A new report has given Nova Scotia 15 recommendations on how it can improve its Canada immigration system.
The province is spending $6.4 million every year on settlement services for immigrants without knowing whether that money is being properly spent to meet the needs of those newcomers.
“Once immigrants arrive in Nova Scotia, the long-term retention of these individuals is essential to promoting economic growth,” notes Kim Adair, Nova Scotia’s auditor general, in a report released this month.
“Despite the importance of retention, we found the (immigration) department had not completed assessments of the settlement needs of immigrants or assessed whether these needs are being addressed through the settlement services provided by the department.”
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The province’s immigration department funnels about $6.4 million to settlement service providers throughout the province every year.
“However, due to the department’s lack of assessment of the settlement needs of immigrants and analysis of the services being funded, the department does not know if value is obtained from the funding.”
In the auditor general’s report to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly on Immigration and Population Growth: Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration, she makes 15 recommendations for reforms to the immigration department. The provincial government has agreed with all those recommendations, including a call to assess its settlement services.
Nova Scotia has pledged to develop a plan to improve its allocation of funding for settlement services by March next year.
Immigration fraud, identified as an issue in another report back in 2008, is again mentioned in the auditor general’s latest report where she bemoans the lack of procedures to help immigration officials identify and address the risk of fraud in Nova Scotia’s Provincial Nominee Program (NSPNP) and the Atlantic Immigration Pilot (AIP)
“While management does provide information on fraud trends and indicators for staff to heed, this caution is only done when issues or concerns arise; they are not compiled into a comprehensive document for staff to consider when assessing applications,” notes Adair in her report.
“If there (were) documented procedures to help guide staff in identifying indicators of potential fraud or misrepresentation when assessing applications, it would promote an awareness of the risk amongst staff.
“It would also provide a consistent approach to identifying fraud in applications and outline the steps to be taken to address the concerns. Furthermore, when new staff start, it would provide a comprehensive document to be studied and used in their training.”
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Here is a complete list of the report’s recommendations:
Detailed plans must be developed to monitor the implementation of the consultant’s recommendations to improve settlement services, including timelines for completion, resource requirements, and regular status reporting to track implementation.
A combination of random selection and risk-based methods can be used for selecting employers and individuals for compliance reviews with research, interviews, and review of documentation used to assess compliance with the requirements of provincial immigration programs. When instances of noncompliance are identified, the auditor general recommends establishing protocols that outline how this will be addressed.
Immigration to Nova Scotia is on track to end this year up 53.5 per cent, up by 4,902 new permanent residents over last year, and reach the record-setting level of 14,062 based on the trend in the first eight months of 2022, reveals the latest data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
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