Thank you for the questions.
Indeed, when the government announced new funding for the sector, we were very grateful. We actually issued a news release saying that it was a great first step in addressing the needs within the sector.
To answer your question specifically, the reduction in immigration application landing fees was of course very substantive in attracting and retaining immigrants, which is the true goal of building a competitive economy. That was substantive in that those fees were cut on an individual basis. I don't know if Canadians have a sense of that. When you are a family of five and you are going from paying a fee of perhaps $8,000 to $4,000, that is quite substantive when you have the cost of moving to a new country and starting out again, etc. I say thank you to this government. However, as we have noted in all these reports, certainly more help in the attraction and retention of a new workforce and a new population is critical.
In terms of setting new priorities for the 2007 fiscal year and beyond, we are very aware of how fragile our sector is, because of the frozen state of the funding in the decade prior to the new funds we just received. The infrastructure within the system is at a critical point, to be quite frank. We have caseloads where things are unbelievable. I think you have all heard the stories of what is happening currently in what we call CTV--Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver.
There are outstanding issues. I just returned from a conference in the Atlantic region, and they are in a different situation. They are so quickly losing population that they're quite anxious to look at ways that we can help to increase their population in the smaller centres.
I would say that our number one priority is to work with our partners--the government, the universities, research, etc.--to come up with a larger framework, because right now we're all working in different silos to address this population need.
Second, there are many things that historically have not been addressed within the sector. We already talked about infrastructure; the settlement workers' caseloads are incredibly high. There is an amazing amount of needs, both in terms of immigrants and refugees. I don't want to get into the specifics of that, but what I do want to say is that in addition to developing a framework, we as a sector, and the department itself, do not have a set of outcomes. For example, we do not know how much it costs to settle an immigrant, so how does one do funding formulas, look at comparable services across Canada, set national standards for service delivery, or any of those things? Looking at outcomes is one project that we are definitely interested in. Establishing those outcomes would give us a very good gauge to look at things such as productivity within the settlement sector.
We are looking very seriously at the professionalization of the settlement workers right now. Historically it has been sort of a “let's go and help these people” type of thing, but with the labour market needs, it has gradually become an increasingly skilled and specialized sector. These are macro projects that require a window of three to five years of study and development.
Those are the kinds of things we would be interested in.
Thank you.
