Evidence of meeting #15 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was syrian.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Bradley Trost Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm sitting in today for Mr. Tilson, who unfortunately had to attend a funeral, so a couple of these are questions he asked me to ask.
Here's one question he asked. There exist uncertainties across different sponsorship agreement holders. Since the cut-off at the end of February, some agreement holders have received new quotas, while others have not. What are your observations?
Director, Catholic Refugee Sponsors Council
I think the quotas were out about two weeks ago. I'm aware of one SAH that did not get a quota, but probably there is an investigation there.
The quotas were out two weeks ago. In the meantime, only Syrian nationals were allowed to be sponsored until the end of March.
Conservative
As an Individual
Yes. As I said in my opening remarks, there are some 2,000 identified Armenian-Syrian refugees who are waiting for sponsorship now. If the SAH quotas were lifted, they could be filled immediately. There is frustration in a number of other communities that either very low quotas have been set or in some cases have yet to be set.
Conservative
Bradley Trost Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
Your implied recommendation, then, would be to lift the quotas.
As an Individual
Well, it would be to get on with it, but to lift the quotas would also mean putting some significant resources in place in Winnipeg and on the ground in Lebanon and Jordan to actually process and transport people.
Director, Catholic Refugee Sponsors Council
In previous years the quota was public, so everybody knew which SAH was sponsoring how many. This year, the quota wasn't public.
Director, Catholic Refugee Sponsors Council
We don't know. We asked Minister McCallum last Thursday, and he said that he would look into it. We really don't know who's getting what.
For example, the Office for Refugees at the Archdiocese of Toronto sponsored about 2,300 individuals last year, in 2015. They got a quota of only 1,000, so their office will be definitely implicated.
Conservative
Bradley Trost Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
I appreciate those answers. It will be something for the committee to follow up on.
One of the questions Mr. Tilson asked me to ask is what your experience is with tackling housing issues in the GTA. I know you dealt with that a little bit here. Does either of you want to expand upon those remarks?
Director, Catholic Refugee Sponsors Council
With the private sponsorships, honestly, I am not aware. Usually families are prepared.
As an Individual
I can certainly speak to that.
There is a great shortage of affordable accommodation in Toronto and the surrounding GTA. The accelerated arrivals caused problems just in being able to go to enough places and to ensure that the leases...that families weren't taken advantage of by some landlords.
There is still a problem. There is still a shortage, but we have found that indeed in temporary terms—again, in the communities I have been working with—families sponsoring families very often fill their houses with the families they are sponsoring until they can find locations. Very often, part of the problem in finding affordable accommodation is proximity to a church or a school—
As an Individual
In the case of the Armenian Catholic community, they want to be close to schools and public transit.
Conservative
Bradley Trost Conservative Saskatoon—University, SK
You have one minute for a very quick wrap-up of anything you haven't included, because we are just about at the changeover—
As an Individual
If I could just make that point again, the incomplete point, I have heard some allegations that concern me about immigration officers at our embassy in Beirut who have been very skeptical and unsympathetic to applications made by Christians and have said that they are not subject to persecution. It has already been made very clear that Christian and other minorities—the Melkites, the Yazidis, the Mandaeans—are vulnerable.
I would suggest that the minister should perhaps ensure that assessments of applications received by the embassy are as sympathetic to Christians as they would be to any other legitimate refugee.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you, Mr. Kent.
We will now suspend to allow the next panel of witnesses to appear.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
I would like to begin the second part of our hearing today.
Our second panel consists of Judy Villeneuve, councillor on the Surrey City Council, and Aileen Murphy, senior social planner, both appearing via video conference. Welcome.
Judy Villeneuve Councillor, Surrey City Council, City of Surrey
Thank you very much. We're happy to be here.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
The video is working. Good.
Also, we have Ms. Chantal Desloges, appearing as an individual.
Welcome, Ms. Desloges. We will begin with your seven-minute statement.
Chantal Desloges Lawyer, Desloges Law Group, As an Individual
Thank you.
Honourable members, this is my sixth or seventh time appearing as a witness before this committee. I have to say that it's very nice to see so many new faces here today.
I'm an immigration and refugee lawyer. I have been working with immigrants and refugees in one capacity or another for over 21 years.
For over 10 years now, I've also been working a lot with sponsored refugees, both groups of five private sponsorships as well as sponsorship agreement holders. As a result, I've gained a lot of insight into the pros and cons of the system, both as a lawyer and as a volunteer. Never in my career have I seen so much public interest in the issue of refugees. I often joke with my friends that it suddenly made me very interesting at cocktail parties, which has never happened before.
There are other speakers on your list today who are active in the area of settlement work, and they're probably going to speak a lot more intelligently about that specific issue than I can. As a lawyer, I will focus my advice on how you can use the legal process of refugee selection to choose more wisely and increase the chances of better integration of refugees at the back end. In that respect, I will advance three pieces of advice.
First, focus more on privately sponsored refugees and less on government-assisted refugees. Second, publicize, clarify, and encourage the self-supporting refugees category. I'll tell you what that is in a moment. Third, develop your own priority selection criteria rather than relying so heavily on UNHCR selection of Canada's refugees.
Starting with the first issue, I don't think there can any longer be any doubt whatsoever that privately sponsored refugees show much better and faster integration outcomes than government-assisted refugees. Any person actively involved in settlement will tell you that same piece of information. There are exceptions, of course. We can all think of exceptions of people who we know who were government-assisted refugees who've done wonderful things, but as a general rule, privately sponsored refugees tend to settle down faster. That makes sense, because refugees have a much softer landing when each family is received by a prepared team of people in Canada who have been waiting for a long time and preparing carefully for their arrival in Canada. Their settlement plan, which is part of their immigration package, focuses the sponsors' attention on what to prepare for. It ensures that not only the manpower but also the funds are going to be in place well in advance.
Furthermore, privately sponsored refugees most often have some pre-existing connection to Canada, whether that's through a family member here or through a supportive religious or ethnic community. This is how they get sponsored in the first place. They find jobs much faster because they already know people in Canada. I can testify to that first-hand, because I've hired one of the newly arrived Syrian refugees in my office. Why did I hire them? The sponsorship agreement holder reached out to me and specifically asked me if I had place to hire one. All of this is at virtually no cost to the Canadian taxpayer. Frankly, I think it's a bit of a no-brainer. Not only does it save money, it also imposes very little pressure on settlement infrastructure: no shelters, no hotels, no welfare.
I don't think it's selfish for us as a country to want to select those people who have the best chance to adapt most quickly to our economic system. That's not to say to get rid of government-assisted refugees entirely. Certainly, we want to help those kinds of people who don't have connections in Canada, but we should do it as we have the means to do so. However, despite that, I would definitely suggest focusing more on private sponsorship of refugees, which I think is the most intelligent and the most economically responsible choice.
Attached to prioritizing the PSR program, I would add that the quota system you've heard so much about this morning really needs to be revised. The sponsorship agreement holders are very frustrated with the way that the quotas are being managed. I'm hearing from a number of different SAHs that the system needs to be more predictable and more transparent. If possible, there should be a multi-year plan as opposed to an ad hoc plan, because the ad hoc plan means that from year to year, the sponsorship agreement holders never know how many spaces they're going to have at any given time.
You have to understand that running a sponsorship agreement holder requires an immense mobilization of manpower, both paid staff and volunteers. Volunteer enthusiasm is not something that you can turn on and turn off like a faucet; it's something that has to be managed over a period of time. The advantage we have right now is that there is unprecedented public enthusiasm over refugee sponsorship. Why would we want to squash that by telling them year after year that we don't know how many people you're going to be able to bring, that one year it's going to be high and one year it's going to be low and nobody can properly prepare?
Here's the second issue. I would be interested to know how many people around the room today even know that Canada has a self-supporting refugee program. Has anyone heard of that, heard that you can basically sponsor yourself to Canada? I didn't think so, because 99% of the Canadian public have never heard of it either.
In the immigration refugee protection regulations there are three ways that you can come as a private refugee. One is to be sponsored. Another is to be government sponsored, but there's a third one called “self-supporting refugee”.
It's very important because, as somebody has mentioned this morning as well, not all refugees are poor. There are a lot of people who came from Syria and other Middle Eastern countries that were very affluent before the war. Many people had money invested abroad. Many people were already living abroad and got stranded by the war and were not able to go home, but it doesn't mean that they're poor and have no money.
I would think that this program that nobody really knows about should be promoted in public so that people would know it is an option. The public should be educated on how they can use it, because in the 20-some years I have been doing this, I literally have never seen anybody use this program.
The question becomes “Why?” It's very difficult to get any information about it and nobody really seems to know how it works, but if we're talking about integration of refugees, wouldn't it be wonderful if you had a group of refugees who could come in under their own financial support and be able to put themselves through the system without taking any resources from anyone else?
Finally, here's the third issue. I agreed with what Mr. Allos said earlier, that there's a huge difference between protection needs of refugees and resettlement needs of refugees. All refugees who run away from their country need protection; however, only a certain fraction of those refugees are never going to be able to go home. Who are those refugees who are never going to be able to go home? They are mostly minorities—not only religious minorities, but also ethnic minorities and sexual minorities and women at risk of gender violence.
Lawyer, Desloges Law Group, As an Individual
Okay. Thank you.
I think we should focus on the most vulnerable. Definitely I agree with the previous two speakers who talked about selecting the most vulnerable and not necessarily relying on UNHCR to pull people from camps, which are, after all, an extremely homogeneous community.
Liberal
Councillor, Surrey City Council, City of Surrey
Thank you very much.
Hello. I am Judy Villeneuve and I have been a Surrey city councillor for 27 years. I chair the Surrey social policy advisory committee and I co-chair the Surrey local immigration partnership.
Aileen Murphy is our senior social planner, and she's with me here at Surrey City Hall and will be available to answer questions.
It has been an honour to be asked to present.
The issue of refugee settlement has been an area of great concern to me and the City of Surrey for the past several years. I'll be focusing my comments on our city's efforts to welcome refugees and primarily on the refugee transportation loan program and the impact that the repayment of these loans has on refugee settlement and integration.
As you know, loans were waived for Syrian refugees who arrived in Canada between November 4 and the end of February. I applaud this decision, and in the interests of supporting refugee settlement I am urging the federal government to extend this policy to all government-assisted refugees who are resettled to Canada. It is poor public policy for vulnerable refugee families to start a new life in this country with debt.
The standing committee's study of the settlement of Syrian refugees is very important for Surrey. About 44% of all Syrian government-assisted refugees have settled in B.C., and they're living in Surrey. Any policy changes that result from this committee will have very important implications for our community.
Refugees are not new to Surrey. Over the past decade it's been a primary destination for government-assisted refugees arriving in B.C. As a result, we have significant Somali, Iraqi, and Karen populations. Over the past decade, the struggles of vulnerable refugee children, youth, and families have been a concern in Surrey.
We have been proactive in creating a welcoming community for new refugees. Since 2009 we have conducted a refugee housing study and a refugee myth-busting campaign, held public forums, created information pamphlets for both residents and Syrian refugees, and provided cultural awareness training for staff. We're working with the Surrey Board of Trade to link refugees and employers. We continue to work with our Surrey Local Immigration Partnership and our immigrant advisory round table to develop a refugee integration strategy.
As you can see, the City of Surrey cares about settlement and integration of all government-assisted refugees who find a new home in our city, but we know that the repayment of transportation loans is a major burden for these newcomers.
Upon arrival in Canada, as you know, GARs are required to sign a government loan. The loan covers the costs associated with their transportation, pre-entry medical exams, and a service fee. The maximum amount for an individual loan is $10,000 and, with children over 18, it can be up to $15,000. Refugees are expected to start paying this loan back within 12 months, and interest begins to accrue after three years. Canada is the only country in the world that charges interest.
I first became aware of these loans in 2009, and thus the City of Surrey put forward a resolution to the Union of BC Municipalities calling upon the government to terminate the requirement for refugees to have to repay the transportation loans. The resolution was endorsed by all B.C. municipalities. In 2010 it was endorsed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and at that time the federal government responded that immigration policies were under review.
In 2013 the City of Surrey, in partnership with our poverty reduction coalition, launched a petition, and over 1,000 community members have signed it. Our MP, Randeep Sarai, will be presenting the petition to the House of Commons, and I urge you to support the petition and review this policy at your table.
As a country, our goal should be to break the cycle of poverty for all Canadians. Research shows strong links between poverty and negative outcomes such as poor health, low educational involvement, homelessness, and increased involvement in the criminal justice system. Government-assisted refugees are provided with financial support that is equivalent to provincial income assistance, but it is not sufficient to beat the high rental rates in B.C. We see refugees with loan payments who are pushed into even deeper poverty. Anecdotally, we hear of families who are using their children's tax benefit to pay transportation loans or who are sending their children to work rather than to school to pay off government debt.
Simply put, the refugee transportation loan is counterproductive. While the federal government makes significant investments in the settlement and integration of GARs, the transportation loan negatively impacts this process. It does not make economic sense.
The 2014 and 2015 data show that the federal government could absorb the transportation and medical expenses for all government-assisted refugees at a cost of about $13 million to $14 million annually out of a federal budget of $290 billion.
Canada's refugee program, to our mind, is our country's contribution to international humanitarian efforts. Since 2003, government-assisted refugees arriving in Canada from war-torn countries have had much higher needs. Up until this year, government-assisted refugees have represented only 1% of all new immigrants.
With this in mind, I urge the committee to recommend to the Government of Canada to change the policy so that from now on government-assisted refugees do not start their new life in this country with a burden of debt on their backs.
I have personally spoken with local MPs Randeep Sarai, Jenny Kwan, and Dianne Watts, who will support what could be a cross-party initiative.
The elimination of the loan repayment could be one of the most concrete actions that you take as MPs to help some of the most vulnerable poor families in our country. I urge you to do so.
Thank you.