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.