Evidence of meeting #155 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 newcomers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Four County Labour Market Planning Board
No, we don't. We are primarily funded.... I will clarify that our funding comes through the labour market agreement. The agreement between the federal and provincial governments is where the funding for local boards comes from.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
You mentioned English training in your community. What are the main issues that you have with respect to being able to access language training in your area, those counties that you represent?
Executive Director, Four County Labour Market Planning Board
Not having the established training available in the community for English as a second language is certainly an issue. When we welcome or try to integrate immigrants into our community, it's not readily available. There is no funding for English as a second language in any of the four counties that we serve.
It's really done through volunteers. The volunteer time is how we're able to provide that service, but it's not adequate to be able to get people to the language level they need to be integrated into the workplace. Having that funded as a service we offer in our community would certainly help us be able to bridge the gap between people moving into our area and being able to be gainfully employed.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
In my riding we have something called Caledon Community Services that provides language training. They, in turn, get funding from the Region of Peel, which of course, has more resources than you do, or indeed, Dufferin County, which is the other part that I have.
I would think that's one of the major issues that you have. You know you're going to have to have language training, but you don't have the resources to provide it. Would that be a fair assessment?
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
The other issue that you got into—and I know I'm going into areas that you've already talked about, and it was an excellent presentation—is the retention of newcomers, particularly in rural communities.
I wonder if you could elaborate more on how you feel that, particularly in dealing with rural communities and small-town communities, the retention of newcomers should take place?
Executive Director, Four County Labour Market Planning Board
There's, of course, education that needs to happen within the community when you're welcoming new people to your community. They look different. They have different cultural desires and expectations. It does change the dynamics of the community.
It's making sure that we have the services, first of all, to help people get to where they need to be, which are the things that I talked about: “How do I integrate here; how do I know when the mail comes; when is the garbage picked up; where do I get my OHIP application?” All of those things are not readily within the community where you live when it's in a rural community.
Then there's having services that help the community be involved on a cultural level, to be able to understand when we bring new people into our community, what they need to know and what we need to understand in our community as well to be able to help the integration.
Integration is one of the biggest aspects for rural communities. When I moved to my rural community, I'm the only one—still, 17 years later—in our community. So it's about us communicating with our community and our community being able to communicate back to help build integration.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Are the boards of education contributing to language training, not just for children, but for adults?
Executive Director, Four County Labour Market Planning Board
The boards of education, so far, in Bruce, Grey, Huron and Perth counties are not particularly involved. There are some pockets where ESL, English as a second language, happens, but it's not across the board.
Conservative
Executive Director, Four County Labour Market Planning Board
Yes. We speak very closely with our boards, and there's a lot more work happening with the Bruce Power life-extension project. There are a lot more people moving into our region, so there's a lot more work happening around this integration.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you both for your presentations.
I am particularly interested in learning more about the successes of the matching up of employment opportunities with employers. Even though those programs might cost a little more, from what I am understanding from other organizations as well, those have been particularly effective in actually ensuring the outcome. That is to say, the participants land a job in their field or area of interest that can further their career goals and therefore maximize all of the potentials for everybody's needs.
Mr. Calla, you talked about this as a pilot program. I think you said that you had a program as such. Can you share with us the information on the cost of the program and who funds you? If you were to run this as a regular program, what would you need?
Executive Director, COSTI Immigrant Services
The pilot program I spoke about was the internship program for refugees. Surprisingly, we did it on $50,000. It worked out to about $2,200 per person, per client. It was very effective. As I say, there were two architects, several accountants, one engineer.... These were all high-end jobs. It's possible to do. It wasn't funded by any order of government. It was a private foundation. That's the kind of thing we would like to see.
You're absolutely right about the role of the employer. That's a key ingredient. Our employment consultants and our staff work hard at establishing those relationships with employers. I'll give you an example. One company in Vaughan, Rex Power Magnetics, makes electrical transformers. Once they got to know us and saw that we were sending quality, talented people to them, over the last number of years they've hired over 200 of our clients—immigrants and refugees—because they know we can deliver. It's about the relationship.
There are other players in Toronto, like the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, with CIBC and TD. CIBC has done over 1,100 mentoring matches.
What is really important about those relationships is that we also influence the company. We talk about Canadian experience. I mentioned it in my remarks as it is such a big issue that they don't have Canadian experience. That's really a bit of a catch-all, for we, as employers, don't know if they understand our corporate culture here in Canada or our work ethic. We don't know if they understand how we operate. If the individual has had some experience in a Canadian company, then they have some comfort that the individual gets it.
Those kinds of relationships transform the company and the co-op or internship also helps with that issue.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Can you ensure that our committee gets information—just as you articulated, but in fuller detail—on how this program worked and so on?
This is a viable example of how governments should fund it and not be reliant on organizations working on the side of the desk. Hopefully someone somewhere along the line will fund it. Clearly, it's a successful example.
Ms. Mendez-Smith, I wonder if you have anything else to add. You're not funded for resettlement purposes in your organization, but clearly this would be a very important component to resettlement. Again, along those lines, I wonder if you have specific requests for the government to support your work in your organization and others across the country to maximize the outcomes that I think we all desire.
Executive Director, Four County Labour Market Planning Board
Absolutely.
Recently, we partnered with a company in Toronto to help train refugees and then bring them to our region, which is the town of The Blue Mountains, where we need workers in hospitality and tourism. You have that strain of having people in a housing situation in Toronto where they're not necessarily getting work. We have work in our region. Being able to support that training and moving that workforce to the regions where there is work would be very beneficial to all of us.
I listen to the radio all the time. I hear about the struggles that are happening with refugees in Toronto. We have training programs that are happening. We have gaps to fill in jobs.
We currently offer some training for manufacturers. Our Four County Labour Market Planning Board works directly with the employers to fill those jobs. We have had lots of people gain jobs. We just don't have the housing in our region to support that workforce. We already have the training. If we could combine those two, we could meet the needs of our rural employers for sure.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
I wonder whether or not you could send something to our committee to more fulsomely express that need and how to match it up. I think that would be appreciated as well.
In fact, just during the break week, I was in Victoria. I met with a refugee who was hired by Vancity, which recognized his training from before. He is now working up to becoming a manager in the branch, which is very exciting. These are stories that we never hear. People are just kind of doing it off on the side, but if we could coordinate our efforts in a concerted way, I suspect that we would be met with greater success.
On a different issue, I wonder if your organizations have come across individuals who have had their training, but they have this problem that they left their country without any of their papers because of the state of the place they have left. The university may have been flattened because it was bombed and they can't get their credentials verified. Consequently, they have nowhere to begin. They literally have to start from the beginning and go through a B.A. and so on and so forth.
I wonder if you have encountered that problem with people who have come to your organization. If so, do you have any proposals for the government for how we could address this issue?
Again, that's a waste of talent that we should try to capitalize on.
Executive Director, COSTI Immigrant Services
The answer is yes, we've encountered it and—
Executive Director, COSTI Immigrant Services
—the response is World Education Services.
