Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 12th, 2016

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

It's like a backhanded compliment.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

My first question is for the department officials.

How many persecuted Yazidis have been guaranteed permanent resident status as part of the government's Syrian refugee program?

[David Manicom]

We are not able to identify refugees by ethnic origin. We don't have that data in our systems. We are dealing with a small number of Yazidi cases, and we know there are some in particularly difficult circumstances in parts of the world that are extremely difficult for us to get to.

We are working on a small number of cases at this time. I don't know if Dawn has more details, but the number is quite small.

[Dawn Edlund]

I believe it's nine cases at the moment.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Nine cases. Okay.

A total of 600 visa officers were transferred to the Syrian files. What was the impact on their regular jobs? Whatever part of the world they were from, what was the impact on their regular work, and how much were their regular jobs delayed?

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

You mean the people who came out for the Syrian operation? How did it impact their regular jobs?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Yes.

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

Clearly, they were not able to do their regular jobs. We had some people come out of retirement, and we had some people from various departments and from different parts of the world volunteer. Their jobs were backfilled by other people.

That's in general what happened. Perhaps someone else can give more detail on that.

[Dawn Edlund]

We had foreign service officers who were posted in overseas posts, who moved into one of the three processing centres in Beirut, Ankara, or Amman. We also had foreign service officers currently posted somewhere in Canada doing work, who are not processing files but who then went to support the effort, as well as other temporary duty officers from elsewhere in the department who have been trained to do this work and who went over to join or to backfill the other officers who had been displaced.

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

Actually, in my meetings with officials in different parts of the world, quite a number have come up to me and said they were so happy they were able to volunteer. I know we've had people from New York and London volunteering. Somehow or other they were replaced during their period in Jordan or Lebanon.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

On the difference between government sponsorship and the private sponsorship, I attended a couple of functions with the private sponsorship program. I think it's called Paramount Foods in Toronto. They took Syrian privately sponsored refugees. Also, 40 of them were taken by Goodyear Canada in the mechanical place.

How many government-sponsored refugees have found a job? Do we have any numbers?

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

That question was asked before, and we're working very hard to help find them jobs. I, too, have been to events where employers have made many jobs available, but we don't have precise numbers. But, as I think Catrina Tapley indicated, there are two sources we are developing where we will have more precise numbers to answer your question.

[Dawn Edlund]

If I may, Minister, the Province of New Brunswick worked collaboratively with us and the service provider organizations in a really innovative way. We moved people into a hotel in Fredericton, where they started to receive settlement services. Then adult members of the families were interviewed as to what their job skills and capacities were. Then they were actually placed in communities where those jobs were available.

They're not necessarily working yet, but they're working on their language skills. Then there are job opportunities for them in different parts of New Brunswick, like Bathurst and Edmunston. Normally, we wouldn't resettle people there, but they have good opportunities.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

What is the difference between the government-sponsored refugees and the privately sponsored refugees? In my experience, privately sponsored refugees find better jobs and they get settled better. It costs less. In the meantime we put a cap on it. Why did we put a cap on the privately sponsored...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 20 seconds, please.

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

As in most things, there's always a balance. On the one hand the privately sponsored refugees do tend to settle faster. On the other hand, the government-assisted refugees are very vulnerable people, and deliberately so. They generally speak not a word of English or French and have very little education.

We want to help the vulnerable people, and in a sense that's a good thing. However, once they get here, given those demographic attributes, it tends to take longer to settle them than it does the other group.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Ehsassi for five minutes, please.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Minister, for appearing before this committee once again. It was great to hear your opening remarks and to observe and witness all the progress that has been made to date.

I did note that in your opening remarks you referred to this being the end of the beginning, and that there are certain other challenges we should be currently focusing on.

Having had the benefit of looking at this whole process as a partnership between the federal government and Canadians from coast to coast to coast, and perhaps between many provinces and the federal government, I was wondering, as we look on the horizon at the next challenges, whether there have been any private sector companies that have come forward to offer to assist with the retraining of Syrian refugees.

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

Private sector companies have come forward in very large numbers to help in various different ways. It starts with money. I had this campaign to raise money. From CN with its $5 million to other companies with smaller amounts, the private sector raised, I believe, over $30 million. There are also private sector companies that have come forward with jobs, and many of them have hired people. I've spoken to many companies that have either hired people already or are in the process of doing so.

However, you talked about training.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Yes, whether that would be on integration, training, upgrading skills, things of that nature....

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

Perhaps one of the officials could talk about the training. I know about the jobs and I know about the money, but what have the private companies done on training?

[Catrina Tapley]

On training, in particular, I'll come back to my list of award winners, and we'll start there. In addition to Cinnaroll, Highline Mushrooms out of Leamington, in addition to hiring, provide interpretation services, language classes, scholarship opportunities for employees' children. The Prince George Hotel in Halifax provide direct hiring, on-the-job language training, workplace education. There are a number of employers who've stepped up. Those are the three award winners.

In addition to that, what we've created on our website, and it's been very popular, is a challenge for business in terms of corporate goodwill in the hiring of Syrian refugees. We've had a number of corporations step forward in terms of either making donations to the Red Cross, or to others, or to participating in the fund that's established through Community Foundations of Canada, whether that's CN or the Royal Bank of Canada. Now we're encouraging others to develop those hiring opportunities. We're getting quite a list of who's contributing, whether it's IKEA, Sun Life Financial, the five Canadian banks that have collectively donated $1 million. We've developed quite a list, Mr. Chair.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you for that response. It's very encouraging indeed.

As you know, provincial and municipal governments have also assumed a role in this process, especially insofar as providing educational services is concerned. Has the federal government been approached by any level of government asking for an offset of the costs that have been borne by provinces or municipalities?

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

Not very much. Provincial governments have a tendency to ask federal governments for money. I would say that the overall spirit of our provincial partners has been to each put forward the money we put forward and work together. We had a recent meeting of all provincial ministers, and me, and everyone commented on the positive spirit of collaboration in which we had worked.

I think there may be one province that thinks it should get a little more money for something or other, but it has not flavoured in a negative way our overall really positive relationship that we have developed on this refugee file.