As I said to the Chair earlier, last year alone, we helped 280 people. That's very important because, when you talk about that many people, it's not just the individuals. It's a whole family, maybe with two or three kids. If you do the math, that shows a really significant impact.
Imagine if those people ended up on the streets. They would depend on social assistance. Who would lose? Not just the government, but also those families. So we realized that, in the past, if people were reluctant to hire refugees, it was because they didn't have enough information.
I have a simple example. When organizations take in these refugees, there is a lot of confusion about the difference between a refugee and an immigrant, and between an international student and a refugee. So these organizations see a newcomer, and that group includes both immigrants and refugees. If you put all of those people in the same group, how do you explain why a refugee doesn't have university documents, for example? People might think the refugee is lying because Robert over here has all of his documents. But that's because Robert is an immigrant.
That can change. That's why I talk about education. We have to educate these organizations about the groups of individuals who come here. Not only do we have to educate organizations, but we also have to educate refugees about the services that are available to them and help them understand the work culture in Canada. That's easy. You might get hired today, but in two or three months, you might lose your job. I realized that, in many cases, that's because of a lack of information. These refugees can't understand the differences between the work culture in Canada and the work culture where they came from. That knowledge is really important and can help a person get hired and keep his or her job.
That's what I wanted to add.
