Pathways to Prosperity: Canada

In a project funded by the Research and Evaluation Branch of CIC, the P2P will be providing a detailed analysis of the economic and sociocultural integration of official language minority immigrants in communities across Canada. Based on analyses of data from the 2006 census and the 2007-2008 Canadian Community Health Survey, the project will provide a portrait of the outcomes of official language minority immigrants, including comparisons to other immigrants and non‐immigrants. Official language minority immigrants will be identified using immigrant status and a combination of home language and knowledge of official language. The project will also examine factors that may drive successful integration, including demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, source country, recent versus established immigrants), and characteristics of the communities in which the immigrants settle. The latter will include the development of a welcome‐ability index for communities across the country. The welcome‐ability index is a newly developed measure of the capacity of communities to welcome and integrate newcomers. The final report from this project is expected to be ready by the end of May 2014. As an added benefit, the analyses conducted for this project will provide a baseline and set of procedures that can be applied to additional datasets, including the 2011 National Household Survey (for which Public Use Microdata Files will be available in June 2014) and the 2011‐2012 Canadian Community Health Survey.

The research team consists of Zenaida Ravanera, University of Western Ontario, Victoria Esses, University of Western Ontario, Aurelie Lacassagne, Laurentian University, Carlo Lavoie, University of Prince Edward Island, and Leah Hamilton, Mount Royal University. They will be assisted by graduate students. The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada (FCFA) was helpful during the project’s development and is continuing to assist with advice.