Federal immigration policy 'a little disappointing' says ISANS

The federal government's new immigration strategy focuses too much on economic immigration and not enough on helping refugees, according to the director of operations for the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia.

The changes to Canada's immigration program will see the federal governmentincrease the number of privately sponsored refugees to 16,000 in 2017, while the number of government sponsored refugees is being rolled back to 7,500.

"It's just a little disappointing that the federal government's responsibility those numbers are smaller than actually we thought they would be," said Gerry Mills director of operations for ISANS.

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Privately sponsored refugees arrive in Canada with financial help from community groups who pay for their travel and help them with housing, clothing and other basic needs. Government sponsored refugees have all of that taken care of by the federal government, said Mills.

This year about 20,000 people were brought into the country as government-assisted refugees, in 2015 nearly 10,000 refugees were sponsored by the federal government.

Responsibility to support refugees

Canada will also increase the number of skilled workers, businesspeople and caregivers it allows in.

"It's good for the economy, it's good for demographics, it's good for the country, but we also need to take our responsibility in the world for supporting refugees," Mills told Information Morning.

In total the base number of immigrants allowed into the country will increase to 300,000 in 2017. From 2011 to 2015, 260,000 immigrants were accepted into Canada.

Drive for economic immigration

Mills said throughout the summer the federal government-held consultations about immigration and were probably asked to focus on economic immigration in the coming year.

"A lot of people actually want us also to focus on economic immigration," said Mills."We did do an incredible...a huge job last year, I think we could do more."