What does the future hold for PNP on P.E.I.?

On Thursday the P.E.I. government will select up to 10 more names from among 500 potential applicants its provincial nominee program.

Those names will represent the last people to be invited to apply through the entrepreneur stream of the PNP.

The MacLauchlan government may hope this will end the controversy which has dogged the Liberal Party since the earliest days of the first Robert Ghiz administration. But with an immigration fraud trial set to begin in November, and a second active investigation by Canada Border Services, it seems the best the province can do is hope to get ahead of any possible further allegations of abuse within its own immigration program.

Controversy aside, the government will also want to keep the newcomers coming — along with the boosts they bring to the population and the economy.

400 clients already in the system

In the short-term at least, that objective has already been achieved. In addition to the names to be selected Thursday, there are 400 clients already in the system whose applications are currently being vetted by either the province or Ottawa.

Those applications should keep things chugging along for at least another 18 months, giving the province time to change its program without disrupting the flow of immigrants. Thanks to immigration, P.E.I. was the fastest-growing province in the country in 2017, at a time when natural population growth was almost stagnant, and while P.E.I. continued to be a net loser when it comes to people moving to other provinces within Canada.

Source: Statistics Canada

There's another factor which will minimize the impact of P.E.I. shutting down its entrepreneur program. Immigrant investors have been making up a smaller proportion of the province's overall immigration system.

As recently as 2014 the entrepreneur stream of the PNP was responsible for more than two-thirds of all provincial nominees. But with the introduction of new federal programs to invite skilled workers to the Atlantic region, that proportion dropped to less than one-third in 2017.

Source: P.E.I. Office of Immigration

Even with the end of the entrepreneur stream, P.E.I.'s allocation from Ottawa under the PNP and other immigration programs will increase in 2018 to 1,070 nominees and their immediate family members.

How it worked 

Under P.E.I.'s entrepreneur stream, immigrant investors provided the province with a $200,000 refundable deposit and agreed to live in the province and start or buy a business here. In return the province sponsored them for permanent Canadian residency, which they were granted upon arrival in the country.

Most other provinces admit immigrant investors under a temporary visa, only sponsoring them for permanent residency once they've satisfied any residency and business requirements in their agreement with the province.

P.E.I. has a program stream that operates on the same principle, the work permit stream, but only five people were nominated through it in 2016-17. The province has said all future immigrant investors will have to apply through that stream.

Deposits won't pad provincial coffers

One thing that will eventually end for P.E.I. is the revenue windfall the province has taken in through its deposit system.

In 2017 alone P.E.I. brought in $21.7 million in revenue between program fees and deposits gone into default from immigrants who didn't fulfil the conditions of their agreement with the province. That's more than the province brought in that year in alcohol taxes.

From 2007 to 2017 the province took in $124 million in program fees and default deposits, enough to fund the entire public school system on P.E.I. — French and English — for more than half a school year. And that figure doesn't include millions more the province earned in interest on the total number of deposits held, a nest egg which at times topped $200 million.

The province's Economic Development Minister Chris Palmer said he'll gladly exchange that influx of cash for a continued steady stream of workers and entrepreneurs, "people making contributions to the economy, that are working, that are creating businesses …. We know that that is more valuable to us than a deposit."

Can P.E.I. maintain immigration levels?

The biggest outstanding question is whether P.E.I. can attract the same number of immigrants without its entrepreneur program — or alternately if the numbers fall off, will the province be further ahead by attracting immigrants more likely to want to put down roots here?

P.E.I.'s immigrant retention rate under its provincial nominee program has been the lowest in the country. Experts have argued P.E.I.'s deposit system attracted wealthy immigrants simply looking to pay $200,000 in exchange for immediate Canadian permanent residency — without any interest in setting up a business on P.E.I., or settling here.

Last week Jamie Aiken of IIDI admitted that may have been the case. "Unfortunately that perception could be taken. That wasn't the objective of the program."

But immigration lawyer Richard Kurland said while P.E.I. will no longer attract immigrants looking to trade cash for quick permanent residency, that doesn't have to lead to a drop in numbers "because the demand for visas grossly exceeds the available supply of visas."

Kurland is urging the province to model its work permit program after B.C., which requires its immigrant investors to run a successful business for two years on a temporary visa.

"All during that time, the business has to work, and, importantly, the people need to be physically present within a certain distance of the business," he explained. "If all is good, about four years after entry, the person is landed."

The province has said it will introduce changes to its work permit stream when a report on the PNP is released sometime around the end of September.

Summerside Mayor Bill Martin sees an advantage in that type of program for municipalities outside Charlottetown who endorse candidates for the program.

The changes announced last week give municipalities some assurance the candidates they endorse will actually live in those communities, Martin said, something he said didn't exist in the previous program.

"It was a ticket to, essentially, permanent residency in our country. But not necessarily our province or our city."

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