Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Good afternoon. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on February 25, the committee will resume its study on family reunification.

This afternoon, we have with us from the Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary by video conference Ms. Antonio, who is the executive director; and Ms. Bragg, the former research and policy manager.

From Dalhousie University, we have Mr. Ungar, the Canada research chair in child, family and community resilience, Child and Youth Refugee Research Coalition.

Welcome.

I now would like to turn to the Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary.

You have seven minutes combined.

[Marichu Antonio, Executive Director, Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak about family reunification. My name is Marichu Antonio, and I am the executive director of the Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary. We are a community-based organization that works to build the collective voice of ethnocultural communities in Calgary. We are also an umbrella organization for approximately 65 ethnocultural community organizations.

Our comments today stem from some of our research that we conducted in 2012: “Families Together/Families Apart”. We undertook a participatory education and research process using focus groups and workshops on immigration policy changes and their impact on ethnocultural communities. In speaking with nearly 200 people, we heard overwhelmingly that the issue of greatest concern was the closure of the sponsorship program for parents and grandparents at that time. This prompted us to undertake interviews with individuals and families who were directly impacted by the limits on family sponsorship.

While the program reopened in 2014, it did so with a cap of 5,000 applications annually. We appreciate that under the new government, this has been raised to 10,000 applications. However, we believe that the research we are presenting shows that families in our community continue to experience barriers to meaningful family reunification.

Bronwyn Bragg, our research and policy manager at that time, will present the key findings of this research in a moment. Before she does so, I want to take a few moments and reflect personally on the importance of family reunification as a core component of Canada's immigration program.

Over time, the number of family class immigrants has declined sharply from where it was a few decades ago. Family class immigrants, especially sponsored parents and grandparents, are represented as a drain on our social welfare system. As someone who came to Canada as an immigrant and who has worked directly with immigrant communities for the last two decades, I see this characterization as both inaccurate and harmful.

In my own family of six siblings and two parents, we greatly benefited from Canada's strong family reunification policy in the 1980s. My sister sponsored my parents from the Philippines in their late fifties; they in turn sponsored me and later my cousin. The average processing time then for most of us was approximately one to two years. This has resulted in a strengthened feeling of belonging and well-being in our new home country, thereby strengthening our ability to give back to Canada. We now have four generations, 42 citizens, 30 of whom are taxpayers, community leaders and volunteers, and those employed as professionals in various sectors of the economy such as oil and gas, banking, and the not-for-profit sector. I myself am now a grandmother of two adorable grandchildren, soon to be three—this weekend—and I work as the executive director of this agency. My 86-year-old mom, who is now a great-grandmother to 10, is still active and supporting us in raising our grandchildren. This wouldn't have happened under the current policy regime.

Thank you to Canada.

In my own experience and in the research we conducted, we found that sponsored relatives are not a burden. Instead, they provide critical support to immigrant families, especially to children in Canada. They help raise grandchildren. They provide psychological and emotional support to families in transition. They are sources of cultural and linguistic knowledge and wisdom. They support the successful integration and settlement of immigrant families and communities in Canada.

We therefore suggest the following five policy recommendations: One, remove the quota of 10,000 applications per year on the parent and grandparent sponsorship program. Two, devote resources to processing all family class applications, including parent and grandparent applications, in a timely manner. Three, lower the minimum necessary income for sponsoring parents and grandparents. Four, reduce the sponsorship undertaking period to 10 years instead of the current 20 years. Five, please do not treat the family super visa as a replacement for a meaningful family reunification program for parents and grandparents.

Now, Bronwyn, go ahead, please.

[Bronwyn Bragg, Former Research and Policy Manager, Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary]

In the time that remains, I will be presenting key findings from our research in 2013.

First, we found that there are profound economic impacts to family separation. From our research participants, we heard that sponsored parents and grandparents were playing critical roles as child care providers, which allowed their children to go out and become part of the workforce in Canada. When these family members were not able to come to Canada, families were forced to cope on one income and women especially were not able to enter the workforce.

The majority of our interview participants cited child care as a major factor in wanting to sponsor a parent to come to Canada. Our research found that in the absence of family support from parents, it was immigrant women in particular who were disproportionately impacted, often having to leave paid employment or choosing not to enter the workforce at all.

Second, family separation also exacerbates the vulnerabilities already facing ethnocultural children and youth. Families we spoke with expressed deep concern about the impact of these policy changes on their children. For many of the families we interviewed, their children had close relationships with their grandparents. These family members played an important role in supporting the healthy psychological and emotional development of young people, especially ethnocultural youth adjusting to life in a new country.

First and second generation visible minority youth face a number of barriers in adjusting to and gaining a sense of belonging in Canada. Grandparents play a vital role in supporting these young people, particularly through critical transitions. They are also transmitters of cultural identity and language, both of which support ethnocultural youth in their adaptation to life in Canada.

Third, family separation inhibits meaningful integration and settlement. For families living in Canada, barriers to family reunification are also barriers to feeling fully settled and integrated into Canadian life and society. Among critics—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Ms. Bragg, you have 20 seconds, please.

[Bronwyn Bragg]

Thanks.

Among critics of the program, it has been suggested that the process of immigration involves leaving one's loved ones back home. This is problematic. We found that many of our participants chose Canada instead of other countries because of its promise of family reunification and the ability to sponsor parents.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Ungar, you have seven minutes, please.

[Dr. Michael Ungar, Canada Research Chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience, Child and Youth Refugee Research Coalition, Dalhousie University]

Thanks very much for this opportunity.

I'm going to build on some of the comments my colleagues just made.

As a researcher, I'd like to introduce to the committee a frame of reference to make the decisions, which are obviously very complex and have long-term ramifications, as we have just heard.

In my role as a Canada research chair, I lead a national coalition of researchers and service provider organizations. We have contributions from four federal departments as well. We're trying to understand the refugee experience from the child's and the family's points of view.

Let me see if I can ground this for you. Let's think about this. Some of you on this committee have children, I take it. If there were a crisis right now, and you got that very urgent phone call, I wonder whether you would have the social capital to respond.

In a sense, when we begin to think in these terms, that family reunification is fundamentally not just avoiding problems, avoiding some of the stressors on families—that's what I study, stress and resilience and the way people cope across cultures—you also have to ask yourself what resources are being built.

I'm going to argue, and I think the evidence shows this, that you're increasing the chances and the likelihood of social integration by expanding the size of the families that come to Canada, offering ways of streamlining this opportunity for family reunification, as you just heard.

If we can break this down into some simple processes, which is what I study, we need ways of simplifying this question.

Seven things are leveraged by expediting a family reunification process for immigrants or refugees. Relationships are obvious. But it's not just the idea of an intimate attachment. You're giving people the support they need during those crisis times. As we know from the literature, people tend to stay together when the families are reunified.

What about identity? You're helping kids know who they are. We have a crisis sometimes, and we talk about this. We're worried about children losing identity. We're worried about the violence that potentially follows from that. Yet here we have a way of addressing some of these other bigger concerns that are sometimes put together, inadvertently or intentionally, when we talk about immigrants.

What about issues of control? You certainly open up opportunities for families to have more opportunities. A very simple one of course is you give parents a much greater latitude in where they're going to be able to work, the number of hours they can transit to their workplaces, by increasing the family supports, whether that's an aunt, an uncle, an older child, an older sibling, or a grandparent who is present in the home.

We're also talking about fair treatment. You are bringing in people to be advocates for each other, which is of course important.

Needless to say, all the research says that you increase material wealth or resources for the families as well. You increase the income, the potential for money inside a home, which of course translates into someone helping the children learn. More resources in technology or supports are the tipping point for educational gains for children who are in transition and under stress.

You increase a sense of belonging, cultural continuity. The family's story can be told live, in a robust way that just isn't available through Facebook and other social media communication.

Of course, there's just the continuity of culture.

If you think about what I've just laid out as seven balls juggling in the air, like a Cirque du Soleil act, through family reunification you are putting more of those balls in play so that families have at least a fighting chance of doing well.

Let me give you one last principle from my work as a resilience researcher all over the world. We have projects that are global in scope. The thing we learn is that there's a principle called differential impact. That says the protective factor, like family reunification, is exponentially greater for a family that's under greater stress. As stress increases, you're seeing the more vulnerable families will benefit the most from a policy that promotes family reunification.

If you think about this, let's be really practical. We have two profiles of families coming in. I'm going more on the refugee side of this. Let's think about the refugees. We have government-assisted refugees, the GARs, and of course we have privately sponsored refugees. If you think about it, if we really had a sensible policy, we would be focusing on the government-assisted refugees and expediting their family reunification even faster than that of the privately sponsored refugees.

I am not sure we want to get into a model where we're saying one is better than the other, but if you begin to actually think about the process here of what family reunification does and those seven things I've just talked about—cultural continuity, relationships, increasing the household income, all these factors—you begin to say that the more vulnerable the child, the more likely you are going to have an impact by actually proceeding with this kind of program.

In the last minute I have, I'm going to suggest as a researcher that we need to study a bit more the cost and benefits of refugees. We have some studies out there that have happened. Perhaps—and this is really one of the goals of CYRRC, this refugee coalition we have going—we need to introduce into those studies a range of outcomes, maybe not just the economic one. Right now, that's not really the problem with teenagers, is it? That's not what's making the front pages of our newspapers, the economic well-being of kids. That won't solve all these issues. We need better social integration and we need conduits for cultural continuity.

I'm also going to suggest that we need to have a little more sophistication. We need to be thinking about if the benefit is just in the first generation or the second generation. Do we have a long-term plan here or is it just short-term?

I'm going to also suggest we need a better understanding of the optimal timing for reunification. What is the impact of delays? When you're talking about the way an individual arrives, what is optimal? Is there a difference if it's a young person who has arrived first and they're trying to get the rest of the family in? There's a lot more complexity in these models.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

You have 20 seconds, Mr. Ungar.

[Dr. Michael Ungar]

Thank you.

At the end of the day, we have to understand the cultural meanings of what family reunification and indeed what family means. As we know, even within the mosaic of our own country of people who are already here, what a family is and who is important to completing one's family depends very greatly on who you are and what kind of meaning you bring to that word.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Ms. Dzerowicz, for seven minutes, please.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to say a huge thank you, Ms. Bragg, Ms. Antonio, and Mr. Ungar, for your excellent presentations.

Very interesting information came out today. One of the things I've heard about for years and years is it used to take families five years to get settled in Canada and now we're hearing that it's taking 10 years. I wonder to what extent this whole process contributes to it.

I personally don't believe that bringing in family members is a burden on our system. What would be the best kind of supports that we could provide to help integrate parents, grandparents, children, spouses when they come into this country? Is it making sure that our settlement services have sufficient and excellent ESL classes?

I'd like both Ms. Antonio and Mr. Ungar to respond to that.

We'll start with you, Ms. Antonio.

[Marichu Antonio]

There are statistics that point to the fact that more than 50% of newcomers that come to Canada don't access formal settlement services. The question there is, where do they go? Who do they resort to?

In our work with around 65 ethnocultural organizations, our experience is that they are the go-to people especially during the first six months and the first year of their stay in Canada, in looking for a home, looking for transportation support, mobility support, medical support. They play a big role. Usually they are relatives or friends or people who speak the same language and understand the culture. Then we encourage them to access formal services.

These kinds of supports are embedded in the communities. The only thing that we need to do is to train them, give them the right information, which is what we're doing in our organization. We call them cultural brokers. They are the connectors, the bridge. Once you give them the right information, they will give the right advice and they will give the right supports to these communities. The other professional services can be linked to them later.

We usually do a settlement action plan for families. For example, my mother sponsored my cousin, or other people sponsor their relatives. They're asked to do a community action plan—a settlement action plan is what we call it—identifying and foreseeing all the possible needs of these immigrants.

If we're dealing with grandparents' needs, there are already specialized services for newcomer elders. In our case, for example, we have 15 trained elder workers who speak different languages and understand the culture and look out for the most isolated members of the community. Even if they are isolated, they still can give back to the community once given the right connections and opportunities. There's a combination of formal services and informal support networks that work on an equal basis.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

Do you have anything to add, Mr. Ungar?

[Dr. Michael Ungar]

I would just add, coming from Nova Scotia, that the same themes appear there, and I'll just echo the same thing about this idea of cultural brokers and family navigators to link people. This myth that they stay with the settlement organizations long term is actually not true. The settlement organizations could use, it seems, a bit more resources for sure, but they're more transitory. They do tend to quickly integrate into regular formal services that are available. The sum total of that needs a bit more study including some sort of cost-benefit analysis, but if we actually looked at the social return on investment here and broadened the definitions, I believe we would probably see a pretty healthy return on that investment, which we know anecdotally from individual stories.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Antonio, you've recommended that we eliminate the 10,000 quota, as you call it. What would be the right number, or is there a number?

[Marichu Antonio]

There wasn't a quota before, right?

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

There could have been one that was hidden. Do you know what I mean? It might have been more departmental as opposed to more public.

[Marichu Antonio]

One of the things we were talking about is maybe to have a sense of the demand for grandparents and parents in every province, because it depends on the immigration trends. If there is a possibility to identify.... For example, in Alberta, I questioned some of the immigration consultants here in our communities, and you don't base the demand on the applications received; you base the demand on the intention of the families and the needs of the families. One of the indicators we're looking at is the child care wait list and child care affordability in Alberta.

Included in our study, and maybe Bronwyn can elaborate on that, we looked at what the demands are, how long the wait list is, and therefore what the newcomer families are resorting to in terms of bringing in their grandparents, including affordability.

[Bronwyn Bragg]

Just related to the cap, we see that certainly the system before the quota was put in place was inadequate, and many organizations across the country were referring to the long wait times. I know that the wait times and the processing times for parents and grandparents were stated as a concern and a reason for bringing in a quota. Whether it is explicit or not, it is still part of the problem, and there needs to be a holistic approach to understanding what the needs are. Capping it at 10,000 creates basically a lottery system in which we see families sprinting to try to get applications in on the first, and then the program is closed weeks or a short month later and people are not able to bring their family members here, so the barriers remain in place.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Saroya, go ahead for seven minutes, please.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you to Ms. Antonio, Ms. Bragg, and Mr. Ungar.

If you look at the table, most of us may be the exception here. We are all on your side. We understand it. I came to the country back in the 1970s. I sponsored my parents back in 1977, if I'm not mistaken. They came in 1978. It was a different Canada in those days. Today it is a totally different Canada in which immigrants may represent 32% or 33% of the population.

For people who were sponsoring parents or grandparents, there were limited applications. If I am not mistaken, we have 80,000 or more applications in the queue. It's all about how we can balance it. The system can allow up to 300,000 total immigrants into the country. This is the reality. According to the numbers, we are looking at 80,000 in the family class of immigrants coming, about 20,000 of whom are parents and grandparents. It's all about balancing where we can bring economic immigrants, parents and grandparents in every single category.

What are the reasonable numbers? What do all of you think is a reasonable number that we can work with? The mandate of this committee is to look for the solution. The solution is to find the reasonable number that both sides can live with.

Can we start with Calgary?

[Bronwyn Bragg]

Thank you for that question.

I also take a researcher's perspective. I think we need a bit more information to understand specifically. Working at the community level we can only see what we see, and that's a high need for people to be reunited with their families, but if we were to take a more analytical approach and understand what the needs are for such things as child care, or in terms of the numbers....

The bigger issue that we hope the committee will consider is the way in which the division between economic immigrants and family class immigrants has become increasingly distinguished in the last, let's say, 10 years, such that economic immigrants are treated as having the priority. I think we saw this particularly under the last government. A fast and flexible immigration program that brings skilled immigrants to Canada was the priority, at the expense of other kinds of immigrants including the family class.

What we see in our work and through this research—and I'm sure, as you've said, you understand this issue personally—is that family class immigrants in fact contribute to the broader economic well-being of our immigration program.

What I heard in our interviews was that the majority of the people we spoke to were skilled immigrants. They were working. They were professionals. They wanted to bring a grandparent to Canada because they had chosen to come to Canada because of the ability to have family reunification. Instead of seeing these two as separate spheres—as I know we do, and that's unfortunate—we need to understand that as part of our ability to attract the labour market ready, English speaking, highly educated, skilled immigrants whom Canada allegedly wants to include in our community, we need to be keeping our family reunification programs robust in order to continue to attract those migrants.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Michael, do you want to add something?

[Dr. Michael Ungar]

Yes. I'd be curious to know, when you came to Canada, how old were your parents when they came over?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

When my parents came to the country, they were 62.