A new federal immigration program aimed at bringing in workers from around the world to fill chronic labour needs in this area is up and running.

Altona and Rhineland Municipality were selected for the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot program, which is designed to fill job gaps in rural and northern areas of the country.

The online platform that allows potential new immigrants to apply for jobs in the area went live on November 1. It is similar to a job board where employers post jobs and people can apply for them, but this job board involves immigrating to Canada.

After only two weeks, the program is generating a fair amount of interest from both businesses and applicants.

The SEED group is running the program in the region and has started meeting with local employers to determine their labour needs. Spokesperson Stephanie Harris says SEED has met with about 10 different businesses so far.

"There are a lot of positions available out there; I would say well over a hundred at this point. Slowly we are uploading those positions onto our website for applicants from all over the world to field."

Harris points out, while there are a lot of job vacancies in the region, not all businesses will utilize this program to fill those positions.

Prospective newcomers who are interested in applying for job positions in the Altona and Rhineland area can create a profile on the SEED website. In fact, candidate profiles have already been created by people interested in applying for the available jobs in this area. "We actually have almost two-thousand candidate profiles that have been created on our website. Those are applicants who are looking to the job postings that are out there and are looking to apply for the jobs in our community."

SEED receives all the resumes submitted and screens the applicants to determine if they meet the base requirements for the job when it comes to language and education. "We have an opportunity to vet them and then forward them on to the business," said Harris. "For example, one of our local businesses received well over 100 resumes, but not all of those resumes qualified for the position that was posted. We were able to vet those resumes and actually forward to them the ones that were relevant to the position which ended up being approximately 15."

According to Harris, SEED acts as a human resources department on behalf of local businesses, which takes some of that pressure off of local employers.

Under the pilot program, once there's a match between the person and the job, the employer can submit a request for a temporary foreign worker's permit and have the person come to Canada. However, applicants would still need to apply for permanent residence when they are still in their country of origin.