Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Jan. 30th, 2019

[David Manicom]

My understanding is that, in the places where we resettled most of the Yazidis, we have been able now to identify Kermanji-speaking interpreters.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Okay.

There has been a scenario I know of in the Lower Mainland where a woman was diagnosed with cancer. She was not able to get her diagnosis because of the language issue, and in fact she only happened to find out her diagnosis by happenstance. She went to the hospital to see the doctor to get the information. Somebody spoke her language. She asked that person to interpret for her. That's how she got her diagnosis.

Aside from where the Yazidi population has been resettled—and that issue has been addressed—has that been addressed overall for newcomers throughout the country?

[David Manicom]

I would never be able to say that we have interpretation service available for every single newcomer in Canada. But we have very substantial interpretation services provided through all of our service-provider organizations across the country.

You will have cases of a little-spoken language in a particular area where interpretation services are not available. Very few Yazidis were resettled in the Lower Mainland, and it would not be surprising if someone were in an area where there was not a Kermanji interpreter.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Sorry, in that instance I used as an example, it wasn't actually a Yazidi woman. It was a Syrian woman who came, so it wasn't an unusual language in that context. But she wasn't able to get her language translated.

My point here is that the suggestion to say that every newcomer will access interpretation is stretching it. I get that. But on the resettlement service side, what work has the federal government done to ensure this is being met for medical needs? You would think that is pretty significant.

What I would like to hear from the government side is that service is being provided and that families who require it would be able to access it. It is inappropriate, for example, for a family member.... I come from an immigrant family, and when I was little, I often had to go to a doctor's appointment to be the translator for my mom and dad. That's not appropriate, and I think it's particularly inappropriate for newcomers of today.

What work have we done to address that issue? You say that for the Yazidi families, where they have been resettled, that's been addressed. You said that.

Now I'm getting to the larger overall population in terms of ensuring that resettlement service is being provided for newcomers.

[David Manicom]

Most specifically for government-resettled refugees, where we destine people through our destination matching centre, the availability of interpretation services is certainly one of the factors considered. We would try to make sure that we don't destine a resettled refugee to a community where we cannot provide interpretation in their language.

With regard to immigrants overall, we have our network of 500 service provider organizations across the country, and providing interpretation services is one of the services that we have contracted to provide.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

If I were a refugee newcomer and I went to a service agency and said I needed a translator or an interpreter to go with me to see my doctor, would that service be provided? Is that how that would work?

When you say all these agencies are provided the service, how do people on the ground get it, because what I'm hearing on the ground is that people can't get it?

[David Manicom]

As I said, Madam, we have a very extensive network of service providers across the country that provide interpretation services in hundreds of languages. Of course, I cannot say there are no newcomers who failed to access interpretation service.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Chair, maybe I can ask the officials to table the list of the organizations broken down by where they are located so we would know where these services are, what they provide and how one can access them. so that we actually have that information—

[David Manicom]

They're free of charge.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I get it that they're free of charge, but I guess you're not quite getting my point that people are not able to access that service. That's my point.

As recently as last winter, I met with a group of vulnerable women who cannot access this service. You say it's available, but somehow they're not getting it. How does one go about getting it? Where are these service agencies? Does someone just show up at the agency and say they need the service and are provided with it, or not?

[David Manicom]

That's right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you, Ms. Kwan.

Mr. Sarai.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Thank you for coming. It's always good to hear an update from you and having you explain the settlement process that welcomes newcomers to Canada.

We got an answer on the percentage of Syrian refugees now employed based on the survey. Do we have data on how many families are employed, or at least one member of every family being employed? It could happen that one spouse is gainfully employed while the other is taking care of the younger children, so the whole family may not be seeking employment but might be fully employed. Is there a way to figure that out from your survey?

[David Manicom]

I don't believe so, based on the survey. The survey results I cited are for all adult Syrians. Later this spring we will have the first database linkages showing us income for all refugees in 2017, which is really the first fully meaningful calendar year related to the large-scale arrival of Syrians, most of whom arrived in 2016, and so 2017 is the first full tax year. We will have that information in several months, and I believe that we could then do household analysis, as opposed to individual analysis.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Would that also include how many refugees are on social services versus not?

[David Manicom]

Yes.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

I ask because my assumption is that the households would be even less. If that's how many people are gainfully employed, there would be very few. A significant number of them are living in my riding in the Lower Mainland core, and I would say that a majority of them are gainfully employed and that very few are now on social assistance. This corroborates what I'm thinking, but I would like to know a breakdown, if you have that to table. If we expect it in spring, then I would look forward to seeing that then.

In your evaluation of the settlement program, your first recommendation states that the IRCC should review and assess its language training delivery and implement appropriate changes to improve its effectiveness. What are the key factors that you believe led to this lack of effectiveness?

[David Manicom]

The difficulty isn't so much lack of effectiveness but demonstrating and attributing our program spending dollars to outcomes. This is very hard to do in lots of social program areas. For that reason, and because we spend a lot of our programming dollars on language training, we have decided to do a separate, more detailed evaluation of language training per se. That evaluation is under way right now.

We do all types of language training, from informal conversation circles to more advanced language training to help people get professional accreditation, so measuring outcomes is challenging. Most particularly, we wanted to do a few things. We wanted to dramatically reduce waiting lists for those with the greatest need, those in the lower levels of the language spectrum, so they can begin initial integration. We've had some success there. Our waiting lists are about 49% smaller than they were a year ago. We also want to dramatically increase the availability of language training linked to employment so that individuals don't have to make the choice between continuing to improve their language skills and getting jobs. Those are our areas we're particularly focused on right now.

We have many other initiatives under way to improve the quality of classroom teaching, to develop better curricula and so forth, but those are a couple I would point to.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

There was a complaint when I met with several settlement agencies in the past that people wouldn't quit a language.... So you're in a LINC program. You come in once in a while, you don't go, but you don't lose your spot and they can't take another student because you still have that spot.

Is there any way to make improve that situation, i.e., that you specify a minimum attendance level and that if someone is attending and they want to continue, by all means they should be allowed to go for further language development, versus those who are registering but not attending or not really participating or being eager to learn, because it holds a spot back for someone else. Sometimes these queues are artificially induced—

[David Manicom]

Yes.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

—appearing to be full, but really only half or two-thirds of the class are showing up. I'm not saying that you have to pass with a 75% average to get to the next class, but how can you have some sorts of metrics that specify that you should at least be making the effort to show up?

[David Manicom]

Yes, this is an area we struggle with quite a bit. I was just at a meeting of our National Language Advisory Board. Our National Settlement Council is also meeting this week. It's very much settlement week in Ottawa.

They're doing a lot of detailed work on finding that tough balance between being kind and welcoming and a little bit tough as well. We now do restrict people to be on no more than two waiting lists. With our service providers, we're trying to develop standards for when someone says, “I'm not available now” for reason X and Y, “but I'm available next month”, and whether we should keep them on the waiting list or remove them.

This question of enrolment versus attendance is something that we struggle with. Generally speaking, we understand there are lots of good reasons why some immigrants aren't able to attend all of their classes. It might be child-minding responsibilities. It might be part-time employment. We work with our service providers to try to have a reasonable approach, but it is a challenging area knowing where tough love becomes too harsh.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

In terms of pre-arrival services, what percentage of eligible immigrants currently use pre-arrival services?

[David Manicom]

It's quite low.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Does this also apply to international students? Are they able to use pre-arrival services? I ask because Surrey has a big cohort of international students who are doing really well, but—