Nova Scotia boasts of immigration jump, but province still short of goals

However, Don Mills, a pollster who has supported a business push to increase immigration in the province, said he sees the figure as an improvement that is still short of what the province needs to replace an aging workforce, and notes the boom in refugees may decrease.

“We’re going on in the right direction,” he said in an interview. “But we have to ramp it up even quicker.”

“There continues to be a sense that we are equally or more diverse than the rest of the country, when in fact that’s far from the truth,” said Mills, who has polled Atlantic Canadian attitudes on immigration.

The pollster notes that according to the last census only about five per cent of Atlantic Canadians were born in another country, while in the rest of the country it’s approximately 22 per cent.

“We are the least diverse population by a mile,” he says.

The Ivany Report, an economic blueprint for the province, urged the province to increase immigration due to a declining birth rate and out migration.

It has predicted that within 15 years there will be 100,000 fewer people of working age in the province, and Nova Scotia cannot count on its natural birth rate to replace the workforce.

The report urged the province to attempt to attract up to 7,000 immigrants a year by 2024 and to embrace a greater ethnic and racial diversity in the makeup of the newcomers.

Follow @mtuttoncporg on Twitter.

Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Nova Scotia boasts of immigration jump, but province still short of goals

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