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, COSTI Immigrant Services
World Education Services is the provincial body that does credentials assessment. They ran a pilot with us at COSTI for the Syrian refugees who did not have their documents with them. There are other ways to assess an individual's credentials. It was a success, and they're continuing that, so people who don't have documents can go to World Education Services and get some confirmation.
Liberal
Marwan Tabbara Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you.
Ms. Mendez-Smith, there are a couple of things you were mentioning in your testimony and in answering questions. You said that 30%.... You've been trying to fill those positions for over a year. Also, when you were asked questions, you said that you don't have housing in certain communities.
I want to talk about the investments that our government has made. We've looked at integration and opportunity, and the success of Canadians and newcomers requires a substantial amount of investment. That's why we moved forward with the national housing strategy of $40 billion over 10 years, so that we can alleviate the pressures that we're seeing with housing in metropolitan areas, whether it's Toronto or Vancouver and even in rural areas.
I know that in my area some wait-lists for housing are six-plus years, and it's higher in the GTA, from what I hear.
We've also made historic investments in transit and in infrastructure, and we've increased settlement funding by 20% since 2016. These are some of the things we've invested in so that Canadians and newcomers can see their potential success currently and in the future.
With these types of investments, have you seen positive results within settlement services, within newcomers coming to your regions?
Obviously, we need to do more. More investments are needed in rural areas. Adding to that, we've put forward the new rural and northern immigration pilot. Can you elaborate on that?
Executive Director, Four County Labour Market Planning Board
I would have to say offhand that no, we haven't seen a lot of the benefits of the housing situation in our region. I know that our local municipalities are working towards changing some bylaws that will allow some different types of housing, but we haven't seen significant movement on that portfolio yet, which is going to be an important key for us moving forward.
On the topic of the rural and northern partnership, most of our region didn't qualify for the program. We had a lot of our partners across our four county region desperately looking at how we might be able to benefit through this program. Unfortunately, most of our communities didn't qualify. That's why I spoke about the fact that, although we may not have critical mass and although there might be services available in Barrie, London or Kitchener-Waterloo, it is not close enough, and the transportation becomes an issue for residents to get to those services, and it may not be available when they need it.
What we would like to see when we talk about rural communities is how we can get that service in our community so that, if someone comes in today, they can get that service tomorrow, not weeks or months away, to get them integrated into the community, really thinking about, when that distance is determined, what the other parameters are that might have a region considered outside of that main parameter.
Liberal
Marwan Tabbara Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
If we look at the pilot, it's for cities that have a population of 50,000 or less, and it needs to be 75 kilometres from a major city in order to qualify. Maybe you're 50 kilometres or so from a major city, and maybe the population might be closer to 75,000.
Executive Director, Four County Labour Market Planning Board
It depends on if you're looking at the municipality or the county, lower tier, upper tier. Yes, there were many things that disqualified our region.
Liberal
Marwan Tabbara Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
I think that we've put forward this pilot to benefit a lot of rural communities that might be 200 or 300 kilometres away from a major city, if not more. We've had testimony that said it has benefited them.
What would you like to see as a tweak or a slight change so that maybe your community may be able to benefit? We have put in substantial money for infrastructure and transit for a lot of communities, and a lot of communities have said that they have benefited from that. What kind of change would you like to see to that pilot program?
Executive Director, Four County Labour Market Planning Board
I think we need to take into consideration the labour market situation. We have a lot of jobs and we have a low unemployment rate, which means we don't have the bodies we need to continue to support economic vibrancy in our region. If we looked at that as a reason for an investment in our community, I think we could help support that rural community. We talked to most of our partners about whether we could actually apply for this funding. We realized quickly that we couldn't but we also realized the value in having something that suits us.
We are close to and higher than the numbers identified in the project application, but we are still the economic region with the lowest unemployment rate. Bruce Power has thousands of jobs and many of our other employers have hundreds of jobs going unfilled on an annual basis. I just shared 2019 data with you. We have five years of data that show this has been getting progressively worse. We really need to think about it in the context of how to fill those jobs.
Liberal
Marwan Tabbara Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
We have increased the settlement funding, as I mentioned, by 20% since 2016, so that has trickled down to a lot of communities. I know in my community they said yes, they had seen an increase, and obviously they want to see more increases.
Mr. Calla, have you noticed that with—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
You have very limited time. You have your clock open, I'm sure, so you know.
Liberal
Marwan Tabbara Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
—an overall approach of investing in housing and settlement services, that increased funding has benefited your area?
Executive Director, COSTI Immigrant Services
Yes, I can say quickly that the housing has been slow. It's the kind of thing that takes a while, that kind of infrastructure, so we're very happy to see that. It's the biggest issue in the greater Toronto area. One area that you haven't mentioned that has been significant is—
Executive Director, COSTI Immigrant Services
—the child tax benefit. It's making a big difference in the lives of people to pay the rent.
Liberal
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks, witnesses, for your presentations.
I also, as Ms. Mendez-Smith does, come from an area of small communities. In fact, I just wrote down 36 of them in my constituency. That's not counting four that still have a signpost but hardly anybody lives there, maybe five or 10 people.
With respect to getting access to some of these training opportunities, there are jobs in those areas in many of these small towns. Someone from Cartwright, Manitoba, was here about a month ago. He made a presentation to us on what they've done with Westman Immigrant Services in Brandon, Manitoba, as a centre out of Winnipeg. From that area. I think there are actually 100,000 people, unless they've changed it, in the rural and northern development program.
Everybody outside of Winnipeg qualifies in Manitoba but it's a situation where there aren't one or two or five or 10 people being accepted in those areas. I think the government indicated there would only be 15 or 20 places. Well, if you're going to limit the number of communities to be involved, you need to have hundreds of people apply for work in one company or in that area in order to really qualify.
You're saying there's no English training funded in your region. They have to come in to Brandon and there are areas here where they are. Fortunately, in Cartwright, some English training is also done by volunteers.
Can you expand on that? What do you think can be done outside of the funding that Mr. Tilson, my colleague, referred to? I think it's a big thing that you mentioned in your earlier comment, that transportation and housing are big problems as well.
We had situations where the housing was available, when I was an MLA, before I became a federal member.
Can you comment on how volunteers in a community help make these people feel at home, and how important that is to their fitting into the community in the long term?
Executive Director, Four County Labour Market Planning Board
I'll start with the volunteers. I can use myself as an example. When we moved into the rural community—we're on farmland—the neighbours came over and said, “This is what we volunteer to do. What would you like to do?” It wasn't, “If you would like to do it,” it was just an automatic acceptance that we were now part of the community, and so, “This is what we expect you to do.” That really helped, and 17 years later, when my daughter left to go to school, that's the one thing she would miss.
When we talk about integration, it's about how someone feels a part of that community immediately, so they decide to stay. With immigration, you've already uprooted yourself from another home, and you're now here. How do you plant new roots and become integrated? That integration with the community is quite important—for someone to not just welcome you, but to integrate you into that community.
Around the language piece, we find that because of the critical mass in our area when it comes to immigration, we are not funded normally for services offered. There are key individuals in our community who see this as a need, so they volunteer their services. While English as a second language is available online, it's not always accessible or ideal for people to learn through that online method. While there are pockets of services, if we're talking about building skills in English as a second language in order to enter the labour market, we need a more focused and aggressive approach.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Mr. Calla, you were indicating that you started the organization in 1952, I believe, in Toronto. You've learned a lot of lessons over the years then, in regard to the integration of the individual we were just talking about. Of course, in Toronto there's a greater opportunity for them to find work, and probably a greater community for each one of the immigrants or refugees who may come into those areas. Can you elaborate quickly on how your organization is funded as well, how you see some of the integration taking place and the most important things you found in immigration over the years?
Executive Director, COSTI Immigrant Services
Our organization is funded federally through IRCC and through Employment and Social Development Canada for some of the youth programs. Provincially, the MTC, Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, as with Ms. Mendez-Smith's organization, funds employment programs. We also have violence against women programs and mental health programs through the province. We have services through the city. We provide shelter services, and some programs for people on Ontario works. It's a broad range, including private foundations, and that sort of thing. What we try to do—
Executive Director, COSTI Immigrant Services
It's a holistic approach, with English language training, employment, settlement, supports, mental health counselling, whatever it takes to help a person become a productive citizen. That approach seems to work best.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to stay on the topic of funding.
Mr. Calla, you were explaining that you received funding from a number of departments as well as the city and that you had to satisfy various criteria in order to obtain the funding. I looked at your annual report, and I saw that federal and provincial government institutions, as well as the city, provided your organization with funding. I even read that the U.S. embassy in Ottawa was one of your donors, which surprised me a little.
What criteria do you have to satisfy to obtain all of that funding? Administration-wise, how much time do you spend looking for funding? What is your annual budget? I didn't see that in your annual report.
Executive Director, COSTI Immigrant Services
Our annual budget is $32 million. We're the largest settlement organization in Ontario.
Yes, basically when you're doing this work day in and day out, you can see what's working and what's not working and what's missing. Our staff works at identifying those needs and going to the appropriate sources, so if we know that it is within the mandate of the provincial government, we approach them and say that the issue is something that we have an idea how to address.
You mentioned, for example, that some of these things happen accidentally. You saw on our website that one of the funders was the Secretary of State, the American government. They approached us. They wanted to do something with the Syrian refugee program and heard that we were working with youth, and they actually funded a very successful youth program, whose funding has ended. Those Syrian youth now are involved in the community in volunteer activities and so on. These were youth whom we felt were marginalized because they didn't speak English. They weren't fitting in at high school, and now they're actually doing speaking engagements for us.
These are the kinds of things that we identify and then we approach governments and, sometimes, as I say in that instance, they approach us.
Liberal