Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[Dawn Edlund]

Mr. Chair, I will answer the question.

Thank you, Mr. Cyr.

We did an analysis to determine where newcomers are now living and what services we should offer to them. We realized that there was some overlap in services in some location…

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I'm going to stop you there because I fully understood that aspect.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

She's in the middle of a sentence. Let her at least finish her sentence.

[Dawn Edlund]

I told you about the analyses aimed at determining where the newcomers actually are and what services they need. This involves avoiding overlap and ensuring that in a region where there was…

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

But you already said that. I don't want to interrupt you, Ms. Edlund, but…

[Dawn Edlund]

Please let me finish my sentence.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

But you're using up my time, and the response you're giving me isn't answering my question. I know very well that, as a public servant, you have requirements and that you follow government directives, but my question is simple: could such a process be carried out as quickly in the public service? Let's look at things from another perspective: would you consider, in the very short term, say in the coming year, moving dozens of public servants from one side of Canada to the other to deal with the fact that needs have shifted from one place to another? Could you do it as quickly if it were the public service?

[Dawn Edlund]

For example, people in Ontario look after all the agreements that we establish with service suppliers. So, it's the people in Ontario who are going to provide this service.

Mr. Chair, as you are well aware, in operations, which is where I'm currently working, adjustments are made every year. In particular, these adjustments affect the number of visa officers at a specific posting. We change this from year to year to respond to pressures we see in the system.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Are the changes that you make from year to year as significant as those we are discussing today, or are they generally spread out over a longer period to take into account the fact that these are human resources, that they need to be managed and that it isn't necessarily possible for 10 officers to leave Toronto and be sent to York?

[Dawn Edlund]

Adjustments must always be made when required.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

You spoke about the importance of monitoring the needs of immigrants. But I've heard discussion about where immigrants are now going, and I've also heard discussion about where they land. They aren't the same thing. It's possible that immigrants will land in large numbers in a given city this year, but that doesn't mean that those people who arrived in that city previously are no longer there and no longer need help. Actually, I see in my community that, in many cases, it's not a matter of one year or two. Immigrants may require services for a full decade. It may take them a long time to integrate.

How do you determine where the needs are? How is it calculated?

[Catrina Tapley]

Perhaps this is two questions. The first, I believe, deals with immigrants moving after they arrive in Canada. Have I understood that correctly?

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

No. You said that the needs are shifting. Is it because the immigrant populations live in other places, or because people arrive and settle in new places? If 10% more immigrants arrive in York this year over last year, it remains that the majority are still in Toronto. Some have arrived there in large numbers over the years and are still there. So, how do you calculate the needs? Do you take into account permanent residents, those who are arriving or those who are still in various cities in Canada?

[Catrina Tapley]

The formula is calculated based on where immigrants land, so we make our allocations based on that calculation.

So within the province—and I'm not sure, Dawn if you'd like to add to this as well—that would be what we--

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

So, it's based on the immigrants who are arriving. If I understand correctly, you presume in some way that it's basically only the immigrants arriving who need help. You assume that they are going to need help for one year and that you will then help the next ones.

[Dawn Edlund]

I will call it a two-step process in the sense that the funding allocation looks at where immigrants land--on that sliding scale over a three-year period that my colleague referred to. Then what we do in terms of determining the allocations within the province, for example, is to look at where newcomers are actually living now.

So when you see that the city of Toronto in the last five years has had a 30% drop in the number of immigrants living and working in that community and that they have moved elsewhere to smaller communities, like York or Kitchener-Waterloo, our funding allocation within the amount of money allocated for that province reflects that.

[Catrina Tapley]

If I--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

I'm sorry, Ms. Chow is....

Oh, go ahead. This is an important issue.

[Catrina Tapley]

I just wanted to make one point.

We recently launched a pilot project with vouchers for language training. Without getting into the details, one of the things it's shown us is that people tend to take the service in the place they have landed. We can speak more about that, if you'd like.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to see your formula placed before us, because by my calculation, in Ontario the drop in terms of immigrants landed between 2008 and 2009, which is the figure we have—the current data—is 4,000 fewer landed immigrants, from 110,000 to 106,000.

In British Columbia, the drop from 43,992 to 41,438 is a drop of 2,560. That's a 5.8% drop. That drop is much higher than the Ontario drop, which is 3.6%.

So Ontario had a drop within one year of 3.6%, and B.C. had 5.8%. If your cut is $53 million—pure math, pure formula—it's 81% of the cut, of which 43% is directed to Ontario. How would you justify that math? That's why I want to see the formula. That's question number one.

My second question is about the number of immigrants who are being served by all the agencies in the greater Toronto area. You have a list--we all have a list--of all the agencies that lost their funding. I'm wondering if you can provide me with the exact number of clients who will not be served because of the cuts and the number of staff that would be lost because of the cuts. Those are the two figures I'm looking for.

Three, given whatever that number is...and it could be 5,000, I don't know; I'm just pulling that out of the air. It could be 10,000. If that is the number of clients who will be impacted, do you in fact have a plan in place now so that when the people who are being laid off now—March 31 is coming—these 10,000 clients will be able to be absorbed by other agencies? If so, could you provide us with this plan?

Those are my three questions. I may have others.

[Catrina Tapley]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm going to deal with I hope the first question, and then my colleague Dawn will probably deal with questions two and three.

The first question is on the formula itself. We're happy to provide the formula to the committee. I would note a couple of things that make it just a little more complicated. One is that we use three-year averages. So to calculate funds for fiscal year 2011-12, we would have looked at 2007, 2008, and 2009. That's part of what's factored in.

The second part to your question--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Perhaps you could send the formula to the clerk.

[Catrina Tapley]

With pleasure, Mr. Chairman.

The second part to this--we also have a calculation, as I said earlier--is that refugees count for double, recognizing that they have unique settlement needs.

The third part is how cuts were allocated. So we have two different things at play. The first is a $53-million global cut to the settlement budget, and that is, outside of Quebec, a national cut. That was applied first, so that was applied amongst all jurisdictions. Then we had a second issue at play, which is the question of bringing how we spend money in Ontario under the national funding formula.

We were doing both of those things at the same time, so sometimes it's difficult to compare between British Columbia and Ontario. What I would add is that other provinces will still complain about their share vis-à-vis others when they look at the per immigrant amount that's happening. So this year--

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I do want to point out that in terms of refugees, Ontario has a huge number, at 12,651, whereas the number of refugees in British Columbia is not even worth talking about it's so small.

At any rate, I'm sorry to interrupt.