Evidence of meeting #42 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cic.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:35 a.m.
Executive Director, Association for New Canadians
No. But I would have to say that I selectively wear a blue jacket and a red jacket. To the best of my knowledge, we have not been affected.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
I don't think you can top that, Mr. Shory. We're going to have to conclude our session.
I'd like to thank all of our guests for your presentations, from St. John's to here in Ottawa. Your comments have been very helpful. Thank you very much.
We will now suspend.
9:40 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
I'm going to call the meeting to order.
We do have a bit of a technical problem. We're going to start with some of the guests who are available. The group from Vancouver, who is on teleconference, and the group from Calgary may not come on for a few minutes, so we'll just start with two, and the others, hopefully, will join us.
We have a total of four witnesses. This session is going to go for three-quarters of an hour.
We have the Asian Community AIDS Services, who are here in Ottawa. We have with us Andre Goh, the board chair—good morning to you—and Riz Quiaoit, coordinator of the settlement program—good morning to you, sir. And we have Ms. Jamila Aman—good morning to you—who is with Northwood Neighbourhood Services. I believe they're from Toronto and they are here in Ottawa with us.
The other two groups aren't quite on the air yet, so we will proceed with the two groups.
We will start with Mr. Goh.
You're making a presentation. You have up to seven minutes, sir.
9:40 a.m.
Andre Goh Board Chair, Asian Community AIDS Services
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, Mr. Chair and members.
I wanted to speak a little bit about the challenges we face in our community, in particular the East and Southeast Asian LGBT communities.
Historically, our organization was born because of a need, because there was none that existed at the time, and through the challenges we have faced over the years we have been able to build up an organization. In the past there were two other sister organizations, in Vancouver and Montreal. These have since ceased to exist. We continue to exist. Officially, we've been around for 15 years, historically for over 27 years.
Some of the groups that we currently service include those from Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Burma, Laos, and of course from East Asia, Japan, China, and Korea. Our groups are multilingual, multicultural, and unique in their needs. The challenges for us have always been and continue to be that we don't offer services in one language or in one format. Having said that, what we have received from the CIC is funding for one program worker, and we've actually been able to function successfully with those.
Our primary challenges are the ongoing issues around community outreach and community integration. Our goals, intentionally, have always been to welcome the newcomers, who don't find services within the mainstream, whether it is mainstream Canadian organizations and agencies or mainstream LGBT communities and agencies. That's our fundamental goal. We serve a niche within this larger Canadian context.
When we actually fill that niche, our goal, ultimately, as with all organizations, is to integrate the individuals, to provide them with enough resources to become productive Canadians. The challenge for us as well, as I said, is multicultural, multilingual, and issues around homophobia, racism...and the list goes on.
One of the things that we've fundamentally tried to address through the CIC funding was to bridge that gap between the resources newcomers need in order to become fully participating Canadians.
I'd like our caseworker to give you a little bit of context about what I'm talking about.
9:45 a.m.
Riz Quiaoit Coordinator, Settlement Program, Asian Community AIDS Services
I am the lone worker at ACAS, and as an agency, we're relatively small compared with other settlement agencies. We are mandated to provide HIV prevention, education, and support services to people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.
The settlement program is three years old, and we have made positive impacts not only on the community but also for our clients. Many of our clients have expressed that they feel welcome at our agency and that there's a strong sense of community.
We are located in downtown Toronto and have built strong ties with our community partners—community health centres, hospitals, schools, colleges and universities, and churches. We connect our clients to people, places, and community events that are LGBT-positive.
ACAS has also reached out to other groups. There are a growing number of clients, particularly temporary workers, such as those who came to Canada under the live-in caregiver program, who have fulfilled their residency obligation and have determined that they want to settle in Canada. When my program is closed they will no longer be able to build these services. Similarly, there are international students who have graduated from university or college and are eligible to apply for permanent residence under the Canadian experience, and they will--
9:45 a.m.
Coordinator, Settlement Program, Asian Community AIDS Services
As Andre said, we have filled in these gaps and reached out to other communities that need services.
9:45 a.m.
Board Chair, Asian Community AIDS Services
Mr. Chair, if I may, we have two suggestions that we think would be helpful. If there could be more transparency to funding assessment processes, individual agencies such as ours could have a better understanding of how funding is allocated or how to utilize the funding. Also, should funding cease, if there could be more significant lead time so that agencies could make appropriate settlement issues and contingencies, ideally six to twelve months is more realistic than usually three to four months.
Thank you.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
9:50 a.m.
Jamila Aman Executive Director, Northwood Neighbourhood Services
Good morning, everyone.
I'll just tell you briefly about Northwood Neighbourhood Services, and then I will talk about five areas: the impact to the agency, the impact to the community, the impact of the cuts to our clients, the cost to the country, and some research-based statistics.
Northwood Neighbourhood Services is a multi-service neighbourhood centre. Of course, the program that was affected by the CIC cut is the settlement services. We have eight settlement counsellors who speak over 28 languages, and they serve, of course, those clients. Last year we served 1,800 clients, people who came for the first time or for subsequent visits.
We have two child-parent programs in the neighbourhood in Toronto, one in Wards 7 and 8 and one in Wards 9 and 10. These are for parents and children from ages zero to six. We have seniors' programs. We serve seven ethnic groups--individually, of course. A lot of seniors have language barriers, so we cannot mix them up, except for one program, because we run it in a seniors' building. We serve the Albanian seniors, Latin American seniors, and the one I mentioned, the multicultural seniors program, because it is in a seniors' building at Arleta and Sheppard Avenue. We serve Sudanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and South Asian seniors. These programs are one day a week.
We have two violence against women programs--we call them “cook and talk”. We have a green program, educating the public; we do workshops and seminars and one-on-one counselling to go green. We are also sponsorship agreement holders. We have a financial literacy program that's also funded by another department, HRSDC. We have employment and self-employment programs, volunteer training and placement. We take a lot of volunteers from the neighbourhood, a lot from Ontario Works, and also from the colleges and universities. And we have English conversation classes. There are a lot of ESL classes, but some people cannot fall into these categories, so we have English conversation circles based on groups, and we have five groups currently.
I'll tell you about the impact to the agency when we got the letter on December 10. There is a liability to the organization because we have a five-year lease and we are in year three. We also have staff members who have worked with Northwood, at the least for four years, and I have a couple of them who have worked for 10 years with the organization.
On the impact to the community, for an organization that has served and was funded by CIC since 1986, what can we tell our clients--don't come anymore, our doors are closed?
For a lot of these people...little things that we take for granted, whether they're newcomers or Canadians.... Some of the people, you cannot imagine, they come in, and when we offer them a cup of tea and we say good morning, they are so happy. At times they tell us we are the guardian angels because there is nobody to talk to them, nobody to guide them and to show them where to go and where to find services, to refer them to the available mainstream services. So that is the impact to our community.
The other thing I want to talk about is the impact to partnerships. We have private sector partnerships. We have other NGOs that we partner with. Just the cuts of CIC incapacitated the organization. It represented 30% of our budget, which is $400,000. Not only will the settlement services be eliminated, but also, CIC funded our core infrastructure, which allowed us to partner with colleges and universities, with other non-profit organizations, for services that have nothing to do with newcomers, such as the Learning Disabilities Association, the Margaret Frazer House. Part of the CIC application for this year was to partner with CIC to look into the mental health issues of women.
The one thing that I would like to mention is some research that was done by the Canadian Policy Research Networks in 2002 called Mapping the Non-profit Sector--Human Resources in the Non-profit Sector. The non-profit sector contributes $102 billion to the Canadian economy. It's the second largest in the world. The non-profit sector employs two million employees in Canada, and out of the two million, one million are in Ontario. So what is going to happen to the sector? I just worry about the third sector, the non-profit. I feel that the recognition for this sector is absent when CIC just randomly sends us a letter, after we've been funded since 1986, to say they're no longer going to fund us.
Is three months enough? Were we prepared? Was the sector prepared? And what is the cost to Canada? What will happen to these clients?
Well, I don't have to tell you what Canada preaches around the world and what we appear to be. Are we walking the talk?
9:55 a.m.
Executive Director, Northwood Neighbourhood Services
Sure.
Reversing the CIC decision will be great, because otherwise all these things that I mentioned will be missing and organizations like Northwood and others will be incapacitated, but more importantly, what's going to happen to the clients?
We need to have, as was mentioned earlier, three or six months to wind up. We didn't even get a phone call from CIC. When we got the letter on December 10, I placed a phone call, wrote a letter and an e-mail. I just got a call this Monday saying, “You requested a meeting. We'd like to sit down and talk with you.” I think this is a complete lack of respect because of the work these organizations have done. This is not acceptable to me and to you.
Thank you so much.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Thank you, Ms. Aman.
Mr. Tam from British Columbia, are you there? It appears he is not.
Mr. Sindhu. Hello, sir.
9:55 a.m.
Salim Sindhu Executive Director, Calgary Immigrant Educational Society
Good morning. Can you hear me?
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
I can, sir.
Mr. Sindhu, you're the executive director of the Calgary Immigrant Educational Society, and you have someone with you.
9:55 a.m.
Executive Director, Calgary Immigrant Educational Society
Yes, Noureddine. He's one of my senior managers.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
9:55 a.m.
Executive Director, Calgary Immigrant Educational Society
Thank you very much.
Good morning, honourable members. My name is Salim Sindhu. I'm executive director of the Calgary Immigrant Educational Society. I'm also accompanied by my senior manager, Noureddine.
Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to talk about the immigration settlement and adaptation program.
The announcement by Honourable Jason Kenney, the immigration minister, about changes in funding to the immigration settlement program was long overdue, since Alberta has a number of secondary immigrants coming from Ontario. Also, as new immigrant statistics show, more new immigrants go directly to Alberta rather than to Ontario.
These changes have a great impact on the delivery of settlement services. They will enable us to improve or add more settlement services in the southeast area of the city of Calgary.
The Calgary Immigrant Educational Society started a LINC program in 1990. The LINC program was independent; it was not part of the settlement services until 2008, when the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration announced that LINC would be part of settlement services.
An increase in LINC funding was announced by the honourable minister, and our society is providing the LINC program with 30 full-time and part-time classes. In 2010, under settlement services, we added an after LINC program, called employment skills training, to help immigrants complete the LINC program and learn job-searching techniques. This program has become very successful and it is in very high demand. When I finish, I will invite the EST program manager to briefly present some details to everyone.
We could not become so-called settlement services over the past 20 years, as these services are restricted to a few selected organizations in the city of Calgary. The settlement services that are provided are located in different parts of the city. The majority of the organizations are located in the downtown area.
However, when it comes to evaluating the settlement program applications, geographic criteria do not seem to be considered. The Calgary Immigrant Educational Society is located in the southeast of Calgary, where a lot of new immigrants reside because of the affordability of housing. But settlement counselling service is not available in this area; they have to travel all the way downtown to access the counselling service.
In addition, under the LINC program, about 450 clients receive service from our organization on a daily basis. We have to deal with all kinds of different issues almost every day. Some clients request counselling and they have to be referred to other organizations. This has created a lot of difficulty for our clients. We have to face the same questions every day. Our clients constantly ask us questions as to why we cannot help them: “I'm already here. Why are you referring me to another place that is far away?”
We believe the changes in funding will have a positive impact on our organization. We hope additional funding will be allocated to Alberta in the near future and that our organization's request to add settlement counselling services will be favourably considered by CIC. Thanks to the increased funding support from CIC, our LINC program has increased the number of clients by 64% and child minding by 70%, compared to 2007 and 2008. This could only happen because of the additional funding for the program.
With the change in funding, we are very optimistic that immigrants' needs will be better met. As Honourable Kenney said, the changes do not represent significant cuts to funding but rather a redistribution of money to where it's needed most. Those funds are being reallocated to other areas that have evidence of greater need.
We believe there is obvious evidence of a great need for our organization to offer settlement counselling services to new immigrants, especially in the southeast area of Calgary. We look forward to witnessing the reallocation of funding to where it is needed in the city of Calgary as well as in Canada.
Thank you.
Now I defer to Noureddine.
10 a.m.
Noureddine Bouissoukrane Senior Manager, Employment Services, Calgary Immigrant Educational Society
Good morning, honourable members. My name is Noureddine Bouissoukrane. I am the manager of employment services at the Calgary Immigrant Educational Society.
Today I am very pleased to talk about the employment skills training, EST, program. Since April 2010 our organization has offered the EST program, funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. This successful program assists unemployed newcomers with the skills to secure employment in Canada. The curriculum includes training in computers, business communication, and job search techniques. It's three months in-class training plus one month practical.
The EST program consists of four components. The first part is computer training skills. We teach our students Microsoft Office 2007, computer hardware and software, Internet knowledge, and online job search.
The second part is Canadian business communication. We teach our citizens business terminology, how to build confidence, report and business writing, verbal presentations, and public speaking.
The third section is job search skills, by itself. It covers resumé and cover letter preparation, job interview skills, career planning, job search strategies, and job fairs.
The fourth and most important component is seminars. We invite guest speakers from the industry and from the corporate sector.
10 a.m.
Conservative
10 a.m.
Senior Manager, Employment Services, Calgary Immigrant Educational Society
With the present changes in funding to Alberta, we should be able to offer more settlement programs.
Thank you so much.
