Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 19th, 2015

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you.

One of the other difficulties that service providers often mention is the longevity of the contract they're getting and having very short-term contracts. They're often left waiting to see if the funding is going to be allocated to a particular program until the very last minute.

Can you let us know what the department is doing in regard to having long-term funding available to the service provider rather than having a short-term funding available to them?

[Catrina Tapley]

Madam Chair, it varies depending on, I think, the organization and the nature of the service. We do some on a longer term basis, but we try not to have all our agreements expire at the same time, so some are for a shorter term and some are for a longer term. In part this is based on risk in some areas, but also around needs assessment in terms of what we're looking at or where we want to see a particular contract come back.

Maybe Ms. Primeau can explain a bit how we manage some of this under the call for proposal and how we try to make sure that organizations are not left in limbo.

[Heather Primeau]

We have a larger proportion of longer-term agreements now than we did in the past through our modernization efforts with respect to advance contribution. We can have agreements for up to three years, but as Ms. Tapley indicated, it does depend on the project and it does depend on the risk of the service provider organization.

We have what we call a funding risk assessment model. That helps us determine the risk of the agreement we're entering into. That also helps us determine the number of financial and activity monitors that are needed across the life of the agreement, but it also informs the length of the agreement to an extent.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

One of the other questions I get from my constituents is the hours of accessibility to some of these programs in the communities. Not only that, they're often far away from where they live, and refugees and immigrants often don't have transportation to get there. How are you tackling all that?

[Catrina Tapley]

Madam Chair, these are very good points. Part of what we do and part of the money we spend on settlement services also include support services. These are related to what we've identified as some of the barriers for people being able to take up settlement services, including transportation. In some cases we fund transportation to the particular settlement services. The other is child minding. One of the biggest barriers in having women come into our settlement services in many cases was related to their responsibilities to children, so we provide child minding with many of our programs

We try to look at a number of other supports. We try to watch closely the distribution of our settlement services so we have settlement services not just in major urban centres but in rural areas throughout the country. It's not perfect as you can imagine, Madam Chair, so we try to offer really good services, good video, online and additional programming that we can deliver remotely. This continues to be an area that we explore and we'd like to focus on.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Menegakis, you have the floor.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Chair, in speaking about P.E.I., I was struck by the point Mr. Casey made earlier, so I thought I'd look up a bit of information that perhaps can assist our honourable colleague. The great province of P.E.I. has a population of almost 150,000, served very well by four members of Parliament. The 1,000 immigrants that choose P.E.I. as their new home on an annual basis are served not only by the members when they come to Canada, but certainly by funding through settlement services through an organization called the Prince Edward Island Association for Newcomers to Canada, which was funded in excess of $1.7 million in 2013-14 through our contribution agreements like all other settlement operations across the country. Perhaps the member can note that, and it can be of some assistance to his office.

We know that when immigrants come to Canada, they contribute greatly both to our economy and to our society. We're a very multicultural country. Certainly, as I represent one of the more diverse constituencies in the country, I can attest to how dynamic and important the contribution of newcomers is to our country. In my opinion that helps make Richmond Hill the best town in the country.

I wonder if you can comment on how many permanent residents are in Canada today, and if you have information on how that compares with our peer countries.

[Catrina Tapley]

Canada has one of the highest per capita rates of permanent immigration in the world. One of the countries we compare ourselves most closely to is Australia. It depends on the year as to who holds the title in terms of per capita number of new arrivals in the country. One in five Canadians in this country is foreign born. In terms of the number of permanent residents in the country at any given time, I don't think I have that number in front of me, but I would be happy to get that back to you, Madam Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Thank you, Madam Tapley. The committee will wait for that information.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I've had the privilege of visiting a lot of the settlement providers across the country. I've always been struck by the number of people that I've seen receiving service. These are grassroots operations that are providing real meaningful services. I visited one in Windsor, for example, and it was the opening of the day care component of the service provider. It was a wonderful opportunity for parents, newcomers to this country, that need language training and skills training so they can better integrate into Canada. They dropped their children off in this new child care for newcomers. I thought that's great. The kids are 30 seconds away from their parents while the parents are receiving service.

You mentioned earlier in your speech or in your response to one of the questions about some of the barriers that are commonly faced by newcomers to our country. Can you elaborate on what some of those are and perhaps the more important ones that we see?

[Catrina Tapley]

Madam Chair, I've spoken about the big three barriers: language, foreign work experience, and foreign qualifications. There are a number of other barriers that immigrants face when they come to Canada. One is a sense of isolation and a lack of a community, so to speak. It has been our experience that they struggle to build personal and professional networks, and part of our settlement programming has been targeted in that area. I think it may help to explain the difference between the outcomes for privately sponsored refugees and government-assisted refugees. Privately sponsored refugees have slightly better outcomes than government-assisted refugees in the first instance because they're coming with a community that's prepared to support some of their needs and there is better community support around it. Isolation is a key issue as well.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Sorry, I will have to interrupt you. We are still in the five-minute round.

I will now give the floor to Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you to our witnesses for being here.

First of all, on a point of clarification, Ms. Tapley, I may have misheard, but regarding the number of Iraqi refugees coming in 2015, I think I heard once 30 and once 3,000. Can you confirm which number is correct?

[Catrina Tapley]

Part of the government's commitment when it announced its commitment to an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees over three years was an additional 3,000 Iraqi refugees to be resettled over one year next year.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I thought you said 30 at one point. That's fine.

I have a question on the numbers in Quebec. It struck me that $340 million in Quebec is a grant from Canada and $600 million is for the rest of Canada other than Quebec. Is that correct?

[Catrina Tapley]

That's correct.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

As you said, this is by formula. The number doesn't quite match up on the surface. Are there more services provided in Quebec by that $340 million than are provided in the rest of Canada with the $600 million?

[Catrina Tapley]

Madam Chair, the number in Quebec also includes services for refugees. There's a slight difference in terms of what's provided in Quebec and what's provided in Canada between those two envelopes. Our envelope of $584 million doesn't include refugee assistance programs. That's another $55 million. In Quebec that envelope would include assistance for refugees as well. The formula is based on two aspects. One is the net increase in federal government spending across all programs. If that goes up, so does the grant to Quebec with respect to immigration.

The other part is that it overcompensates for the number of non-Francophone speaking immigrants that the Government of Quebec selects. The formula has a floor, so if the net rate of overall spending is negative, it can't go down. It re-bases every year.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

That makes sense.

The organizations that get settlement funding and so on, how often do you audit these folks? Is it periodically& Is it continuous? What is the level of compliance? What's the action if somebody is not compliant?

[Catrina Tapley]

We do it based on risk. We call it the FRAM. This is the risk assessment model that we use around how often we monitor and how often we audit these organizations.

[Heather Primeau]

The funding risk assessment model is a consistent risk assessment that's applied to each contribution agreement and as Ms. Tapley indicated, that will determine how many monitors are needed over the course of the life of the agreement, both in terms of financial monitoring and activity monitoring.

The activity monitoring is the monitoring to see if the organizations are doing what they said that they would do in the agreement.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I'm not asking for examples by name, but are there examples of organizations that are non-compliant and have had their funding pulled? Has that happened?

[Heather Primeau]

There are a number of steps that are taken depending on the issues. If it's a minor issue, we will work with the organization to resolve that issue. If organizations are not meeting their outcomes, we can reduce funding. If there are serious issues, we can look at ending the agreement as well.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

On the calls for proposals for pre-arrival services and settlement services—you say you work with about 700 organizations across the country—are those calls for proposals accepted regionally, i.e., Ontario, east, and west, or are they provincial, local, or a combination of whoever happens to step up and apply?

[Catrina Tapley]

It's all of the above, Madam Chair.

When we go out, we'll go out this spring with a national call for proposal for settlement services in all areas outside of Quebec, including pre-arrivals—actually, not including pre-arrival services, as we've just done that one. We're currently assessing the bids that came in under that. We'll look at it and some organizations will offer services in a broader geographic area, so throughout the province. Others will be in a particular area or a particular niche. We assess all of those that we have needs in all of those spaces.