Thank you.
Merci, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.
I would echo much of what Wendy has shared and reframe it to: what is it that we need?
There has been a slow release of the plan for an “emergency response”. We need clear and ongoing communication to best be able to plan and also to manage the interest that we're seeing and receiving on a regular basis as SAHs. The IRCC department needs to be resourced sufficiently to be able to process the existing inventory, the Afghan response and this Ukrainian response.
I would also echo a lot of what Wendy said about the response to Ukraine and that setting a precedent for how emergency responses can be handled.
There is a strong Afghan diaspora community here. We have well-networked organizations, the SAHs, as well as organizations such as Wendy's one, who are eager to harness public interest, civil society, good funds and time, and we just need clarity on how we can best plan for and do that in a rapid way, recognizing that we also need to look at this surge moment as an opportunity to grow sustainability within our sector and recognizing that the private sponsorship program is a pillar of resettlement here in Canada. We need to ask where there are areas that we can learn from, in the Syrian response and the most recent surge, to grow and build the infrastructure that we need for sustainability. I would argue that a key part of that is supporting sponsorship agreement holders to grow and to be able to respond to this need.
Thank you.