Afghanistan Committee on March 21st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

I call the meeting to order. Welcome to meeting number six of the House of Commons Special Committee on Afghanistan.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. I would remind all those present in the room to please follow the recommendations from public health authorities, as well as the directive of the Board of Internal Economy from October 19, 2021, to remain healthy and safe. Should any technical challenges arise, please advise me as we might need to suspend for a few minutes to ensure all members are able to participate fully.

Witnesses should be aware that translation in both English and French is available through the globe icon at the bottom of their screen.

I welcome our witnesses this evening for our first panel.

From the Canadian Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holders Association, we have Kaylee Perez. From the Ted Rogers School of Management, we have Dr. Wendy Cukier, founder of Lifeline Afghanistan and professor at Ryerson University. From the Maria Toorpakai Foundation, we have Maria Toorpakai Wazir, president and founder.

Welcome to each of you. You will have five minutes for your opening remarks. Please respect the time so I don't need to intervene.

We will start with Ms. Perez. Go ahead, for five minutes, please.

[Kaylee Perez, Chair, Canadian Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holders Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable committee members, for the invitation to speak with you today.

I'm joining you from the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinabe and most recently the Haudenosaunee people.

Thank you for the work of this committee, and for being responsive to this urgent need.

I would first like to acknowledge those who have been impacted by the Taliban's takeover, the millions of Afghans living under Taliban rule in need of vital humanitarian relief, the thousands who have been newly displaced as a result, and the millions of Afghan refugees whose needs predate the Taliban takeover.

I'm here in representation of the Canadian Refugee Sponsorship Agreement Holders Association. We are the national umbrella organization for 130 sponsorship agreement holders, or SAHs for short, across Canada outside of Quebec.

I imagine you're familiar with the private sponsorship of refugees program, or the PSR program as I will refer to it moving forward, but in short I will note that our organizations hold an agreement with the government that enables us to add to government resettlement commitments by facilitating the private sponsorship of refugees from around the world. Each year the government sets the total number of spaces, one space per individual refugee, that SAHs can access to submit new sponsorship applications.

SAHs and the diverse communities in which they are embedded stand ready to welcome more Afghan nationals. SAHs are eagerly awaiting an announcement on how the additional commitment of 20,000 spaces for Afghan nationals will be distributed. SAHs are receiving many inquiries from Canadians who are wanting to respond, many of whom know of Afghan refugees they would like to name to bring to Canada. Without further information, there are limits to the ways SAHs can effectively inform and mobilize our communities and effectively plan for this increased engagement.

While wanting to assist with the Afghan initiative, SAHs are concerned about the impacts this response will have on the existing inventory. I was just on a call last week with a sponsor who is supporting a 22-year-old Congolese refugee currently in Namibia. That refugee been separated from his mother and siblings for seven years and has had to literally fight for his life while awaiting for his case to be processed to come to Canada. This Congolese refugee and his sponsor were both concerned about the impacts that the Afghan and Ukrainian response could have in delaying his case further. With the historic high inventory of over 70,000 persons in the system, most of whom are in just as much need as Afghan refugees, the government needs to ensure that IRCC is funded sufficiently to process the Afghan response, the new Ukrainian response and the existing caseload.

One key recommendation that we wish to bring to the committee is for the government to develop a framework for immigration and refugee responses to emergencies that sets objective criteria. This would allow all of the actors involved to be well prepared to act quickly, and would help maintain transparency and equity in the strategic use of resettlement.

SAHs are a long-standing, reliable and risk-managed partner of the government in refugee resettlement. The PSR program can play a significant role in emergency responses by providing an avenue for family reunification and for community building. SAHs carry infrastructure that is worth investing in, not only to manage current interest but also to support the quality of post-arrival settlement and the long-term integration of newcomers. We stand well poised to help government harness public interest, but need to scale up our capacity to do so.

In December 2021, just last December, we met with the Minister of Immigration, Sean Fraser, and proposed the creation of a public/private national SAH capacity-building fund. We believe there's an opportunity to make use of this surge moment to build infrastructure for sustainability.

In summary our four key messages are that SAHs need more information on the distribution of the additional commitment of 20,000 spaces to effectively plan and engage; IRCC needs to be funded sufficiently to process the existing inventory of Afghan and Ukrainian responses; an emergency response framework with objective criteria is needed to maintain equity and transparency in the strategic use of resettlement; and we would point out that SAHs are a reliable and risk-managed partner in refugee resettlement. A private/public national SAH capacity-building fund could support our ability to work with you to meet the demand of both public interest and Afghan need.

We look forward to continuing to work toward our shared goal of assisting those displaced by the situation in Afghanistan in a timely way.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, Ms. Perez. You're right on time. We appreciate that.

Now we will move to Dr. Wendy Cukier, please.

[Dr. Wendy Cukier, Founder, Lifeline Afghanistan, and Professor, Ryerson University, Ted Rogers School of Management]

Thank you very much. I appreciate being invited to meet with the committee in doing its important work.

I will not repeat what Kaylee talked about in terms of the humanitarian crisis or the important role that sponsorship agreement holders play.

I lead the Diversity Institute at Ryerson University. I was a private sponsor of Indo-Chinese refugees as part of Operation Lifeline in 1979. I led the Ryerson University Lifeline Syria challenge in 2015, which raised $5 million and privately sponsored 500 Syrian refugees in a matter of months, and since then has continued to support the expansion of those refugees. In August, we created Lifeline Afghanistan to build on that experience in creating public-private partnerships in leveraging civil society, as well as harnessing the power of post-secondary institutions, students, volunteers and others.

Although it is absolutely critical that the quotas for the SAHs be adjusted to the needs of Afghan refugees, it's also important to note that private sponsorships through the “group of five” arrangements can contribute in a very significant way.

I'll echo what Kaylee said about the outpouring of support we have from Canadians—from donors, civil society, private corporations that are ready to provide jobs as well as funds to privately sponsor Afghan refugees—and to ask you to give consideration to streamlining the processes to removing the red tape, to eliminating the need for UNHCR designation, to basically replicate what was done in 2015 to allow the Government of Canada to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees in four months. We have the capacity. We've done it before and we can do it again.

I also wanted to flag the importance of the following. I lead the Future Skills Centre research efforts. While the humanitarian message has been delivered over and over again, I really want to reinforce the economic importance of creating pathways for newcomers generally and for refugees in particular. We have employers who have come to us and said, "We have 5,000 unfilled jobs. Can you provide Afghan refugees?” Of course, we don't have the pipeline. We've been working with small and medium enterprises that have crippling labour shortages and are prepared to offer jobs but do not have a pipeline to Afghan refugees. We have post-secondary institutions that have offered positions to Afghans. In fact, I'm sure the committee has heard of the case of one post-secondary student who completed a term while in Afghanistan and was denied a student visa because of the dual intent provisions.

Were you to do a few things, our recommendations would be, of course, to address Kaylee's concern about the numbers to help the SAH plan, but open up the opportunity for private citizens to leverage government investments to privately sponsor Afghan refugees.

We need to have the same provisions that were put in place in 2015 to streamline the Afghan effort, and think about the post-secondary pathways as another opportunity to build Canada's capacity to meet the needs of employers. I'm happy to provide more details in the Q and A.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Dr. Cukier. I appreciate the time.

Now we will be going to President Wazir.

Go ahead, for five minutes, please.

[Maria Toorpakai Wazir, President and Founder, Maria Toorpakai Foundation]

Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity. I am so happy to speak to all of you today, especially about my ancestral land of Afghanistan.

I come from Waziristan. As you may know, it was known as the most dangerous place on earth because of the terrorism and Talibanization there.

I grew up in that region, but I was known as “Genghis Khan” there, not as Maria. I grew up like a boy, so nobody knew, and then I eventually ended up in sports. My dad and my mom have worked in tribal areas all their life in Waziristan in educating girls. My dad believed that change had to start from our own family. He believed that sons and daughters are equal and gave me all the opportunities to be free and to excel. We didn't have schools or anything, so my mom did whatever she could do to educate the girls and ran a school there. My sister would go just encourage other girls.

Eventually, I turned professional squash player, though it was a very difficult journey on its own, because I did get threats on the way, a lot of harassment and abuse, and also threats from the Taliban. That was all part of it. I went into hiding for three years and sent emails all over the world to different colleges, universities and clubs, wherever I could find a squash court and an offer for a part-time job opportunity, asking them for time and help so that I could train myself. I came third in the world juniors and I won many international tournaments. I was 41st in the world.

All of this training was at the same time. I taught myself, because in this area and this region, the Pashtun region, in the mentality of the people there is so much patriarchy and conservatism. I know that the Taliban is one thing, but everyone there has the same mentality as the Taliban. This is the culture. They don't believe that women are equal. They don't believe that women should be going out or going to school or sports.

There are other reasons for that, because for centuries a lot of men have been shy and a lot of men cover their shyness under this umbrella of religion and culture. They say that women should not go out, but the reason is that there are no opportunities. There are no facilities where women can actually go. Also, in the schools, they can go to a certain level, but then, after that, there is again a lot of struggle. They're afraid that if something happens to their daughters on the way, it will be a big shame. There are a lot of things. I think education is needed there. A lot of awareness is needed.

I know that when I started, a lot of people were against me and my dad and my family. We had to move from area to area. Our house was attacked. My dad was put in a mental jail for educating his wife and daughters, but the thing is that now the people want him to come back, and now they want [Technical difficulty—Editor]. They give their daughters my name and my sister's name, so things can change, and I have seen the change.

In the area where I used to be the only girl playing sports, now there are 27 girls. They come in burkas and then change into track suits, and they run, they stretch, and then they run to the ball and jump and dive. They never thought they could do those things.

For me, it is my dream to see all those girls having that freedom. I have been going back to those areas. There was a time when the Taliban was everywhere. There were bomb blasts every day, but the times change and now I see that it is quite peaceful there compared with those times.

Afghanistan is my ancestral land because my great-grandfather was second to King Amanullah and we have land in the Khost area. We are in the Wazir tribe. The Wazir are the biggest main tribe in Waziristan. The Taliban are no different from me. By blood, we are all cousins. They understand my language, and I understand them. Whenever I send them a message through social media, they watch it and they do understand it. I have the following for that.

I know the psychology of my people. They are Pashtuns. If you treat them with love and respect, they will die for you. If you challenge them, it's a different mentality and they die for that too. In the beginning, I had difficulties in that region, but now, the more that I speak to them with love, care and respect, they listen. They also want to tell me that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Ms. Wazir, could you wrap up, please?

[Maria Toorpakai Wazir]

That's all I wanted to say.

I am working on building a fourth school for these Afghan refugees who recently arrived in Pakistan. There's a lot going on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much, and congratulations to you on your achievements. Thank you to your parents for taking leadership, Ms. Wazir.

Now we're going to go to our honourable members of Parliament. I'm going to start with my own member of Parliament, Madam Findlay, for six minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here. I want to say thank you to Ms. Wazir's father, because he and her mom did a lot to make her who she is today.

Wendy, how do I pronounce your last name, please?

[Dr. Wendy Cukier]

You can call me Wendy.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

All right.

I wanted to see if you could expand a bit on how the IRCC's current measures could be streamlined. You talked about it, but I would like to give you another minute on it.

[Dr. Wendy Cukier]

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

I'm not a specialist in these areas, but in 2015, the IRCC made a number of changes to its normal procedures in order to meet its very ambitious targets that were established for Syrian refugees.

First and foremost, Syrians became prima facia refugees without having to have the UNHCR designation. That opened up incredible opportunities for both private sponsorship through sponsorship agreement holders, which don't require UNHCR designation generally, and for “group of five” sponsorships. That, for us, is critically important, because we know that UNHCR is not capable right now of processing the volume of applicants that would need to be processed.

Canada still addressed the health and security issues, but we did it in real time much more quickly. That's one of the things that's important.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

You segued nicely into my next question. You agree that prima facie refugee status would be very helpful.

[Dr. Wendy Cukier]

It's essential.

The second point is, as Kaylee mentioned, that the sponsorship agreement holders and settlement organizations do an amazing job, but they're not designed for dealing easily with spikes in volumes. One of the things that is so powerful about private sponsorship and engaging civil society, the private sector and so on is we can deal with spikes and high volumes very quickly.

In addition to addressing the quota issues with the sponsorship agreement holders, we need to facilitate a group of five formation. I think everybody agrees that the quotas for Afghans in order to meet the government's ambitious targets need to be in addition to others, so that we are not making trade-offs. We have more detailed recommendations on that.

The final thing that is incredibly important is to be innovative. The minister has talked about the EMPP program. If we continue to think about ways we can use student visas and other mechanisms to help create pathways in addition to private sponsorship, I believe that we can meet the government's targets in a short period of time, and people who would otherwise not survive will not die.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you.

Ms. Perez, what is your view on removing caps so that more Afghan refugees can be privately sponsored?

[Kaylee Perez]

Thank you for the question, MP Findlay, and to Wendy for all that you've interjected. It's been great to hear from you.

I think first and foremost I want to say that Afghans are in need, and our association has also raised concerns about the limits on the eligibility criteria. Currently, to be eligible to be privately sponsored as an Afghan, you must fit one of five categories. Our association has had concerns about that and has been interested in seeing that removed so all Afghans have access.

One thing that I think is important to consider here with this decision is our existing inventory and capacity. We have a historic high inventory, as I shared. Over half of the current inventory is made up of a group-of-five community sponsorship cases. One of the realities with the efficiency of processing cases is that groups of five and community sponsorship cases take longer to process at the ROC-O level, at the department within Ottawa, before they're sent overseas. I also think there is a dynamic that many groups of five and community sponsors would submit their cases via a sponsorship agreement holder if they could, but SAHs ultimately are limited by our spaces and our capacity.

I think groups of five and community sponsors play an important role, but I think it's important for us to learn from the Syrian response and the impact of that rapid response. I think there is something to say here about how SAHs are risk-managed partners. We support program integrity. It would be great for us to be able to work with and support more groups who, as a result of not being able to be sponsored through a sponsorship agreement holder are often left going the route of a group of five or community sponsorship application.

These are some of the considerations I would share.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Ms. Findlay. Your time is almost over.

We'll now go to Mr. Baker for six minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for being here today.

Wendy, it's good to see you again. We've had the pleasure of working together in a number of different forums. You attended an event in Etobicoke in the past for International Women's Day, if I'm not mistaken. Also, of course, I had the chance, when I was a member of the provincial parliament at Queen's Park, to work with you at an event held by the Diversity Institute. Anyway, it's good to see you again, and thank you for your leadership and advocacy on this important issue.

I will start my questions with Ms. Perez, if that's okay.

Ms. Perez, I hope you can help me sort of flesh out some of the things you were talking about. Could you just talk about the SAHs' capacity to resettle and support additional numbers of refugees?

[Kaylee Perez]

Sure. Thanks for the question, Mr. Baker.

There are 130 sponsorship agreement holders in Canada, many who have been involved since 1979. Over the past few years, since 2016—I have some stats here of landings—we have resettled over 18,000 privately sponsored refugees a year. I would say that's all of the privately sponsored refugees who've arrived in Canada, so not all of those numbers are reflective of the cases that sponsorship agreement holders have done. However, we do represent a significant number of the resettlement numbers.

We are a diverse association that is actively connected across faith-based, ethno-cultural and humanitarian networks with long-standing experience, having been involved in private sponsorship and the effective settlement of refugees for many years.

One of the realities that I would also mention is that we've grown significantly over the past seven years. We used to be about 80 organizations doing around 6,000 sponsorships a year, and over the past seven years we have grown to 130 organizations. Much of that growth is due to the Syrian response and the growing needs of refugees globally.

One of the important considerations around SAH capacity is that within our association we are diverse in how we are structured and the number of sponsorships that we do. When it comes to interest in Afghan resettlement, we did run a focus group and collected some stats. There are 66 sponsorship agreement holders who've expressed interest in engaging in the resettlement of Afghans and who have said they have the capacity to engage. There are 12 SAHs who are interested in doing more than 100 spaces.

That gives you a sense of where the interest is at within our association. I think many are eager to engage, but the reality is that 20% of the SAHs within our association have two or more full-time employees. The rest are either volunteer-run or have a combination of part-time staff and volunteers who are working together to facilitate sponsorship. While we do have the interest and the desire to scale up, to do that in a healthy way SAHs are asking for support to allow them to hire additional staff to manage the growing number of cases and to support quality settlement post-arrival.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

This is helpful. I only have two minutes, so I'm going to ask you a couple of questions and I hope we can get to them briefly.

My understanding is that there are hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been recognized by UNHCR. Have we looked at resettling them?

[Kaylee Perez]

Are we looking at resettling the refugees who had already been identified by the UNHCR, pre-Taliban takeover?

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Well, I won't speak to pre- or post-. My understanding is that they've been designated or recognized by UNHCR, and I'm just wondering whether those are some of the folks you were trying to resettle.

[Kaylee Perez]

I'll quickly respond, and I see, Wendy, that you're wanting to jump in.

I would say that Afghans were among the top five refugee groups in their need for resettlement pre-2021. There are some cases of refugees who have been privately sponsored within our existing inventory, but post-Taliban takeover, as has already been shared, there have been difficulties in accessing UNHCR registration. That limits their ability to be sponsored via groups of five and community sponsors. However, sponsorship agreement holders do have the ability to submit those cases if they involve Afghan refugees who are outside Afghanistan.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Okay.

Oh, sorry, go ahead.