Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Wai Young, and I'm with the Ottawa secretariat of the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance, which is a national umbrella organization for the 450 settlement agencies across Canada. Our vision is that CISSA, which is our acronym, harnesses the expertise of the immigrant settlement sector and is the sector's national voice to help build a Canadian society in which all immigrants and refugees are able to participate fully.
CISSA's mission is to advance public policies and programs that facilitate the settlement and integration of immigrants and refugees to Canada. You probably know that some of our agencies have been providing services and programs within their communities across Canada, some for 30, 40, 50 years. Our members are currently the provincial umbrella organizations from across Canada, as well as some national groups, such as the Canadian Council for Refugees, the sponsorship agreement holders, etc.
We're here today again to present ourselves as a national body, to identify issues, and to respond to any questions the committee has arising out of a letter we wrote requesting that the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration undertake three different studies.
One study is to do comparative study of services in the national immigration settlement programs across Canada. As committee members know, the immigration department provides a variety of programs across Canada. It is our understanding that there is a huge diversity in the kinds as well as the levels of programs and services that currently exist.
Specifically, in B.C., if you were waiting for a language training program right now, you would be waiting anywhere from eight to twelve months on a wait list before you could enter a language training program. If you were waiting in Ontario, you would be waiting six weeks. In addition to that, in B.C., if you were in that program, you would be able to get, free of cost, up to level three language training in English. If you were in Ontario, it would be level eight.
These kinds of disparities we feel need to be addressed in a national program such as this, and thus we are requesting that the standing committee undertake a white paper on comparative services across Canada.
This is just one example of the kind of disparity and variety found across Canada in programs and services, and we feel it creates a huge challenge for immigrants' and refugees' settlement and integration, depending upon where they enter and where they integrate and settle in Canada, which we feel is an issue.
Secondly, we've asked the committee to undertake a study on the outcomes of immigrant and refugee children and youth. As you've all read in the paper this summer, as well as over the last year, huge issues have now been identified regarding the integration outcomes of children and youth.
For example, in the city of Toronto, immigrant youth are dropping out at rates of up to 70%, much higher than the rates for their Canadian counterparts. Obviously, as refugee youth come through the system, they've witnessed war and all kinds of horrible situations, and the programs and services within our current programs do not address the kinds of trauma that currently children and youth are witnessing and experiencing abroad prior to coming.
We believe this program again needs to be updated. It's been a while since the refugee and immigrant service programs have been expanded to include the kinds of trauma and the kinds of issues that youth face today, in the 21st century. That's why we requested again another study on this.
Thirdly, we requested a study on smaller centres. As you know, many of our cities across Canada are experiencing population loss, as well as aging. This is a huge concern to the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, who have written us a letter requesting to work with CISSA in the areas of attraction and retention of immigrants and refugees to their smaller city centres. So we would again like to request the committee to undertake some work in assisting these smaller communities on how they can attract to and retain newcomers and citizens resident in their communities.
Having said that, now I would like to turn the microphone over to my colleague, Morteza Jafarpour, who is from Hamilton, Ontario. He will speak a little bit about himself, his personal as well as his professional experiences, and what he brings to the table today.
Thank you.