Province gives city funds to help attract immigrants

North Bay will soon have new tools to recruit new Canadians to live and work in the city, the Honourable Monique Smith, MPP for Nipissing announced Monday that the city will receive $270,000 to develop a website that will be aimed at immigrants.

“This is a really important initiative for the city as well as the province,” states Smith.

“The province has a portal which now has attracted, since 2006, 30-million hits which is an impressive attention seeker for the province. And these hits are coming from around the world within that portal, the Immigration Ontario portal, the city of North Bay will be one of 17 communities that will have its own portal and the city will be able to provide information to potential immigrants of all the resources that are available and links to the various resources that are in our community and in our region.”

“It will be a key tool in attracting newcomers to our area I know that that’s an integral part of the city’s full strategy on retention and attraction of new citizens,”

The city is just one 17 communities that are part of the Ontario portal and Smith says the government is moving at a rapid pace not only to attract new Canadians to the province but to also help northern and rural communities expand diversity in their communities.

“Of course in Ontario many of our newcomers settle in the greater Toronto area,” she says.

“We want to see more attraction of newcomers to Northern Ontario and to less settled areas, so that’s part of the initiative part of the funding it to try to help smaller communities to be able to have a presence on this website and to attract.”

North Bay Mayor Victor Fedeli agrees that the portal will help market all the city and area has to offer when people and companies are looking to relocate.

“There are 200,000 immigrants to Canada every year about 100,000 come to Ontario and very few come to Northern Ontario it’s about 50 altogether every year, so part of our strategy is to grow our immigration base,” he states.

“We’re looking to increase our population by attracting companies here, by attracting people, by attracting retirees, and attracting immigrants and so this will give us a worldwide presence to be able to attract immigration to North Bay and show a lot of the reasons they should be here.”