Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 26th, 2015

[Debbie Douglas]

The council is very much aware. I talked about our research study, “Making Ontario Home”, which clearly stated, and we heard from immigrants themselves, that the key issue for them is employment and economic integration. All of our member agencies are autonomous. They're stand-alone organizations. OCASI uses moral suasion more than anything else in terms of the kind of work they do. Our role is really to work in an attempt to influence government so that government is backing the kinds of innovative thinking and programming that agencies are developing to meet the employment support needs of those who show up in the agencies.

We talk about social integration all the time. I think we have to remember that 30 to 35 years ago, when we first formally introduced a program called settlement and integration in Canada, it really was about social integration. It was about how we make communities welcoming spaces. It was about how we work with immigrants to build some social capital so that they're able to participate fully in the community. Only recently have we begun to think of immigration and settlement funding as an economic tool.

It really is around taking a look at the kinds of programming we would need to be “privileging”, for lack of a better word, in terms of refocusing what the sector is paying attention to. In Ontario, for example, about 10 years ago we thought that if economic integration were going to be important, then we needed to look at new structures. There was the creation of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, which was then scaled up across the country. We wanted to take a look at the fact that while labour market and education are under provincial jurisdiction, the federal government is responsible for immigration settlement.

Integration also had a role to play in that, hence the creation of bridging programs. Basically, that's the federal government transferring dollars to the provinces so that they're able to support some of the bridging programs. The research bears out the fact that mentorship, paid internships, all are benefiting immigrants and refugees.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm sorry, Ms. Douglas, but we have to move on.

Mr. Aspin.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Welcome to our guests this morning.

I'm interested in pursuing a question on pre-arrival services. As you well know, pre-arrival services can be vital in the successful integration of immigrants. I would like to hear your comments with respect to pre-arrival services, such as learning French or English, and that kind of thing.

[Debbie Douglas]

We believe that pre-arrival services are important. The country is looking at scaling up pre-arrival services, but we also know there has to be a seamless transition between the kind of information that folks are getting overseas and the kind of services that they need once they arrive in Canada. Right now if we're looking at bringing in 265,000 to 285,000 folks with 65% coming through our economic class, we know that not all of those folks have access to the pre-arrival services overseas. We know that access depends on one's economic situation and whether one is able to travel to where those programs are being delivered.

There is some conversation about looking at online pre-arrival services. We absolutely support that, but we continue to stress that while pre-arrival services information is critically important for permanent immigrants in terms of making informed choices, the services once they arrive are even more important with regard to meeting their real-time needs. But yes, we absolutely support pre-arrival services.

[Audrey Andrews]

I'll give you an example of a simple pre-arrival service that I think has been fairly effective. In Durham region we developed an immigration portal, which is an online local resource about Durham region and its eight municipalities. On that portal is all the information you would ever need to learn, earn, settle, create community, and be successful. We track our statistics fairly carefully regarding from which countries of origin we are getting our hits. The important piece of the model we developed for our portal is that it was created and is sustained to this day by over 80 organizations that serve the needs of newcomers in the community. The 80 organizations are from business, settlement, education, and wherever. We come together quarterly to ensure that information is up to date, relevant, and of value obviously to someone who lives in the community but also for someone who is in their country of origin and is shopping for a community. We believe it's been successful.

[Tracey Vaughan-Barrett]

Following up on that point, that was again one of the very strong indicators of success for Ajax when we looked at our competitive-ready designation, because that type of localized tool with up-to-date localized knowledge and pathways is critical. I think it works hand in hand with more formalized processes that CIC has in terms of pre-arrival service. I think localized knowledge is critically important to underpin those things when someone says, “When I actually get to a community, as opposed to Canada or Ontario, if I go to Ajax, what does that mean for me? What's available? What does it look like? How fast will it happen? Who do I talk to?” They will know all of that before they come, and that's key.

[Sherman Chan]

I definitely see pre-arrival as really important. I came to Canada 27 years ago. I still remember the consulate telling me when I came here that my resumé would be at the bottom of the pile. I still remember him warning me that I would have to really survive, and I would have to do extra work to make myself successful.

It is also the familiarity; the local information is important. I chose Vancouver because I know Surrey. My education in England was in Surrey, and here it's called Surrey. When I looked at a map of Canada, it was close. I came from Hong Kong; it's close to Hong Kong as well. I think that is something many immigrants want to treasure, the familiarity. That makes it more personal. Like local information when we come here or when immigrants come here and there are already people here, they are kind of making a connection. I think that is what connection means.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Mathyssen.

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

I want to come back to my first question, because I have a sense that Ms. Andrews, Ms. Vaughan-Barrett, and Mr. Shields may have wished to answer. It was on the challenges faced by immigrant women with regard to child care, training, and settling a whole family.

Could you comment, please?

[Tracey Vaughan-Barrett]

Thank you for the question. Certainly, it's one of deep interest for me.

Again, as referenced in my notes, when we look at second- and third-tier communities, where perhaps we look at landing stats, we're not necessarily registering as a community that may have had a high critical mass perhaps a few years ago. We see those numbers rising rapidly, but we're often a secondary landing spot, so we're not often captured in terms of landing statistics. When you have fewer numbers, unfortunately one of the challenges with that is that you may not be able to have the types of programs and services in every community that you need to meet the needs. I think when we look at immigrant women in second- and third-tier communities, it becomes that much more complex, that much harder, when we may not have the full robust set of services available to access.

One of the recommendations I would strongly put forward is that when we're looking at the next call around citizenship and immigration, again really look at that mixed service modality to see what it looks like in communities to ensure scalability, to ensure community responsiveness, particularly when we look, for example, at women with very low literacy levels and their opportunity to access language instruction. There may not be enough in the numbers for lower literacy levels, and there may not be a child care program available. What are the other service modalities that we can do? What are the partnerships we can create in order to ensure that those women have the tools they need to ensure that they can integrate? It's critically important for us and more challenging in second- and third-tier communities.

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

Yes, Mr. Shields.

[Prof. John Shields]

I agree with what the other speakers have said. I think one of the big challenges is accessing services by women who sort of run out of time and are not able to access especially language training. That's really critical in terms of integrating into Canadian society and the labour market.

The other thing, of course, is that women, and especially immigrant women, do face a dual labour market. There are different types of jobs they tend to be streamed in, and they tend to be far more precarious and to be paid less. We do need services that are tailored to their specific types of needs. Generic services don't always work for women, and I think they have to be tailored to the areas in which they're located. We need to look at them as a specific type of group with specific types of needs.

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

Would you say child care—

[Prof. John Shields]

Yes, it's critical. Certainly, in terms of accessing the services, somebody has to take care of the children. If the children are not being cared for, then they're not going to be able to access the services, so this really becomes a critical type of issue.

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

I would assume it would put a great deal of stress on a family if children are not being cared for.

I heard reference to the need for data and the importance of data collection. I think, Ms. Douglas, you made mention of the mandatory long form census. Has the cancellation of the mandatory long form census created problems—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I don't know what this has to do with this study.

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

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, but Ms. Douglas made mention of it, and I just wanted to follow up.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Stop the clock for a moment.

I'm just telling you that getting into that discussion has absolutely nothing to do with this study, in my opinion, but proceed and we'll see if it's a long discussion. If it's short, that's fine.

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

Okay, well thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think we'll leave that to our expert witnesses to determine.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

No, you'll leave it to the chair to determine.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You're welcome.

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

My question is about the collection of data. Is that important to your ability to provide services to newcomers?

[Debbie Douglas]

The mandatory long form census gave us better numbers in terms of specific groups of immigrants and how well they're doing in the labour market. When I talked about the research report “The Colour Coded Labour Market By The Numbers”, that was based on the voluntary national household survey. The concern of the researchers was that there's built-in bias, because we know that those who are at the lower economic status and at the higher economic status tend not to fill out surveys unless they are mandatory. It brings some question into who it is that we're missing geographically, but also particularly around issues of race and gender.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Eglinski.