Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 19th, 2016

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

Thank you.

As our region continues to grow, many more services will be needed.

Ms. Bedard, the immigration partnership has been working with employers to open doors for newcomers and to address the employment challenges. How can the federal government help in addressing future employment for resettling refugees?

[Tara Bedard]

That's a very loaded question, and I don't think anybody has the answers to that after so many years of focusing on this in our community.

Certainly the engagement of employers at all levels to support newcomer integration into the workforce is important, and it goes well beyond the capacity of community organizations. Support by all levels of government on accommodating newcomers in the workforce is really important.

There's also the matter of facilitating training needs. We are seeing that the capacities and past experiences of the refugees who have arrived in the Waterloo region are not what they were expected to be, so we need a longer-term focus there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. Bedard.

After the committee meeting, if there are submissions that the group would like to make, please send those through to the committee chair.

Thank you.

Mr. Saroya, I understand you are splitting your time, half and half, with Madame Boucher?

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

She has one question. Let her take her question first.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you for that.

You are very proactive with refugees in the Waterloo region, and I thank you for that. You are a role model in many respects.

I would like to know what is done in your community when people arrive from abroad, like the Syrian refugees, and have health problems. There are also language-related issues, since their first language isn't French or English.

Are you getting the help you need concerning people from other countries—such as the Syrian refugees—with health problems? What has been your experience with those people?

[Carl Cadogan]

We have dealt with health issues for 25-plus years.

I think the uniqueness with the Syrians is the numbers. The process we set up involved working very closely with health professionals and having, within the first week, an assessment of families, so the children, the mother, the father, everyone in the family.

We worked very closely with organizations to ensure that we had interpreters. We usually had two or three interpreters per group.

In some cases when there was a health emergency, we were able to help that family or that individual connect very quickly to primary care support. We had many cases of people who were arriving sick, so we very quickly got them assessed and got them connected to a hospital. Lately we have been trying to connect each of those people to a primary health care provider.

It has meant a lot more work for health care professionals in the community, but a lot more coordination of the work. The coordination aspect, to get medical professionals and hospitals working together and to ensure that we had interpreters who could work with the families when they went to the hospital, was very critical.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Mr. Saroya.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for coming down, educating us, and giving us your perspectives.

Mr. Cadogan, you mentioned the housing issue. Has it been resolved or do we still have issues regarding housing?

[Carl Cadogan]

Again, that's a challenging question. We have 1,200 or so refugees who are now in permanent housing. That took a long time.

I think, as I said, traditionally we try to get people into permanent housing within three or four weeks. This took a bit longer because of the high occupancy rates in the region as well as the large families that were typical of the Syrians who we received.

I think the good thing that happened in the community, one of the other good things, was that landlords responded really well. We went out and spoke a lot to landlords. We brought them together. We made presentations and we had opportunities to see a lot of houses and apartments in Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, Stratford, and all over the region. We were able to really work with landlords to get people into permanent housing, but that took a lot of coordination, again, a lot of focus, and a lot of negotiating with landlords.

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

Are all the refugees in permanent housing as we speak?

[Carl Cadogan]

Yes.

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

That's fantastic.

My next question is very difficult to ask. I just learned in the previous hour of some domestic issues with the Syrian refugees. Are there any issues that any one of you are aware of?

[Carl Cadogan]

I think part of the work that we do is life skills and orientation. Child rearing is an example. Because of the committee that Mike and Ken spoke about, we had a very strong connection to the police.

We had an incident in a hotel, as an example, where there was a family out in the courtyard and I think the father smacked the child. Someone was going by and they saw that and they called the police.

The police came, but because we had that relationship with the police we were able to have some discussions about it. We were able the next day, when we did our workshops and the nurses came in, to really focus on child rearing again, about alternative ways to discipline your child, how to support your kids. It's because of our connection to the system we were able to work very closely.

I think people were afraid that they were going to lose their child because there were lots of stories about the Children's Aid taking their kids and everything else, but we didn't have any of that happen. It helped us to reinforce how best to raise kids in Canadian society.

[Lucia Harrison]

I want to add a very quick point. One of the things that I have seen in my 18 years in the settlement sector is this concern is raised as various groups come into the community, but at any given time when we've done a survey with family and children's services or our women's shelters, the percentage of people who are newcomers, people of colour, new to the country, has been about 25%, which is about equal to our population.

I think we need to be careful not to be drawn into it. It is still a problem in our society as a whole.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

[John Haddock]

Mr. Chair, may I have a couple more?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Very quickly.

[John Haddock]

In our grants committee with the immigration partnership council, we're receiving some applications from organizations like the Muslim Social Services committee that are identifying these cultural issues and looking to provide some intervention on it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Ms. Kwan, you have seven minutes, please.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses for their presentations. It's very useful and helpful.

My first question is to Mr. Haddock. You mentioned the funding cuts and the funding shortfall that you're experiencing, and I wonder whether or not you can be more specific about the areas where the funding shortfall falls and what needs to be done or the amount of dollars that you're looking for to fill the gaps to ensure that resettlement services are properly provided to this large influx of Syrian refugees at this time.

[John Haddock]

I can tell you that on April 1, 2015, our agency, which is primarily a federally funded organization for settlement in the region, received a 10% funding cut. Since then, our intake has increased by 30%. That's without the Syrian refugees. That would be the primary basic settlement services. An area that has been a high need, as was indicated in the previous presentation with the young lady, is our young people. There has been a lack of funding for youth. Most of the settlement services get directed towards the parents and the needs of the adults, which is fine. The settlement needs of the youth, which are somewhat different from the parents, have never received funding, or if they have, it's just been episodic. It hasn't been ongoing funding.

As has been mentioned, I think by Lucia as well, the language assessment and the ESL is critical. It's probably the critical initial component of settlement. Right now, we're having delays because of the volumes. I know back in the Kosovo situation about 15 years ago there were some extra resources for a period of time to help with the influx. I have not seen that yet relative to the Syrian refugees.

Hopefully, that's answered your question.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much. That is very helpful.

I wonder, at a later time, if we could receive a submission from you detailing the specifics in terms of actual dollars, and what amount of dollars you think would be necessary in order for the programs to be delivered, and where the shortfalls are or where there are no programs available. I extend that to all of the witnesses.

I will turn to the point around domestic violence. It was an issue that was raised in the last set of witnesses. Again, in terms of providing the necessary supports in education and information to the families, that would be very essential as well. Can you tell us whether or not the current programs you have in place are sufficient for doing the work that's necessary?

What we want to do here is to understand what the needs are, and then advance to the minister and to the government where the gaps are and where we need to do things far better, efficiently, in addressing the problems. As well, where there are funding shortfalls and gaps in program delivery, those holes need to be plugged.

On the question around language training, this is widespread across the country, I think, where there are huge wait-lists, and particularly in the provision of child care as well. I wonder if you can elaborate with respect to that challenge that you might be faced with. I open that up to anybody on the committee.

[Carl Cadogan]

Well, I think it's very simple, the federal LINC program, as an example, has attached to it child minding. The other option for us is the provincial government ESL programs, which don't have child minding. If there's a wait-list for LINC, and you're looking at the provincial program as an option, you have to find child care somewhere, and if it's not on site as you're learning the language, then it has to be somewhere else. Right now, there isn't the capacity for that.

As John says, language training is very critical. I think timing is very important and getting into employment is very critical, and language training is key to that.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Can I ask a quick question with respect to the federally funded LINC program? Have you had a funding cut in that stream?

[John Haddock]

We had a cut on April 1, 2015. We did not have a cut on April 1, 2016, but there was no increase as well.