Supporting the settlement and integration of newcomers in the Northwest Territories

Abstract

Given the large number of immigrants arriving in Canada’s metropolitan centres, there’s an increasing need to disperse the benefits of immigrants to smaller centres -- one such place being the Northwest Territories. Government officials have responded, making public commitments to expand immigration in the North, through the launch of the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot and the Northwest Territories’ immigration strategy. Due to these public commitments and a positive trend upwards in the number of immigrants moving to the Northwest Territories, this paper asks two important research questions. Firstly, should policymakers in the Northwest Territories take on more responsibility in settling and integrating immigrants? If so, how can they better support immigrants settling and integrating into the territory’s small and remote communities? This paper has responded to these questions by conducting an academic literature review and policy literature review to examine the settlement strategies used to integrate newcomers into small and remote communities across Canada. This research found that the most important factors for successfully settling newcomers in small and remote communities include opportunities for employment, social connection, housing, education, and settlement services. Based on this analysis, three recommendations were provided to policymakers in the GNWT – primarily focused on the labour market integration and social integration of newcomers -- to prepare for future territory-driven developments in the space of settlement and integration for newcomers. Overall, this paper calls on the GNWT to seize the opportunity to bolster settlement and integration programming in the territory, starting by conducting a full evaluation of settlement services to assess their current and future capacity.