Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee, for inviting us to present today.
The Arab Community Centre is a federally funded settlement agency that provides assistance to newcomers of every Arab country and anyone who walks through our doors. We're not exclusive to Arabs. We provide settlement assistance, and family reunification is part of that.
The centre normally sees about 4,500 clients a year. This particular year—and thank you for the extra funding from IRCC—we're opening a second satellite office in Scarborough. I am very pleased to know that Salma Zahid is our MP in that area, so thank you. You're all invited to the opening some time toward the end of the month.
We have been providing, as you might imagine, quite a bit of settlement assistance to newcomer Syrians, who have been arriving since last December and prior to that.
Zena will be talking in detail about some of the family reunification issues that we are seeing within the client base.