Nova Scotia municipal costs, compared with 10.0% for all Canadian municipalities. By the latter date, these social expenditures were significant only in Ontario, where they continued to represent 19.6% of municipal expenditures (data not shown in table), compared with a mere 2.0% for municipalities outside Ontario. Only one social responsibility of particular relevance to new immigrants – primary and secondary education – continues to rely significantly on municipal finances (table 2). But educational costs are a special case in relation to municipal finance. As elsewhere in Canada, Nova Scotia’s schools are overseen by local school boards, which manage their own budgets. While much of their revenue derives from the local property tax base, the boards generally control these funds separately and are accountable directly to the province for their expenditure. The major innovation in recent years has been to regionalize the boards, which reduced their numbers, and to tighten provincial oversight of their budgets (Clancy 2000, 151–9). Thus, primary and secondary education is not a conduit for municipal influence on provincial and federal immigration initiatives.

municipal case studies Thus, to the extent that Nova Scotia municipalities participate in immigration attraction and settlement, it is likely to involve relatively modest and inexpensive efforts to adjust the delivery of their remaining services to make them more accessible to immigrant ­communities. Much municipal interest in immigration pertains to retaining immigrants once they have arrived by providing them with satisfactory municipal services; municipalities have not been offered, nor have they sought, formal involvement in policies to attract or settle immigrants. With the local role in the Provincial Nominee Program assigned to regional development authorities (rdas), and

Table 7 Municipal Expenditures, Nova Scotia and Canada, 1995 and 2005 Nova Scotia municipalities 1995 $000

All Canadian municipalities

2005

1995

2005

%

$000

%

$000

%

$000

%

non-social expenditures General services Planning, debt, etc. Property protection Transport & communication Conservation & development Environment Recreation & culture total non-social expenditures

76,273 51,034 156,861 115,740 6,688 154,247 82,356 643,199

4.4 3.0 9.1 6.7 0.4 9.0 4.8 37.4

161,332 61,283 241,814 187,231 19,347 403,312 118,074 1,192,393

6.9 2.6 10.3 7.9 0.8 17.1 5.0 50.7

4,006,555 5,275,496 6,049,580 8,415,181 808,144 6,419,277 4,821,431 35,795,664

5.4 7.2 8.2 11.5 1.1 8.7 6.6 49.0

6,050,100 4,017,929 9,833,213 11,762,967 1,266,979 10,504,804 7,472,561 50,908,553

5.9 3.9 9.7 11.6 12.4 10.3 7.3 50.0

Education

781,388

45.4

1,125,715

47.8

30,642,856

42.0

40,761,038

40.0

other social expenditures Social Services Housing Health total other social expenditures

276,708 17,065 2,044 295,817

16.1 1.0 0.1 17.2

31,822 1,290 1,423 34,535

1.4