Dr. Phil Leonard of UNB's New Brunswick Institute for Research, Data and Training talks about their research and data sharing partnership with the Department of Post Secondary Education and Training in New Brunswick

1. NB-IRDT & PETL Research
Project Partnership
NB-IRDT Partnership Open House
February 15, 2019

2. 2017/18 NB-IRDT Labour Market-Related Studies
• "Push or Pull into Self Employment? Evidence from Longitudinal Canadian Tax Data. A Working
Paper", Philip Leonard, Herb Emery, Ted McDonald
• "Temporary Residents in New Brunswick and Their Transition to Permanent Residency", Herb
Emery, Ted McDonald, Andrew Balcom
• "Apprenticeship Programs in the Atlantic Provinces: Program Characteristics, Apprentice Mobility
and Earnings", Herb Emery, Ted McDonald, Andrew Balcom
• "The Economic Impacts of Migrating from New Brunswick to Alberta/Saskatchewan and Return to
New Brunswick", Herb Emery, Ted McDonald, Rene Morrissette
• "New Brunswick Population Snapshot", Paul A. Peters
• "Small area population forecasts for New Brunswick", Paul A, Peters
• Available at: http://www.unb.ca/fredericton/arts/nbirdt/outreach.html

3. Immigrant Retention: Hot off the Press
• “Immigrant Retention in NB: an analysis using administrative
Medicare Registry data,” McDonald, Cruikshank & Liu (2018)
• Initial use of citizenship database to examine immigrant retention
• Based on having a valid Medicare card (canceled if move out of NB)
• Can identify immigrants, arrival date and their source country – but not detailed
immigrant class (e.g. PNP, AIP)
• Key finding - Immigrants less likely to stay than those born in NB, but
about equally likely as those born in other provinces
• Considerable variation by source country

4. Going forward: 5-year Research Agreement
• PETL has contracted with the NB-IRDT to conduct research
related to program/policy evaluation and LMI
• 6 priority research areas agreed upon for Year 1
• Research priorities to be updated each year depending on PETL
priorities
• Steering committee meets quarterly to review progress
• Composed of PETL DM, ADMs and IRDT Director
• Year 1 research well underway
• Draft reports mostly targeted for end of fiscal year

5. Data Transfer
• Major first step is transfer of program data from PETL to IRDT
• Will be linked with existing NB-IRDT data (e.g. Citizen registry)
• Data Analyst (Andy Balzer) seconded to PETL to help prepare data for
transfer
• Data are stripped of personal identifiers (e.g. names, addresses) before
sending to IRDT
• Crosswalk procedure at Department of Health allows the assignment of
the IRDT identification number
• PETL priorities determine which datasets move first

6. Data transfer general procedures
• First step is Master Data Sharing agreement
• Each dataset needs:
• Privacy Impact Assessment –
• Individual Disclosure Schedule – list of specific variables and timelines for data
transfer
• IRDT can help with this
• Melanie Buyting – Data Planning and Development Coordinator
• Donna Curtis Maillet – Privacy Officer

7. Project 1 – Labour Market Training Programs
• Labour Market Training Programs – Profiles and Retention
• Year 1 - To link Training and Skills Development and Apprenticeship
program data with Medicare registry database
• Having a valid Medicare number is indicator of remaining in NB
• Do trainees remain in the province?
• Year 2 plan is to examine labour market outcomes using tax data
• Use secure linkage environment of Statistics Canada
• Market income is good indicator of success of training program
• Tax data can also be used to verify retention (province of filing)

8. Project 2 - GED and labour market success
• Economics literature shows that high-school equivalencies
(GED) not always equivalent to HS diploma
• Comparison of outcomes to use GED data from PETL and survey data
from Research Data Centre
• GED data from PETL
• IALS, IALSS, PIAAC from Statistics Canada
• Part 1 – descriptive analysis of GED holders compared to HS
• Completion statistics, retention
• Part 2 (year 2) – compare labour market outcomes using tax data

9. Project 3 - Profiles of low-skilled workers
• Starts with analysis of what defines “low-skilled worker”
• Low education? Low paying? low skilled job?
• Initial work conducted by student projects in Economic Policy class
• Given a definition, how many low-skilled workers
• Where are they? In which industries? What age groups?
• Comparison with other provinces
• Using primarily RDC Census and survey data
• Census/NHS 1996-2016
• Analysis well underway

10. Project 4 - Immigrant Retention
• Extension of initial work described earlier
• Using landing records (IRCC - federal) and BizNet (PETL) linked to
medicare registry (for retention)
• Key addition is ability to compare immigration streams
• e.g. family class, skilled worker, Atlantic Immigration Pilot
• Data transfer is again the key issue
• First step – update initial analysis using citizen (Medicare) data to
summer 2018 – draft completed
• Second step – repeat analysis with linkage to IRCC/BizNet
• BizNet due to arrive at IRDT imminently
• IRCC coming soon

11. Project 5 - Sustaining and Growing NB’s rural
economy
• Economic evaluation of government spending in rural areas
• E.g. – extent to which local public services stem outmigration from rural
areas
• What amount of investment would be required to sustain or grow these areas?
• Multiple projects underway
• Review of impacts of public libraries
• Extent to which public service closure (or opening) affects mobility to
urban areas
• Citizen registry to be used for internal migration measures

12. Project 6 - Profile of NB Businesses,
Entrepreneurs & labour markets
• Several smaller projects using Statistics Canada (RDC) data
• How do goods-based and service-based industries differ across the
province?
• Using Census and Labour Force Survey
• Description of self-employed workers –using tax data (LAD)
• Year 2 – Plan to access enterprise-level data at CDER (Ottawa)
• Confidential business data can’t be accessed here