THUNDER BAY -- The Northern Policy Institute is determined to find the paths Northern Ontario immigrants have blazed to success and widen those paths for others to follow.
The institute launched three initiatives on Wednesday aimed at assembling data and building tools to stimulate immigration in the region and hope to paint a framework for success within the year.
Sustaining Northern Ontario's economy over the next 25 years will need to attract workers that will fill 50,000 jobs left vacant in the wave following baby boomer retirements. The Thunder Bay District alone will need to attract 50,000 immigrants by 2041.
"The challenges we have with our demographic trends, even if everyone who's here now were to work, we'd still be short in the next 25 years somewhere around 50,000 employees in the labour force, north-wide," said NPI president, Charles Cirtwill.
"Here in the northwest, for example, we're talking about 25,000 unfilled positions even if everyone who's in our indigenous communities, everyone who's here now, every child under five (years old) grows up and gets a job still 20 years from now, we're going to be 25,000 people short".
Cirtwill hopes those questions will be answered through a study that will determine general trends among migrants to the North from both inside and outside of Canada. NPI has commissioned North Bay's Curry Consulting to recommend needed changes to current migration policies and programs.
Curry's report will be released in November to coincide with a conference in North Bay, at which NPI hopes to attract immigration policy specialists and academics from every Canadian region.
"By the time we hit this time next year, we'll be in a situation where we're able to say, 'if Northern Ontario is serious about immigration -- if we want to address the population challenges we have -- here are the things that have to change, federally, provincially and municipally.'" Cirtwill said.
"Here are the things as a community we should be focusing on and. here are the steps the evidence tells us others have told us others have had success using so these are the things we should be doing here."
Cirtwill recognizes municipalities of different sizes and sub-regions within the North will require nuanced responses to the immigration challenge facing the entire region.
"We're going to get a sense of what the economy looks like in say, the Thunder Bay District versus Kenora versus Rainy River versus Manitoulin, what kinds of things they've already got in place and we can identify the gaps," he said.
"We can help them on a community level decide if a community of 500 or a community of 5,000 or a community of 15,000 wants to get into this, what are the different things they should be focusing on and participating in?"
