You're welcome.
Good morning, Mr. Chair and ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Noureddine Bouissoukrane. I come from Calgary. I work for the Calgary Immigrant Educational Society.
First of all, I would like to thank you for inviting me. It's an honour for me to be here.
The Calgary Immigrant Educational Society was established in 1988 by Mr. Salim Sindhu, who has been in the sector for 25 years. He was supposed to be here today, but he sends his regrets due to his pre-arranged commitments, so I'm representing our society here.
Just to build on what my colleague says, first I would like to thank CIAC for welcoming and supporting newcomers to Canada from all over the world.
Second, I don't want to explain the practices. I came with some recommendations from my own experience of one and a half years with newcomers in Calgary.
The first is that we see a lot of soft skills. A lot of new immigrants have a lot of technical skills. However, most of them lack soft skills like business communication, Canadian culture, Canadian corporate culture, and so on. So I would suggest, if it's possible, for the CIAC to come up with programs like soft skills, business communication, how to talk, the way of doing business in Canada, and Canadian culture. I know some of it is already included in LINC programs.
The second is that CIAC has some programs, a lot of proposals, but most of them go year to year, which is really not sustainable. If it's possible to have multi-year funding programs, the employees will feel secure in their job, will perform more, and the outcome will be higher, I believe.
The third is salary. This is my own opinion. The salaries in the agencies serving immigrants—I'm talking about Calgary—are a bit lower than in other sectors, so we have a high turnover in our society. They stay two or three months and then they get better offers, so they leave us.
The fourth is to have more local immigrant services in communities. In Calgary, we have three or four, and all of them offer all those settlement programs, which are employment, language, family, youth, women, and so on. Small and medium ones offer only one or two programs.
For some reason, the big organizations go to settlement programs right away. They submit a proposal and somehow it's accepted. Newcomers usually come to new communities. If we try to build up more small agencies, it would really help newcomers.
The fifth is international students. A lot of international students come to us. They are already here in Canada and they've learned the language; they are already integrated. They know our culture here in Canada, so they ask if it's possible to reduce the time to become a permanent resident. In some provinces it takes them up to 24 months. Is it possible to do something about the timing?
The last recommendation I have is on family reunification. Either the husband or wife comes here, and in some provinces they have to wait between a year and two years. If it's possible, I would recommend doing something about the timing processing for immigration. Family reunification would play a crucial role in performance.
Thank you. I'll be happy to answer questions.