2 P.E.I. towns scale back PNP applicant processing

Some rural towns on P.E.I. continue to wrestle with the workload from their new roles as endorsers for the provincial nominee program (PNP), leading some to scale back the number of applications they are willing to review.

Andrew Daggett, Chief Administrative Officer for the town of Montague, said assessing PNP applications added four to five extra hours of work per week, on top of an already full schedule.

"It certainly is adding a lot of workload," Daggett said. "Some of us are starting to feel like immigration agents more than CAOs."

Geoff Baker, CAO for the Town of Kensington, said he has also reduced the number of applications he's processing and is scrutinizing them more closely. . 

"I've gone from maybe four to five meetings a week down to a couple a week," Baker said. "I've met with close to 55 applicants thus far, so it certainly does take more time than what we originally anticipated."

Daggett said Montague town council had considered a halt to new applications due to the amount of resources needed to keep the process going and the small number of applications that have been moved ahead by the province. He added that he's reduced the number of applications he processes in a week from four or five down to one.

Fourteen communities across P.E.I. have signed agreements with the office of immigration since November to participate in the PNP business impact program as endorsing communities. Points are awarded to applicants based on their skills, language abilities, business plans, as well as endorsements from communities on P.E.I.

'Why are we bothering?'

If a potential applicant receives an endorsement from a community, their application is sent to the province for further review and the highest-scoring candidates will then receive an invitation to submit an application to the P.E.I. PNP.

Daggett said the maximum number of points an applicant can get is 200 and the higher the score, the more likely an application will be moved ahead. He said that to his knowledge, only a handful of the over 30 applicants Montague has endorsed have been selected.

"When you're putting the time and the effort into this and nobody is getting selected, it's kind of like, why are we bothering to endorse a bunch of people if no one is going to get passed through."

He added that Montague council decided it needed to prioritize other projects throughout the summer and significantly scale back the amount of time being spent on PNP applications.

Why are we bothering to endorse a bunch of people if no one is going to get passed through?- Andrew Daggett

Baker, Kensington's CAO, said some municipalities have been talking about calling a meeting with the province to request further support and possibly recouping some of the costs associated with administering the program.

Recouping costs?

"They're sharing the same sentiment of the unanticipated increase of workload associated the with program," he said. 

"To accommodate this additional three, four, six, eight hours a week associated with this program does cost money…as well as lost opportunity costs from dedicating myself to this as opposed to other things on my to-do list." 

In a written statement to CBC News, the provincial office of immigration said it has selected 33 nominations to apply in the entrepreneur stream so far in 2018. Of those applications, 24 have received community endorsements.  

The province adds that it's working with communities to ensure the process of endorsing applicants isn't cumbersome and that the community endorsement model is voluntary and without quotas.

The province says communities "are encouraged to do this at their own pace with the resources available to them." 

Both Baker and Daggett said they strongly support the program and know immigration is key to rural development on P.E.I. They believe the workload will become more manageable now that they have reduced the number of applications they're assessing. 

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