Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Jan. 30th, 2019

[David Manicom]

Yes.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

—a lot of times they're misled about what to expect in Canada or about their financial obligations. I don't believe they're getting any pre-arrival settlement services and I was wondering if you would be broadening services. It's a two-part question.

[David Manicom]

On the first part, the uptake of pre-arrival services is still quite low. I think it's around 10%, but we'll get you information on that. Of course, sometimes it's because people are coming as a sponsored spouse. They don't feel they need it. Other people already have a job and so they access services as they need them.

In our program redesign, which we've made much more streamlined with more centralized intake at the front end, we certainly need to do a better job of making sure that all newcomers know about the services and have an easy pathway into the system.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Currently how would they know?

[David Manicom]

Through websites and through—

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Does it come on your acceptance letter? I apply for immigration, I got accepted into a program.

[David Manicom]

Yes.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Does it say, here are some pre-arrival services you can call?

[David Manicom]

At the approval in principle stage, they get in writing information about the availability of these programs.

Your second question was....

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

In regard to students, there are international students....

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I need to ask you to be very quick on this.

[David Manicom]

International students are not currently eligible for our settlement programming. At this time, we give it to permanent residents only, with a few small exceptions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you.

That will end our first panel. I suspect that we may ask for more information from you at some point with respect to the breadth of some of the services and the makeup of the programs, and some fundamental things that I think we may need to have as a basis. I'll just let you know that we may get back to you on that.

Ms. Kwan.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I just want to clarify something in my request for information. I don't know if I heard a firm affirmative from the officials undertaking to meet my request for the committee. I just want to confirm that will be the case.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Sure. We'll ask the clerk. I think we assume that it's always affirmative. We'll ask the clerk to follow up from the minutes to make sure that the department has all of the requests that we made so that you understand what we've asked for and can clarify.

[David Manicom]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and in concluding, there was a reference to difficulty with information about how we define our programs and what we spend on each. We do have very firm hard data on all of the services we provide, how many dollars we spend in each one and so forth and so on, which we could certainly provide to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I think a little briefing package from the department would be helpful to the committee members to understand the breadth, the geographic and demographic makeup, anything that you have that you would enable the committee to understand the depth of that.

[David Manicom]

We could provide, I would suggest, some of our off-the-shelf materials, and then if there are gaps, we can attempt to answer them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Very good.

Mr. Maguire.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I have a couple of quick questions, but I don't need to ask them now; I just need the answers. Could I table them with the clerk, and we'll have the officials respond to them?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Sure. Give them to the clerk, and we'll get the answers to you.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I'll get them emailed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

We're going to suspend for just a moment to change the panel. We have a video conference witness, as well as some in the room.

Thank you to the officials; we'll be in touch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thanks to our witnesses for joining us for the second hour. We're beginning our study on settlement services. In particular, this first panel is on pre-arrival services, which are part of that continuum of services.

We're going to begin with Mr. Cecchetto from the IOM. We're glad you're here.

[Matthew Cecchetto, Liaison Officer, Canadian Orientation Abroad, International Organization for Migration]

Thank you.