Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 31st, 2016

[Dr. Randall Croutze]

As was indicated, I am hopeful that these individuals.... They are very talented, incredible, resourceful people. I think they are going to be on their feet by that time. If you ask me, I think they are going to be able to integrate very well. They are going to have good-paying jobs, skilled jobs, and they will have dental insurance and those sorts of things. My hope is that they achieve that level of support.

Moving forward, I would hope for that outcome, but for those people who aren't able to do that, the provincial dental associations take a look at assisting people in getting access to some of the specific programs available under social services. Those programs are incrementally better than the present interim federal health program, so the level of care they would receive at that point is meeting a certain standard that would be acceptable. At that point, most of these people would perhaps have a possibility of being covered, depending on their income situation.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

That is good to hear.

[Carolyn Davis]

Many of the government-assisted refugees have a very low level of English language skills, and there is a fair bit of illiteracy in their own language. There are issues around employment and whether or not there are skills that are transferable to an urban life in Canada.

I am not as optimistic as my fellow witness as to the GARs being self-sufficient after a year. This is a group that will probably require more than a year's worth of support. It is certainly another one of my recommendations that this be considered.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 10 seconds.

[Carolyn Davis]

It is not going to have a huge impact on our work, in that we are going to be working with the GARs as soon as they get into their own housing and all the way through.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. Davis—

[Carolyn Davis]

Month 13 is difficult for them, not us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Ms. Kwan, you have seven minutes, please.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses.

I would like to follow up on that, Ms. Davis. In your presentation, you mentioned two issues. One was funding cuts that have been made in the last five years, and perhaps more. I wonder if you can elaborate on the funding cuts and what needs to be in place.

In another presentation, other witnesses in Ontario advised that they have lost funding. There was the LINC program funding cut, for example. In this year's budget, while they didn't lose funding in that stream, they didn't get an increase either, and their workload has increased by more than three times. I wonder if you can elaborate on that.

With respect to month 13 and the impacts around it, you mentioned the issue of the GAR allowance, which follows the provincial allowance, being deficient. I wonder what suggestions you have in terms of a remedy for that. Should the minister, for example, convene a provincial-territorial ministerial table to talk about increasing welfare rates for all people, whether they are refugees or otherwise?

I would love to hear your comments on these issues.

[Carolyn Davis]

I will tackle month 13, because that was actually one of my suggestions.

The rates are set by the province, not by the federal government, but I think everybody has some skin in the game in improving the ability of both those on social assistance and the refugees to have an allowance that allows them to live a reasonable lifestyle. I think this would be a good suggestion, as a start. Certainly considering the extension of GAR support for refugees beyond the year would be another suggestion that might merit consideration.

With regard to funding cuts, I can't speak for everyone across the country, but in Ontario we have had reduced funding. As an organization, over the last five years we have probably lost somewhere in the vicinity of $800,000 to $900,000 worth of funding.

We have five contracts with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, or IRCC, three of them for direct service and two for indirect. In our direct service, we have had either a status quo budget or a reduction. For example, this year in our settlement services in Toronto we lost $210,000. In the Toronto area, we have seen 437 Syrian refugees turn up at our door in the last number of months. We had a funding cut, but we are also seeing quite a number of Syrian refugees.

We didn't get a funding cut in our Peel region contracts, but we were status quo. We are seeing an influx. We are not just maintaining the services we provide to the entire newcomer community, but we are also seeing quite a number of new Syrian refugees.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I know that time is limited. I wonder if you could provide an additional submission to this committee with some details around these cuts and the implications of the increase in the demand for the services.

[Carolyn Davis]

Sure.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

It would be very useful and helpful if that could be submitted to us, so thank you for that.

I want to touch on the question to Mr. Croutze about dental services. In our meeting and in your presentation today, you mentioned that patients have to come in, and then you have to go through the process to re-verify their approval, which often takes up to an hour in terms of staff time. I wonder if you could touch on that issue quickly, and what needs to be done to eradicate this challenge.

[Dr. Randall Croutze]

I think eliminating the requirement for pre-authorizing routine dental work is a start. It's an unnecessary administrative burden. It doesn't occur with any other dental provider. Removing it would be a cost savings not only for the provider but also the dental office, and it would increase access to care. It's a barrier right now that has an easy fix. I think of eliminating the requirement for pre-authorizing a filling. I don't think there are too many dentists out there who are looking for more work. I spent thirteen hours yesterday working on teeth, and I'll be doing that tomorrow. There are a lot of holes out there to fill.

I can let you know right now that dentists are very ethical people. There's no requirement in any other benefits program to do that, and it's unfair to have to do it. Removing that requirement from the very beginning would eliminate having to wait four weeks to provide absolutely necessary and perhaps life-saving treatment. It would decrease the burden in the office and improve access to care.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

To Mr. Baig, via video conferencing, I think that in your presentation you talked about the need for settlement funding. Does your organization have access to government funding?

[Mirza Hakeem Baig]

No, we do not have access to government funding that I have seen, but we are requesting it. For all resources, actually, there is an element of settlement activity we do on a daily basis. We have families coming into our organization every day. We need funding for additional staff that we need. We do most of the funding and we are fairly okay with that, but we need some government funding to take care of some professional equipment for counselling and to provide help for PTSD and so on.

We do get some resources, but we need funding for those areas, because if the families are Muslim, they are more comfortable coming into an Islamic institution than going to a church. If we had some funding, it would play into the resources. It would be helpful to us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Ms. Kwan, you have 10 seconds.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'll address this invitation to all of the presenters in my last 10 seconds. If you have additional information that was not touched on, detailed information about specific recommendations or issues or problems that you see in the community, please send that submission to this committee so that we can review it. Because of time, we're not able to get into all of those details. Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Chen, you have seven minutes, please.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is to the Islamic Foundation of Toronto.

It's such a wonderful pleasure to hear you talk about the incredible support that you have managed to gather in the community, raising $6 million to support refugee families. You talked about having a group of people there to support refugee families throughout their settlement process. You talked about five or six people, a team of people who would help a family. Could you tell us a bit more about that? Who are those folks? What do they do and how do they get involved with your initiative?

[Salahudin Khan, Vice-President, Islamic Foundation of Toronto]

They are all volunteers. We have a list of almost 300 volunteers who are helping us. Even when we are filling out the application forms, everything is done by volunteers. We have the applications, which we have already submitted. We have people who can speak the Arabic language. This assignment of five people to each family is to look after taking them to the doctors, showing them how they can use the transit system, and all of those things. We also try to see where we can fit them for jobs, where the school district for their children is, and so on.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Excellent.

I gather that you are working with local employers. How do you go about finding the jobs and being able to match families and individuals looking for work with the opportunities that are out there for employment?

[Mirza Hakeem Baig]

All of these teams that we have are varied, with different skill sets. There are project managers. There are officials working in each of those groups. They manage their own teams, actually, and the work, so they take care of this.

They have one year. The refugee families have been told that they have one year to work with the group and co-operate with it, and the group is also told they have one year to work and see that the family is settled.

There is budget planning. There is skill-set training. If there is a truck driver, how does he get his credentials here? How does he get his licences? But first it's the ESL part, and then the licences. They are all hard workers that we are seeing. There are farmers, there are construction workers, so it's fairly easy.

However, in the case of professionals who are coming under various sponsorships, we are attaching the doctors and dentists to a group that has a doctor who could help them in at least getting them into the same field in some other job.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Great. Thank you very much.

My next question is to Ms. Davis.

Your organization runs the refugee sponsorship training program. It is quite a unique program funded through IRCC. Outside of Quebec, it's the only program in Canada that is working to support private sponsors.

What are some of the biggest challenges you have encountered with private sponsors in the work they're trying to carry out, and how have you tackled those challenges?

Mr. Chair, I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Sarai.

[Carolyn Davis]

Yes, we are the only people who provide the refugee sponsorship training program across Canada. We had four people providing service to the entire country prior to additional funding, so you get a sense of how very quickly four people get overwhelmed.

Probably the biggest challenge with the sponsors at this point is that there are a large number of new sponsors who responded to the call for sponsorship and who decided that they were going to take this on. It is a very complicated, complex, and responsible position they've put themselves in. It's important that they understand that going in.

Now that refugee families are beginning to arrive in Canada, there's also the complication that the family is here and now they have to begin to actually fulfill their responsibilities. As I said to somebody at a meeting last week, it's like planning for a baby and bringing baby home. It is a completely different ball game. Most people can seem to get the analogy.

When the refugee family gets here, a lot of the sponsors are looking for very practical, hands-on support. We are trying, in a couple of places, to bring private sponsors together to begin to hopefully develop some self-support groups—“We solved this problem this way” or “You solved that problem the other way”—because we can't be there for everyone, certainly. We do webinars to try to get information out to a broad spectrum of people regardless of where they're located.

We do have two staff located outside of our core group. One is in Vancouver and one is in Halifax, and it's a model that we would like to replicate with additional funding down the road to have people more on the ground to do more of that sponsor support work, which is turning out, I think, to be the bulk of our work right now, and it will be the same moving forward. It's going to be a lot more of the sponsor support as they work with their refugees when they get here.