Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 2nd, 2008

[Steve McLellan]

If I were to make one quick recommendation, it would be that you, through your efforts, and your colleagues in Ottawa change the fundamental function of Citizenship and Immigration from a philosophy that keeps out those very few Canada may not want into a philosophy that brings and welcomes the very many whom we do want. If you change that philosophy from being a goalkeeper to being a centre, you're going to make some difference.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I appreciate that. When I talk to staff people working in my office, I say, “Don't look at why something can't be done; let's look at what we might be able to do.” Just a change in attitude sometimes makes a big difference.

[Steve McLellan]

A huge difference.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

That's a fair point.

I guess I'm done.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

Thank you.

You have spoken a good deal about the cooperation between the provinces and the federal government. Now, provincial governments have many responsibilities to new arrivals, who need to be looked after in health, education, settlement services, training and employment.

When it comes down to it, would it not be easier for the whole immigrant selection process to be looked after by the provinces? Quebec does its own selections under a special agreement. In that way, provinces could tailor their programs to their specific needs. The feds could still look after security, health concerns as they affect safety across the country, and territorial control.

What do you think about that?

[Jan Katerynych]

In theory, I think it sounds like a great idea. There's nothing there, as far as I'm concerned, in having Saskatchewan people focusing on future Saskatchewan residents; I think it's great in theory.

However, it is still the federal government's role, with respect to security, to actually get those people processed in their home countries and get them to Saskatchewan in the first place. That in itself also needs to be ironed out. If the permits or the papers were issued at the home consulates or embassies quickly and easily, that would make it a lot easier within the province.

Settlement services themselves, if they were funding.... I don't know, but I know they're certainly handled at a provincial level or through non-profit organizations, as it is. But we still need to iron out some of the federal processes, even if we did change the rest of it to provincial.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Chair, if I may interject, the provincial nominee program we talked about could advance the opportunity for the province to nominate; then what's left to the feds is security and health provisions, which is along the lines you're speaking of. That's why I say it's a great vehicle for the provinces to wake up to and use to the max, if they can.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

Fair enough.

[Gurcan Kocdag]

One comment I'd like to make is that I agree with Jan, in the sense that it would be great to have more responsibility and more operational functionality reside in the province. That will only help speed up the process; we would agree with that. However, personally, I don't know what the other implications may be on the federal system.

I also have to focus on the difficulties we have at the visa post. For example, for the employees we're able to bring from overseas, we have just as much problem, if not more, at the visa post as locally or at the federal level. Solving the problem on one end is not going to be enough in itself; we have to complete the circle and make sure that the visa-issuing offices are required to improve their performances as well.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

What you say is true. While Quebec chooses most of its immigrants itself, at least all the economic immigrants, you often hear the complaint that once someone is selected, we no longer have control over the time that the federal government takes to do the health and security checks. In Quebec, we really have this problem with immigrants in the investor category. We try to get a competitive advantage by doing the selection very quickly. We are among the quickest in the world, but once Ottawa gets the ball, we have no more control over the process.

In all cases, whatever the level of autonomy that the provinces have, there could be a requirement that, for example, the federal government should process 80% of cases within six months. Then we would be able to have an idea of the amount of time that the federal government puts into processing applications for security and health. Would you be receptive to that idea?

[Gurcan Kocdag]

Absolutely. If it were possible, once it's determined to be x number of months, at least then you can make a business decision as to whether or not that's an avenue you wish to follow.

To give you an example, we are receiving three employees from South Africa within three weeks. We started that batch 19 months ago. So eight months certainly is a dream come true. But, definitely, if you knew. What makes it more difficult for us is the uncertainty. We don't know how long each application is going to take. Provided all the information is given to the processing officers, we know from that point on it's going to take three months, six months, eight months. At least we would have the ability to make a business decision. Right now, we don't.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

Thank you.

Are there other comments? Would members like to ask any questions? Ms. Grewal? No?

Thank you very much for your testimony. We are going to take a break for a few minutes in order to give the next witnesses time to join us.

In fact, Mr. Batters, the member for this area, suggests that we take advantage of the break to hear from two people from his community. First, I would like to find out if this is acceptable to all members of the committee. Not all the witnesses in the next group are here. We could set aside 30 minutes. Our two guests will have to take their places immediately so that we do not fall too far behind.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

I'll introduce them.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

We just agreed to take 30 minutes with those two persons. It's the Saskatchewan day.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

In Saskatchewan we see lots of people, lots of action.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

We could give each witness five minutes to make their presentations, which would leave us about 20 minutes for questions and comments.

We can start with Ms. Blanchard.

[Dave Batters, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Mr. Chair, if I may, I'll introduce Ms. Blanchard. She is from Moose Jaw, representing the Moose Jaw Multicultural Council; she is its executive director. She wanted to come today—she only found about our visit to Moose Jaw yesterday, unfortunately—and speak on issues regarding refugee and immigrant settlement.

Following Tara will be Darcy Dietrich from the Regina Open Door Society, and he'll speak on topics very similar. Because of the short notice, they do not have materials prepared, but they talk about these subjects every day in their work lives, and I think they can do an excellent job without preparation, with our indulgence.

And then I'm sure we'll be anxious to ask questions when they're done. I agree with you, Mr. Chair; I think five minutes per witness would be great.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

Ms. Blanchard.

[Tara Blanchard, As an Individual]

Merci. Thank you very much for having us here today on such short notice. I'm the executive director of the Moose Jaw Multicultural Council. Our agency has been active in our community for almost 35 years, providing settlement services to refugees and immigrants.

We prefer just to say “newcomers”, because there is not much of a difference between a refugee and an immigrant. They still have needs when they arrive in Canada. Sometimes they still need some language training; they still need some settlement services to overcome culture shock. They are new to our country and they need services.

We were sitting in the back and heard some of the comments of people who were here earlier. One of the comments that tweaked our interest was about the need for skilled workers. We're certainly not disagreeing about the need; there is a need in Saskatchewan for skilled workers. But I think the refugee population is overlooked as a viable source of labour pools.

A lot of our refugees come with lots of skills, lots of different qualifications. They sometimes have a language barrier, as do a lot of newcomers to Canada. The difference with refugee clients is that they are given one year and sometimes two years of assistance from the federal government to go to school to learn English and sometimes to go into an employment class and learn a little bit about the Canadian labour market and labour standards.

They may take a little longer to enter the work force or to become self-sufficient, but we certainly take great steps to ensure that they are well prepared before they go into the workforce or enter into further education or anything of that nature.

Another thing I want to comment on is the retention rate. Ms. Katerynych just indicated that the retention rate for refugees hasn't been that great.

A few years ago, we probably would have agreed with that. In the last four or five years, we've had really good success with retention rates because of some of the changes that CIC is making to the way refugee clients are destined to us: with group destination, with listening to the clients, putting requests in for their families to be destined to the same cities—instead of having family here and family in Vancouver or something, sending everybody to the same place—and building on existing communities.

At the beginning of the year, we usually sit down with our local immigration office and tell them what kinds of existing cultural communities we have and what their retention rates are like. Do we want more of a certain kind of clientele? Are we open to accepting new types of clientele? Are there services in place for these people when they come? Do they have people they can form friendships with? Do we have interpreters who are available?

We look at all these things and are trying more and more to make educated decisions when it comes to the destining and acceptance of the refugee clients in our communities.

Another thing is family reunification. I know the federal government is taking great strides to reunite families, because people are more likely to stay in a community if they have that family support. That goes for everybody.

Then I'll mention the existing cultural groups. We have a lot of cultural groups—16, actually—that belong to the Moose Jaw Multicultural Council, and all of them are very open to accepting immigrants or refugees and welcoming them. Our agency has been put in place to welcome newcomers to Moose Jaw, and as I said, I think for the past 35 years we've done the best possible job we can of providing services for newcomers, welcoming them into our community.

There are a lot of benefits to living in a smaller community—the cost of living and the transportation time and so on. Sometimes smaller communities are overlooked. I don't think they should be put aside or disregarded as a viable source for people to relocate.

Is that my five minutes?

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

You can take 30 seconds.

[Tara Blanchard]

I think I've covered the clients. I'll let Darcy talk about the existing relationship between CIC and the province.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Dietrich, you have five minutes.

[Darcy Dietrich, Member-at-large, Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance (CISSA)]

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak with all of you today. I wish I'd had a little bit more time to prepare, but in any case, thank you for having Tara and me come up and speak with you.

The Regina Open Door Society has been serving the community of Regina for about 35 years. In the past year and a half, we've grown from 35 to 75 staff members. This is in large part due to additional opportunities through Citizenship and Immigration, but as well, as you all know, the Province of Saskatchewan is now playing a greater role in trying to attract and retain immigrants.

I'd like to speak a little bit about the fact that we feel presently--and I think since the Saskatchewan Immigration Branch was created--that there hasn't been a good relationship between the federal government and the Saskatchewan Immigration Branch. We often feel that we're put in the middle of that, and it creates very difficult circumstances for us.

Traditionally we have served all newcomers to Regina. The province seems to be pigeonholing us as having only worked with refugee clients, and that is not true. Definitely, with our settlement services--the resettlement assistance program and the immigrant settlement and adaptation program--we've worked intensively with refugee clients to ensure that they're successful in participating in our community, but over the years we have always served all classes of immigrants. Actually, our employment service has traditionally been serving about 65% to 70% immigrants, and in language training the number of immigrants is going up and up.

I have a problem with the fact that everyone seems to be talking about the need to separate the refugee and the immigrant. We very much see ourselves and our agencies as a gateway for all newcomers to Regina or Moose Jaw, and we would like to welcome our community and be viewed by our community as the gateway and as the experts in the field.

As well, I'd like to talk a little bit about some of our challenges around funding, although a recent increase to funding in Saskatchewan was announced from Regina Open Door Society in December.

In reality, what's happened because of the funding formulas is that Saskatoon has received a much larger amount of that funding. Of course, we realize that's based on a formula that takes numbers into consideration. I think it's probably highly weighted in terms of numbers, but I think we all know many immigrants don't necessarily require the same level of support to be successful as our refugee clients do. I think that needs to be taken into consideration; if one region is working with a lot of refugee clients with more complex needs, we need that additional funding to support them to ensure they're going to be successful, participating, employed members of our community.

When I look at what's happening in Ontario right now, I see the funding of welcoming centres. Millions of dollars are going into welcoming centres to bring agencies together to create sort of a gateway, a one-stop shop for newcomers. That's what we're all about in Saskatchewan. We've always done that. We deliver the settlement services, the family support services, employment training, and language training, and we would like to see more support in order to fill the gaps we have and to be the welcoming centres in Saskatchewan.

We'd like to see that encouraged. Instead what we seem to see is--and I'm not saying this is the federal government, because it might be the provincial--a preference to segregate and to create competition. It's not that competition is bad, but it's at a level at which people aren't willing to work together. In Saskatchewan and in Regina that's what we're all about. We've always been about building partnerships and ensuring that our clients are getting absolutely the best service possible so that they can be successful.

I would very much encourage Citizenship and Immigration and the Saskatchewan Immigration Branch to look at how other provinces are working together. In Alberta there's a very good relationship, and the sector is flourishing. In Saskatchewan the opposite is happening; because there's not a good relationship, the sector is being pulled apart. We're not being encouraged to work together to ensure more successful outcomes for newcomers coming to our province.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Thierry St-Cyr]

Thank you.

Who wants to weigh in on this?

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Ms. Blanchard. I hope that you still speak French, given that you provide immigrants with settlement services.

We talked a lot about refugees earlier. You also said that retention rates for refugees have improved, but you did not provide any figures. We still see it as a problem. The president of the Chamber of Commerce suggested that Saskatchewan be targeted for immigration to a greater extent so that immigrants can in turn be directed to communities able to receive them. This targeting of regions or of countries could apply to refugees just as well as to immigrants.

At the same time, some participants have called for better collaboration between the federal government and the provinces. It looks like it is the provincial government's job to target regions appropriately so that newcomers are better integrated into your communities. I suppose that receiving refugees takes more staff, more effort and more time and if the refugees move on after six months or a year, it is seen as a great waste of everyone's energy.

Would you like to see the provincial government getting more involved in targeting newcomers in the province more effectively?