Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2016

[Bronwyn Bragg]

Thank you for the question.

I think I'll just reiterate some of what we were recommending.

Obviously, we feel very strongly that the parent and grandparent program, which is the area that we just happen to know particularly well because of our research, is very important. We feel that all family class applicants make strong contributions to our society. We do see the burden that has been placed on families. In 2014 when the 5,000 cap came in, it came in with other requirements. An increase of 30% to the minimum necessary income doubled the sponsorship undertaking agreement to 20 years. It put in place this super visa as a suggestion that this was a viable alternative to the family reunification program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 20 seconds, please.

[Bronwyn Bragg]

I'll just highlight our recommendations. We want to remove the quota. We want to lower the minimum necessary income. We want to reduce the sponsorship undertaking period to 10 years. We want the super visa to be treated not as a family reunification program but as a visa, which it is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Tabbara, you have seven minutes, please.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you to all of you for being here today as we further conduct our study on family reunification.

My first question is for Mr. Ungar. You mentioned in your testimony that vulnerable families benefit the most. Could you elaborate on that, please?

[Dr. Michael Ungar]

Sure.

What's interesting as the conversation roles out here is we hear numbers, but I think both of us, without having prepared our remarks in advance, are really saying something more along the lines of some analysis of the vulnerability of families or the benefits that they would receive.

If I tell you what I know as a researcher on this topic, I'm going to say that I think in terms of levels of vulnerability. I study resilience. I study what makes people well protected and most likely to succeed. That's what I specialize in. What I can tell you is that something like family reunification will have the biggest bang for the buck, the largest amount of change, what we in statistics terms talk about, the amount that will account for the most variance in life trajectories based on the vulnerability of the particular family. Now, I'm not saying that we should ignore families that are less vulnerable. Please don't misinterpret what I'm saying. But if you really thinking a little more in depth about this, the families who are really the most vulnerable, say, the refugees that came in as government assisted, would absolutely be for me, priority number one. Frankly, if you could get them any other supports, then you're going to have an exponential bump that is disproportionate to, say, bringing in a grandparent to another family that is already better resourced or better integrated into the family.

For me, I look at an equation as an algorithm of impact—the more vulnerability, the family reunification will probably produce a bigger impact—just as a concept.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I want to give a small example. In my riding I have one brother that has been here for a couple of years. His brother was doing his application to come to Canada. He came to Canada as well. The one brother didn't have much experience in the English language quite yet—his English language skills weren't up to par—but the other brother did. What they did is they joined together and opened up a construction business. The one brother had a lot of on-the-job field experience. He can do estimates. The other brother, the one that is good in English, does all the paperwork, sends emails and bids on jobs, etc. That's just one example of where one family member is weak in certain skills and one has greater skills, and they come together and really build on their family unit and work together.

You mentioned an increase in social, financial, and cultural capital. Perhaps you could elaborate on that, too, please.

[Dr. Michael Ungar]

I think the reports and, if I could defer again, the stories we're hearing from the direct field.... I'm conscious of my role as a researcher, but if I defer to my colleagues who are in the service-providing organizations, we know there's this bump in all kinds of different capital. By capital we mean, of course, financial potential and that's in the reports that are coming out, but I think we also need to think about things like cultural continuity.

One of my side interests is in the area of countering violent extremism and immigrant youth. I know it's a discourse that doesn't always play out, but it has been on the agenda of this committee as well. It's not something we often want to talk about, but for me the broader issue isn't necessarily violence; it's about whether the next generation is going to have a sense of cultural continuity, a sense of fair treatment and social justice, and for better or for worse, family reunification and the terms of that fit into that discourse.

I see it in more global terms if we provide an opportunity to be, in a sense, mentored by an older sibling, an uncle, or a grandparent or whomever, you're creating a critical mass of cultural capital. Again, I'm not trying to equate necessarily.... Unfortunately, the discourse puts some violence issues along with immigration, especially when you add in adolescents or young people. What our work is trying to do is to change that conversation and talk about the resilience of those populations, but resilience requires protective factors and one of the things they need is cultural continuity and engagement with people who are going to mentor them and create a community that can support young people as they transition into adulthood.

It's not a bad strategy, in terms of thinking more holistically about some of the other problems which are sort of percolating that we don't necessarily want to talk about.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

You mentioned also better short-term and long-term integration. If we had better social integration programs, what would they look like? We generally see with immigrants who come here as a family that maybe the parents at times integrate into the society, but we see the children integrating a lot faster and a lot quicker. What kind of programs would you think would be available to have better social integration, for example, for the parents who first come?

[Dr. Michael Ungar]

If we're talking about the parents, I might defer more to my colleagues in Calgary.

My focus is much more on when the kids get up to about age 24, and of course their families, and specifically on that. I can speak well to them in terms of, for instance, the continuity in language training which unfortunately a lot of kids lose if they drop out of school. Due to the challenges of school, we see a gap in services between the ages of 16 and 18 years old, but these are things nuanced for the kids themselves.

Integration is very good, but also one of the advantages of being a Canadian is that we don't emphasize acculturation. We're much more pluralistic in our mosaic. In fact, from a mental health point of view, what the researchers are saying is that it's actually a better approach here, that people are mentally healthier if we don't just think about blanket acculturation, but actually more about finding that middle ground, the third cultural space.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Ungar.

Mr. Tilson, you have five minutes please.

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

Ms. Antonio, you have made a recommendation to the committee that the cap be removed, and you're not the only one who's said that. In other words, that's a popular recommendation.

The committee has several issues that it's dealing with. One is what in the world are we going to do with this backlog? How are we going to recommend to the government that we get rid of this backlog? Another is, how are we going to cut down on the wait times which are extremely long? All of that ties in with your recommendation of getting rid of the cap.

One witness said that you can't deal with the wait times until you get rid of the backlog and it's just impossible to do that.

There are obviously different alternatives. The government can put more money into the system. I suppose it would be the same thing, but the government could hire more staff to process these things, or the government could develop new processes.

My question is for all of you. I'd like all three of you to comment on this, but we'll start with Ms. Bragg. One of you has said that we could streamline the process and that's an interesting one. How would you recommend to the committee that the processes be streamlined?

[Bronwyn Bragg]

Thank you for the question.

When you were talking about putting more money into the system, I think that's a good idea. Putting more resources into the system, I think, is a good idea. Streamlining, I think, is a good idea. Of course, we're community advocates, so we don't work within the bureaucracy or the government necessarily, and we can't speak to the challenges of what you're suggesting, but I think—

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

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but that's a very important issue. It's great to say to get rid of the cap, but that's going to cost money, and we have to be responsible to the taxpayer.

[Bronwyn Bragg]

I understand that. I think when we talk about this issue, we're very cautious to just emphasize, and I know we've made this point, that while there may be a short-term cost to processing family class applications, it will be a long-term investment. There is a return on investment, so the taxpayer actually benefits by having families reunited and healthy and socially integrated in our communities.

There was another point. In terms of streamlining the process, one of the things that I heard quite a bit in talking to families was about the issue of documents that are required but then expire. For example, medical documents are valid for only one year. A family will submit an application, which takes time and money. It goes into the queue, and then it's not looked at, and then the documents become invalid. That's just one example of a small processing thing that would make things perhaps run more smoothly and take less time.

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

Ms. Antonio, with regard to streamlining the process, one witness said that we could get more technology into the system. Have you philosophized about that? Is there a way to cut back on the paperwork or the bureaucracy?

[Marichu Antonio]

That's one of the greatest kinds of feedback, in support of Ms. Bragg here. The requirements are so onerous, so maybe review how it was before and how it is now, and which ones are really necessary. In our experience, when we were talking to the community members, some applications are able to be processed within a year for parents and grandparents. Look at those cases and see what makes them efficient and what makes the others inefficient. The question is, does it take one year to process 10,000 applications, or 5,000 applications, for grandparents?

That's all I would like to say, but there are cases that are being processed within one year, and grandparents are able to come. Some are settled.

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

You work with the system. There must be some bureaucracy that you find absolutely silly, or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's not slow.

[Marichu Antonio]

Yes. One of the things we're getting feedback about is why there is a requirement for a minimum of three years' income. For example, if there's a life-changing situation within the last year, we will have to alter the whole document. It goes back to them. It becomes a backlog. But the basic situation of the family, the need, for example—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 20 seconds.

[Marichu Antonio]

—for grandparents is there, so why will the documents serve as a barrier to justifying the situation of the family? What is the best way to capture that? The minimum income requirement is also onerous.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Ms. Zahid, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I'll take this opportunity to thank the panellists for coming today and providing their valuable input to the study we are undertaking.

My first question is for Mr. Ungar.

One of your topics of study has been families across cultures, immigration, and refugees. We have heard a lot about family during our study, the definition of a family. Our immigration system is based on the western definition of a nuclear family: two parents and their dependent children. But that isn't in line with the definition of a family in many other countries and cultures, including many of the countries Canada draws the maximum number of immigrants from. Their parents and grandparents, older children, and even sometimes aunts and uncles, often live under the same roof as a family.

Could you discuss the varying definitions of family and whether you believe the definition of family in our immigration regulations is still appropriate?

[Dr. Michael Ungar]

Thank you for that question.

That is such a hot-button issue here. Indeed, we have a kind of bias toward this nuclear family, which might represent my cultural space, but it doesn't necessarily represent many of the spaces of the people I work with, globally.

In fact, when you start thinking about who would be most effective for child care, it might be an aunt or an uncle. Our bias tends to be to define those key players as the grandparent or the parent, when in many other cultures that just wouldn't be the case. It would not be uncommon for a child to be actually raised by multiple parental figures in a home. We sort of shortchange that, creating more stress for families, when we have this bias toward one particular individual.

In fact, I would almost go out on a limb and say that in most cultures that I'm familiar with—if we really look at the global situation—it's quite unusual to have a nuclear family. It's an oddity, globally. Certainly, burdening grandparents, who are elderly, with care of young children is even a bit odder, globally. It doesn't tend to be like that. It tends to be more extended family, and you need a critical mass of people to create that.

There are sociologists, for instance—just a very small quip—who say that we pathologize single parents, but we don't have to. We just ask if a parent is single, married, or in a common-law relationship, and we sort of tick the box in our census, and everything else. But the real question that should be asked is, “If there was a crisis at midnight tonight, how many metres away would you need to go until you could find someone to actually help you with your children?” That is the benchmark of a cohesive community, and that's the way we need to be thinking about this—creating that critical mass of supports for people, which, I think, is what people naturally do when they do a secondary migration once they are inside the country.