Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 12th, 2016

[David Manicom]

We can provide exact numbers to the committee, but at this time under that program we've had far more Syrian refugees identified for sponsorship than we've had organizations for doing the matching. However, separate from the family links program, formally the private sponsorship community is engaged very actively in doing sponsorships for people with family links to Canada.

There is, then, the general private sponsorship program and then the specific initiative. In the specific initiative, we stopped taking in new names for matching so that the organization that is doing the match can focus on that part of the work for the next little while.

We can provide exact numbers to the committee.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

That would be really great.

My next question is in regard to housing, with a large number of common sponsored refugees. Many families were temporarily housed in hotels and other such forms of temporary housing for some period of time, and thankfully the department was able to successfully clear this backlog, and, as indicated today by the minister, 98% of the people are in housing and thus did not have to turn to military housing to provide additional accommodation.

What lessons has the department learned that could be implemented in the unfortunate event of another mass influx of refugees?

[Dawn Edlund]

Throughout the course of the first part of the Syrian operation, we learned several lessons and put them into play. The original plan in bringing people to Canada was that they would stay a night, two, or three in welcome hotels in Montreal and Toronto, which were the two ports of entry we were using. Then we would flow those people forward to their destination community fairly quickly thereafter.

It turned out that, with such a quick mass influx, some of the communities like Ottawa struggled with that and asked us to slow down, so people were staying in our hotels longer. Then we moved to put in settlement and resettlement programming in those hotels.

Then we moved into a different version in British Columbia, for example, where we did a hub-and-spoke model with other communities, rather than just Vancouver. We created a new RAP SPO in Victoria and then we resettled people in Abbotsford, Prince George, Kelowna, etc., to get folks out.

Then the third thing we learned was that it was better to have people moved to their province of destination if they couldn't be moved to their community immediately. That's the New Brunswick model I spoke about a little bit earlier. We moved people out of the hotels in Toronto and Montreal to Fredericton. Then they started to receive resettlement and settlement counselling and assistance, some language training, trips to art museums, and other field trips, that kind of stuff. Then they moved from Fredericton to other communities that hadn't typically received refugees, such as Bathurst, Edmunston, Charlotte County, and Woodstock.

[Catrina Tapley]

Just to add to Ms. Edlund's answer, the department has conducted quite an extensive lessons-learned exercise that is still ongoing—we're just completing it now—with provinces and territories, service provider organizations, and partner departments that have been in this to make sure we learn well from what happened.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

If, on average, 98% of the people have gone into permanent housing, do you have any data on that 2%? I know the majority of the government-assisted families are larger, with 6, 8, or 10 family members. Is it because of the size of the family that they have not been accommodated? I know that usually you don't find bigger apartments. Is there any other specific reason that you have found?

[Dawn Edlund]

There are a couple of different reasons. Family size is one. Another one is that, if there are disabilities amongst family members that need to be accommodated, you need to have specific types of housing for them. A third has been that in some instances the Syrian families have been offered housing in several different locations and have decided they didn't want to go into that housing. They didn't like it. They wanted to be in a different neighbourhood, etc.

There are some more complicated cases that are this remaining 2% that we're working on settling. However, as the minister said, we're expecting, from what our service provider organizations are telling us, that everyone should be in permanent housing within about a month.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 30 seconds, Ms. Zahid.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

We have heard about the importance of different areas, such as language, housing, and employment, to the successful integration of Syrian newcomers into Canadian society. The government has taken a whole-of-government approach to the Syrian refugee crisis, but many of these areas cross jurisdictional boundaries between provinces and municipalities. What is the department doing to ensure that all levels of government are working together to help them integrate?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Five seconds, if possible.

[Catrina Tapley]

We have a robust governance structure of how we work with provinces and territories to make sure it is as seamless as possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. Tapley.

Mr. Saroya, you have five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Through you, the most asked question in the riding, I think, has something to do with the Auditor General's report. Why is the CBSA not talking to the RCMP and immigration officials? What is the reason they don't talk to each other? I think this is going back to the fraudulent cases of citizenship. Does anybody have anything to say on this one?

[David Manicom]

We speak with the Canada Border Services Agency at every level of our department every day.

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

Do you think the Auditor General's report is wrong when it says that a number of fraudulent cases were done? If my memory is correct, they looked into 38 cases, and two cases were discussed by the two agencies, and 36 were not touched. The information was available there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Mr. Saroya, are these particular cases within the scope of the Syrian refugees?

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

Maybe not. I can come back to this one. It was the most asked question in the riding. I thought maybe I could squeeze it in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you. Could we return to the Syrian file?

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

Okay.

Has the department done any research regarding resettlement cohorts over the last 15 years? What were the key findings? Did the government consider these findings when drafting their Syrian refugee resettlement program?

[Catrina Tapley]

The short answer, Mr. Chair, is yes. We track groups who come in through our longitudinal database in terms of how they do. We've also used both formal and informal methods in terms of evaluation around both our settlement programming and our refugee assistance programming in order to look at that.

We also took the opportunity with the immigration historical society to talk about the lessons learned particularly from the movement of the Vietnamese boat people earlier, but also from the situation with Kosovo and with others, and the important lessons from those. We looked at those things.

[Dawn Edlund]

I would add that we did an evaluation of the large number of Iraqis that we resettled to Canada. We followed them and saw how they were doing and what kind of support they might need. That was part of what we factored into our plan in relation to Syria.

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

Thank you.

Going back to the private sponsorship in the refugee program, how many sponsorship holder agreements were signed with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in order to sponsor Syrian refugees?

[Dawn Edlund]

I think the number of sponsorship agreement holders that we have is somewhere in the realm of 90. I don't believe that we signed any one specifically just for Syrian refugees. I could be corrected on that, and we could come back to the committee, but for the sponsorship agreement holders for the privately sponsored refugees, we worked with those as we have always worked with them throughout the course of this project.

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

Through you, Mr. Chair, what happens with a private sponsor when, for whatever reason, they cannot fulfill their financial and other obligations to the refugees they have sponsored?

[Dawn Edlund]

There are some instances of what we call “sponsorship breakdown”, where, for whatever reason, it's just not working out. We deal with those individually on a case-by-case basis and look to see what supports can be provided.

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

Are there many cases like this or is it just a handful of cases?