Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 8th, 2011

[Marion Newrick]

I was having difficulty hearing back there, but I thought I heard one of the CIC staff say they were helping us with transition plans...?

[A voice]

Yes, they said that.

[Marion Newrick]

They said that. Okay.

We have had zero contact. I need you to know that nobody has contacted us whatsoever, other than telling us in the form letter in December that they're not funding us anymore. We sent an e-mail to a generic e-mail address, and we all got back the same paragraph that covered every possible deficiency in an application.

That's as much as we know at this point.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

I want to pass this on to my colleague, but I want to put a piece of information on the table.

The current government gave Toronto only a quarter of the money that was due to it for the growth of needs. The average amount per new immigrant in Toronto, even by the government's worst-case scenario numbers, is less than two-thirds of the average for Ontario, or for the rest of the country. Toronto has been taken from a position of having less money to having still less money. That's based on a letter provided by the minister to the city council of Toronto today.

I'm very sympathetic to the situation in Thunder Bay and Guelph, because where else will people go? These are communities that are struggling to grow and get past economic difficulty.

I want to make sure that we somehow get information that shows where the cuts actually are. As more information is emerging, I think these agencies are being victimized.

I want to find out a little bit more about the uniqueness.

Mr. Gomez, I don't want to press your point, but you've got 90 people. How many of them will be able to be served once you have to shut your doors?

[Colin Gomez]

We have absolutely no idea, and nothing at all has been communicated to us so we can communicate it to our students.

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Ms. Newrick, you're talking about 1,500 translators who served the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan and who can no longer stay in Afghanistan because it's not safe for them. The Afghan Association was contracted to provide services to those translators, and now they're being put out of business. Is that correct?

[Marion Newrick]

That's my understanding, yes, because I was asked by this agency to present....

I was at a workshop put on by United Way in Toronto to help us deal with the trauma of what's happening to us all, and I was speaking to one of the board members during the session. The look in his eyes was one I can't forget; it was disbelief. He said they don't know how to deal with this. He said they were serving these 1,500 interpreters, who were brought here with fanfare; Canada is doing a great thing--which it is--but now they're cutting us off. How can this be, and what do we do?

[Gerard Kennedy, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Is there anybody who wants to hazard a guess as to how a new Canadian is going to feel to have their little bit of dollars for language training, for job search--to get on their own two feet--sacrificed for tax cuts to large cooperations, or to make the finance minister look like a better manager off their back?

I know it's hard. We don't have somebody here today who is with their agency. I know you don't want to step into their shoes, but these cuts are taking something away from them. I'm wondering if you can help to convey what that means.

[Colin Gomez]

Well, when our students got the bad news, many of them wrote letters to the editor of the local Guelph newspaper, the Guelph Tribune. I'm not sure how many there were, maybe six or seven letters. Some of them were very, very articulate. We're very proud of them, especially of their progress with the English language.

One of our students suggested that money might be found for immigrants—I hope this isn't too political a thing to say, but it was his idea—perhaps by reducing our commitment to a war in Afghanistan.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay--

[Colin Gomez]

So that was his reaction.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

That's interesting.

Thank you, Mr. Kennedy.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

During your presentations, you all addressed the issue of the impact these reductions will have. I'm asking each of you to repeat or confirm it.

What would the impact of these reductions have for each of your agencies with respect to the amounts, the percentage of your budget and the very future of your agency?

[Colin Gomez]

Well, our agency is being completely shut down, so that would be 100%, ultimately, although, as I said, we usually say it's 90% of the funding because that's the LINC program. The CIC had an idea to continue with ELT, but as I said, it's completely uneconomic and absurd, really.

So ultimately it's 100% of funding that will be lost.

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

How much would this 90% being cut and leading to another 10% represent?

[Colin Gomez]

Yes, absolutely. All of the LINC funding will be cut, therefore ELT can't continue.

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

How much would it be in dollars?

[Colin Gomez]

It's around $300,000, a little over for LINC. I'd have to do the math, I guess, for ELT; but I'm not the ELT coordinator.

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

Okay.

Madam Newrick.

[Marion Newrick]

We were cut 100% of our ISAP settlement services--$305,000. We still retain provincial settlement funding. I would add that Minister Hoskins met with us twice already, and he considers us very strong and valuable partners in the delivering of settlement services. He made that very clear. It represents about 40% of our overall budget.

The difficulty for us is that as well as the debt of $160,000 for the lease, which Diane already outlined, each funder also contributes to core costs of an agency, such as audit, insurance, bookkeeping and so forth. That, for us, is another $30,000 that needs to be extricated from our other programs, and usually when that happens, you have a longer-term plan in place. You know something is coming to an end. In our case, we don't know that.

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

Earlier, you addressed the issue of equipment that you had bought through funding from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Now, you say that you have to return it. Can you explain that?

[Marion Newrick]

In the form letter we received, there is an indication that all equipment needs to be disposed of according to Treasury Board rules. Usually what happens is that CIC quite often sends other still-funded settlement agencies to go through your furniture and take what they need. In actual fact, what will happen in our case is that we were provided with new equipment by CIC. All of these agencies over the years have had those items purchased. We fill out every year a form that says what was purchased, and they have the right to come and take that back.

We're saying that as charitable agencies, they're leaving us with an empty shell. We still have the cost of the lease on our backs. We have to cover that, but it will be an empty shell because the furniture that we used to have was disposed of.

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

You're saying that, even if you find sources of funding elsewhere to continue operations, you would lose your equipment. Which would mean that you are back where you started. You could not operate any more.

[Diane Walter]

Yes, that's right.

[Marion Newrick]

That's correct.