Finance Committee on Nov. 17th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hik.

We'll now go to Ms. McIntyre, please.

[Jenn McIntyre, Director, Romero House]

Thank you.

My name is Jenn McIntyre. I am the director of a Toronto-based organization called Romero House and I am here today to express serious concerns regarding clauses 172 and 173 proposed in Bill C-43.

Romero House is a non-profit organization in the west end of Toronto that provides housing and other forms of support to refugee claimant families. I live in the community and I'm inspired every day by the strength and courage of people who have endured war, persecution, torture, and the more recent trauma of dislocation. The people I know and connect with every day come to this country for one reason—to seek safety for themselves and their families.

Refugee claimants are not immigrants. They are people looking for refuge, and they often leave everything behind to get here. The majority of families who come through our doors are not even aware that they are eligible to apply for social assistance. They come here not to take advantage of Canada's generosity, but because this country has a reputation of speaking out against human rights abuses and also a commitment to protect life. Part of protecting life is not paving the way for vulnerable and traumatized people to fall into extreme poverty as soon as they arrive here seeking safety. Removing restrictions on residency requirements would do that very thing.

At Romero House, I see the immediate impact that legislation has on families, and I cannot imagine the path that this may pave for people who have suffered so much already. I would ask you to think about a member of our community, a woman from a West African country who fled her abusive husband knowing that she would be killed if she did not leave.

With no other choice, she left behind five children and arrived here very pregnant, penniless, and with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. If she had not had access to social assistance, she would have ended up completely dependent on the shelter system, food banks, and the financial support of non-profits. Even though her work permit would eventually arrive, how would a mother with a newborn be expected to work? Would she have been able to care for her baby or would social services remove him from this woman who had already lost everything?

The very basic income provided by social assistance keeps refugee claimants off the street, out of homeless shelters, and out of hospital emergency rooms. It keeps families together. It keeps single women from the potentially dangerous situation of sleeping on the couch of someone they barely know because it is their only option. It keeps people from being exposed to labour exploitation because they are desperate to provide for their children.

Social assistance is a necessity for newly arrived refugees. Many of the people who come to Romero House are educated professionals in their country of origin and they cannot get a job and a stable income fast enough. They want to work hard to support their families and to contribute to Canadian taxes.

To illustrate just how true this is, I would like to introduce you to Alexandra Jimenez, who is here with me today. She is a former resident of Romero House and a committed member of our community. After making a claim for refugee status almost 13 years ago, Alexandra was accepted as a convention refugee and is now a Canadian citizen.

She arrived here from Colombia and was immediately dependent on social assistance to pay for her rent and basic needs. Her accounting certification was not recognized in Canada and she was not able to speak either of our official languages. After taking ESL classes and waiting seven months for her work permit to arrive, Alexandra has been working and paying taxes for 12 years. For the past nine years, she has been facilitating Romero House's tax clinic, assisting our refugee claimant residents in paying their taxes, starting in the very first year of their time in Canada.

A minimum residency requirement would have been devastating to Alexandra and her family. I encourage you to ask Alexandra questions about her experience, as she is available to switch spots with me in the question time.

Romero House has space for an average of 40 people. Agencies like ours can assist only a small percentage of refugee claimants. Think of the vast majority of refugee claimants who are not at Romero House and how they will be affected by restricted access to social assistance. Think about what will happen when our funds are quickly dried up from supporting the basic needs of our residents. Think about what will happen when the shelters, which are already full, are flooded with refugee families. It will just download the cost to somewhere else.

I realize that a decision to impose a minimum residency requirement will sit with the provinces, but for a country that is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions and claims to uphold human rights, it should not even be an option. To make it possible to deny social assistance to refugees is worse than an injustice; it is a new form of social cruelty.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you for your presentation.

Colleagues, we'll again start with seven-minute rounds and we'll proceed as long as we can.

We'll start with Mr. Cullen, please.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you to all our witnesses.

I'll start with you, Mr. Gooch. You made a comment midway through your presentation as to how this change to the law is going to potentially affect Canadian airports. I think your concern was about what this change was doing at this committee. Why were you concerned about that?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

I think the sense was that it had been slipped into the omnibus bill, so it perhaps hadn't had a lot of consideration by and consultation with industry. We were aware that the minister had concerns about private aerodromes and wanted the legislative authority to regulate in that area, and we certainly support that. There's a bit of concern about the way the language is written, in that it's much broader than that. I guess we would have preferred to see it come through the normal channels.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Because under normal channels and a proper scrutiny of the impacts of that broad language for the airports purportedly being targeted, that would have been the place where we could explore and understand what the impacts would be across.... Is it 45 member airports that you represent?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

That's correct.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Further to that, you talked about the historical switch of taking the minister out of having impacts on the airports you represent, which was, in your words, a “depoliticization” of those decisions. Therefore, the decisions would come not from a political nature. Where would they come from?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

Well, our airports are governed by airport authority boards. They're all established under long-term leases with the federal government. I'm speaking, of course, of the national airport system airports. There are additional airports in our membership that are not NAS airports.

Before the airports were transferred, they were operated by the federal government, and decisions on development, expansion—

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Or not expansion?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

—or not expansion, of course, would have been part of the political process. Now they're under local airport authority not-for-profit corporations, and those decisions are made locally at the airport authorities themselves in consultation with the community and with their users.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Not here in Ottawa.

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

That's correct.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you for that.

Ms. McIntyre, I have a question for you. I think you answered it in part.

Part of the question is this. If claimants fall off social assistance, where do they end up in the system? One of our concerns is how this change in the law impacts the federal treasury. When we had government officials in front of us, what we heard was that it doesn't right now. As you said, it's a provincial decision in terms of social assistance.

If folks aren't going through Romero House or any of the charitable groups.... I was just reading your website, and on the front page you say that Romero House follows the gospel commandment of “love thy neighbour”. If they don't go there and if they can't stay there, if they fall off social assistance or are denied, where do they go?

[Jenn McIntyre]

They would need to seek shelter in homeless shelters, which are already overburdened—we get emergency phone calls every day for people for whom there are no rooms in emergency shelters—or they'll end up on the streets.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Bienvenida, Señora Alexandra.

You raised the case of Ms. Alexandra. I'm not sure if she can come to the table here. One of the things the committee has been looking at—and maybe she could take the microphone—is around the skills shortage in Canada. This has been a preoccupation for the finance committee. It's been a preoccupation for businesses in Canada, that we lack a whole set of certain skills.

You have a certain set of skills. We've just had a panel with some chartered accountants and other other folks. How important was that transition for you to actually bring the skills you had from the refugee claimant position to being active now and working and paying taxes, as Ms. McIntyre said? That has been for how many years?

[Alexandra Jimenez, Finance Manager, Romero House]

For 13 years already, I've been working at Romero House. Now I'm the finance manager at Romero House as well, after being part of the community as a refugee.

What I will say is that if you have left your country, if you have left everything you had in your life—your career, your family—for a new country, and you're trying to build trust in this new community, it's a hard time. You don't understand what is happening, but you start believing in God, if you have a God, and saying, “I want to try it again because I love my profession and I want to be alive again.”

Being here, being able to get the assistance and go through the ESL classes for my English, then to a Job Track centre for my accounting skills, and then taking income tax courses and now running the tax clinic in Romero House with our new immigrants and new refugees and teaching them how the system works, teaching them the basics...all of it is a great opportunity to build your life again. You feel like you are reborn and you are part of a community. Then you can use your passion. My passion is my accounting background and my bookkeeping and I can use it in this way.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The question we have around this policy...because we reached out to the provinces to ask if they asked for this change, and no one did. One province that was consulted said that they didn't want to make this change. So we're trying to find out who this tax change is coming from.

I'll end with a question about the transition. I think Ms. McIntyre talked about a seven-month waiting period before you were even issued a permit to work. In terms of that transition time, without the social assistance opportunity, what would life have been for you here, new to Canada?

[Alexandra Jimenez]

I was thinking about this over the weekend, wondering what would have happened in my life without this access to assistance. I would have been looking at the shelters, trying to see how I could get money for my food, for my basic needs. I arrived here without money. After seven months I was able to start working, because I was able to go to school, as much as I could, from nine to five to improve my English, to be ready for that.

Without the support, I would have been on the street, maybe working on a cash basis, under the table, because without even a work permit I don't see how a company could allow me to work.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Is that my time?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have 10 seconds.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Oh.

Mr. Drummond, climate change: is it important?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Sorry, that doesn't.... Those 10 seconds threw me. We'll get to some climate change questions and the research being done.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Cullen.

Mr. Saxton, you have seven minutes, please.