The problems with the backlogs.... We sometimes see a bunching up of families. We have no indication of when the families will arrive.
As I mentioned earlier, we are a humanitarian organization. The people we are attempting to support in coming to Canada are refugees. They're in terrible situations. One family spent 10 years in a camp in Jordan. Another one, who arrived just a couple of weeks ago, was almost on the street with four children. They were probably in processing for three or four years. We were very concerned that we were going to lose this family to the street without the ability to contact them—without the ability to have an address—so that they would be able to continue the process, which drags on and on. Once again, I think we saw a problem with communication.
From the perspective of the refugee process, it's a bit different. They arrive in Toronto. They receive their permanent residence status when they land, but before they come, the situation they're in, in countries where they are under oppressive situations, where people are physically and verbally attacked and abused.... They pull their children out of any schooling that they might have, because they're targeted as people who are not wanted in their country.
When we talk about the rural model that I mentioned earlier, this is something that we see would be applicable across the board in rural Canada, because we have these challenges. For instance, there's the bunching up of applications coming at the same time. If you have four families of six who come to Antigonish, a small community, we have a very difficult time managing that effectively to resettle these families so that they can start their life in Canada without a legislated world of poverty, relegated to minimum-wage jobs for the rest of their lives.
This is the kind of thing that we look at.