By Jesse Boily | Town & Country News
The City of Grande Prairie in Alberta is hitting the brakes on the Rural Renewal Stream (RRS) as it faces uncertainty of how many applicants it can accept as the federal government scales back immigration efforts.
The RRS program allowed the city to endorse candidates to fast-track their permanent residency status through the Provincial Nominee Program, with a focus on rural communities.
“The RRS was a program instituted by the provincial government that allowed us to assist them in placing immigrants into our country into roles and industries where there was actually a local need,” said Coun. Dylan Bressey.
“I think this program has been very successful, but we’ve hit a point where, as the federal government is pulling back on how many immigrants it’ll allow in the country, we’ve got enough already approved through this program that we’re probably not going to make it through that list.”
City council’s decision to pause the program on Monday follows many other municipalities across the province.
Mayor Jackie Clayton said the RRS is a potential advocacy item for council and wants to know how the city can work with the provincial and federal government to make the program more efficient and effective.
Grande Prairie has 844 approved candidates, of which 518 have received permanent resident certificates through the program.
Rory Tarant, InvestGP interim director, said last year the city was given 275 spaces for candidates; currently there are 345 active candidates in queue.
He expects there to be a reduction on the amount of spaces in the upcoming year.
“The likelihood of us seeing a significant reduction in this program is great, if the program even continues at all,” said Tarant.
“In 2025, in response to a number of housing pressures and other pressures related to immigration, the federal government reduced the number of their immigration targets.”
In 2024, the province’s allocation for permanent residency streams totaled 9,942 while its allocation for this year is 4,875, a reduction of 5,067 spaces.
The province has not yet announced how many of those spaces will go to the RRS, but historically about 18 per cent have been allocated to RRS, said Tarrant.
He said no timeline has been provide by the province as to allocation of spaces.
“That would mean that there would be a maximum 878 spaces available across the province for the program; the city last year did receive 15 per cent of those of the rural renewal spaces,” Tarant said.
He says it could mean the city will only have 132 spaces available if allocation stays the same; the waitlist of 345 means the city has over two years of candidates.
Additionally, when the program started, the average timeline in July 2022 from submission to the province to permanent residency was about nine months. Now, it is taking about 24 months due to backlog and space limitations, read a city report.
“There is a risk, if we do continue without pausing, that we are going to be giving false hope to employers and potential candidates,” Tarant said.
He noted that candidates could pursue other streams for permanent residency through federal programs.
Additionally, the city’s RRS status with the province is set to expire in July, so council directed city administration to return with a report in the second quarter of this year with a status update and a recommendation on whether to continue.
The County of Grande Prairie and Beaverlodge, Sexsmith and Wembley paused their RRS due to housing availability concerns last year.
City Coun. Wendy Bosch asked administration how many of the new workers are staying in Grande Prairie after receiving their permanent residency.
Tarrant said information on where workers are going after receiving their permanent residency is hard to track, and the province does not provide any information.
“The data we have so far right now is that within 18 to 24 months of receiving their endorsement, about 80 percent of endorsed candidates were still employed by their employer.
“Now, a significant proportion of them are still waiting to find out about the permanent residency, so what we’re more interested in is, once they receive the permanent residence, how many of them will be staying in the community?”
He said candidates who have received their permanent residency tend not to answer the surveys, making the data collection more difficult.
