I would like to thank you for inviting us to this session.
The Islamic Foundation of Toronto has been in existence as a SAH, a sponsorship agreement holder, for the past 15 years, but we have aggressively worked on the private sponsorship of Syrian refugees and the BVOR categories since January 2016. Until March 31, when there were no restrictions on how many applications we could submit, we submitted around 187 applications for 187 families, and that is approximately 8,500 persons, with a financial commitment from outside of $6 million. Without government support, without the IRCC, and without our bureaucrats, this would not have been possible.
The other category is BVOR, whereby the government supports each of the families for six months. We have sponsored approximately 27 families. As part of the continuation of the process, there are some family members who remain there for whom we have to apply. Other families have been divided, with some left in Turkey, Jordan, or other countries.
We have a challenge, because we have been allocated only six people for the rest of the year, from March 31 onwards, and we're not able to meet the demand of our congregations. Our congregations are ready with the money in addition to the $6 million we have committed, and we have more than 67 families who are waiting in line to sponsor their near and dear ones, with their financial commitments in place. We are taking it up with different levels of the government and taking it up with IRCC, but unfortunately we are not getting any help on that.
We would like to be part of this process to help the government and to reduce the financial commitment of the government. We would like to pitch in with money. However, we need the IRCC to look into the issue of the allocations. If we have submitted applications for 8,500 people from January until March 31—in three months—we should get a fair distribution of the allocation for the rest of the year, and this has not happened. For this reason we request that the private sponsorship of refugee allocations be revamped in terms of how the number of people to be sponsored by each of these SAHs is allocated.
Also, when there is a process of BVOR allocation and a communication is sent to all the SAHs, we respond within three, four, or five minutes' time. Sometimes we'll get one family and sometimes we don't get any. Something has to be looked into. What is the problem? If there are 25 families, why would we not get at least one family? That has to be revamped.
We have a complete settlement process in place. We ensure that the families who are coming in don't just do some odd jobs. We train them. We take them for training first. There is a group of five or six people working with each of the family members. They plan for the whole year. They have one year to see that this family gets settled in Canada and doesn't go on welfare. We work hard.
For this reason the government should also consider giving some secondary funding to the SAHs that are doing the settlement activity. Without a complete comprehensive action plan, we cannot settle these families. We have to ensure that the family members—the kids and all—are settled in life here in Canada. We say each time—and we don't have to repeat it here—that we feel proud that our country has taken up this challenge and has done this great job.
Thank you.