Considering the decade of the 1990s, Alberta-bound refugees ranged in number from a high of 4,345 in 1990 to 1,148 in 1997 (the latest year for which government figures are available). During the eight-year period 1990-1997, an average of 2,127 refugees were settled in Alberta annually. The large majority (about two-thirds) of these refugees were destined to the metropolitan areas of Edmonton and Calgary.
However, at the request of the Alberta government, CIC has, for many years, been sending government-assisted refugees not only to Edmonton and Calgary, but also to smaller destination centres. As indicated above, these centres include Lethbridge, Red Deer, Medicine Hat, Grande Prairie, and Fort McMurray. Privately-sponsored refugees may be settled in these or in other centres. The populations of the smaller destination centres range from 63,053 in Lethbridge to 31,140 in Grande Prairie (for more details, see Table 4-1 in Chapter 4) The Alberta government, traditionally attentive to the needs of smaller and rural communities, encourages the practice of destining publicly-sponsored refugees to centres other than Edmonton and Calgary in the hope that it helps to spread refugees more widely throughout the province.
In the six-year period 1992-1997, an average of about 57 refugees per year were destined to each of Lethbridge and Red Deer, 46 to Medicine Hat, 17 to Grande Prairie, and 9 to Fort McMurray. During the period under review, the total number of refugees destined to these communities was 1,115. Table 4-9 (Chapter 4) provides detailed information about the annual flows of refugees to these communities, as well as to Edmonton and Calgary. The destination communities, although ethnically and culturally diverse and urban, are not as diverse as the populations of the larger metropolitan centres of Canada.
Nonetheless, some policymakers assume that the integration of refugees who settle in smaller centres may be as successful as the integration of refugees who settle in larger centres such as Edmonton and Calgary. The results of this study shed some light on this assumption.