The Decibel - The YouTubers guiding immigrants in small-town Canada

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

Newcomers are turning to YouTube to learn about everyday life in places like Moncton NB, Kamloops B.C. or Swift Current, Sask. Canada’s goal of bringing in 500,000 new permanent residents every year by 2025 has a focus on settling new immigrants in small towns and different regions of the country – Instead of just the big city centres – and 2021 census data shows that shift is already happening.So YouTube channels made by recent immigrants are helping those who arrive after them learn about where to get groceries, what kind of winter coat they need and even what people are like in a particular town. The Globe’s Dakshana Bascaramurty talked to some of these YouTubers.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Hi guys. Welcome to my YouTube channel. So today we're going to Costco. So come with me guys. New Canadians are turning to YouTube to help people back home understand what life is like in small towns and cities across Canada. They talk about everything from what jacket to buy for winter, to how to fill out documents,

to how much a haircut costs. Hi guys, in today's video we're going to Brandon City to buy some stuff for our baby. What we're going to do today is I'm going to take you to a car dealership in Halifax, Nova Scotia. So guys, this is the bottom view. Look, swift current downtown. Guys, I'm treading to the barbershop. It's now minus 15.

Snow on the ground, it's kind of windy. Welcome to Grand Prairie, Alberta, guys. Today, the Globe's Dakshana Bhaskaramurthy is on the show to explain why YouTube is becoming a guide for new Canadians and how these videos are helping to fill a gap in settlement programs. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Dakshana, it's great to talk to you. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me again. So I did not realize that small town Canada guides were a whole video genre on YouTube before this.

Can you just like describe what these videos look like? Like where are people taking us in these videos? Sure. So the videos come in a lot of different formats. People are describing their immigration experience. They're talking about where they live. Sometimes they're walking through the streets of their neighborhood. And they're often narrated in this sort of diary style. There are strong opinions in some of these videos. So there's this one YouTuber, Ram's Life, and he's an Indian immigrant in Saskatoon. He has this one nine-minute rant in Hindi titled, Five Things I Hate About Saskatchewan. Five things that I hate about Saskatchewan.

Weather conditions in Saskatchewan. Other times, it's very practical advice. There are these Jamaican immigrants known on YouTube as the D. Andersons, and they have a video running down the cost of maintaining a vehicle in Alberta. We're getting into that time of the year when, you know down the cost of maintaining a vehicle in Alberta. We're getting into that time of the year when, you know, we have to prepare our vehicle for winter. So you have to get your oil change done, you have to get your tire change done, you have to get everything up and running. I know it's a lot cheaper in like Jamaica for sure, but I mean, you're getting premium service as well.

And then there's this other genre that are these very kind of click-baity how-to guides on the actual process of immigration. So there's this channel Bebuzz Canadian Journey where a Nigerian immigrant in Halifax has a video titled, you know, this title is in all caps,

Get Canada PR in 6 months or less in 2022. One of my recommendations, and I've been saying this for a very long time, is if you can improve on your language exams, please do that. So actually, I do want to ask you about some of these YouTubers. I know you spoke to a woman named Ogunerwana Balugun. Can you tell me who she is? Okay. So Oguner Rwana, who goes by Rwana in her various videos, she is this 28-year-old woman who moved from Nigeria in June with her partner and her daughter, and they settled in Moncton, New Brunswick. Now, she had initially had her eyes on Ontario when she was thinking of coming

to Canada, and she was in the federal skilled worker program pool and was kind of waiting for like months, thinking it might be years before she got selected to come. But in the meantime, she had also applied through the provincial nomination program, which a lot of provinces in Canada have where the provinces have a little bit more control over who they recruit. And it's based on their labor needs and things like that. And so New Brunswick chose her to come and she was able to come earlier than she expected. But the thing is, she didn't know anything about New Brunswick. She'd never heard of New Brunswick. She definitely didn't know anything about Moncton. And she started doing research. She didn't find out much. And when she landed, she wanted to make videos to show, you know, friends and family back home what her life was like. So yeah, this is my first Canada Day in Canada. So as a newcomer, I just didn't want to sit at home. I went into the dollar store, got my T-shirt, my Canada Day T-shirt, yeah. But she very quickly discovered that there was this other audience that was interested in this content too,

people who were contemplating the same move. And, you know, she started documenting things like, you know, she was touring stores. So I'm taking you guys to an African store here in Moncton, New Brunswick. Hi, Yannick. Hello, how are you? Very well, thank you. So, guys, this is one of the best African stores we have here in Moncton. And then, guys, we can buy anything we want. Like guys, these chips

are going to take all my money. It's actually, it's kind of wonderful to see. Like when I was watching some of her videos, I'm thinking about like my mom and her family, like when they came to Canada in the seventies, right? And they like came to small town Ontario and like, you don't know, you don't know what kind of coat to buy or what kind of boots to wear in the winters, right? And they came to small town Ontario and like, you don't know what kind of coat to buy or what kind of boots to wear in the winter, right? And so just kind of showing people the community there because, you know, when we're talking about small towns, it's not like a big city in Toronto where there's maybe a lot of things that are easily accessible online. This is kind of like a personalized tour of a place that might not have so much other stuff on the

internet then. Yeah, it's very specific to Moncton. You know, life in Halifax, which is where I live, is very different from life in Moncton. And I think it was this very targeted picture of what integration looks like there. So Rwana's from Nigeria, like you said. Are many Nigerian people looking to move to Moncton or are people from all over watching? So she can actually answer this question very specifically because, you know, YouTube offers their creators lots of metrics to look through. So her audience, 60 percent of them live in Nigeria, 20 percent are from Canada. And then, you know, surprising to her was that 5% are from

the Philippines, 5% from India. And, you know, those two countries, Philippines and India, have been large sources of immigrants to Canada for the last number of years. So it makes sense. And what's been the response to her videos? It's fascinating. Her page has become very much a conversation between her and either prospective immigrants or recent immigrants who have a lot of questions. When you go to the comments section of any of her videos, people are asking questions about, you know, where did you go to buy this particular grocery? Or, you know, how long did it take you to find an apartment? But then also there are, you know, DM conversations because she'll list like her Instagram handle and other ways of getting in touch with her. And so she, you know, she's only been in Moncton since June. She is

still very much a newcomer. But within a couple of months of landing, you know, some of these relationships she formed, people who were arriving in Moncton were saying, like, can you pick me up from the airport? And she's always, you know, responded to tell people, like, I would love to help, but maybe this community organization or this, you know, sort of immigrant community would be better suited to do that. But I think it's that age-old tradition of immigrants helping other immigrants with settling. We'll be back after this message. Dakshana, how did you just first come across these videos? So last year I did a big story for The Globe about the international student recruitment machine that was bringing a lot of Indian international students to Canada. And I discovered all of these videos that a lot

of international students were making about specifically Brampton, Ontario, where a lot of them were landing, and about Sheridan College, which is a very popular college that these students enroll in. And then back in October, there was this big census release on immigration. And we found that immigrants were increasingly settling in smaller cities, like mid-sized cities and towns in Canada, you know, places like Lloydminster, places like Swift Current, Brandon, all kinds of cities in Atlantic Canada. And I got thinking about those Indian international students and the videos they were making. And I wondered, like, is this happening in other parts of Canada, too?

And I literally went to YouTube and was searching the names of some of these cities and towns and then immigration and then just seeing what came up. And I would say that in every single municipality I searched, there was a video that a newcomer had uploaded or several videos. You also spoke to another YouTuber, Piyush Gupta. Hello, everyone. Welcome and welcome back to Piyush Canada. Who has 44,000 followers on YouTube. And he's in Kamloops.

He's talking about Kamloops, which for comparison has a population of 90,000. So there's a lot of people following him here. Can you just tell me about him and why he started making videos? So Piyush is an Indian international student from Delhi, India. And Piyush is an Indian international student from Delhi, India. And Piyush had never heard of Thompson Rivers University.

He'd never heard of Kamloops, B.C. But he just he applied. He was accepted. And he had what I thought was a very smart and creative strategy for researching this place. He went on LinkedIn and he looked at all of the sort of recent graduates from Thompson Rivers University and he DM'd them on LinkedIn. He DM'd a hundred of them and seven replied. And he was just asking them, you know, what was your experience at this university? What is Kamloops like? And he was looking to get a very honest opinion about the

place. But obviously that took a lot of effort, a lot of work. And he learned a lot through that experience, but he learned even more once he was on the ground in Kamloops. And so he just thought, you know, I knew so little and I made some mistakes. I learned so much and why not share that knowledge? And, you know, he kept saying to me when we spoke, I don't want to be a gatekeeper of information. I just want to share everything that I learned so that other people can learn from it. Like, Piyush has a video about working a job at Skip the Dishes. And, you know, he kind of lets you tag along on a shift. 7017. This is the one? Thank you. It's not just, you know, finding out, like, these are the jobs you can do.

It's saying, come along with me and see what this job is like and see if it's something that you would want to do. And this is how much money that I make per shift. So he's kind of paying it forward in a way then. But 44,000 followers, Dakshana, like, that's a lot of people. Like, who are these people who are following him? So the majority of them are in South Asia. So India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. His videos are almost all in Hindi. But what's fascinating is he also has, you know, a growing viewership in the Middle East. And you'll often

see people who are commenting on his videos being like, bro, can you please put this up in English? Because, you know, they can see the titles that are written in English and they know that the content would be valuable to them. But when they actually click play, they don't understand what he's saying. Wow. Dakshana, these videos are popping up at a time when Canada is really ramping up the number of immigrants and permanent residents that we want to bring in. Canada has a goal of bringing in 500,000 new immigrants every year by 2025. What is actually in place to help newcomers with the settlement process? I've looked at several studies that have been done on the settlement sector in the last decade, and many of these studies, authors found that workers were overburdened with large workloads. You know, they struggled to get stable long-term funding. And this was especially the case in smaller communities. Actually, in 2020, the Nova Scotia government hired a consultant to find out the reasons why immigrants were staying or leaving Nova Scotia.

And 42 percent of those immigrants surveyed who stayed in the province and 55 percent of immigrants surveyed who left said that they didn't access settlement services at all. And they had all kinds of reasons. Some of them didn't even know that they existed. Some of them said, you know, these aren't available in the municipality that I live in. And in other cases, they said, you know, we tried, but we just weren't able to get an appointment. So these services aren't being used very well or they're overburdened or both. And the government of Canada does also have something called pre-arrival services. Can you tell me about that and how helpful people say that is? There are things like live chats.

You know, there are websites where you can read any number of articles. In some cases, they have these informational videos. But when you look at this content, it's very different from what the YouTubers are offering. You know, there's one of these pre-arrival services. So it's this agency called the Active Engagement and Integration Project. And they have a video that they put up about living in small towns. And it's such a stark contrast to some of these YouTubers' videos. If you love to be in nature and enjoy activities such as hiking, fishing, boating in the summer, and skating, skiing, sledding in the winter, then living in a small town could be for you.

And it's like, what are you actually telling me? Yeah. And it varies so much. You know, they mention a couple of small towns and it's like this place in B.C., this place in Quebec. And, you know, the experiences of living in those communities are so different. Just before I let you go here, Dakshana, you've obviously spent a lot of time watching these videos. Can I ask you, do you have a favorite moment that you've come across? Absolutely. So probably my favorite, and I have watched, I will tell you, like dozens and dozens of hours of this content. My favorite video is one that Ruana posted.

So this was like shortly after she got her first job in Canada. And she was doing what so many immigrants do. You know, they've got these paychecks coming in. They're excited to sort of settle into their place, buy some nice stuff. And she was out furniture shopping. And the most interesting part of the video and the longest part of the video was a tour of The Brick in Moncton. The furniture store. The Brick. Yes of The Brick in Moncton. The furniture store. The Brick. Yes, The Brick furniture store.

And she was just like a kid in a candy store. So, I mean, too many beautiful things. Look at, just look at. I wish I could just bundle, you know, one set and drop it in my house. But I shall come back when I have made enough money. I mean, look at this. Look at the purple, purple throw pillow. It's so beautiful.

It's giving, as in, it's giving luxury. Look at this brown leather with the peach throw pillow. Oh, this is so beautiful. And it was, you know, I think this perfect encapsulation of the reality, like, you know, at the beginning, you're going to have to buy secondhand furniture probably because the costs of setting up your new life are so high. But then also the aspirational aspect of coming to Canada and this promising new future that you have. And so she was saying, I want this couch, but look at how much it is. But, you know, maybe one day I can come back and buy it.

Oh, wow. That's really wonderful to hear. Dr. Chana, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today about this. Thanks so much for having me. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.