The Longitudinal Immigration Database combines linked administrative immigration and tax data files. It is a comprehensive source of data on the socio-economic outcomes of the immigrant taxfiler population in Canada. In partnership with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the national network of Local Immigration Partnerships (LIP), the Community Data Program has acquired a set of data tables tracking the mobility and economic outcomes of Canada's newcomer population over several years.
The ICARE IMDB tables include data from the ICARE Settlement Services module, which has information on the type and number of services received at the person level. Counts include persons having received services at any time, not necessarily during the tax year in question.
ICARE Table T2 combines data on settlement service delivery with mobility data. The data is available at three levels of geography:
- Local Immigration Partnership geographies (Table T2A)
- Census Subdivisions, e.g., municipality, city (Table T2B)
- Census Divisions, e.g., region/county (Table T2C)
ICARE (Immigration Contribution Agreement Reporting Environment) is a reporting system used by organizations providing resettlement services to immigrants to report their activities. Annually, Statistics Canada received files generated by ICARE, in order to produce an IMDB settlement services module. The data received covered the services provided from 2013 and onward.
Settlement services are received in Canada or pre-arrival. These tables only include services received in Canada. Note that the coverage for immigrants admitted prior to 2013 is partial. Data from organisations located in Quebec are not collected, so only services provided to immigrants outside Quebec are available.
The category ‘Having received settlement services’ refers to immigrants who have received settlement service at any time, not necessarily the tax year in question. An immigrant could receive one or more service at the same time, and/or multiple times, one service could last over years.
Settlement services are not limited to recent immigrants. For example, 315 immigrants first admitted in 1980 had received settlement services between 2013 and October 2020, it was also the case for 1,050 immigrants admitted in 1990 and 4,245 immigrants admitted in 2000
Note that the IMDB tables show counts for immigrant taxfilers aged 15 and over. Immigrants aged 0-14 and those who have not filed taxes are not captured.
The retention rate for a given geography is the proportion of immigrants (filing taxes, aged 15+) from a given admission year who are located in their "intended geography" when they filed taxes for a given tax year. The "intended geography" is the location where the immigrant indicated that they would be going upon admission.
Retention rate can be calculated as follows (using variables from the IMDB tables):
retention rate = stay / (stay + out migration)
Out migration only counts those immigrants who are not residing in their intended geography for a given tax year. It does not count immigrants who moved into that geography and subsequently left. If an immigrant moved back into their intended geography, they would be counted in the "stay" column (for that tax year, but not for the tax years they were gone).
Note that the national and provincial retention rates included in these tables are not calculated using the above formula and provide an average retention rate for all the geographies, respectively in the country or relevant province. Provincial retention rates can be obtained either by using Statistics Canada's Longitudinal Immigration Database [IMDB] Interactive Application: Mobility OR from this table: Interprovincial migration of immigrant taxfilers, by pre-admission experience and tax year, for Canada and provinces.
For more information, consult the Longitudinal Immigration Database [IMDB] Technical Report, 2020. A primer for the IMDB is available here. You can download 2018 IMDB data dictionaries here. If you have questions about this product, feel free to contact the CDP team.