View From the Legislature

Manitoba’s NDP Minister of Immigration has been holding small meetings with new Canadians, including in Steinbach, doing her best to scare them. These meetings have been long on fear and short on facts.

At one meeting in Brandon, it was reported by an individual in attendance that the NDP Minister told those assembled that even if they had become Canadian citizens there was a chance they might not be able to get back into Canada if they left. Where is all this unfounded fear coming from? It’s coming from the fact that the NDP Minister is about to lose control over a program her government hasn’t cared to properly fund for the past 11 years.

Currently, Manitoba’s Department of Immigration has a budget of about $37 million annually for settlement services. These services include language and other services that help new Canadians transition to their new country. That sounds like a pretty impressive commitment by the province until you find out that of the $37 million, only $1 million is from the province and the remaining $36 million is from the federal government.

In essence, even though the federal government funds about 97% of the settlement services in the province, it has been the provincial NDP that have run the program. Because of this, it should have come as no surprise to the provincial NDP when earlier this year the federal government informed the province that starting next year, the federal government would run the program themselves since they pay for almost all of it.

In fact, in every province except Manitoba and British Columbia, the federal government has been running settlement services for new Canadians for some time.  Up until now, the provincial government has been like a business partner who demands to have 100% control of the business but is only willing to put in 3% of the costs.

Despite the fact that the NDP government has let its support for the settlement program fall to almost nothing, this change has enraged the NDP Minister of Immigration and she is now meeting with new Canadians trying to scare them into being concerned as well.

Perhaps, had she truly been concerned about these important services to immigrants, she would have worked over the past several years to provide provincial support for the program. Instead, she was happy to allow the federal government to fund almost the entire program. Going around the province to try to scare new Canadians with false information is not only unbecoming of the Minister, its disrespectful to the many wonderful people who have chosen to make Manitoba home.