Sault Ste. Marie — The federal government is making funding available to the City of Sault Ste. Marie with the aim of attracting immigrants to the region and addressing labour shortages.
Sault Ste. Marie MP Terry Sheehan announced Thursday at city hall $500,000 from FedNor to attract and retain newcomers through the government's Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot program, or RNIP. Sheehan says RNIP will help rebuild the economy.
"We're just turning the page on this pandemic," said Sheehan. "But there's a lot of things we need to continue to do to grow our economy, and this is going to be one of the tools in the toolbox that allows us to further grow in northern Ontario."
Mayor Christian Provenzano said the city jumped at the opportunity to participate in RNIP, and is one of the first cities in Canada to do so.
"We hit the ground running because we had a really great employee already in place at city hall who was working on labour force development," said Provenzano.
"So they took charge of the RNIP program here. And this is additional resources so that we can make sure that we administer RNIP properly and we make the most of the pilot."
Provenzano said the pilot program will help address a number of employment gaps.
"There's multiple sectors that we're looking at, but one of the dominant ones is healthcare," he said. "But there's also industrial sectors and skilled labour shortages that we're trying to address."
Sheehan, meantime, said businesses are the driving force behind the program. He added the money will specifically help businesses to locate, attract and retain skilled labour through outreach, communication and marketing.
