Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Tung Chan and I am the CEO for SUCCESS. I'd like to start by thanking you for giving me this opportunity to present to you.
SUCCESS has been a non-profit, not-for-profit organization since 1973. We have 12 offices in the lower mainland, we have 350 employees, and we have a total of 9,000 volunteers. Our budget is about $17 million a year, and I'd like to thank the government for providing roughly about 80% of that to us. The other 20% we fundraise through the community's support as well as from our own resource recovery programs.
We have always provided a holistic, integrated approach to helping new Canadians settle. What do I mean by that? It means that we help them find accommodation, we help them get jobs, and we help them learn about their new neighbourhood. We also help them learn new languages. We truly believe that when new Canadians arrive on our shores, we have to provide them not with a single approach but with a holistic and total approach.
We believe that when we look at the statistics in population growth—and I'm not going to bore you with statistics—the labour market is going to be reliant on new Canadians coming to our shores. I want to stress, along with my colleague here, that we're not looking for foreign workers; we're looking for new Canadians who are interested in moving here to adopt our country as their country.
Next, I want to look at the B.C. situation. If we look at the B.C. skilled workers' occupations, between 2000 and 2004, this province received up to 15,000 skilled immigrants. They possess skills, expertise, and technology in engineering, in finance, and in marketing. Typically, they are between the ages of 25 and 44 and have at least a bachelor's degree or several years of experience. As a country we are benefiting tremendously from those kinds of human resources.
When we talk about new Canadians coming here to settle, it has to be both ways. It's not only that new Canadians coming here need to adopt to this country, but we believe—with the 33 years of serving them that I have experienced—a host country also needs to move. It's a two-way street. They need to do that in an interactive way.
Let me talk about some of the challenges that are experienced by new Canadians coming here. The first one would be language, and when I mean language, it's not just learning English but more about learning the linguistics, learning the social language skills as well as skills in the workplace. It's important also that their foreign credentials need to be recognized. They also need to adapt to the local culture and to gain Canadian experience.
We have been connecting business with skilled workers. We have also been operating in the employment and economic development area. We believe it's a win-win situation.
There are a lot of service gaps, however, for new Canadians. There is insufficient support for workplace language training. There is not enough recognition of prior work experience and foreign credentials. We also need to have programs that bridge and connect employers to skilled immigrants. We also really need to address the skills sort of issues that have been spoken to by some of the panellists here. Also, we need to have pre-settlement services.
Let me talk a bit about how we can overcome those barriers. We believe we need to have a systematic approach in changing the accreditation. We need to have a reliance on prior learning assessments. That means that before the new Canadians come to this country we should have that in place. We have to have programs to fast-track the certification of new Canadians' qualifications in occupations subject to public regulation. We should also have standards. For example, in health care occupations, trades, engineering, IT, and accounting, we need to have new initiatives to facilitate assessment and recognition of foreign credentials.
I heard some questions earlier today, and if you ask me those again, I will offer you some other suggestions.
We need to have more investments in our new Canadians. To me, new Canadians are like newborn babies. We invest a lot of money in our new babies when they move here; we are not investing sufficiently in the new Canadians who have come to our shores.
We need to have integrated bridging programs, and we need to have more resources to provide people with language training, skills training, vocational training, and the kinds of apprenticeships I heard about here today. We fully support that kind of approach.
We also have to address regional skills shortages through pre-settlement services. What I mean by that is orientation at Canadian institutions before new Canadians arrive on our shores. We need to provide them with road maps on credential recognition. We need to provide them with training courses and bridging programs in our labour market, language professions, and trades. We need to provide them with assistance in acquiring Canadian credentials.
The bottom line is that we're looking for leadership, and we're looking for leadership from the federal government. If there is one message I want to leave with this panel, it's that if the federal government provides that leadership, I truly believe the rest of the country will follow. We need to have connections and we need to have cooperation in terms of governments, service providers, professionals, trade associations, trade unions, the business community, and new Canadian service organizations like ours. We need to have coordination. We need to have people like you and like those in different government departments coordinating efforts.
This is a country that relied on new Canadians to build it. This is a country that was built by immigrants. We have to move forward, in the 21st century, by working together as a group.
Thank you.