I was the chair of the B.C. refugee committee for the Mennonite Central Committee. I actually sat on the Mennonite Central Committee board of directors, as well as a binational Mennonite Central Committee, in Akron. We did a lot of this work in both countries. So absolutely, I would say yes, that's definitely a strategy Canada should be looking at and embracing. As I said earlier, it has proven to have worked.
Again, as we said earlier, the sponsorship agreement holder situation is precarious, at best. When you pull together a family or a church or whatever to sponsor a refugee family, those people get very, very excited. It's like Christmas. They go out and prepare, etc. But when that family does not actually arrive for three years, you can imagine what happens to the support, the sense of community, and the bringing together of that group. Unfortunately, that all begins to dissipate.
I think this is a huge program, which Canada can capitalize on. We're actually not using it as effectively as we can, primarily due to resources abroad. The reason it's taking so long for these refugees to arrive in Canada is basically resources overseas--the visa officers doing the security clearances and all that is needed. If they were told that this is a priority and/or that we're going to expand the numbers there.... Really, this is an effective, effective program for Canada. It's not costing us very much. These families are so welcoming and so happy to have them, and the refugees are so happy to arrive.
The second part is that many, many of these refugees who are sponsored, as you know, then want to turn around and sponsor their family. Unfortunately, their families are not designated as being primary family because they're not the wife or the child, etc. If you are a refugee, and the only family member you have on this earth is your brother or your sister, well, I think that person is family, in my books. It doesn't matter that they're not your wife or primary family according to our western definition.
If we know these people have settled, and many of them have across Canada, and that they want to bring their families to settle with them, why are we as a country saying no? Because that is inevitably happening.