Citizenship and Immigration committee  Some of the discussions we've had within CISSA speak to the issue of capacity. Going back to Ms. Grewal's question around how funding gets dispersed, right now it's linked to landings, immigrant landings, by and large. But the issue is.... And we face this throughout the country—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's a complex question that is primarily guided by what's called the settlement allocation model that the Department of Citizenship and Immigration has created. That's one of the accompanying documents in our written submission to the standing committee today. What essentially

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Perhaps I can start. On the issue of the funding, we have to realize that in the context of close to two million immigrants arriving in the last decade and no funding increase, we now are in catch-up mode. We're trying to ensure that the services we have in place are stable, th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Since the report card was released in February 2005, we've been seeing a further erosion in the capacity to adequately support immigrants and refugees coming to the country. This translates into increased wait-lists, and there are cuts in adult ESL programming. As another examp

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are other funders, such as United Way of Canada, Community Foundations of Canada, the Vancouver Foundation, and all of these funding agencies have addressed or identified children and youth as a priority. Again when we're looking at, for example, the skilled labour shortage

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think we have to understand that close to two million immigrants and refugees have come to Canada in the last decade, and the sector that has been at the front line for over 50 or 60 years in providing adequate support services has not seen any increase in its baseline funding.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. My name is Chris Friesen; I am representing AMSSA, the provincial umbrella association. In the context of British Columbia last year, to give you a snapshot to follow up what Fariborz was saying, almost 46,000 immigrants lande

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My name is Chris Friesen. I'm here representing AMSSA, Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies, the umbrella association in British Columbia, a group that represents over 80 multicultural and immigrant-serving agencies in British Columbia.