BARRHEAD - Barrhead-area businesses wishing to hire workers through the Rural Renewal Stream (RRS) program will have to pay them a minimum of $20 per hour.
That is one of the changes County of Barrhead councillors made to the program during their Nov. 19 meeting.
The RRS enables rural communities with less than 100,000 people to attract and retain immigrants by working with local employers and settlement-providing organizations to offer employment and support services, including housing, language training, health care, and education. The stream requires that communities apply for designation through the provincial government. Designated communities have the Rural Renewal designation for two years, with the option to extend for two more.
Barrhead (town and county) has been an RRS community since November 2022. The county is the unit of authority and administers the program for the municipalities.
The program is part of the province's Alberta Advantage Immigration Program (AAIP), which helps employers recruit foreign nationals to apply for jobs. The AAIP is part of the province's effort to combat its labour shortage.
To be eligible for workers to receive workers under the program, a business needs to have at least one permanent, full-time position, not including seasonal jobs, of a minimum of 30 hours a week.
The council's other change was to require a candidate's Canadian work permit to be valid for at least eight months from the date of request to be considered for municipal endorsement. This follows the change council made to the program in September 2023 to endorse only candidates already in Canada on temporary work permits.
Development and communications coordinator Adam Vanderwekken said increasing nomination wait times by the AAIP made the change necessary.
From November 2022 to August 2023, the municipality issued 56 endorsement letters, 40 to candidates outside Canada and 16 to Temporary Foreign Workers (TFW) in the country. After limiting them to TFW only, the county sent 79 endorsement letters to candidates from September 2023 to August 2024.
Two months ago, council pressed the pause button on the program upon administration's recommendation due to an ever-increasing delay in processing times, which would only increase after the province announced it would be moving to an expression of interest process.
"When we made the decision, there was already an eight-month wait before the province would even pick up an application to review," Vanderwekken said. "In some cases, employers expressed concerns that [RRS candidates already in Canada] would have their [TWF] work permits expire and be kicked out of the country before the province reviewed their case."
He added that the municipality also temporarily froze the RRS program to devise a plan to support successful candidates better when they arrive in the community.
"We were finding that many of the positions requested under the Rural Renewal Stream tended to be for low-wage entry-level positions," Vanderwekken said. "If candidates can't afford to live in our community, which is a requirement under the program, it is likely that they would only stay for a short time before looking for other opportunities."
Earlier in the meeting, Barrhead and District Family Community Support Services executive director Karen Pronishen noted that Barrhead's living wage is $24.50 an hour (calculated by the Alberta Living Wage Network), a figure Vanderwekken reiterated.
"If the goal is to have [RRS candidates] live in Barrhead long-term, other endorsement letter criteria could include the requirement that job offers be equal to a set minimum," Vanderwekken said, adding other RRS communities have linked salary requirements to the community's living wage, something administration also recommended.
County manager Debbie Oyarzun interjected that the Alberta Living Wage Network figure did not include modifiers, such as employer benefits, which could lower the amount considered to be the living wage.
Vanderwekken said that of the candidates the municipality has endorsed, only 13 per cent met or exceeded the $24.50 an hour mark.
"If you drop that to $20 an hour, 57 per cent of [endorsed positions] were under that wage and at $18 an hour, 64 per cent of endorsements are over that," he said.
Coun. Walter Preugschas interjected that members of the county's Economic Development Committee felt a $20-an-hour wage floor for RRS positions would be appropriate.
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com
