Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good evening, everyone.
I am the director of the Table de concertation des organismes au service des personnes réfugiées et immigrantes, whose members are 160 intake and settlement support organizations dedicated to assisting newcomers, whether they be refugees, immigrants, or persons without status.
My considerations will be focused more on the social and health aspects, given that the legal aspects have been dealt with well by all the lawyers who are here today. I am going to talk more about the current views of these organizations. As was said just now, there is a humanitarian health emergency in Quebec at the moment. Everyone is aware of it, but action still needs to be taken.
I don't know whether the support system in Quebec that has existed for several decades and is unique in Canada is familiar to you. If a refugee claimant, whether regular or irregular, arrives in Canada and needs help with housing, it will be provided by Quebec's social services, more specifically by PRAIDA, the Programme régional d'accueil et d'intégration des demandeurs d'asile. That organization will provide temporary accommodation for three or four weeks, on average, until they receive their first social assistance cheque. After that, they are politely asked to leave the temporary accommodation facility and make their own arrangements.
That worked well over recent years, but because of the current volume of refugee claims, the system is no longer functioning. In fact, the Quebec government has informed the federal government that it was capping its housing capacity. I think it is 1,200 beds, more or less. The federal government also places people in hotels, 14 at the moment, in the Montreal region. That accommodation is temporary, but it does not include any services; medical and social services are provided by Quebec's social services.
That puts enormous pressure on the organizations that ordinarily try to help refugee claimants, as my colleague Frantz André explained when he talked about his work. As is the case in the rest of Canada, those organizations, which are mostly charitable groups, do not receive money and so have to self-finance with support from foundations or by fund-raising.
It also has to be said that the services are very limited. In Quebec as elsewhere in Canada, refugee claimants are entitled to very little, which really can be summarized as essential services, such as basic medical coverage. It is estimated that since January, Quebec has taken in nearly 45,000 people out of the 72,000 refugee claimants who have arrived in Canada, whether regular or irregular, a distinction that no one makes when it comes to services or housing, in fact.
Settlement aid organizations are saturated and have no more capacity. As well, as was said earlier, the caseload is increasingly disturbing, and this causes overflow into the community networks that are responsible for non-immigrants, such as organizations working for families, youth, homeless people and women. Those organizations do their best to lend these individuals a hand and help them survive.
With winter now on its way, we are very worried. We really are at a breaking point in the Montreal region because of the volume of refugee claims. While that volume does not compare with what is happening in Europe or at the Mexican border, it still puts a lot of pressure on volunteer organizations.
We are proposing, and we are asking the federal government to establish, a system of longer-term accommodation, perhaps with Quebec's ministère de la Sécurité publique and the Red Cross, at least during the winter and especially for the most vulnerable families. Given the housing crisis, it is virtually impossible to find a place to live. The occupancy rate at shelters for homeless people is therefore rising, something we absolutely want to avoid. That is one of our recommendations for the federal government.
The situation that prevails between Canada and Quebec brings to mind a divorced couple who can't agree on custody of the kids. Each one volleys the ball back to the other and they both argue all the time, so the children are left on their own. That is kind of what the current situation for refugee claimants looks like.
It is important for the federal government and Quebec to agree on implementing emergency measures...