Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 25th, 2014

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

In the pre-arrival situation, that means we have to deliver that message in almost 190 languages. There's a potential we may have to do that for every major language group that exists around the world.

[Debbie Douglas]

I'm trying to remember off the top of my head in how many countries right now we do have some pre-arrival services. I know out of the U.K. office they probably take care of about 20 countries. Asia is pretty well covered, as well as China, the Philippines, and India, in particular. The U.K. tends to take care of the continent of Africa and the Middle East. We are building infrastructure in terms of being able to deliver those services overseas. It's really looking at where it is that we're putting investments. I want to say again, it has to be seamless. It has to be pre-arrival and in-Canada information once they arrive here.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Madam Belhassen, do you wish to comment on the delivery of information and how we manage that with the people who may be illiterate and with people who don't speak English or French as a first language?

[Amel Belhassen]

It's true it is a bit complicated, especially since, as was just mentioned, women or immigrants make up a diverse group. When it comes to immigrant women, for example, some are city dwellers, whereas others live in rural areas and have a tougher time accessing information. Some of them have never gone to school and don't know how to read or write.

How can we deliver information to them? I think the approach should depend on the prospective immigrant. People on site, in the home country, can deliver the information to them, there, in their native language.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

I'm sorry, sir. Your time has expired.

Ms. Blanchette-Lamothe.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Ms. Belhassen, I'd like to continue the discussion to make sure I understand you correctly. You are saying that we shouldn't use education or language as the basis for choosing who is sponsored and that we need to tailor how we deliver the information to them. If they aren't able to read, then, the information could be provided to them in person, in a language they understand, and adapted to their educational and language abilities, instead of creating a barrier to the information. Is that what you are saying?

[Amel Belhassen]

They shouldn't be chosen. All of that should be tailored to the groups in question.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you. That's what I thought you said.

I'd also like to follow up on what you said about how hard it is to access protection measures and services. I believe all three of you mentioned that. Earlier, one of my colleagues said that a woman's initial reflex would probably be to call the police. That's not true. Given how things work in certain countries or the experiences these women have had, they won't react by calling the police.

I have here the information sheet that CIC provides to sponsored individuals who request it. The document says that, if the person is suffering from abuse and wants to request an exception to the conditional permanent residence measure, they should contact CIC's call centre at the number provided.

But one witness told us that the call centre wasn't suited to that kind of call. The witness said that the person could wait on hold for a long time and that, in some cases, a CIC representative had to call the woman back. Women in abusive situations can't always leave a phone number where they can be reached or wait on hold for long periods of time.

What are your thoughts on those comments? What kinds of services would make things easier for women who want to report abuse or seek help?

The question is for the three of you.

[Amel Belhassen]

First of all, as you just pointed out, the tools exist; they include the police and the services offered by the department. But the immigrant woman's interaction with those services and the police is a sensitive matter. Agencies here would have to explain to immigrant women what the police do. They would need to allay these women's fears and help them understand how things work here, to change their thinking and ideas from back home.

Basically, efforts need to be made at the front end, before these women get here, and once they are here, a lot of outreach and education is needed.

[Queenie Choo]

From the service provider agency point of view, I think it is now even more significant and vital to provide these vulnerable immigrant women with the information they need should those circumstances arise so that they know who to talk to when there's an issue, so that they're not left in those desperate situations when a crisis comes. This is important to better prepare them for the future.

To the service provider agency, we have to make those services available for these people. We have to invest in those services so this is not a vicious circle for those battered women.

[Debbie Douglas]

Let me echo Ms. Choo's comments in terms of the need to continue to invest in the settlement services and the kind of education and training that needs to happen there so that front-line practitioners are asking the right questions so that women are able to disclose.

I believe Ms. Belhassen talked about the need to develop trust in the relationship before someone will disclose that there is violence in the relationship, particularly for women who have experienced trauma, coming out of refugee situations where the state has often been the oppressor. It's difficult to expect them to trust state institutions, like the police, for example, and even settlement services, because for them, walking into a service agency, it's basically a government agency. There isn't that sense that this is non-profit and arm's-length from government. I believe there is awareness that needs to be built, both on the side of the immigrant woman who is coming into Canada, but also on the service industry side, whether or not it's a front-line settlement organization, police services, immigration offices, and including folks working in our call centres.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

On behalf of the committee I'd like to thank the three of you for coming and sharing your knowledge and experience with us. It has been very helpful to us in preparing our report for the House of Commons.

Thank you very much for coming.

We will suspend for a few moments.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll start with two witnesses. The first witness, who is a lawyer from Montreal, apparently has transportation problems. If she arrives, we will let her participate, but in the meantime, we will start with two witnesses.

We have Saman Ahsan from the Girls Action Foundation. Welcome. She is here in Ottawa with us.

We also have Marie-Josée Duplessis, executive assistant, who is from Montreal.

We'll start with you, Madam Duplessis. You have up to eight minutes to make a presentation to the committee.

[Marie-Josée Duplessis, Executive Assistant, Collectif des femmes immigrantes du Québec]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

First, thank you for the invitation. Our director, Aoura Bizzarri, asked me to represent the Collectif des femmes immigrantes du Québec, or CFIQ, and give evidence for your study.

The CFIQ was established in 1983 by stakeholders from various backgrounds. Its mission is to support immigrant women and their families and women from visible minorities and cultural communities as they integrate into Quebec society and the labour market.

I'd like to give you a sense of the kind of work we do. Last year, the CFIQ offered 12 distinct services at its women's centre. A total of 2,685 women benefited from these services and activities, resulting in 12,375 visits to the centre. In addition, 2,400 people, including 900 women, registered for its 11 socio-occupational integration projects.

The CFIQ has expertise in two areas covered by your study, the integration of immigrants into the labour market and the social isolation of immigrant women. I will start with the integration of women immigrants into the labour market.

Immigrant women face many challenges common to immigrants: a lack of knowledge of the labour market, organizational cultures and the skills required in the workplace, the need to learn English or French, and the need to rebuild their work network. All newcomers, be they men or women, face these challenges.

But women must also reconcile a job or job search and family life. Most immigrant women come from traditional societies where gender roles are much more distinct than they are here in Canada. Women are usually responsible for domestic work and taking care of children. In their native country, however, they were able to rely on a large support network and often had domestic help even if they were not rich. In order to enter the labour market here, they must rebuild their personal support network, as well as their professional one.

For the first time in their lives, women often find themselves shouldering all the responsibility for doing the domestic chores, planning and preparing meals, and caring for children. That's a lot of responsibility all at once. Some men do not want to share these tasks, while others are willing to help but do not know how because they never learned how to do them. Regardless, this problem has an impact on the family dynamic and affects the spouses' relationship.

Now, I'd like to spend some time discussing the obstacles immigrant women face, obstacles that are not related to their integration or adaptation efforts. In fact, removing these obstacles falls more on the shoulders of Canadian society.

The first obstacle is the lack of room in subsidized daycare, which obviously prevents immigrant women from trying to enter the labour market. The longer immigrants take to enter the labour market, the more difficult it is to have their credentials recognized.

Another obstacle is the fact that services are not tailored. Offering tailored services is paramount. The immigration process and the individual's situation must be taken into account, as these affect access to services. Bewildered by the immigration process and finding themselves in a place where the rules of the game are different, new and often implied, where both work and personal networks are non-existent, immigrant women need different supports so that they can regain their independence. And goodness knows how much value we attach to independence in our society.

Program standards for public labour market integration services represent another obstacle. In Quebec's case, that involves Emploi-Québec. These services are often aimed at reducing the number of people receiving employment or social assistance. Sponsored women are not entitled to employment assistance; neither are economic-class immigrant women during their first three months in Canada. Often, then, those not receiving a cheque are not allowed to participate in a job placement or training program because helping them does not reduce the number of employment assistance beneficiaries. That denial of services further delays their entry into the labour market or even access to a retraining program.

And, very often, employers require prospective employees to have work experience in Canada. So we have some work to do in terms of making our society more inclusive and accommodating when it comes to immigrants.

Another obstacle is education and credential recognition, which is a very complex issue. Because of time constraints, I won't go into it in detail. I would like to say, however, that on a small scale, there are some pilot projects under way in that respect; they take into account the education completed and the credentials earned as part of a work experience in the host country or not. Non-standard projects of this nature are serving as trial exercises that will make it possible to better assess the situation and support labour market participation. But, even if these projects do perform well, the fact that they are non-standard often hinders their existence in the long term. So the problem as far as adequate funding is concerned, comes back to the non-tailoring of services, standards and programs.

As far as the employer perspective goes, Deloitte conducted a round table dialogue in 2011 involving a hundred or so employers. Round tables were held across the country and the focus of the discussion was diversity. The round tables revealed that employers were risk-averse and that they associated the hiring of immigrants and the difficulty of having foreign credentials recognized with risk. So rather than take the risk, they don't get involved.

The lack of understanding around cultural nuances was another problematic element. So there's a lot of groundwork to be done as far as small businesses are concerned.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Duplessis, you have only a minute left.

[Marie-Josée Duplessis]

In conclusion, what I want to make clear is that employers need help and support when it comes to evaluating credentials. The organizations could play a very significant role in providing that support, facilitating increased awareness and understanding and making it easier for immigrants to enter the labour market.

I still had many points to cover, so I encourage the committee members to ask me any questions they would like afterwards. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

We now have our third speaker. Welcome Ms. Molina, who is from Montreal. We'll let you catch your breath, and we'll have Ms. Ahsan speak.

[Saman Ahsan, Executive Director, Girls Action Foundation]

Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee and share our experience working with immigrant girls and women in Canada.

I think it's clear that immigrant girls and women, including those in the spousal sponsorship program, face various challenges and experience considerable tensions in their efforts to bridge multiple cultures, live in a new context, and respond to the discrimination and barriers to opportunity they face. At the same time they also demonstrate high aspirations, skills in cultural negotiation, and great potential for leadership.

According to statistics from a few years back, girls and young women under 25 made up to 38% of female immigrants to Canada within that particular year.

We can see girls and young women are at the crux of race, class, age, and gender, which are converging factors that make them particularly vulnerable. They find themselves caught between two cultures where their own is often devalued, and they face tremendous struggle in trying to fit into a new culture. Their specific needs and experiences need to be acknowledged and addressed if we want to prevent violence against them and also to prevent an abuse of the immigration system.

Immigrant and refugee processes place many women, including those who come here as a sponsored spouse or those who sponsor spouses to come here to Canada.... In both situations the girls or young women are in particularly vulnerable positions and need our support.

Some immigrant girls and women face violence in their homes, but may have little or no protection due to a range of factors. I think the factors were covered by some of the participants who spoke just before me, so I won't go into detail. For example, there's the lack of information, distrust of the police and services, fear of deportation, language barriers, fear of isolation, just to name a few. There is a range of factors that make them more vulnerable. Perpetrators of violence also think they can escape punishment if the victims feel they cannot afford to report the violence. Usually the victims are girls and women.

I will tell you a little bit about the Girls Action Foundation and our approach. We are a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting girls and young women to reach their full potential as future leaders and change-makers. We operate on a national scale through a network of more than 340 member groups in all provinces and territories across Canada. We provide our members with tools, resources, and training to help them start up programs for girls, including programs for girls from specific backgrounds, such as immigrant and newcomer girls.

We have supported more than 100 initiatives across Canada to build a national movement of active and engaged young women and organizations.

We take an assets-based approach in working with girls and women, because we see immigrant girls and women as having many strengths and skills. They work hard. They carry heavier burdens than their Canadian counterparts, and they act as cultural ambassadors and bridges between two cultures. Often they are the ones who are supporting their family in understanding and accessing services, and in this process they develop skills, such as cultural awareness, communication skills, and resourcefulness, which can be valuable assets for the whole community.

Immigrant girls and young women are more likely to continue and complete their education than their Canadian counterparts, so we really need to see girls and young women who come to Canada, including those who come in as sponsored spouses, as assets, as agents of change, not as victims or beneficiaries just waiting for our intervention.

We have worked a lot with immigrant girls and young women, and we have seen some promising practices that have been proven to work. They include building skills and self-esteem, reducing isolation, and increasing connections to their communities, providing support, especially supports from their peers, and providing girls and women with girl-only spaces where they can express themselves more freely, and last, providing role models, including role models from their own families and communities, to show them they can also reach levels of leadership in Canada.

We have some recommendations that would reduce violence and abuse as well as support communities, girls and women in dealing with violence.

First of all, it's important to see that a holistic approach is needed, one that recognizes the diversity of needs, provides a range of social services, and builds linkages between the different services.

There should be services at all levels. At the individual level, services should help young women develop skills and knowledge to participate actively in society and to deal with issues such as violence when they face them.

There should be family-oriented support to address the stress that families face, especially families who are immigrating together or have other changes in their economic status due to their immigration, to help them support one another and respond together.

There should be services to help the host communities in the process of the adaptation of newcomers, especially women who come in as sponsored spouses and are particularly vulnerable. These services should include: cultural sensitivity and training for service providers, who should also belong to diverse backgrounds that can relate to the young women; increased collaboration between community centres, shelters, police, and justice officials; and ongoing provision of information to immigrant women, especially sponsored spouses, about their legal rights and services.

Health, well-being, and skill-building programs with a feminist and cross-cultural approach need to take place. We should start young because our society needs to equip girls and boys to develop into healthy active men and women who don't commit acts of violence or abuse, but know how to respond if they are ever faced with it.

Policies and programs at the government level must be proactive. Immigrant women should be engaged as a priority right from the start, not as an afterthought. They should be collaborative and flexible and adapt to different needs and realities of women. They need to recognize the role of immigrant women in their families, communities, and society at large. If women are provided with support and resources to develop their leadership skills, they can become a tremendous asset, not only for the young girls of the communities but for society at large, as they can act as role models for younger women and also provide them with support.

Last, I just want to highlight again that we should not overlook the specific realities and challenges that girls or younger women face. As I said, they are at the crux of race, class, age, gender, and they are particularly vulnerable, so they need specific attention to reduce their vulnerability.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Ahsan.

Ms. Molina, thank you for being determined to come to Ottawa.

[Claudia Andrea Molina, Lawyer, Cabinet Molina Inc., As an Individual]

Yes, thank you for having me.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We look forward to your presentation. You have up to eight minutes to make a presentation to us.

[Claudia Andrea Molina]

My comments today will focus on just two aspects relating to the sponsorship program: the conditional permanent residence period of two years and its impact on women in domestic abuse situations, as well as the proposed requirement that sponsored female spouses be able to speak one of our official languages.

The government's objective of protecting women from barbaric crimes is commendable. But requiring women to speak one of the official languages does not address the source of the problem. Unfortunately, this new requirement will discriminate against women from certain countries and subject them to shameful consequences. It will also separate families, preventing women in their child-bearing years from starting a family and, in some cases, from having one at all.

Learning a language is not an easy, straightforward or fast process. I would submit that this new requirement violates the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. What's more, it's an attack on the family and women's rights.

The fact is that the new rule will have no effect whatsoever on many women who come from countries in northwest Africa where honour crimes and forced marriages exist. The reason is that they already speak French.

In addition, there is no research showing that the ability to speak English or French shields women from domestic abuse situations. Resources to help women are what is needed.

In my legal practice over the years, I have seen a great deal of women suffering from domestic abuse. Many of them were from the United States, Canada and even France, just to name a few. They were often well-educated women with careers. However, they were socially isolated, and seeking out support and helping themselves was a challenge.

Violence is a complex problem that won't be solved by learning one of the official languages.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no doubt that Latin, Asian and European women who don't speak English or French and who come from countries where forced marriages and honour crimes don't exist, will be separated from their families and discriminated against unnecessarily, under the proposed requirement.

It's also quite conceivable that some women could face enormous pressure from their husbands to learn English or French quickly so they can be sponsored. And that could cause conflict in families and make women even more vulnerable.

If the objective is to prevent barbaric acts, why not take a targeted approach? I suggest that the government examine the problem directly at its source. Who are the women most at risk of falling victim to an honour crime? What support and information programs are available to those women upon arriving in Canada or before they are sponsored?

Would it be possible for the government to prevent domestic abuse by educating men and women on what constitutes violence against women under the Declaration of the Elimination of Violence against Women, adopted in 1993? According to that declaration, violence can be verbal and leave no physical trace.

Women who are already in extremely vulnerable situations should not be forced to file a police report and further endanger themselves because of the two-year conditional permanent residence period. The conditional two-year period makes women who are victims of domestic abuse more vulnerable, despite the exception put in place by the government. In fact, these women are often asked to provide evidence that they are experiencing domestic abuse. In some cases, what the government is trying to achieve will actually make the abuse these women endure worse, making them even more vulnerable.

The exception in the act should be interpreted very broadly so as to respect the definition of violence in the 1993 declaration, so as to include psychological and verbal violence. Article 1 of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women states that:

[...] the term “violence against women“ means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.

A woman should not have to tolerate shouting, insults and psychological and verbal mistreatment, and should not have to prove this mistreatment in order to remain in Canada. The current law puts the sponsored woman between a rock and a hard place.

This problem existed before the advent of the two-year conditional residency. Indeed, women who were being sponsored were often victims of family violence. They could then ask to remain in Canada on humanitarian grounds or be entitled to an exception. I have had some of these women as clients. They had to prove that they had lodged a complaint with the police or that they had marks of physical violence. It was very complicated and traumatizing for them.

Realistically speaking, it has to be said that lodging a complaint with the police can sometimes make violence against certain women worse. In Quebec, I saw cases where following complaints to the police, violent husbands hunted these women down, and tracked them right to the shelters for abused women that are supposed to be anonymous and have secret locations.

That said, my conclusion is that the conditional residency provision prevents these spouses from giving each other a chance to reconcile and undergo therapy, but does not necessarily protect the institution of marriage as well as judges who give couples some time to change their minds. In real life, sometimes couples quarrel. Certain women will forgive acts of violence, that are then not repeated.

In conclusion, I submit that in sponsorship cases, families deserve as much protection from legislators as do other families. Once I saw a young couple with a newborn at my office. The mother had postpartum depression.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Please wind up, Ms. Molina.

Thank you.

[Claudia Andrea Molina]

Very well.

During the quarrels that followed, acting on an impulse, the young husband called up Citizenship and Immigration Canada to withdraw his sponsorship. The process had to be started all over again from square one, even though they had been close to the end. This story had a happy ending: the couple reconciled and the woman was granted permanent residency. However, how many stories have such happy endings?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Menegakis.