September 2009: 43 Icelanders given jobs and cleared to move to Manitoba, Canada

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Here's the latest in a story that has been a few months in the works, on a deal between the governments of Manitoba (Canada) and Iceland to help unemployed Icelanders find jobs and immigrate to Manitoba. Now 43 Icelanders have been matched with jobs in six different companies, in the sectors of health care, construction, and education. They still have to wait for Ottawa to approve this in the form of a "positive labour market opinion", which means confirmation that no Canadians could be found to fill the positions...and hopefully the first decisions on this could be made this month and then the Icelandic population in Canada will be able to increase by 43 after a few more weeks waiting for work permits to be issued.

After all that red tape I love this comment: "Allan said Manitoba is not fast-tracking these applicants in any way". Gee, you think?


Current stats give 26,000 people of Icelandic heritage in Manitoba, though naturally most of these will not know the language. The area with the largest concentration of Icelanders is Gimli (just north of Winnipeg). Since my last post on this subject the Icelandic Wikipedia page on Gimli has also expanded a certain amount.