Thank you. Thank you for having us here.
On behalf of the board of directors, staff, volunteers, and the participants of CASSA, the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to present to the standing committee. Since it's 10 minutes, I had a choice either to go deep with few or go broader with many. I've chosen to go broader with many, and if you have questions, I will definitely be willing to answer.
CASSA is an umbrella organization. Our mission is to facilitate the social, economic, cultural, and political empowerment of South Asians. We serve as a resource for information, research, mobilization, coordination, and leadership. Our overall goal is to increase the participation of South Asians in defining Canada's social, economic, political, and cultural future, not just necessarily to fit into what already exists but also to be part of defining what is to come.
We're not a front-line organization. We don't see clients on a one-to-one basis, so the views that we are going to bring as an umbrella organization of over 100 agencies would be a more systemic view of what exists. There definitely is a lot of good work being done through CIC and other immigration-related funding in terms of job search, in terms of language training, settlement counselling, settlement workers in schools, etc., and we would like to acknowledge the great job that's being done by our member agencies. We would like to say that those need to continue and need to be supported.
The other factor I would like to mention is that ethno-specific services and ethno-specific agencies play a very critical role in settlement. Though they're seen as serving one particular community, those agencies are well aware of the cultural and linguistic needs of the community. I would also urge the continued support of those ethno-specific agencies. Agencies such as as South Asian Family Support Services, the South Asian Women's Centre, Bangladeshi-Canadian Community Services, Punjabi Community Health Services, TESOC community services for the Tamil community, and so on, are some examples of members who are doing amazing work in Ontario and are continuing to support settlement in a meaningful manner.
I just want to caution that the term “South Asian” is sometimes misleading because it's seen as a homogenous group from outside, but it's pretty diverse, and it is a large chunk of the population of Canada, so I think we need to also look at the diversity within South Asian communities. For example, a Muslim from Pakistan and a Muslim from Sri Lanka would have totally different lived experiences and different languages and so on. Except the faith, everything else seems different. It's the same thing for a Tamil coming from India and a Tamil coming from Sri Lanka, in terms of lived experiences and so on.
We should also acknowledge that there are communities such as the Punjabi community, which has been in Canada right from the mid-1800s. Sometimes it's insulting to keep considering them as immigrants or as newcomers, but at the same time we need to acknowledge that Punjabi community members are coming as we speak as well.
Keeping that diversity in mind is important for us as an agency that works on an identity of solidarity of South Asians rather than an identity of homogeneity. Recent initiatives such as the local immigration partnership model are very appreciated. It brings multiple stakeholders together. It is an innovative approach, and we would like to commend the CIC and the provincial government for partnering to do that. The only thing I would mention about it is that it should be built around immigrant engagement, and we still feel that those local immigration partnerships are service-provider-led or municipality-led. The immigrant population is still either consulted at a distance or is tokenized at times, so it's important to keep that in mind.
The move towards one-stop models, where there is a particular location such as the welcome centres and so on, is a good way to help newcomers at the start to navigate the whole system at one place, but moving towards one-stop and not having a dispersed geographical location of services in the long run would produce problems, because the proximity of services becomes an important thing to have. A balance is needed between a one-stop model of services with having services mobile and dispersed across geographical regions that have very strong transportation challenges.
For the rest of my conversation I would like to focus on talking about smaller municipalities, forgetting about Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, which are urbanized cities. I'm talking about smaller communities, smaller cities that are facing a large number of immigrants. We're proposing something called smart settlement. What this is, is that we need to think beyond language instruction and job search. Those are two pillars of settlement. But let's talk about how much access do immigrants have to the public space. Let's talk about how much access do immigrants have in terms of arts, sports, and recreation, access to health, access to public decision-making, and a sense of belonging to the country. I think these factors are important if somebody is to feel settled.
For example, in the early parts of this decade, we talked about dispersion policies in immigration to make sure that the immigrant population was spread out. What we are suggesting is that when a father gets a job and goes to a particular municipality with the family, if the wife is not appreciated for her skills in that area and their children are not included in the school system in a meaningful way, they are not likely to stay. So retention of immigrants in smaller municipalities depends on the kind of access I was talking about.
What we are stressing is to have a smart settlement model that works on principles of access and equity. It would actually acknowledge that certain systems put up barriers for immigrants and that these barriers are based on power and privileges. That needs to be addressed if immigrants are to feel included. That has to come from proactive leadership from local leaders, local MPs, councillors, MPPs, educational institutions, and other institutions.
We try to do this at CASSA with the support of CIC. We are very thankful to the multicultural branch for this project. We are actually working in York Region to address these issues and are putting together a body based on the immigrant population as leaders and residents. The service sector is also working together to address inequities in access in York Region, which between 2001 and 2006 had a 22% increase in population. Within just one census, 40% of the public school board's students were visible minorities. I think it's important for us to look into those kinds of things.
We did a community-based engagement model and actually got the immigrant population involved. We are working in Peterborough and Waterloo this year with the same model to create more welcoming and inclusive communities for newcomers and immigrants. We are thankful for this opportunity.
In conclusion, I would say to continue investing in existing programs that are effective, as I mentioned earlier. Ask the organizations you fund to build a component of civic engagement and community building into their programs. Make immigrant engagement a theme in the programs, because without engagement, meaningful settlement will not take place.
Continue to support ethno-specific agencies.
Revisit eligibility criteria for clients. It's difficult for some people to be fully integrated into society within three years. Some of the criteria , such as the number of years, becoming a citizen, and so on, need to be revisited.
Fund broader projects beyond language and job searching. Encourage projects that bring intercultural collaboration to addressing issues. That has to be organic and come from the bottom up rather than forced from the top down.
The last piece I would say is to support systemic change through policy, programs, and funding, whether it be changing the way school boards operate, public health operates, or municipalities operate. An immigrant partner initiative that looks at systemic change would be much appreciated.
Thank you very much for having me here. As I said, I'm involved with so many things, I would be glad to answer questions later. Thank you.