Canadian immigration minister Marco Mendicino recently announced that the government will be investing $100 million over the next 3 years, from the fall of 2021 till March 31, 2024, to ensure better quality settlement services to newcomers. Settlement services are very essential to an individual’s success in Canada. These services include helping newcomers get work, learn English or French, find accommodation and overall help them integrate into the community.
This investment intends to improve the newcomer’s access to settlement services through the Service Delivery Improvements (SDI) process.
What Are the Service Delivery Improvements (SDI)?
The IRCC launched the SDI process in 2017 to work on developing innovative ways to better support the settlement and integration of new immigrants. The SDI runs an Expression of Interest (EOI) draw every 3 years to select and fund new projects and areas of study.
Through this process, 78 projects were selected to explore how the settlement services can be improved to better help newcomers integrate into their new community. The SDI process was also meant to support the recovery of the settlement sector post-pandemic.
Some of the projects include the following:
The University of Windsor’s Artificial Intelligence: A Rapid Response Leveraging Newcomers' Pathway to Settlement
This project was established to test whether artificial intelligence could be used to develop an effective strategy for the settlement of newcomers.
The Accessible Community Counseling and Employment Services' Connecting Canada: Employer Engagement Driving Settlement in Smaller Communities
As the name suggests, this project will work to connect newcomers to employers in smaller rural and urban communities before they arrive in Canada to encourage them to settle in rural and urban communities.
