Citizenship and Immigration committee  Even inside Canada.... I'll give you one story. I know of one lady who came as a refugee to the United States and married a gentleman who came here to Canada as a refugee. Actually she's in Canada, as they're married now. The Canadian government expects the Iranian government to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, it's hard for me to say for the past year, because I really don't have a study done in the past year. But I would say that in the past five or six years, the length of time or waiting time has gone up for all of them—for citizenship applications.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, with the new funding, we don't know. It may happen, hopefully, because we are hearing there is going to be more investment. I hope as a result of that, the waiting list will decrease. I hope, but we don't know yet.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Let me comment on that. I would really suggest that we increase the numbers. I mean, we have a number problem. We used to get 14,000 government-sponsored refugees 15 years ago. Today we're getting about 6,000. The refugee situation has not improved worldwide. I think it also g

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think historically these organizations have been community-based organizations, but because of the task and the complexity of the settlement, we've become quite professional organizations. It goes back to resources. It has always been a challenge for us. The rates of salaries a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For refugees, I think in the first year there is an agreement between provinces and the federal government that they provide basically what's needed. But it's not very comprehensive at all. I can tell you, for instance, they are not really covering any dental work. If a refugee c

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It depends on the different provinces, but yes, they do have full access to doctors and hospitals. But when it comes to the drugs or dental or other special needs, it is very limited what they can access.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That has been a challenge, because again, as was mentioned, there's been a real lack of resources for the past 12 years. They didn't get anything extra, so whatever money they had, amid the rising costs of operation, they really didn't have— Recently there has been some movement

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. Just as a comment about youth and children, I think the major problem we have is resources. When you look at the school boards and the challenges they have, they are now fully recognizing that these are special needs kids, and that as boards they have to do some initi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. In looking at influencing the regulatory bodies to respond to the need we have, I think there's another step before that, which is the type of selection we have. As you know, we're selecting based on human capital. So unless we address that issue, which is going to be

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think there's a continuum of services, from initial services and settlement to settlement, integration, and civic participation. Initial settlement is really a physical thing. It's about housing, schooling, getting a bank account, learning how to drive here or getting a driver'

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Lack of services is one of the reasons. There are a number of issues with people not going to smaller centres. We have to recognize that we're bringing people from countries where they're used to living in cities of more than eight million people, so they like to go where people

Citizenship and Immigration committee  First of all, I'm sure you're aware of the sponsorship agreement holder arrangements. At the agency I work with, we are a sponsorship agreement holder. I think of the Alberta situation. There are not many sponsorship agreement holders in our smaller communities. In Medicine Hat

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We know about the backlog and the problem we have with the backlog. At this point I think we have about maybe 6,000 or 7,000 or 8,000 sponsorship calls every year, and only about half of them come to Canada. It takes a really long time. With the waiting lists, for instance, in Ru