Project aims to match newcomers with rural Lambton jobs

A community effort to strengthen immigration to the Sarnia area is seeking federal funding for a rural pilot project to help find skilled newcomers to meet urgent local demand for tradespeople.

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It’s one of the recent initiatives of the Sarnia-Lambton Immigration Task Force that has been at work locally in recent years.

The proposed rural pilot is “incredibly important to this area,” task force chairperson Judith Morri said during an update on the group’s efforts.

“If we get it, it will allow the economic partnership (Sarnia-Lambton Economic Partnership) to be the lead organization, but with a community steering group, that would develop pathways to employment, and then to permanent residency,” she said.

“There has to be a job at the end of it” and they would be “skilled labor jobs that are in demand,” Morris said.

A similar approach “has been very successful (at drawing in young people) in many of the Northern communities and the retention levels are very good,” she said.

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All 11 Lambton County mayors have provided letters of support for the plan, Morris said.

The pilot would be specifically aimed at rural areas needing skilled workers, she said.

“We are very much hoping that we will be successful,” Morris said. “We should hear in September.”

A Newcomer Connection Program, also led by the partnership, hosted events supporting 450 newcomers and 150 local employers, resulting in the creation of 70 new jobs, she said.

That program was just getting started when its funding ended, “but they are continuing with the work,” Morris said.

“Employment has been a major driver of what we’re trying to do,” she said.

“To retain people in our community, you have to have employment.”

Work on encouraging immigration to the area, underway for several years, and became more formalized when the task force was set up about two years ago, said Morris, a retired Lambton College president.

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“There were many international students, and we had a population issue and a diversity issue, a skills shortage,” she said. “And we had a golden opportunity to do something about this.”

Out of that came the task force with its 35-member steering committee of local leaders, industry representatives and newcomers. It created four action groups last year to work with organizations and community services in particular areas of focus.

Census numbers show Sarnia “has not been growing at the rate of the province,” Morris said. “When you don’t keep up with the province, your base for taxes and health and education and roads etc., starts to shrink.”

Without population growth, “we will see a decline, and that’s not what you want (in) a community,” Morris said.

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Ottawa recently made changes to limit the number of foreign students coming to Canada.

“It makes (the task force’s work) even more important,” Morris said.

“Although we aren’t seeing the decline right at this moment, we will see a decline in numbers of students who would be graduating, and obviously that reduces the number of potential immigrants for our community,” she said.

Efforts like the proposed rural pilot project would let the community retain more foreign graduates as those overall numbers decline, Morris said.

Other highlights of the group’s work include work by the Sarnia-Lambton Local Immigration Partnership to launch a federally funded Welcome to Lambton app to connect newcomers to services.

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The Lambton County Library also has worked with the immigration partnership to provide immigration services through the library’s 25 local branches.

Work also focuses on “equity, diversity and inclusion,” Morris said. Along with jobs for newcomers, “we also need to have a welcoming community.”

There have been presentations on that priority to local human resource professionals and other organizations, Morris said. “Little by little, we’re moving this forward.”

Also, an action group at Lambton College is “doing some great work,” including launching a podcast showcasing international students’ first-hand accounts, and forming a student International Business Professions Club.

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