Multilevel Governance: Immigration and Settlement Services

1. Multilevel Governance: Immigration and Settlement Services Nov. 22

2. Federal-Provincial Agreements on Immigration • Citizen and Immigration Canada (CIC) • “Some provinces and territories have comprehensive agreements with CIC that cover a wide range of immigration issues. Yukon, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have this kind of agreement with CIC.” • “Other provinces and territories have agreements that cover more specific issues, in response to their respective needs. For example, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon have signed Provincial Nominee agreements, which allow them to nominate immigrants to meet specific labour-market needs.”

3. Canada-Ontario Agreement • Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement, signed November 2005 • “federal funds are provided for settlement and integration programs and services in Ontario communities, and for innovative services and delivery mechanisms to improve outcomes for newcomers” (Burr, 2011: 3). • This led to Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPS) to support “a new form of locally based collaboration among multiple stakeholders. These partnerships enable communities to develop strategic plans to address the opportunities and challenges associated with fostering inclusive and responsive environments. They also signify and innovation in multi-level collaborative governance – encouraging co-operation among federal, provincial, and municipal governments” (Burr, 2011: 1).

4. MLG and Toronto • The Canada-Ontario-Toronto Memorandum of Understanding on Immigration and Settlement, signed in October 2006 • Toronto Newcomer Initiative, signed in May 2010 • Cuts to immigration services were announced in December 2010. 34 “Ontario organizations — 14 in Toronto…lost federal funding when Citizenship and Immigration Canada cut $43 million in settlement services in Ontario this year.”

5. Comparing settlement programs in Vancouver and Winnipeg • “proved to be textbook examples of the contrast between provincial policies that respect community difference and ones that do not” (Leo and Enns, 2009: 94-96).

6. Winnipeg case study • “the provincial government built an impressively successful system of immigration and settlement, carefully tailored to meet the requirements of disparate Manitoba communities, not along any particular line of governance theory but on the well-established political and administrative arts of close consultation and co-operation with stakeholders, thoughtful design of a provincial nominee system of immigration, attentive monitoring, and flexible adaptation to lessons learned” (Leo and August, 2009: 493-494).

7. Winnipeg case study • “shows how a provincial government that is open to community involvement in policy making is perfectly capable of respecting community difference in both formulation and implementation of policy while entirely bypassing municipal government, in this case a municipal government whose record of responsiveness to community involvement is less than stellar” (Leo and Enns, 2009: 96).

8. Local role in Manitoba • “There seems to be a case for municipal minimalism in this instance…provincial administration arguably makes sense” (Leo and August, 2009: 505). • “In Toronto and Vancouver, by contrast, matters stand differently…it makes sense for each of those cities to manage at least some aspects of settlement, and problems arising from settlement, in their own way” (Leo and August, 2009: 505).

9. Vancouver case study • “the provincial government, in its fervour to impose a new ideological direction, placed serious obstacles in the path of a famously effective network of community organizations” (Leo and Enns, 2009: 96). • “market-oriented governance…militated directly against community input. Applying methods common to public choice policy making, the provincial government defined community-based service providers as contractors. Once so defined, they were all but excluded from providing feedback to the government in the successes or failures of its policies, on the grounds that a contractor making representations to the contractee was in a conflict of interest” (Leo and Enns, 2009: 101). • “a one-dimensional, ideologically driven approach to community governance is likely to be unequal to the formidable challenge of deep federalism” (Leo and Enns, 2009: 112).

10. Vancouver case study • Issues with the immigration settlement system in Vancouver: • Funding • Lack of consultation • Open tendering process • Performance measures

11. Implications for MLG and “Deep Federalism”

12. MLG and “Deep Federalism” • “The rationale for multi-level governance…is to strike an appropriate balance between the realization of national objectives, on the one hand, and the achievement of governance appropriate to the requirements of local communities on the other, leaving open the question of which particular constellation of organizational forms is best suited to accomplish a particular task” (Leo and Enns, 2009: 94). • “the formulation and implementation of national policies in a manner sufficiently flexible and responsive to take full account of the very important differences among communities” (Leo and Enns, 2009: 94-95).

13. Different forms of “deep federalism” • “there are many possible ways deep federalism may be achieved in particular local circumstances: different permutations of public and private initiative, different forms of cooperation among the various levels of government, and different means of securing the necessary degree of local participation in policy formulation and implementation” (Leo and Enns, 2009: 95).

14. Avoiding MLG • “Intergovernmental agreements are obviously superior to intergovernmental disagreements, but they are not superior to a state of affairs in which one government is clearly in charge” (Sancton, 2008: 7).

15. “Deep Federalism” and Municipal Government • “official recognition that local governments can play an important role in ensuring the effective delivery of federal and provincial programs…has been slow in coming” (Leo and Andres, 2008: 109). • “apparently…no organization is better placed than a municipal government to identify both available job opportunities and community needs, secure funds for meeting them and then make the jobs available” (Leo and Andres, 2008: 112).