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.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Bridget Foster  Executive Director, Association for New Canadians
Megan Morris  Director of Programs, Association for New Canadians
Debbie Douglas  Executive Director, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI)
Jamal Kakar  Executive Director, Afghan Association of Ontario
Dost Yar  Treasurer, Afghan Association of Ontario
Andre Goh  Board Chair, Asian Community AIDS Services
Riz Quiaoit  Coordinator, Settlement Program, Asian Community AIDS Services
Jamila Aman  Executive Director, Northwood Neighbourhood Services
Salim Sindhu  Executive Director, Calgary Immigrant Educational Society
Noureddine Bouissoukrane  Senior Manager, Employment Services, Calgary Immigrant Educational Society
Thomas Tam  Chief Executive Officer, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.

February 10th, 2011 / 10 a.m.

Thomas Tam Chief Executive Officer, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.

Hello.

10 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Hello. Is this Mr. Tam?

10 a.m.

Chief Executive Officer, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.

Thomas Tam

Yes, Thomas Tam from SUCCESS in Vancouver.

10 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

I was worried you weren't going to come and speak to us, sir. It's 7 o'clock out there. Did you just get up?

10 a.m.

Chief Executive Officer, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.

Thomas Tam

No, I've been here listening to all the conversations.

10 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

That's good.

Mr. Tam, you're with SUCCESS.

10 a.m.

Chief Executive Officer, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.

10 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

And you're the chief executive officer.

10 a.m.

Chief Executive Officer, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.

Thomas Tam

That's right. Should I start my presentation?

10:05 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Welcome to Ottawa. If you could give a brief presentation, we would appreciate it.

10:05 a.m.

Chief Executive Officer, S.U.C.C.E.S.S.

Thomas Tam

Good morning, committee members. My name is Thomas Tam, and I am the CEO of SUCCESS, a multicultural social services organization that has been serving new Canadians since 1974. Our mission is to build bridges, harvest diversity, and foster integration.

Last year we served over 200,000 clients of diverse cultural backgrounds who spoke more than 20 different languages, including Chinese, Punjabi, Korean, Vietnamese, Farsi, and others.

Over half of our clients are new immigrants.

We have 26 service locations in metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, and northern B.C., and we have overseas offices in Korea, Taiwan, and China.

It's my pleasure today to share with the committee what's happening in British Columbia in regard to the committee's concern about the social impacts of the recent CIC funding cuts.

The funding model in British Columbia is a little bit different from other provinces. Under the Canada-B.C. agreement, CIC has downloaded most of the settlement and adaptation services to the B.C. government through the transfer payment. In other words, the B.C. government is the direct funder for most of the services provided in British Columbia.

Although most of the services are delivered by the B.C. government, CIC still maintains some direct funding projects in British Columbia, mostly nationwide or interprovincial programs. SUCCESS, our organization, as an example, has two very unique projects funded directly by CIC. The first one is the AEIP project--the active engagement and integration project--which is an overseas project in Korea and in Taiwan that serves prospective immigrants coming to Canada.

The other project is our airport reception project at the Vancouver International Airport. We receive and provide orientation for over 40,000 newcomers who arrive at the airport. Half of them will go to other provinces, mostly the western provinces.

These two projects are directly funded by CIC. At this moment, we haven't received any funding cut signals or a funding reduction message from CIC, so we believe that CIC will also look at these two very unique and innovative projects. We are very optimistic that CIC will continue to support these two projects.

To conclude my presentation, as a service provider in British Columbia, we haven't seen any signal about drastic funding cuts recently because of the unique funding model between Canada and the B.C. government.

I would be happy to answer any questions from the committee.

10:05 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you, Mr. Tam, for your presentation. The committee will have questions for all of the witnesses.

Mr. Kennedy, you have up to five minutes.

10:05 a.m.

Liberal

Gerard Kennedy Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON

Thank you. I might address my questions to the first people who spoke.

Have you seen any sign of a contingency plan? Is Citizenship and Immigration on the ground? Are they working to show where else people can be served, if they're trying to close down the programs they're de-funding? Have you had any indication there?

10:05 a.m.

Board Chair, Asian Community AIDS Services

Andre Goh

From where we sit, no, there isn't. The uniqueness of the community we serve is that people who arrive anywhere across the country tend to migrate to Toronto, in part because this is where the LGBT community is most prominent.

10:05 a.m.

Liberal

Gerard Kennedy Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON

All right. We're 45 days away from losing funding and there are no replacement services in sight. Is that correct?

10:05 a.m.

Coordinator, Settlement Program, Asian Community AIDS Services

10:05 a.m.

Executive Director, Northwood Neighbourhood Services

Jamila Aman

That's true. There is no contingency plan. They are not even talking to us.

As I said earlier, they only called us this Monday to say that they would like to come to talk to us about why they eliminated our funding. It's not even about a contingency plan.

I don't think this was thought through. As I was saying earlier, this is a complete lack of respect for the work the non-profit sector is doing. We're not treated as equal partners. We're treated as if we're given a handout. We gave it to you and we'll take it away from you. It is that kind of thing. There has not been a talk.

If this was the direction of CIC, I think there should have been more conversation with us to tell us that this is what we are doing, so let's prepare, let's talk, and let's do what needs to be done.

10:10 a.m.

Liberal

Gerard Kennedy Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON

We've been collecting figures from agencies—we've talked to 70 so far—and there are some 78,000 people who are going to have less or no services.

Do you think those people can be absorbed by your colleagues who haven't been cut as much? I just want to know your opinion.

Where do you think those people will end up? What will happen when those people start to knock on the doors of other agencies? I appreciate the point that has already been made about uniqueness, but even if they try to get services, what's going to happen at the other places?

10:10 a.m.

Executive Director, Northwood Neighbourhood Services

Jamila Aman

Can I go first on this one?

We are told there are some services and agencies, and people can access those services.

First, a lot of people who are accessing our services are low-income people. They can't afford TTC, and TTC prices have been going up. Those people don't even have the money to travel and access services. Even if there are places, they don't know about it. We provide unique outreach services door to door, where clients know about us. If clients don't know where to go, how will they know where to go? This is the million dollar question.

Even if there are services in the city, it will be impossible for clients to access them. I'm not saying this because we were cut; this is a reality. I can tell you, last year, CIC cut funding, for whatever reason they had, to the centre for Spanish-speaking people. This was way before all these major cuts. In York West, in the immediate neighbourhood, in the Jane-Finch West and Mount Dennis neighbourhood, we are the only organization that has been absorbing.... When the centre for Spanish people closed—

10:10 a.m.

Liberal

Gerard Kennedy Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON

So there's no—

10:10 a.m.

Executive Director, Northwood Neighbourhood Services

Jamila Aman

No, there is no service in the immediate area. Actually, Northwood was going to Jane and Finch, sending a counsellor, because we provide a lot of itinerant services. A lot of these services would be missing from this neighbourhood. Where we were going and where the clients were, the services will be missing.

10:10 a.m.

Liberal

Gerard Kennedy Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON

Ms. Aman, I just want to tell you that we're going to release figures today that show that in fact big parts of Ontario are actually severely underfunded. The very places that are being cut have been receiving less money than other parts of the country all along.

I hate to tell the person from Alberta, who's rightfully saying we got a little bit more money.... What happened in a number of parts of Ontario is the money was promised before the last election, and now it's being taken away from a lot of those new services that are being folded up, unfortunately. I wanted to make that point really strongly.

They're saying this should be based on landings. Now I know there's a big problem with just using landings, but if you try to find a correlation between the landings across the country and the cuts that are taking place, it doesn't exist. So I just want you to be assured that this kind of deception, frankly, on the part of the government, or this kind of effort to try to get around the facts is not going to survive. There is going to be a public airing of these numbers, the very things that the government has tried to hang it's hook on. They're basically saying that there is an excess capacity in Ontario and therefore we can take money out.

They're trying to set up a fight with other parts of the country for dollars that are being cut: $53 million is leaving for good, for every $1 that's being redistributed. So this isn't about rebalancing; it's a lot of money leaving the system.

It's really important, I think, because I know you must really feel that you are in a difficult position. You're forced to justify yourself after years of serving—you see the people every day—but I want you to know that there's a political thing at work here, a political allocation.

10:10 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you, Mr. Kennedy.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

10:10 a.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The discussion on monitoring needs and the allocation of resources based on needs is fairly interesting. I think that, generally, most people are going to agree on the fact that the money must match the needs. Now, how do you establish those needs? Also, how are we going to adapt to those changes with time? We cannot instantaneously make draconian changes to meet these needs.

Mr. Kennedy just spoke about aspects like the location where immigrants initially settle. It's a fairly approximate way of determining where the needs are geographically across Canada. I would like to know this. If you had to help the committee and suggest to us a way to establish where the long-term needs are and where we should invest, how would you do that? What would you base your calculation on?

10:10 a.m.

Board Chair, Asian Community AIDS Services

Andre Goh

Thank you very much.

If I may, one of the things that we found with regard to allocation of money.... As we know, statistics can be used in multiple ways, and the challenge is that landings don't give an accurate picture. Ideally what you should be doing is where the immigrants are. Generally, what we found is that somebody who lands may not seek services immediately. It's going to take them a while to get used to the environment, wherever they are, to then understand the country and the distribution of services and needs. What we found is that some of the people we service have been here five, eight, ten years, and haven't actually understood that they are entitled to some services, that they can access some services, in part because there are barriers in place. Many people have already spoken about that.

What we've always said is that if you follow the landings it will give you an inaccurate reading and you're going to give funding based on something that evolves almost on a quarterly basis.