Evidence of meeting #16 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 families.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you.
I would like to thank all of today's presenters for appearing before our committee. Thank you for all of the incredible work you're doing in helping to settle the Syrian refugees here in Canada, and thank you for all of the information you have provided. It will help us in determining ways we can do better in settling these Syrian refugees. Thank you.
We'll now suspend for two minutes to allow the next panel to appear. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Good afternoon.
Our second panel today consists of Paul Clarke and Emily Woods, both from Action Réfugiés Montréal; Thomas Vincent, from the Collingwood Syrian Sponsorship Committee; and from Child Aid International, Nouri Haidar Al Hassani, accompanied by Amer Alhendawi, who is appearing as an individual.
I'd like to note that Mr. Alhendawi solely speaks Arabic, so we'll have the presence of Yohannes Sawassi as an interpreter. Because we don't have simultaneous translation, if there are questions to Mr. Alhendawi, we will be stopping the clock during the translation to make sure we have seven minutes for each round, notwithstanding the non-simultaneous translation.
Go ahead, Ms. Kwan.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Mr. Chair, could I also clarify that point? When Mr. Alhendawi presents as well, presumably he will need to translate into English for the committee members so the committee members can understand and so it can also be recorded on the committee Hansard. Would that time also not come out of their seven minutes?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
That's what I was referring to. For that time for translation, the clock would be suspended so that each round has seven minutes, notwithstanding the fact that we don't have that simultaneous translation. That will not come out of the time of whoever is asking the questions.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Okay. That's for questions, but is it the same for the presentation?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you.
I would like to remind all the panellists that each group has seven minutes to present.
We will begin with Ms. Woods, please, for seven minutes.
Emily Woods Sponsorship Program Officer, Action Réfugiés Montréal
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon everyone.
On behalf of Action Réfugiés Montréal, thank you for the opportunity to share our experiences with you today.
Action Réfugiés Montréal is a non-profit organization that has been funded by churches, individuals, and foundations for over 20 years.
We offer three programs, one of which is focused on private refugee sponsorship in the name of the Anglican Diocese of Montreal and also The Presbyterian Church in Canada. In that program, we work closely with people in the Montreal region to sponsor their own family members living in a refugee situation overseas, and we work closely with them after the arrival of their family members as well.
First I would like to commend the federal government for their commitment to resettling 25,000 Syrian refugees, a job, however, that we all know is not yet complete. These families and other resettled families will need different forms of support throughout the coming years. It is essential that organizations working with this population have the tools and resources necessary to do so. This is also an important learning opportunity for the country.
At ARM, we were overwhelmed by the positive response within the community to help refugees. Managing this goodwill proved to be challenging for small organizations like ours in attempting to mobilize the large influx of offers of support and donations while continuing to carry out our jobs. We continue to receive interesting offers of support from Canadian residents wanting to help refugees on a daily basis.
In Quebec, a large proportion of funding was allocated towards government-assisted refugees. However, the province received five times the number of privately sponsored refugees than it did of government-assisted refugees. Various families we work with were unexpectedly tasked with welcoming multiple family units over the holidays after submitting applications with various organizations. These are families who had, of course, expected to welcome family members over the course of one or two years instead of a few weeks. Such unexpected time frames were emotionally challenging for some and created obstacles in relation to housing, finding furniture, and access to certain language courses, for instance.
Proximity to family in Canada has not been a concern for our organization. However, we have seen cases of secondary migration, either into or out of Quebec, which have been problematic due to the different immigration systems and a lack of accurate information. Families are not fully informed of their rights and freedoms, and service providers receiving these families need to have more accessible information to better support these individuals, particularly in cases of potential sponsorship breakdown.
Sponsorship breakdowns, wherein the sponsor stops supporting or supports the refugee only partially, are a real concern for families who have been sponsored by family members or organizations that are not fully prepared to financially support them. Some were tasked to support many families at once. It is not enough to tell sponsored families to apply for welfare in cases of sponsorship breakdown.
Families often feel indebted to their sponsors and family members. They fear placing a bigger burden on them and often prefer to attempt to find other ways to be independent without signalling a breakdown, which could of course have consequences for the sponsor.
Many Syrian families that we have been working with are highly educated. We are working with many highly skilled professionals who are working evening or night shifts right now while taking French courses in order to one day be able to complete their equivalencies and work in their field. Community loan programs have been an interesting option for some individuals wanting to complete their equivalencies. However, we need to be considering other options as well.
Those trying to access employment counselling services in the Montreal region are often redirected to language training if they are not proficient enough in French. We need to think creatively to help those who are interested in finding employment right away.
Although the overall housing experience, from what we have seen, has been quite positive, some families have faced challenges when meeting with landlords or were left with no housing at the last minute after landlords signed multiple leases with families for the same housing unit. In one particular case, a family was asked to pay for a full year of rent up front. The family understood that this, of course, was illegal, but after a difficult housing search, they felt that it would offer them some security and stability to know that they would have housing for one year.
From our experience at ARM, access to educational programs has been done relatively smoothly within the school system, with short waiting periods to get appointments within the school board. Families have also received additional support within the school system. That said, seeing as we also work with non-Syrian families, we have been disappointed to hear that some non-Syrian families have been receiving less support within the school system due to reallocation of resources within schools to prioritize Syrian families.
From what we have seen, families have been able to receive adequate medical support and follow-up as needed. We are also relieved to know that all the families we serve, no matter their country of origin, will have access to supplemental health coverage through the IFH program.
In terms of travel loans, assuming the cost of transportation loans for resettlement Syrians eliminated a large burden on said families. However, the programs put in place involved some unjust technicalities for some. For example, some Syrian families who arrived in Canada after November 4 on non-chartered flights had their transportation costs covered if they came from Jordan, Lebanon, or Turkey, while Syrians arriving from other countries within those same time frames are tasked with repaying their transportation loans. We feel that these abstract circumstances create unfairness within the system.
At ARM, we have a few non-Syrian families who will be able to benefit from the one-year window program. That said, we have a significant number of Syrian families who have recently arrived who are hoping to sponsor additional family members of their own who are not eligible within the one-year window.
At ARM, our waiting list included 150 names at the end of 2014. In December 2015, it was over 600 names. It is clear that the need for private sponsorship is great. With this in mind, we are pleased that reflections such as these are happening on multiple levels in order to improve future responses. There is no doubt that the Syrian crisis has created an increased awareness of refugee populations and allowed us to bear witness to a truly incredible response and flexibility within the sponsorship system to facilitate the resettlement of Syrian families.
We hope that this desire to help continues to grow in order to promote greater fairness, compassion, and justice towards all refugees.
Thank you.
Liberal
Thomas Vincent Founder and Co-Chair, Collingwood Syrian Sponsorship Committee
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to present today. My name is Thomas Vincent, and I'm co-chair of the Collingwood Syrian family sponsorship group.
While Canadians across the country are very supportive of the federal government in its initiative and resettlement program for Syrian refugees, from the perspective of small-town Canada, which we probably represent in Collingwood, and of sponsorship groups across the country it has been a disaster. Canadian sponsorship groups have gone from excitement to frustration to anger at the absence of consistent or any communication, the lack of transparency, and the excessive wait times for the arrival of Syrian families.
From a historical perspective, obviously the previous Conservative government decided that they were going to bring in 10,000 Syrian refugees, and the newly elected Liberal government increased the target to 25,000.
The government created unrealistic deadlines to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees and for some unknown reason decided it was critical to meet these unrealistic target dates regardless of the lack of resources and infrastructure in place to process and help relocate the refugees into our Canadian culture.
The result is the perception and then the reality of confusion, lack of organization, and poor communication. It seemed to Canadians that empathy for the plight of the Syrian refugee crisis was turning into a convenient publicity photo op for officials of the federal government.
Although the federal government attained its goal of bringing 25,000 Syrian refugees in Canada, it did so with 10,000 under private sponsorship and 15,000 under the GAR program.
In Collingwood, representing small-town Canada and with a population of only 19,500, we raised more than $90,000 in a few months to sponsor two Syrian families. We submitted our BVOR application through AURA, and it was approved in January of 2015.
Our sponsorship committee has organized countless volunteers, who have been ready for months. We have established an organizing committee of co-chairs, a secretary, a welcoming committee, a housing committee, an ESL committee, a transportation committee, an IT web services committee, as well as committees for furniture and clothing, professionals, education, and computer services. All these committees have created all the resources we require to sponsor and immediately accommodate two Syrian families.
We then sit and we wait, and we wait, and we wait, with no communication from the government on its plan to work with private, BVOR, or community-sponsored groups. On March 31, to our surprise, we finally received word that we could receive the only family that was awarded to AURA for all of its sponsorship groups. We were fortunate to have the one family awarded to our group in Collingwood.
I'm going to move on to a couple of recommendations, because I know I only have seven minutes, and we're ticking.
From our perspective, problems for small-town Canada with the Syrian refugee resettlement plan and the leadership of the government include there being literally no communication from the government through the sponsorship agreement holders, such as AURA. We are told that the families are being processed, that they are being screened for health and security by government resources, but no other information at all is forthcoming in regard to the number of families in the pipeline. In Barrie, Ontario, they were notified of their family acceptance nearly four months ago, and they're still waiting for the arrival of their family. It's totally unacceptable, when Mr. John McCallum has been quoted saying several times, “We're going all out to meet the demand.”
John Sewell, former mayor of Toronto, has formed an organization that is coordinating information among sponsorship groups. He said they're doing it on a private basis, and his is called Canada4refugees.org. We would recommend that the federal government work with this group to communicate to the sponsorship groups as an official entity and provide the communication that we require.
There is no understanding of the number of sponsorship groups across Canada and therefore of the number of families that could be accommodated by sponsorship groups across the country. I have estimated myself that there are more than 2,000 sponsorship groups across Canada and have seen projections as high as 8,000 or 9,000. Nobody knows what the number is, and too many have not received any notification of a family under private, BVOR, or community sponsorships. Would it not be a simple process to poll the sponsorship holders, find out the number of sponsorship groups in existence across Canada, and then extrapolate the number of Syrian and other refugees we can allocate?
Staffing for processing refugee allocations I think has been touched on, but after the government announced that it had processed its target of 25,000, the government pulled back its staffing from Jordan and Turkey, etc., and in Winnipeg, thereby stopping the process and the supply of refugees.
We've heard this morning already that it has dried up. Where are the families? We have thousands of groups across the country that are ready and waiting.
Knowing the existing number of sponsorship groups across the country and their capacity for refugee families and equating the staffing with demand would assist the immigration department in understanding the staffing required and the budgets that are needed.
We need to find a way to fast-track current refugee applications. We need a more streamlined and flexible approval process, as well as additional processing staff for the applications. The federal government rushed to bring in 15,000 GARs and house them in hotels with per diems, etc. Why wouldn't the government look to the privately sponsored or BVORs, which would not cost any money, or less money than the GARs, and simply offer the families to these sponsorship groups? We were just told that this is too complicated. I don't know what's complicated about having us, in the country, waiting for groups while the government is paying for people to stay in hotels. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
We've heard stories of Syrian GARs using food banks for assistance. This would never happen with a private, BVOR, or community-sponsored group. We would be embarrassed if we found that our families were going to food banks. We need to understand the capacity of the sponsorship groups in Canada and start an immediate allotment of refugees to private, BVOR, and community-sponsored groups.
As for critical Information, there's no blueprint for refugee assistance for small-town Canada. In rural Canada, sponsorship groups are duplicating refugee assistance programs, and spending and wasting precious resources and time to create programs. We seem to be reinventing the wheel and working in silos instead of sharing information and resources. How do rural Canada's sponsorships obtain information on resettlement services available in larger urban communities?
Founder and Co-Chair, Collingwood Syrian Sponsorship Committee
Okay.
We would all agree that teaching new refugees English is a top priority. What ESL services are available to rural Canada? How do we know if local families have the same cultural background or extended related...?
We need to create a resource-based information file and allow the chairs of sponsorship committees to contact each other about the refugee programs. We need to create formal connections with resettlement services, and we need to extend the information base and create an all-inclusive manual, a template, for sponsorship groups.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Borys Wrzesnewskyj
Thank you, Mr. Vincent.
Mr. Al Hassani is next. You have seven minutes, please.
Nouri Haidar Al Hassani Founder, Child Aid International
Thank you. Is that seven minutes for me or...?
Founder, Child Aid International
Okay. I will take three and a half. Thank you.
My name is Nouri Al Hassani. I'm the founder of Child Aid International. I have very good experience with refugees. I was a refugee for six and a half years before I came to Canada in 1996.
Our involvement with Child Aid International with the Syrian refugee crisis is that we were able to help. Our focus is with helping the families in the Vancouver area in B.C., and in Surrey, and in all those areas.
We are from a centre that does speak Arabic, so we are able to help and become the backbone for two other centres in that area, which are the Az-Zahraa Islamic Centre and the Al-Kawthar Islamic Centre. Whenever they needed help from Arabic speakers, our volunteers were able to provide that help. Through Child Aid International, I was able to help lots of families in finding a house to rent and to establish themselves, as well as go to the doctor. All these things could be small services, but to be honest it's a major problem for the families, especially with the language as well as with the culture.
I'll keep the rest of my time for my friend.
Thank you.
Amer Alhendawi As an Individual)(Interpretation
Request number one is that one of the main problems we are facing, as Syrian refugees in Vancouver, is learning ESL, or English as a second language. We have been here, as a family, for almost a year, but up to now, none of us has attended English class. Every time I go, they say there is no chance and to come back in two to three months. If I go after that, they still tell us the same thing.
Request number two is that I ask the Canadian government if they can waive or exempt us from the transportation costs, which, for us as a family, are $7,040. Most of the Syrian refugees coming as a family have these transportation costs, which are between $6,000 and $7,000, or even more, because of the size of the family.
The third request is that, if possible, we ask the government to help us with housing. We are a family of seven—five kids and the two of us, husband and wife—but we live in a two-bedroom apartment. I am asking, if possible, that we be able to access or have a chance to get subsidized housing, because this private market is very expensive. Apart from that, these smaller two-bedroom units are also unsafe. They are infested. There are bugs. From time to time we have to use bug spray, but it doesn't work.
Another point I would like to enlighten the government about is that sometimes we sense there are issues if you have to apply for subsidized housing. It is not very easy for you to get it, because there is a kind of intermediary or broker. You need to know someone who can act on your behalf to access that subsidized housing.
Thank you so much. This is all I can say or ask for.
Liberal
Liberal
Marwan Tabbara Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the guests for having me here.
I am going to speak a little bit in Arabic for Amer here, and I will translate myself.
[Member speaks in Arabic]
What I said was that everyone here in the Canadian government is very happy that we have brought in the Syrian refugees and that they have come here to a peaceful country.
I will speak in English now.
In your case, in British Columbia, just so we put this out there, that is one of the most expensive cities in the country, actually. It is unfortunate that this is happening and that you have faced certain circumstances, but there have been overwhelming support and a lot of great things in different regions. For example, in my region, a lot of people have been settled and have been getting English language training.
What has been the difficulty? Have you tried maybe going to...? Maybe they were not able to take you in at one school, but were there other schools you went to at different times that were able to provide that language training?
I will say it to him in Arabic.
[Member speaks in Arabic]
Liberal
