Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 26th, 2015

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[Tracey Vaughan-Barrett]

Through the chair to the member, I would add to that as well.

First and foremost, I think it's critically important that settlement agencies, as I mentioned, be well positioned to provide the tools and resources required to navigate our system. Coming to Canada is complex, as I recall from coming to Canada as an immigrant myself with my parents. You need basic information, tools, and resources to understand the map you need to follow.

To Audrey's point, it is critically important when working with those institutions and organizations for them to understand the benefit, understand the barriers, and have those good, solid, conversations, and have the leaders at the table who can make change in their organizations to ensure that the map works. You have to have the map, and then the map has to work.

In terms of the data piece, what I think is truly important for economic integration is to be able to understand our emerging needs and the way we work to accommodate that integration.

Ajax was recently designated as the first competitive-ready community in Canada. It looked at 175 factors, basically to assess our community readiness for investment. Playing a very strong role among them were diversity, immigration, and having the tools to manage that diversity and immigration. Having welcome centres and settlement services well positioned and a LIP was a huge factor in our success in becoming accredited. It talks about real attraction of investment that's real dollars and cents.

One of our biggest challenges with getting our designation was having access to real-time labour market data. There's that mutual plug: one, being able to speak to the resources we have, and two, being able to better predict. When we looked at our American counterparts with whom we were compared, we didn't have the same sort of robust dataset. My plug would be to ask how we get more localized labour market data and other data to ensure that we're ready, and also, how to speak to the investment of CIC, in this case, and it is attracting investment and employers to locate in Ajax. I think that's a huge win and speaks to the value of the programs.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have less than a minute.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay.

Some of the things we've heard have been very interesting, from previous witnesses as well, particularly the importance of language and of some of the skills that people need so that they can apply for jobs moving forward.

I'm going to ask Ms. Douglas a quick question.

Welcome back to our committee. Perhaps in the little time left you could mention some of the barriers that you see newcomers facing.

[Debbie Douglas]

I think that you have referred to them. Foreign credential recognition certainly remains a key issue. What we know is that even after credentials have been recognized, depending on the particular profession, often there are not enough internship or residents positions available for internationally trained physicians, as an example. Employers are still not as comfortable as they should be in recognizing the credentials that are seen as legitimate in Canada, and so they're not hiring immigrants who are coming in, in terms of skills and work experience, at the level.... We have to put in place more interventions at the employer level so that they have confidence in the credentials, but also so that they begin to see the benefit of having a diverse workforce.

We have been talking about this—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm sorry. We have to move on.

Ms. Mathyssen.

[Debbie Douglas]

I'll come back to it.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

I have a clock that I have to run by. I'm sorry.

[Debbie Douglas]

I absolutely appreciate that, Mr. Chair.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you to our witnesses.

Your presentations today have added incredibly to this study, and I appreciate that very much.

I have two key questions. I hope you can address both of them.

I'll start with you, Ms. Douglas, but certainly I'll welcome comments from our other witnesses.

The first one, and Mr. Menegakis referred to it briefly, is that we have just completed a study on the challenges faced by immigrant women. I wonder whether you could comment on the special challenges that women face when they're settling into a new community. I'm thinking about language training, the availability of reliable, affordable child care, and of course the issue of settling the family.

[Debbie Douglas]

Let me start off by saying that we need a national child care program in Canada. Regardless of where women arrive in Canada, child care continues to be critically important to their labour market participation, but even to their being able to access settlement services. In Ontario, but I think this is true across the country, our language program funded by Citizenship and Immigration provides some child care spaces, and women have absolutely found that incredibly important. We also need to look at the hours of service so that funding allows agencies to deliver programming at all hours so that they're able to accommodate how families have to work and pay the rent, feed and take of their children, and all of those kinds of things.

For immigrant women, what we find often is that they put off their settlement needs while their spouse—and I'm speaking here for heterosexual families—who is often male goes ahead and does the upgrading first, the credential recognition first, while women take survival jobs to feed the families. We have to be able to see how we can support women's faster integration into the labour market if that is what they choose to do.

We also know there are many women who want to start their own businesses. We have many cottage industries, very much on the periphery, what John calls the informal economy. There has to be some way for us to begin to identify those opportunities and provide funding support for those women to be able to grow their businesses where there's an opportunity to do so. When we talk about entrepreneurship, when we talk about self-employment, you also have to look at the needs of immigrant women.

Often in terms of violence against women, which continues to be an ongoing concern for us, it's a concern for all women here in Canada. It's also true for immigrant and refugee women, and the kinds of programming that needs to be in place beginning at the settlement agency level is critically important. Citizenship and Immigration Canada absolutely has to be a partner, along with Status of Women Canada, in terms of providing funding support for those kinds of services.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

You said something in your remarks that I found very interesting. You said that family plays a key role in social integration, and without social integration there's very little economic success. I am wondering, re there real barriers to family unification? What are your clients experiencing? If there are barriers, what should the government be doing to help overcome these barriers so that we can have families together?

[Debbie Douglas]

The changes to our family reunification program where we've capped applications at 5,000 per year and we've also instituted our 10-year multiple in and out visa—what we call the super visa—have really made a difference in terms of who gets into Canada and how families are supported. The changes have created a class bias. Families with money can afford the super visa. It is families at the middle income and lower who are not able to get their families in.

It's interesting. I pay attention to the family reunification application numbers and for the last two years, before the end of February, the 5,000 cap has been reached. We know there are many families who want to sponsor family members, grandparents, which goes back to the child care issue and women being able to participate fully in the labour market. Often parents and grandparents are the kinds of backbone supports that families need to be able to fully participate. They are also the cultural foundation of families.

If you look at China's one child policy, for example, in terms of the children being here, the parents being overseas, it means that the families are not able to fully concentrate on building their lives here in Canada, because they're having to support families overseas. We look at the economic implications of those kinds of things when we look at other communities in terms of remission and where dollars are spent. We can look at all of these kinds of social fallouts because of the kinds of changes we've made to our family reunification program.

It was good to hear Mr. Menegakis speak to the percentages. On the face of it, though, although family reunification is the cornerstone of Canada's immigration program, it only makes up 25%. I understand that. Principal applicants come with their families, their children and spouses, and those kinds of things, so I don't mean to pretend that isn't true, but we've certainly been moving away from the family as the cornerstone of our immigration program. I think that both anecdotally as well as research would show us that when immigrants have their families together, they do better socially and they do better economically.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Chan.

[Sherman Chan]

I'd like to add one point about immigrant women, and it's true across Canada. Many of them spend much of their time looking after their children or family, and when they want to access settlement services, their eligibility has expired because once they become a Canadian citizen, they can't get settlement services.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

That's a very good point.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. McCallum.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I'd like to welcome the witnesses.

I agree with Ms. Douglas about the centrality of family unification. I think we have had problems recently with the skyrocketing of processing times for family members, which I see in my office in Markham every day.

I would like to begin on the subject of refugees with Mr. Chan.

I agree with Mr. Menegakis in general about Canada's glowing record, but I think that record's been tarnished in the last few years, with Syria in particular.

I heard you say that refugees often in the medium term do better than other newcomers, but in the short term they have specific issues different from others. Are there gaps in the settlement services where we could improve the system for addressing specific needs of refugees? Are there improvements that could be made in how those delivery services are provided?

[Sherman Chan]

Yes, for sure. I know that with CIC we have been, as a sector, addressing this issue through many venues, through the CCL consultations, and also through the National Settlement Council that we really are looking at.

In the short term, yes, many refugees are vulnerable. They come to Canada without anything or even without good preparation. Then we see that we have to look at the service even for a model and whether the model has to be adjusted. Many settlement services are designed for information and referrals, short-term based counselling or support. It's not really looking at settlement planning that is more long term and that has a case management approach. Now we are moving in that direction. Of course, there's always the challenge that if we are spending more time in a particular family of refugees, that means the cost will be higher. I think it's more like a balancing act. How can we incorporate long-term planning and case management, address the psychosocial needs or trauma needs of refugees, and give then more information and consistency? I think that is what we are looking at.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

Professor Shields, I noticed when you mentioned the need for labour market information improvement that a number of the other witnesses nodded their heads, as they're doing right now again. That seems to be a big issue.

Can you tell me if that information has deteriorated in recent years, or has it always been bad? Perhaps more positively, what precise improvements are you talking about that would improve the system?

[Prof. John Shields]

I think we've long had challenges around labour market information. The thing to remember is that national data is useful, but labour markets are local, essentially, so we need to get that information at the local level.

I agree with the point that was made that we need all parties within a region working, so local governments, provincial and national, and non-profit agencies and so forth. We need to get that information at a local level.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

What kind of information? I remember when we were dealing with immigrant workers—

[Prof. John Shields]

We need to know how many jobs in particular sectors are available within a particular region, with a profile of the population that is within those jobs, where the potential gaps are emerging, and age profiles. Ideally, we need fairly detailed information regarding that.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Less than a minute, sir.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

All right. Very quickly, one of the issues in terms of credentials that I have heard is that often people, before they get here, don't know the rules. They come here as a doctor or engineer, and they think they can go to work the next day in Canada.

Is there a gap in terms of providing people with the information they need before they come to Canada as to what they have to do in order to work in their profession?