Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the standing committee, for this opportunity to appear before you. I do policy and public education at the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, OCASI. We're the umbrella organization for the immigrant and refugee-serving sector in Ontario, and we're the largest of our kind, given that most immigrants come to Ontario.
OCASI was founded in 1978, so we've been around for about 31 years. We're a registered charity. Our members are located across the province in centres large and small, large urban centres and smaller communities. So what I bring to you is informed by the experience of our member agencies and their clients, both in the credentials recognition process and also in the labour market integration process in the communities in which they live. They don't all look the same, obviously.
I'm not going to repeat everything that Tim has said so wonderfully, which gives me a bit more time, I think. I want to focus on three key areas in my presentation. There is the process itself, the cost, and, most importantly for OCASI, the labour market integration piece.
First, about the process, as Tim has said, a lot of work has been done, both by the federal government and various provincial governments, in making the process more accessible, transparent, and effective in addressing the realities of immigrants and refugees. OCASI feels a significant gap is a shortage of practicum opportunities, whatever you might call them, in the different fields. So in many fields, such as the medical profession, when someone has to do a placement to go to the end of the process, there is a limit to the number of available opportunities. It's quite ridiculous in Ontario, which has a shortage of general medical practitioners and yet not enough spaces for internationally trained doctors to qualify.
The other problem that is part of this is that the practicum opportunities don't often pay enough for most people to pursue them. So what we've heard from our member agencies is that many clients are making a decision not to do that. They simply cannot afford it, because this comes on top of paying fees, paying for tests, and also because the majority of their clients are underemployed and overrepresented in low-paid contingent types of work in the labour market. So it makes it very difficult for them to access any opportunity they can follow to complete the process of credential recognition.
OCASI recommends that the federal government--because we think it is the federal government that can play a strong role in this--invest in creating more practicum opportunities across all the fields that require this type of placement to complete credentials recognition. This could be done either through incentives to the regulatory bodies or through direct investments through employers in internships or placement opportunities, all of which should be paid at the market rate rather than at a lower rate, which would really not make a difference.
The second piece I'd like to look at is the cost of the entire process. Perhaps Tim's experience is different, but what we hear from our member agencies is that for most of their clients, the cost is enormously prohibitive and puts it out of their reach.
OCASI is a steering committee member of the Colour of Poverty campaign. The campaign has looked at who is poor in Canada, and our findings, based on census data and other studies from Stats Canada, show that members of racialized communities, including recent immigrants, are overrepresented among the poor and working poor in Canada. So we have found a strong intersection between race and poverty. The majority of immigrants who have arrived in Canada in the last 10 years are racialized, and we have seen the intersection of race and poverty reproduced in that population as well, and women are overrepresented in both groups. What this means is that--