Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Karen Shortt, and I represent the 650 faculty who teach at Vancouver Community College. Our student population is approximately 17,000.
Our faculty do the front-line English language teaching that is a direct result of this Parliament. Canada has well-intentioned policies and programs to assist refugees and immigrants. We do not want that intent to fail in the last stages after giving people so much hope and promise. Unfortunately, though, we're not doing as well as we should be.
Vancouver Community College provides assistance to new immigrants in three areas: English language training, credential recognition, and Canadian work experience. Our faculty have a deep understanding of the unique nature of an immigrant's needs. We create pathways that lead to meaningful employment and credential recognition.
Vancouver Community College has an infrastructure in place that will help refugees transition into employment. We will be there for the long term, as their needs change and their children come through the K-to-12 sector. We have counsellors on site to meet with students in crisis and on an ongoing basis. We have well-equipped labs. We have learning centres with tutors, a library, and student associations. As well, each program has a program advisory committee.
The level of industry engagement is critical to our students' success. The added value is direct feedback from employers on how our graduates' customer service and interpersonal skills are transferring in the Canadian workplace.
Our class size is small, usually 20 per class, and this allows the instructors to have one-on-one interaction with the students. We offer a variety of programs that combine classroom instruction, hands-on training, and internships in industry. We have many heartwarming stories that are vitally important to our ESL programs and to our communities. We have people who come into our programs, take ESL, and go out and become nurses, dental hygienists, hospitality managers, and culinary arts chefs. They are involved in the automotive trades in apprenticeships.
I'd like to tell you just one VCC success story. We had a group of immigrants, all engineers, go through our ESL pathways program for engineers. After completing the program with a curriculum specific to engineering, they then went into our seven-month drafting program. After completing this, they all gained employment, because they were able to transfer the skills of being an engineer into a seven-month drafting program and go out and get a job rather quickly. We think this is something that is very important for new people to Canada: that they start working and are able to contribute back. In fact, 93% of our graduates are working in their field.
However, we are not fulfilling our promise to immigrants and refugees. We currently have over 800 students on the wait-list for English language courses. Because of funding cuts this year to our LINC program, we had to cancel classes for 220 ESL students who would have started in April of 2016.