The short answer is yes. Definitely, Canada can and should do more. There is a general sense right now in Canadian society that privately sponsored refugees are better educated than government-sponsored refugees, and that implies that government-sponsored refugees can't contribute as much.
One of the programs that Jumpstart initially started was about construction. We found out that the construction field here in Canada has a lot of shortages, and needs a lot of skills. We have a database of over 800 refugees across Canada. At that point, 60% to 70% of government-sponsored refugees who were going to hotels had a construction background. We were able to create a pilot project. As long as people were willing to think out of the box.... We partnered with over six organizations, and that was an effort led by Senator Ratna Omidvar.
The government funded a program. In the pilot, out of 94 graduates from construction.... We're talking about government-sponsored refugees who had English levels from 0 to 2 on the CLB, which goes from 0 to 8. Of the 94 graduates, over 50 found jobs. Over 40 of those were full-time jobs. Over 20 of them were unionized jobs. We're talking about people who otherwise could have stayed on welfare for a longer time.
What I'm saying is that we can do more. We proved it. If we think out of the box, and if we have the will, we can definitely do it.