Northern Policy Institute offers tips on filling labour gaps in Sudbury

The Northern Policy Institute is working with a Sudbury group to help newcomers settle in Sudbury for the long-term.

A policy analyst with the institute, Rachel Rizzuto, says the introduction of the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot, as well as the Francophone Welcoming Communities Initiative will mean an increase in people new to the city to fill vacant jobs.

Rizzuto says the institute brain-stormed with the Sudbury Local Immigration Project to come up with ideas to keep those people in the community.

She says connecting them with support services is important.

"Services can be such as language services or services about the local schools," she said.

"So one of the points made was ensuring that besides the principal applicants, making sure their families also have those supports."

Rizzuto says there are plenty of jobs at all levels that could be filled by Indigenous applicants as well as immigrants.

"Assuming full employment of the Indigenous population, we still need thousands of newcomers to tackle our demographic dependency ratio," she said.

"It's an important point that we need to tackle from both the newcomer as well as the domestic population."

Rizzuto says some barriers include the lack of a permanent immigration and passport office for newcomers, discriminatory behaviour, and language barriers.

One of the recommendations is to educate employers about what they can do to accommodate the schedules of new and immigrant employees.