Newcomers welcome to the North: report finds immigration a viable solution to succession planning.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: NEWS

A new report from the Far Northeast Training Board has found that secondary immigration can be a viable answer to succession planning in the North.

The North's New Entrepreneurs details the results from interviews with business owners identified in the Training Board's catchment area, which includes Latchford, Temiskaming Shores, Earlton, Englehart, Kirkland Lake, Matheson, Timmins, Chapleau, Cochrane, Kapuskasing and Hearst.

In that area, 55 newcomer business owners were identified, but only 38, or 69 per cent, were interviewed.

Compiled by Don Curry of Curry Consulting, the report explains who the newcomers are, where they've come from, how they found out about business opportunities, which businesses they own, who they employed, and their plans for the future in their adopted communities.

Three years ago, while Curry was the director at the North Bay & District Multicultural Centre, the organization conducted an informal survey to see how many of the first-generation newcomers were business owners in North Bay.

It yielded some compelling results: more than 70 businesses in North Bay were owned and being operated by newcomers.

The new report suggests those numbers are replicated across the region.

"I had suggested that we look at every municipality in their region to see if what we see in North Bay is happening through the North as well," Curry said. "It was encouraging to see it's happening everywhere."

The Training Board report notes that two-thirds of the business owners are secondary immigrants: they first immigrated to the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and then relocated to Northern Ontario.

Two-thirds of the people interviewed are originally from India.

Curry said it's interesting to see that so many newcomers from India, via Toronto, are entrepreneurial in nature. Many said they wanted to start a business in Toronto, but were thwarted by the cost of living and an inferior quality of life.

"They were not happy with the crowded conditions, the congestion in the Toronto area, and the high cost of living," Curry said. "If you want to buy a house in Toronto--and it's been in the news steady--it's very expensive. So they did their research, and they looked at prices in the North and thought, 'Hey, I can afford it there.'"

Many of those interviewed were informed about opportunities in Northern Ontario through family and friends who are already living there. But a majority said if they were looking to expand or acquire new businesses, next...