Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Sept. 29th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We have to move to Mr. Dykstra, but before—

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Is it possible to get the answer to my question that they looked up for me?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you.

[Les Linklater]

The answer is 182,276.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

That's interesting, 182,276.

[Les Linklater]

That's correct.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Okay, that’s interesting.

I don't have any more questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I was going to compliment you. Your question on visitor visas was a good one.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

An example, which is similar to hers, is someone who has had a visitor visa a half a dozen or more times and is all of a sudden rejected on the seventh time. So there are a lot of strange things going on. I appreciate that you have issues of fraud, I know that's one of your more serious problems. But there are a lot of unexplained things that we as MPs are having trouble with. I shouldn't speak for everyone, but I'm willing to bet that all parties are having similar problems. It's not necessarily from one particular site or one particular country.

Go ahead, Mr. Dykstra.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know that Mr. Weston has a question as well, so I'll probably turn a minute or two of my time over to him.

I have two things I would like to mention. Number one is the Balanced Refugee Reform Act. The result of the implementation of that act is an additional 2,500 refugees coming into Canada each year. Two thousand of those are privately sponsored and 500 are government sponsored. Could you give the committee a brief description of the difference between a privately sponsored refugee and a government-sponsored refugee?

[Les Linklater]

Sure.

[Dawn Edlund]

I'll start and Les can jump in if I start to say something that's silly.

Government-sponsored refugees are referred to us by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees as those people who meet the definition of a refugee and who are in need of resettlement. Some folks meet the definition but reside in a stable environment, so those cases aren't referred to us. We process applications for government-assisted refugees, or GARs, as we call them.

Privately sponsored refugees can be any number of things. We have sponsorship agreement folders from NGOs, or church groups and the like, who have formal agreements with the department to bring in privately sponsored refugees under the auspices of the agreement they have with us. Also, groups of five Canadians can come together and choose to sponsor someone and show that they have the wherewithal to look after that privately sponsored refugee on arrival.

Those are the two main processing streams for the overseas context.

[Les Linklater]

For GARs I would only add that the Government of Canada provides income support for up to one year after arrival in Canada. For the PSRs, normally we look to the sponsoring groups to provide income support, although we do in some limited cases have what we call blended sponsorships in which we work with sponsorship agreement holders or other G5s to be able to provide partial income support for part of the year.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you.

I'll turn to another topic that you touched on, Mr. Linklater, which is the change in dynamics in the country. For years, Ontario obviously was a centre point for immigration and settlement. That has changed over the past four, five, or six years. I wonder if you could just comment on the fact that we made some significant changes in our funding mechanisms with respect to the other provinces that have seen a significant increase in settlement services based on the increase in immigrants. Could you just comment on the rationale behind that and perhaps comment on the change in dynamic that we have seen in immigrants moving into this country and not just settling in Ontario but going elsewhere in the country? Obviously we're seeing the numbers decrease here in the province of Ontario.

[Les Linklater]

Mr. Chair, I'll try to unpack that multi-dimensional question.

First and foremost, I think as a result of the growth and the efforts that provinces and territories have placed on their provincial nominee programs, 25% of immigrants are now going outside of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, when I think the number was only 10% a few years ago. Our calculation of settlement funding allocations for provinces and territories rests on what we call a three-year rolling average based on initial admissions, so as admissions in other provinces have grown, their share of the settlement funding has gone up at the expense of those provinces where the share of admissions has gone down, primarily Ontario.

That said, I think in terms of settlement services generally in the last five years, the overall number of settlement dollars provided to CIC has tripled from about $200 million outside of Quebec to a little more than $600 million for provinces outside of Quebec for this fiscal year. So in effect we're providing more services to more people outside of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver than was the case 10 years ago.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you.

I'll give the rest of my time to Mr. Weston.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you.

I have a comment and two quick questions. I see we have a few colleagues here.

You can see how important your presentation is. You don't often get other MPs in the room.

Firstly, concerning GARs, for those of us who speak to community groups--and I'll be speaking to one Sunday--what do we say to them? Can you point us to a website or something so we can advise them how to implement the sponsorship?

Secondly, maybe you could close by advising all of us MPs how we can do our job better in dealing with our constituents when we have the kinds of problems that you've heard about from all of the MPs today.

Thank you.

[Dawn Edlund]

If I understood the question correctly,

For the government-assisted and sponsorship refugees, those are actually not sponsored by groups.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

No, I mean the private ones.

[Dawn Edlund]

You mean the privately sponsored refugees. Okay. That's definitely on part of our website. We'll get the locations to the committee so you can see how it works, what the process is, what the application kit has, and how you do it. There are certainly sponsorship agreement holders across the country that we work with. I think there are some 200 that can work in concert with individuals who want to try to have a case brought forward. There would also be an explanation there of how to become a group of five if that's something they wish to explore.

[Les Linklater]

In terms of helping you, I think information sessions like this to provide you with as much information as possible about how our operations unfold on the ground will likely be helpful for you. I know that at the regional offices, information sessions are held regularly for MPs and their constituency offices to share the most up-to-date information possible regarding program and policy changes and how those can help you deal with your constituents.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you. The time has expired, Mr. Weston.

I want to thank you, Ms. Edlund and Mr. Linklater, for coming and expressing some of the issues that are going on in the immigration ministry. We'll be back at it again next week. I don't know whether you're the lucky ones who will be coming, but we're going to study backlogs, so we'll look forward to hearing your comments.

Thank you very much for coming.

Ladies and gentlemen, this meeting is adjourned.