Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 18th, 2018

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Oliphant (Don Valley West, Lib.)), Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

We're going to call the 126th meeting of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration to order. We are continuing pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the study of migration challenges and opportunities for Canada in the 21st century.

We've had one change today with respect to the first hour. Mr. Yosief Araya has had to cancel due to personal illness, so we have Ms. Bond with us. Thank you for coming.

I'm going to suggest that we do a 50-minute hour, and then move to the second panel and save a bit of time at the end of the meeting for an in camera meeting. We will take that 10 minutes when we're not having that second presentation.

Thank you for agreeing to join us today. We're looking at a very broad study on migration challenges. We're doing it in a way that's not exactly linear. We have a variety of issues coming at us, and we will make sense out of them, hopefully, after the testimony has continued for a while.

This is your time. Thanks.

[Jennifer Bond, Managing Director and Chair of the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative, The Refugee Hub]

Thank you, and good afternoon.

Thank you very much for inviting me. It's a real honour to be with you today.

My name is Jennifer Bond. I'm a law professor at the University of Ottawa and managing director of the University of Ottawa Refugee Hub. I'm also currently serving as chair of the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative.

I plan to focus my intervention today on two things: first, the potential of community sponsorship programs to both protect refugees and transform the world's approach to resettlement in very fundamental ways, and second, Canada's unique opportunity to lead this transformation.

I know you've already heard from a number of other witnesses on the scale and scope of the displacement challenges in the world today, so I'll just open with a few key framing remarks.

First, we're facing a dramatic escalation in the number of people being forcibly displaced. You heard the numbers when our colleagues from the UNHCR were before you. They're enormous. Second, the global community has failed to mobilize sufficient collective capacity to adequately protect all these people, particularly since they need protection for longer periods of time than ever before. Third, many governments and their citizens have serious concerns about how these large protection challenges intersect with their ability to effectively integrate newcomers so that they enhance existing societies. Fourth—and we all have to recognize this—when integration fails, communities suffer, anti-immigrant sentiment festers and support for the broader protection agenda is challenged.

It's a very complex and a very challenging moment, but over the past 40 years Canada has been quietly developing an incredibly powerful tool that has the potential to make an enormous difference, and that is community sponsorship. Sponsorship is a program or an idea that many of you know well. Many of you have grown up with it all around you in various ways, and a lot of us take it for granted. It's part of what we understand as a normal component of refugee resettlement.

Until very recently, however, we were the only country in the world with any kind of sustained and robust policy model that gives private citizens primary responsibility for welcoming and integrating refugees into their local communities. Most Canadians don't know that. They don't know how unique this program is.

We introduced community sponsorship in the late 1970s, and since that time Canadians have sponsored over 300,000 refugees on top of those who have been resettled by our government programs. This includes over 30,000 Syrians who have arrived to sponsorship groups in over 400 Canadian communities since 2015 alone.

Canada's use of private sponsorship today has a number of different individual programs: private sponsorships, which is language with which many of you will be familiar; BVOR sponsorships; LGBTQ sponsorships; medical sponsorships; and educational sponsorships. We have a lot of different program streams, and each of them is driven by its own unique policy configurations. At the heart of all of them is this fundamental notion that groups of citizens are empowered and responsible for welcoming and integrating the newcomers. That's at the heart of all those programs.

Collectively these programs demonstrate three important things: first, that community-sponsored refugees integrate comparatively quickly, showing improved outcomes over all kinds of indicators in years one, three and five post-arrival. It isn't really surprising if you think about the many benefits that follow when you have a group of 10 or 20 or even 50 people dedicated to helping you find your way in your new neighbourhood. Of course, the forms of this support are many. They include finding and furnishing housing, providing informal language training over a cup of coffee or a shared meal, introducing newcomers to their neighbours or their local barber, helping kids with homework, teaching them how to skate, supporting adults with resumé writing and landing their first jobs—all these little things make a difference in the lives of newcomers.

From a policy perspective, what matters is that the sponsors themselves feel deeply invested in and responsible for the success of their new neighbours. It stops watching from a distance, and maybe even hoping for the best, from a distance, for your new neighbours. Instead, it's also a collective endeavour. Your new neighbour's success is also your success, and that changes the landscape of what this looks like. The data also shows us it changes outcomes for refugees.

Second, and this is really important, community sponsorship has a profoundly positive impact on local communities. If you talk to sponsors here in Canada, they almost always talk about how meaningful sponsorship has been for them. They talk about how it's brought their communities together, how it's addressed their own sense of detachment and loneliness in a chaotic and technology-driven world. They talk about how fulfilling the experience was. The key thing is that it's always about them. It's not actually about the fact that they did something good for the world. It's about how their lives have been improved. This is really noteworthy in the context in which we're facing the bigger problems around displacement.

It's also noteworthy that sponsorship programs have the potential to engage many different kinds of communities. From our experiences here in Canada, big law firms have engaged in sponsorship, neighbourhood book clubs have engaged in sponsorship, along with entire towns, various faith communities and interfaith communities. This is an opportunity to engage many different kinds of communities.

Of course, it's not only the sponsors who are engaged but also the people who are around them. That's really part of the magic of these programs. It's the people who get asked for a car seat or a couch, or a few hours of their time, not from a stranger or a professional agency but from their friends, from their neighbours, and they feel compelled to contribute.

We know from recent survey data that close to two million Canadians have been part of sponsorship groups just in the last three years. That's extraordinary when you consider our population. I find it equally stunning that another seven million Canadians know someone who has sponsored and offered some form of support. Again, this is an extraordinary reach.

This brings me to my third significant benefit. Over time, sponsorship has the potential to translate, block by block, community by community, town by town, a mobilization that begins in the most intimate of ways. It's about helping families find their way in this new country.

You can take that mobilization and see it translate into strengthened understanding and support for the broader protection agenda. In today's complex and challenging environment, that support is critically important. It's a critical part of what we have to address when we look at the big picture issues that you have all been studying.

Belief that community sponsorship can lead to these three significant outcomes has led to the creation of the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative, or GRSI, a unique partnership that brings together the Government of Canada, the UNHCR, the Giustra Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, and the University of Ottawa Refugee Hub. You have in front of you samples of some material that's been produced through that partnership.

Our collective goal is to encourage and support the adoption of community sponsorship programs all over the world, and there is tremendous interest. As I sit here today, the GRSI is currently working in over 15 countries that are interested in exploring the possibility of sponsorship programs. We're also supporting the design and implementation of publicly announced programs in the U.K., Argentina, Ireland, New Zealand, Germany and Spain. That's an interesting list of countries, in part because of its diversity.

Hundreds of sponsored refugees are already arriving in several of these countries, and we anticipate that by the end of next year there will be tens of thousands of sponsors directly supporting refugees all over the world for the first time outside of Canada. The U.K. is leading in this regard. I was recently at an event in London that gave me an opportunity to hear some of the same kinds of stories that have surrounded us for decades in Canada, except they were being shared with Welsh, Irish, Scottish and cockney accents. It was such a meaningful demonstration of what can happen if we find the right policy tools to empower our communities. Communities have many skills, a lot of energy and a lot of compassion. At this moment, with these significant challenges, we have to empower them.

Sponsorship in the GRSI has been included by UN member states in the final draft of the global compact on refugees, and the international community is currently looking very actively at new approaches to the massive displacement problems you have been looking at. They see hope in sponsorship, they are interested in sponsorship and they are looking to Canada to lead the way.

What can we do? I'll close on this point.

We need to share our 40 years of experience generously, with humility and also honesty. We need to talk about what hasn't gone that well. We need to also grow our commitment to capacity building around these programs, finding significant ways not just to describe what we do here but to roll up our sleeves and offer expertise and operational support and sustained accompaniment as states transform their own approaches to welcoming newcomers. What we take for granted is a huge radical leap in most of these countries.

We also need to find ways to build connections between sponsorship groups in Canada and those that are forming all around the world, so that we can leverage the community-based expertise and generosity and energy and skill that are at the heart of our program here as we're trying to support others in developing these programs in new places.

Most important, we need to recognize the transformative potential of a model that for us is normal. I welcome the study you are undertaking here for that reason. It's an opportunity to see what we do well and the spaces where Canada can lead, and this is one of them. Canada is a trailblazer in the sponsorship space. We've been quietly doing what we've been doing for 40 years, but now the world is asking for us to play a leadership role. Given the scope and the complexity of the challenges that the international community is facing, there's a significant opportunity and a real responsibility for Canada to stand up and seize that moment.

Many thanks again for the invitation to be here, and I look forward to our conversation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Zahid.

[Salma Zahid, Scarborough Centre, Lib.]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bond, for your testimony, and thank you for all the work you have done.

We have heard from some of our previous witnesses in regard to the study about the relationship between the legal and the irregular migration channels, and how cutting down on the availability of the regular and legal migration streams usually leads to an increase in migrants seeking irregular channels, often at great risk and cost.

Can you please discuss the relationship between the legal and the irregular channels? Are there any legal channels that can be made so that we can discourage the irregular channels?

[Jennifer Bond]

I will leave to others who have done more quantitative studying of what happens as we start to move different policy levers and they respond to each other, and I'll restrict my comments here to note that there is an interest at the global level in trying to expand resettlement capacity for two main reasons.

The first is that there are urgent lives at stake. When the international community as a whole doesn't come together to figure out how to protect those lives, desperate people start to move on their own. There is a widespread recognition that if channels aren't created—regularized, safe, available channels for people who are desperate to save their lives and protect their families—there will be increasing pressures on the other forms of movement. That is part of what's reflected in the global compact on refugees. You see states looking for solutions that will try to avoid the pressures that come with irregular forms of migration.

The second—and I really want to emphasize this—is that there is a small number of states in the world who are hosting the vast majority of the 25 million refugees. You've heard about this. I understand you've visited some of these places. There is an intense pressure in those countries on their systems, on their populations, on their communities, and they are looking for support from the international community to recognize that this is a global problem, a global challenge that needs global solutions. Resettlement is not only about creating channels, not only about saving lives, but also about participating as an active member of the international community and signalling solidarity with the states that are hosting the vast majority of the world's displaced persons.

Those are two main reasons to do resettlement generally. Now sponsorship, I would suggest to you, has a third benefit. The third benefit is this change in the hosting populations. We're not only resettling, but we're also supporting the communities who are welcoming the newcomers, and that over time changes the fabric of those communities and, eventually, of the countries in a way that supports the whole protection agenda, including for people who arrive through irregular channels.

[Salma Zahid]

Resettlement is not always an answer with high numbers of IDPs and refugees, we have heard. What do you think? Can Canada take some measures other than resettlement?

[Jennifer Bond]

Sorry, take some...?

[Salma Zahid]

What measures can Canada take other than resettlement to help the increasing number of refugees and IDPs?

[Jennifer Bond]

There are a number of different steps that states have identified as being supportive to a comprehensive solution. One of those includes investing in those states that are doing the vast majority of hosting. We know there are continuous budget deficits through all of the international agencies that are offering support in those states. I think that looking very significantly at the humanitarian envelopes and the development envelopes and identifying how that support can be offered is significant.

As you know, the challenges around IDPs are different, because they have not crossed an international border. There is a series of challenging questions for the international community around IDPs, including who is best positioned to support them and what the politics are around that support, but I think that's a discrete population that we also need to consider.

I know you've had some experts in front of you on the IDP issue. I think all states recognize that they have to take a look at their own integration efforts. These programs and our ability to welcome newcomers successfully depend on investments in integration. That is a place where Canada is a leader—we invest a lot in integration—and a place where we can offer a lot of support to the international community as it starts to consider how to expand the responses.

[Salma Zahid]

I understand that you were involved in some of the deliberations around the global compact on migration. Can you please discuss some of the measures included in the compact designed to encourage safe and legal immigration?

[Jennifer Bond]

I want to clarify that I was not part of the negotiation of the compact. The compact originated in a state-led process in combination with the UNHCR. The UNHCR has tabled a series of drafts for states, and the global community has had an opportunity to input through a series of consultations in Geneva. I have not been a part of that. I have followed the process closely, and as I've tabled here today, some of my work on sponsorship is reflected in the final draft that has been negotiated between states and agreed to by the UNHCR.

[Salma Zahid]

Are there any legislative or regulatory changes that Canada should consider to discourage irregular migration?

[Jennifer Bond]

I understand that your study includes a number of topics, including our domestic asylum system as well as international contributions. I've really come here today to speak specifically on the global contributions and not focus on the detailed legislative changes around our own asylum processes, so I'll defer to some of your other experts on that point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Mr. Tilson.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I understand that you're emphasizing your position and your comments with respect to the international issue, but in doing that, you must have looked at local sponsorship programs. I'd like to ask you a question with respect to the wait times of the approval of sponsorship groups, and secondly, refugee funding.

As I understand it, sponsorship groups can apply to something called blended visa office referral, which I don't know much about. Hopefully you can tell us. They do all the pre-screening. They prepare to have the refugee confirmation ready. Ultimately, the sponsors have to be approved, and then that's it. The refugee gets assigned to them and is on their way.

I've heard of files, with respect to this process, taking one to four months, or even six to 12 weeks—I'd like to hear your thoughts on that—as opposed to the current of one plus a year wait times that sponsorship groups are experiencing.

As I understand it, the government is committed to taking 1,500 claims per year and is currently 500 short, as they need more sponsors. The government looks after the first six months of refugee funding, and then, I understand there is some Jewish organization that is committed to looking after the second six months of expenses. The sponsorship group, if that's the case, would therefore not have to worry about the costs for the first year.

I don't know how familiar you are with this blended visa office referral, but if you can enlighten us, I'd appreciate it.

[Jennifer Bond]

I'm going to take that question in two parts, because I am familiar with the BVOR program—a very unfortunately named program that we refer to in short as BVOR—as a policy mechanism within the Canadian landscape. I am also very involved in the private sector funding you referred to, which for a time-limited moment is subsidizing the sponsors' part of that program. I'll tackle both of those pieces.

The first question you asked was about how the BVOR program works and how it's different in its operational dimensions to what we often call the private sponsorship program. I prefer to call it the naming program, to be clear on what's different.

In the private sponsorship program—or the naming program—individual Canadians or groups of Canadians are able to identify the individual person somewhere in the world who they wish to sponsor. They put that name in and position a series of documents to show why that person should be coming in as a refugee. The Government of Canada then takes responsibility to find that person anywhere in the world to conduct a series of interviews and assess whether they're a refugee. If they are, and if the sponsorship group is approved, they will be able to come through as a sponsorship.

I'll contrast that with the BVOR program, which begins with a UNHCR referral to the Government of Canada. The Government of Canada then does its screening to assess whether this is a refugee who meets Canadian criteria. It also does medical, security and health screening. That person is then offered to sponsorship groups within Canada who are interested in sponsoring.

Because of that very different back end, there's a different operational timeline required between when an application to sponsor is received and when a landing can actually happen. In the one variant, the refugee is pre-approved before she is introduced on paper to the sponsorship group. In the second variant, a name appears to the Government of Canada, and, using its visa offices, it goes and finds them and starts the process of screening. It's very different from an operational perspective.

The other thing that's very different in Canada at the moment is that there is a huge demand to do named refugee cases. We refer to that as the echo effect. There are a lot of people who have arrived in Canada in the last few years who have left loved ones behind. They are currently asking either their own sponsorship groups, or others in the community who they encourage to form sponsorship groups to bring their loved ones to safety. Because of the echo effect, we've had a surge of applications in through this naming program. A lot of those cases we expect will be family reunification cases. That has put a lot of demand on an already slower operation model,

You're absolutely right. The difference in timing is significant. We see wait times of three to five years, depending on the location of the named refugee in the named model. We see landing times of a few weeks in the BVOR model. It's absolutely very different.

I'll speak to your second question on this current moment for Canada's BVOR program. There has been a lot of interest in Canada in retaining this very dynamic sponsorship model. There is a multi-year wait-list that reflects that, but there has been less awareness and less interest in taking BVOR sponsored refugees just over the last short term. There are a number of theories about that, including the fact that the echo effect has encouraged sponsors to support the loved ones of people already here. We can explore that further if it's of interest.

In response to that, a number of community organizations have looked at ways of encouraging the use of the BVOR program and educating Canadian sponsorship groups about the availability of the program. One of those interventions has been led by my organization, the University of Ottawa Refugee Hub. We've partnered with a number of philanthropists who offered to subsidize the sponsor portion of the sponsorship.

You correctly identified a second difference in the BVOR program. Sorry, I skipped over that. In the naming variant, the sponsor bears the responsibility for 100% of the settlement costs for the first year. In the BVOR program, that's split fifty-fifty between the sponsors and the Government of Canada. The 50% that's borne by the sponsorship group is for a time-limited period, being fully subsidized by a group of philanthropists through our organization and a partnership with Jewish Family Services, which is working with us on this.

That has mobilized a long wait-list of BVOR sponsors. Whereas we started a few weeks ago thinking there's a shortage in that space, there's now a long list of people waiting to support BVOR-sponsored refugees, and we have some work to do now to unpack what that tells us about the operational models and the strains on the system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

The question was so good and the answer was ever better, so I let you go on a little long.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I think she's done an excellent job of explaining it to me. I must confess that, until recently, I had never heard of this BVOR program. If your organization is involved in that, congratulations, because it does seem to solve the wait-time problem, although I suppose if it becomes more popular, it won't.

[Jennifer Bond]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Ms. Kwan.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Bond, for your work in the community and for being here as a witness today at the committee.

On the issue around the refugee sponsorship program, as you've noted, there are many people in Canada who are very generous and who want to engage in that sponsorship opportunity. However, there are limitations, because they can't actually get a family here and they've been waiting.

To that end, I wonder if you have any recommendations for the government in terms of direct policy actions that can be taken to address this issue. That's my first question.

[Jennifer Bond]

Great. Thank you.

While I have explained the operational complexities of the naming program, I do share concern that there is a lot of goodwill and compassion in Canadian communities. There are a lot of Canadians who have fundraised. They have the money available and the interest in sponsoring and they're being frustrated by the very long wait times. I do think it's incumbent on the government to consider what it can do.

There are a number of options. One is to invest in those processing capacities. To the extent that there's an operational barrier, there are obviously ways of increasing our operational capacity.

Second there is, as you know, a levels target, which sets a cap on the number of people who are able to come through sponsorships. There are cost components to sponsoring, and there are a variety of operational components, but that cap could ultimately be lifted in a way that would mobilize and facilitate the ongoing interest by these groups. I'm concerned that frustrating the sponsorship groups by having them wait three, four or five years is actually very counterproductive.

The last thing I'll mention is that I do think it is an opportunity to educate Canadians about the other streams available. In addition to the BVOR program, there are a number of other sponsorship-related opportunities that don't involve naming a refugee. Some Canadians just don't know about them, so I think doing a better job of educating about the range of streams might diversify the interests in a way that is beneficial for all of our overall policy objectives.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

This is what I've heard from the community as well, calling on the government to lift the cap. That is very essential, because effectively the cap is limiting the capacity of Canadians' generosity in this effort. I'm hearing from you that's something that the government should do. The other thing, of course, in tandem with that is that the levels numbers have to match. It they don't match, then without one or the other, it doesn't actually work.

Last, on the question around processing, you're absolutely right. Capacity in processing is key. The government has set, for example, for a spousal sponsorship, a 12-month period for processing. Would you suggest that should be the target of the government for this work, for this stream?

[Jennifer Bond]

There are some significant operational challenges associated with refugee-related sponsorships. In part the geographic location of some of these people is quite precarious. We have difficulty accessing some parts of the world where people have named a refugee. It's harder to create a processing target in the same way as is done for other streams in which the application is more paper-based.

I certainly do think investments in that operational capacity will allow us to realize a better average processing time, which would be welcome.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

In the instance of the difficult locations in some cases, where there's not even a processing office to process the work, the government has engaged in the past the UNHCR, the IOM and other international agencies that are reputable to do that work.

In fact, in some of the previous cases with Syrian refugee initiatives on the privately sponsored stream, the former minister actually embarked on that process to get some of the folks processed accordingly so that they could finally get to Canada for resettlement.

Those are the options the government can engage in to make this work in a speedier way. Would you agree with that?