Canada boasts of the highest per-capita immigration rates in the world. Being the eighth largest economy in the world, Canada is renowned for its multiculturalism and reinforced work ethic. Finding a place that offers you the best opportunity to succeed then becomes the next piece of the puzzle. Fortunately, researchers have been working on a new tool intended to help people relocating to Canada find a city in which they are more likely to thrive.
According to Statistics Canada, over half of the immigrants often choose to live in Canada’s main cities such as Montreal, Vancouver or Toronto. However, other smaller cities and towns usually have better opportunities for immigrants to thrive. A film director, for example, maybe better suited to live in Toronto, while a tech worker may not.
Alongside the Immigration Policy Lab (IPL) at Stanford University, the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has made relentless efforts working on a tool dubbed GeoMatch to better solve this problem. Since the inception of this idea in 2018, the project tries to repurpose a formula used in resettlement to help with immigration. Using historical data such as background characteristics, geographical locations and economic outcomes, IRCC intends to help immigrants choose a place to live where they can best thrive.
Isabelle Dubois, the spokesperson of the IRCC, informed CIC News that the study revealed that prospective immigrants who utilized the GeoMatch tool were more likely to find a well-paying job on arrival in the country. While most immigrates tended to gravitate towards cities they were familiar with, the tool helped change this by promoting a more diverse locality across the country beyond the major cities or centers.
