Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chan, Mr. Bouissoukrane, and Mr. Tam, thank you very much for being here.
First, I hear myself through your words. I spent 15 years in an NGO settlement agency, so I share your concerns and your reasons for offering us so many recommendations. But one of the reasons we invited you was to hear about what have been successes throughout Canada in the settlement agencies, so that we could perhaps share among the different agencies better ways of using the funding that is there and the strategies we have to better settle newcomers.
I don't know if you're aware, but in fact I am from Quebec and we do have a totally different funding system. The Quebec government is totally responsible for the settlement programs. I heard your concerns about staff turnover because you can't necessarily pay the better salaries and keep them. You spend the time training them—and it requires a lot of specialized training to offer services to newcomers—and then you lose them very quickly, as soon as they can get a better job with a better salary. That has always been a concern of mine, and I totally agree with you.
I will share with you one best practice in Quebec. Mr. Tam mentioned it a bit, with the private sector being able to support some of the NGOs. The Government of Quebec has allowed settlement organizations to offer for pay—they are being paid to do this—services that are also provided by the Government of Quebec.
I'll give you an example: licence bureaus, for car and driver's licences. The organization to which I have belonged for many years is the mandataire. They are given a mandate from the Government of Quebec to operate an office where licences and licence plates are renewed, and for each transaction the organization is paid x amount of money.
That has become through the years—it has now been 15 years—their main source of stable financing, meaning they can pay their salaries from there, and then everything else that the Government of Quebec provides for services is directed to the services only and not necessarily to salary.
I don't know if this is possible in other provinces, but I'd like to hear you on the subject. Do you think it could be something that would help you in maintaining the quality of staff that you need to provide the services? They do gain the experience and the best practices.
Perhaps, Mr. Bouissoukrane, you could start with that, since you mentioned it.