Integration of Francophone Immigrants in Manitoba: The Evaluation of Public Services Provides by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada

This chapter presents some of the results of the research project on The Settlement and Integration of Newcomers to Manitoba: Improving the Delivery of Language Training, Employment Integration and Well-being Services. This project was funded by the Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of public programs and services offered to newcomers (NCs) within the framework of the overall Canadian Government’s policy on immigration. The project stems from an initiative launched by the IRCC in 2017 that sought innovative ways to better support the integration of NCs in Canada, in terms of employment, linguistic and general well-being integration as a linguistic minority of francophone immigrants in Manitoba, Canada. The research specifically assessed the current offerings and possible improvement of services provided through different programs and services offered by partners funded by the IRCC in order to facilitate the integration of NCs in Canada. As part of this research, the set of conditions, motivations and needs of NCs, and whether they use public services or not is identified. This issue is more acute in francophone minority setting, where the resources available to NCs are limited. By observing cohorts of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, we measured how the use of services (US) reflects the establishment of NCs and their linguistic, general well-being integration and particularly integration into the employment and labour market. At the end of this chapter, recommendations for public policy decision-makers are formulated.