Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 12th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Good morning. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on March 8, the committee will begin its study of the federal government's initiative to resettle Syrian refugees.

Appearing before us today are the minister and senior department officials.

Welcome back, Minister. It doesn't seem as if the week would be complete if you weren't before our committee. We'll begin with your opening statement.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Minister of Immigration]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm delighted to be here again. It's not as if I've been lobbying to make frequent appearances; I think I have been invited. It is a pleasure to be here once again.

This is about the settlement process. To start, I'll have a few remarks.

I am pleased to appear again before you. Today, I want to review various aspects of refugee resettlement, from the recent past to the short-term future. I will focus in large part on Canada's efforts to assist people fleeing instability in Syria, looking both at what we have done and at what we continue to do.

Afterwards, I will be happy to answer questions.

As you know, Canada fulfilled its mandate to welcome 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February, and we're now working on our second commitment, which is to welcome 25,000 government-assisted Syrian refugees by the end of 2016. We've already brought more than 17,300 to Canada, and we are working to welcome the remaining part of this group by December 31, 2016.

Also, my department will make every effort to finalize the processing of the privately sponsored Syrian refugee applications that we received before March 31, 2016, by the end of this year or early in 2017. We already have a number of additional officials in the field, in Jordan or in Beirut, Lebanon, and more will be there. This plan will come out in more detail in a short while, but it has already started, and there are additional officials out there as of today.

The government is prepared to invest up to $678 million across departments over six years to help the Syrian refugees accepted by our country settle here and become integrated into Canadian society. This should underline that Canada's response to the refugee crisis that has touched so many countries around the world will continue to be done in a sustainable way.

Budget 2016 allotted $245 million in funding over five years to our department, starting in 2016-17, for the identification, overseas processing, transportation, and resettlement of the additional government-assisted Syrian refugees.

To call the response to our “Welcome Refugees” initiative unprecedented would not be a stretch, even for a country such as our own with a history of helping many of the world's dispossessed. What we have seen since last November is a tremendous outpouring of support, which continues to this day.

Indeed, one could say that the strength of the support is a problem for me, a challenge for me, because, as I've said before, I'm probably the only immigration minister in the world whose major challenge is not being able to deliver enough refugees quickly enough to satisfy the amazing generosity of Canadian households and Canadian families who want to sponsor them. This is a good problem to have, in the sense that it underlines the welcoming nature of our people, but it's still a problem and, as I said just a few minutes ago, we have started to deploy additional people to the region in order to expedite those refugees as quickly as we can.

The Red Cross welcomed flights of Syrian refugees as they came to Canada. The tireless hours their representatives put in at the welcome centre was quite amazing. As we all know, the Red Cross has once again shown its amazing capacity in the case of the Fort McMurray crisis. Also, Community Foundations of Canada created the welcome fund, and they're working with corporate Canada to help provide affordable housing to refugees.

At the height of the operation we had approximately 500 government officials, including visa officers and military staff, deployed to work on the Syrian resettlement effort abroad, and hundreds more dedicated full time to Operation Syrian Refugees in Canada. I don't think I can say too much to salute the officials of my department and other departments who carried out this amazing operation in Lebanon and Jordan and Turkey over four months to bring in the 25,000 refugees. I think that was an amazing effort, and probably without precedent.

As I've said many times, Syrian refugee support came not only from individuals and small groups, but from private sponsors, municipal, provincial, and territorial governments, and the all-important settlement provider organizations. It was, in truth, a major national project.

Where do things stand now, and how does refugee settlement look going forward? This is expected to be the most ambitious resettlement year in Canadian history, as we work to welcome more than 44,000 refugees. The government has tripled the number of privately sponsored refugees to be settled, about 40% of this year's total of refugee arrivals.

Let me point out that this refers to all refugees, not only those from Syria. I want to re-emphasize that we have not lost sight, despite the recent attention paid to Syrian newcomers, of other refugees who also need our protection.

The Syrian experience taught us quite a bit. We recently completed several lessons-learned sessions so that we could capture best practices and apply that knowledge to other immigration processing streams.

It's true, we have reached a significant milestone. We will report on how we did this fall.

We're all keenly aware that the government and its partners face continuing challenges and opportunities associated with integration and helping refugees succeed. At this point I want to comment a little bit on this question of integration challenges.

With the continuing arrival of large numbers of refugees, settlement services to help newcomers find their place in Canada will play a vital role. In 2016-17 the government is allocating $38.6 million in additional funding to respond to the needs of Syrian refugees, who will need resettlement services to help them successfully integrate into Canadian society. Securing permanent housing for Syrian refugees remains a key priority. As of today, my text says, 97%, and I'm told it's now 98% of government-assisted Syrian refugees have moved into permanent housing.

Some time ago, I think last November, when asked what the priorities were, I said the top three priorities were housing, housing and housing, because at that point I thought that would be a major challenge. Well, it was a major challenge, but it's largely mission accomplished now—98% is almost 100%. I think, thanks in part to the support from the private sector in this area and for other reasons, we have largely reached our goal of finding permanent housing for the refugees.

Of course, the work is by no means done, because there are areas of language training, finding jobs, and other things that are far from complete. But at least on the housing front, I think we can claim, not 100% success, but we can claim 98% success as of today.

Local service provider organizations across Canada are working as quickly as possible to secure necessary and appropriate housing for government-assisted refugees, no matter where they are from, Syria or elsewhere. Once they are here, refugees have access to our full suite of programs, and these include the following.

There is language assessment and training. As of March 10, 2016, more than 4,000 refugees had been assessed for knowledge of English or French, and more than 1,500 had begun language training.

There is support to build networks in communities, for example between newcomers and community members, public institutions, and employers. In 35 social innovation pilots, more than 2,000 refugees across the country have participated in such varied activities as cooking exchanges, sessions on mental health, improving computer literacy, developing peer connections with Canadian youth, and networking with employers.

There is information, orientation, and help finding and retaining employment, including one-on-one counselling.

There are job search workshops, resumé and interview help, Canadian workplace orientation, mentoring partnerships, networking and job-bridging programs.

These are all among the things currently under way.

I think I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair. This gives some idea of where we are in settling the refugees. I would be most happy to receive any questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Tabbara, take seven minutes, please.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Minister, for being here, and thank you to the departmental staff.

Minister, in Waterloo Region we have welcomed more than 1,200 Syrian refugees since last year. Our region punches above its weight. We're only 1.6% of Canada's population, but we've taken in 4.6% of all Syrian refugees arriving in Canada, and they have settled in our region fairly well right now.

I'm advised by our region's immigration partnership that some of the factors that played a role in our region's initial resettlement success include the government's immediate assistance with permanent residency documents and social insurance numbers, enrolment in the interim federal health program at the port of arrival, as well as the elimination of interest-bearing loans to cover the costs of travel to Canada and of overseas medical assessments.

Our region has done a fantastic job of settling Syrian refugees. There have been many individuals and organizations holding fundraisers and welcoming all these Syrian refugees, but I keep getting questions in my constituency. Some constituents have approached me with concerns that our attention to the Syrian crisis is diverting resources and attention away from such important efforts as family reunification and settlement of other refugees from different countries.

I've explained to them that this is a big humanitarian crisis such as we have not seen in many years, but could you provide us with some reassurances?

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

Yes. First of all, I praised the performance of my department in admitting all the refugees but neglected to introduce, once again, the three at the table with me. I should do that.

Catrina Tapley, Dawn Edlund, and David Manicom have been key to this operation and may be called upon to answer some of your questions today.

Yes, Kitchener has done extremely well. I'm told that in housing you're at 96%, so you're just about all the way there.

As to the impact of the Syrian refugee operation on other categories of immigration, which I think was your question, on the one hand I make no apology for the government's giving priority to Syria, because this was the worst refugee crisis the world has seen in decades. There were literally millions of people displaced. It can be seen as almost an existential crisis for the European Union, and it has created a crisis there as well as in many places around the world.

I think the fact that we stepped up as we did to put major effort and resources into this, at a time when much of the world was hesitating or even closing their doors, was the right thing to do.

Now, when you do something like that, it is going to have some implications for other things, because in focusing so much on this, you are necessarily taking some resources away from other things.

I checked out, early in my time as minister, whether this was diverting resources away from dealing with other refugees and I was told several times that no, the people working on the other refugees were still doing that. So service to them was not diminished.

That's not to say it was necessarily good, but it wasn't made worse by the Syrian effort. Along with many other challenges we have, we must improve our speed of delivery for refugees from countries other than Syria, but I don't think these other efforts were impacted negatively by the Syrian operation.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Chair, I didn't mention it but I want to split my time with Mr. Sarai.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Sarai.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Thank you, Minister, and to your staff for coming in.

I want to know first just a quick factoid. In Surrey, what percentage of Syrian refugees have received permanent housing?

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

Maybe one of my colleagues will know. I'm sure it's over 90%.

Do we have an exact number?

[Dawn Edlund, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

I have the number for Vancouver proper, which includes all the folks for Surrey, and that's 97%.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Good. Okay.

Do we have data on the percentage of families who have found employment, out of the Syrian refugees? Are we noticing that they're starting to get employment, or is that still in the infancy stage?

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

Actually that's a good question and the short answer to it is no. We don't have a precise number for what percentage of refugees have employment the way we have a precise number for what portion have permanent housing. We are working to get those numbers from the settlement organizations. We do not have that number right now.

We certainly have been working very hard with industry groups, and I have been speaking to industry groups, going across the country to encourage employers to step up to the plate to hire Syrian refugees. I know a good number have been hired. I cannot give you the precise number.

Maybe one of the officials has something more concrete in this area.

[Catrina Tapley, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic and Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Minister, to pick up from where you are, it's really how we will track those who have moved on to employment.

We'll do it through three different ways. One is what we call the immigration contribution agreement reporting system; we call it iCARE. This works with service provider organizations and they enter information into it. We're building that part so we can track things properly. On top of that we'll have a settlement client outcome survey later this year. That will give us an even better picture. As well, of course, we'll use a longitudinal immigration database.

On top of that I might mention that we recognized employer excellence in terms of employer awards for refugee employment earlier this year. We had three winners from across the country. Just as an illustrative example, Cinnaroll Bakeries Limited out of Calgary, in terms of what they are able to provide for support—transportation support, flexible work schedules, and social activities for employees to build networks—was one of three winners.

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

Maybe just in response to the previous question I might point out, in terms of the impact of Syrian refugees, it cannot be said that this was at the cost of family reunification, because our numbers for family reunification are higher this year than they were last year. They're 80,000 versus 68,000 the previous year, so we have also put a push on for family reunification, especially spousal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Minister.

Ms. Rempel, go ahead for seven minutes, please.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you.

My question is to department officials.

Can you please provide the committee with the total cost to the federal government to date of this government's Syrian refugee initiative?

[Dawn Edlund]

I have our departmental costs, which were part of the main estimates that we saw earlier this week.

The funding was $298 million in 2015-16, and we spent $187.4 million.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Is that for all government departments?

[Dawn Edlund]

That's just for IRCC.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Do you have an idea across government departments what the total figure is?

[Dawn Edlund]

We've started to get that cost coming in, Mr. Chair, and we're just finalizing that. At the end of the fiscal year, at the end of March, we're still tagging some expenses related to that fiscal year that are coming in. The total is in the realm of $141 million or $142 million for all departments.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Do you have an estimate of what the total cost to the federal government for the Syrian refugee initiative will be over a five-year period?

[Dawn Edlund]

We had the initial amount of money allocated for the Government of Canada to deliver on this project, which I believe was $687 million. It may be $678 million. I'm sorry if I have the numbers backwards. We will be working on projecting forward the costs in future years.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I notice in supplementary estimates (A) that there is roughly an additional $150 million allocated to the Syrian refugee initiative. Is this above and beyond the figures you just provided to the committee?

[Dawn Edlund]

Yes, it is. That's money for 2016-17 and that's for processing and bringing to Canada the remainder of the government-sponsored refugees who are part of the government's commitment of 25,000 by the end of December.