Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 19th, 2015

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Basically, you throw it out nationally and then whoever—

[Catrina Tapley]

That's right.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

—applies gets fit into some kind of a pattern. That makes sense.

In terms of the pre-arrival services and settlement services—I guess this is probably an obvious question and obvious answer—are there gaps?

There would always be gaps, but who is out there trying to identify those gaps, and how quickly do we try to address those gaps?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

A very short answer, please.

[Catrina Tapley]

Yes, we're trying hard and we hope the recent call for proposal on pre-arrival services helps to address a number of those gaps. We've increased funding in terms of what we're going to provide and oversee services to enable us to do that.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Madam Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I have a question in regard to money for resettlement programs in terms of what is in the budget. For example, in 2009-10, $878 million was budgeted, but $4,178,000 was not spent. Then in 2012-13, the budget was up to $888 million, but the amount not spent was $18,218,231.

Why was it not spent? Why was that money left there? Could it not be utilized? We're hearing that there is tremendous need in terms of these services. Could you explain that? I would appreciate it very much.

[Catrina Tapley]

Madam Chair, I think those figures relate to CIC's budget as a whole and not just to the refugee assistance program.

There are a number of reasons for there being a lapse in our budget. Some money is what would be referred to as “ring-fenced” for special purposes. For instance, in health programs the moneys are fenced and, if they are not spent in that particular area, can't be reallocated within the department to use for other things. Those allocations account for some of the lapses.

Others are in other areas, and we may move back to settlement services with respect to some of this. We have seen some lapses in settlement services of funds provided: cases of organizations thinking they were going to be able to spend more money than they did and those funds not being completely spent within the year; sometimes delays in our getting funds out through a call for proposals will also account for some of the slippage in funds.

We monitor the situation very closely with respect to settlement dollars or our settlement envelope. I'm happy to report that this fiscal year it looks as though we will have much less of a lapse than we have had in the past. Traditionally, our lapse has been small on settlement programming; it's well less than 5% and probably less than 3%. That is where we are on this, and this year we will squeak in even tighter in spending every penny that is there for settlement programming.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay, thank you.

I want to clarify that we will.... Mr. Sandhu has reiterated that we would like to get the actual numbers of Syrian refugees for 2014 and perhaps a forecast in regard to 2015. In my office I have some very upset families who quite simply can't get their loved ones to Canada.

Also, concerning your promise in regard to the VOS, the proof of status, in Ontario OHIP is the only division that can scan the bar code on new citizenship documents, and so folks looking for a driver's licence or an ID card in Ontario are being sent away. Any help you could provide in that regard would be much appreciated, because the frustration of folks who are essentially without status is very evident.

Mr. Sandhu, did you have any questions?

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

I don't know whether I may.

May I?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

You have one minute.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

That's wonderful.

Let's go back to credentialling again. I would like to know how many bureaucrats are working in B.C. Is there a physical office?

[Catrina Tapley]

I'm sorry but I don't have the number of CIC employees in British Columbia at my fingertips, Madam Chair. I'm happy to get back to you with that information.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Could you perhaps provide the number of people in the various provinces across Canada and if you have any physical offices in these provinces, tell us where evaluation of credentials is provided?

[Catrina Tapley]

A lot of the work on credentialling is done here in Ottawa, but throughout this, we work on credential recognition closely with Employment and Social Development Canada, including Service Canada, and there's a considerable footprint of people in British Columbia and in other provinces who are working on this situation.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Could you forward the numbers to the committee?

[Catrina Tapley]

I am happy to do so.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Mr. Leung, you now have seven minutes, as we start back at the first round of questions.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

I wish to follow up on my colleague's question regarding pre-arrival settlement service. How many pre-arrival service locations are there around the world? I must say I only know of two: one in Taipei and the other in Seoul, Korea. Both of these I have visited. Is there any anywhere else in the world?

[Catrina Tapley]

Madam Chair, we have three organizations that are currently offering pre-arrival services.

One is an organization called S.U.C.C.E.S.S. and they offer services in Korea, Taipei, and Taiwan. They offer services to all newcomers except for refugees.

We work with a second organization, the International Organization for Migration. It offers a broad welcome to Canada program or Canada abroad program. It works in a lot of different countries and different locations and provides a one-day orientation service on coming to Canada. It serves all newcomers to Canada, including refugees.

The third program is the Canadian immigrant integration program, or CIIP. It has four main offices. This is the program I spoke about earlier that provides more individual settlement plans or services to federal skilled workers and provincial nominees who are coming to Canada. It operates out of London, Delhi, Beijing, and Manila. Then from those offices it will also serve other countries, but those are its four primary locations.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

In terms of the specific area of service, is it primarily for employment, education, family integration, or societal integration?

Also, how do we provide the services that allow them to integrate into rural parts of Canada versus urban parts of Canada? In the urban part of Canada there is always the core group of immigrant communities already there. They integrate very easily. But in certain other parts that are rural it may be a little bit harder.

[Catrina Tapley]

Pre-arrival integration services focus on all of the elements that were mentioned, Madam Chair. We'll focus a lot on integration generally into Canadian society through the program that's offered by the International Organization for Migration and S.U.C.C.E.S.S. It will touch more lightly on employment issues as they are trying to cram a lot into a day. As well, they really emphasize where newcomers can go to receive settlement services in Canada and provide that. There are also some basic services and these are highlighted in Welcome to Canada, which is our guide for newcomers. There are simple things like opening a bank account or getting a driver's licence or health services or how you go about navigating those. They'll concentrate a lot on that.

The CIIP focuses more intensively on that economic integration. They will focus on things like the credential recognition process and what the labour market needs are in Canada. They have been quite successful, I think, in terms of directing people to where other opportunities are. It's a way to offer people alternatives to the large urban centres of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Have we had enough history for the pre-arrival centres to compare those to the onshore centres to evaluate their effectiveness? If we do have a way of evaluating their effectiveness what is the measurement tool?

[Catrina Tapley]

We conducted an evaluation on all our pre-arrival services two years ago, Madam Chair. I am happy to share the results of that evaluation with the committee. It's on our website and we will get that to you.

In particular on CIIP, certainly in the beginning it was a bit more expensive as a program and more a pilot in terms of the individualized service that we were offering, so we set up a separate process called tracking of overseas orientation session graduates, TOSG. What we monitor there is how quickly people are finding a job. We know in this case about 75% of those CIIP graduates find employment in less than 12 months. I think the more significant figure out of the CIIP that we track is how many reported their job was directly aligned or related to their previous work experience. This was a big mandate or raison d'être for the program in the first place. That's about 69% who have reported finding work that's related to their experience or their field and 58% reported that their job was directly aligned or related to their education. We think those results are pretty good.