Settlement Renewal: Lessons from the Past, Directions for the Future
This paper reports on a workshop that took place on January 5, 2009, hosted by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. The workshop focused on the realignment in federal-provincial responsibilities for settlement that took place in the 1990s. The goal of the workshop was to extract lessons from the previous two decades of experience and to suggest how these lessons might inform future directions. At the table were former and currently active federal and provincial officials as well as academics. The workshop operated according to Chatham House rules, meaning that participants cannot not identified and remarks may not be attributed to individuals.
As a matter of design, the workshop focused on British Columbia and Manitoba, the two provinces – Quebec aside – where responsibility for settlement services was fully devolved to the provinces. Separate exercises will be undertaken with regard to provinces and territories where co-management arrangements are in place and where Citizenship and Immigration Canada still retains full responsibility. Notwithstanding this plan, participants employed a broader empirical and experiential base to enrich their interventions. This supported the underlying workshop goal of identifying an ‘optimal model’ for federal-provincial settlement arrangements with a view to achieving the best possible settlement outcomes for newcomers.
