Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you.
My name is Anita Stellinga. I'm the chief executive officer of COSTI Immigrant Services. For almost 75 years, COSTI has provided employment, education, settlement, housing, language, mental health and social supports to newcomers and their families across the greater Toronto area. We welcome this study because, in our view, the provincial distribution of asylum seekers is less a question of fairness among jurisdictions and more whether the system produces the right outcomes.
The test of any new approach is practical. Does it help people stabilize faster, move into housing sooner, enter the labour market more quickly and reduce avoidable pressure on shelters, health systems and municipalities? Yes, Ontario and Quebec continue to receive the largest shares of asylum claims in Canada. The issue is not simply where people first arrive. It is whether Canada has the reception, housing and settlement infrastructure to support people after they make a claim.
At COSTI, we see, every day, that housing instability is not a side issue in the asylum system. Housing is the hub of the settlement wheel, and around it are the elements that allow a person or family to move from survival to stability. Health care, education, language training, employment services, legal navigation, social connection and community—without these supports, housing is only a roof. That distinction matters because Canada should be aiming to not only locate and house asylum seekers, but to help people build a home.
A home is more than a physical address. It includes community, dignity, agency and belonging. The benefits of immigration—social cohesion, labour market participation and long-term contribution—depend on that connection to community. That is why we urge caution about models that distribute asylum seekers primarily by population share, fixed quotas or administrative allocation.
A formula may look fair on paper, but it does not tell us whether housing exists, whether employment pathways are realistic or whether a community is ready to welcome people well. Moving people without that foundation simply moves pressure around the country. Access to services, supports and pathways can vary, depending on where someone first arrives, where they are referred and which provincial or municipal systems they encounter. Communities differ in their labour markets, housing conditions, service networks and cultural connections. Newcomers should be able to consider those differences when deciding where to build their lives. Equity should not mean assigning people to places. Equity requires informed choices and reliable access to the supports that allow people to build a home, to contribute and to belong.
Many newcomers, understandably, navigate toward large urban centres, like Toronto and Montreal, because they assume that large cities offer more jobs, more services and a better chance of success. Sometimes they do, but large cities can also have high housing costs, stretched services and difficult labour markets. This study should not only ask where people land, but ask where people are able to stay, work, build community and set down roots. If newcomers can assess housing, employment, education, health navigation, language and community supports before choosing where to build their lives, they are more likely to make choices that last and have better outcomes. If they arrive, only to discover that supports are unavailable, housing is out of reach or jobs are harder to access than expected, then the system has not served them or the municipalities and the communities asked to welcome them.
Rather than creating a system that restricts movement, Canada should create one that coordinates funding, service navigation and outcomes across jurisdictions. In practical terms, that means a multi-year intergovernmental national asylum and housing strategy that codifies the respective roles and funding responsibilities of federal, provincial and municipal governments.
We need a single framework for reception and referral that is characterized by collaboration and coordination across all levels of government and that is supported by shared data infrastructure. The goal would not be to track people in order to control their movement. The goal would be to ensure continuity of support, to prevent duplication, to reduce service gaps, to avoid overwhelming local systems and to give newcomers reliable information about their options, which encourages geographic distribution.
A national system could help identify where housing pathways, services and community networks already exist and where additional capacity could be developed to make more communities realistic choices for settlement. It could also help governments and service providers measure outcomes across jurisdictions: time to housing, time to work authorization, time to employment, school enrolment, health navigation and connection to community.
In closing, COSTI recommends that the committee support a national asylum and housing model built on four principles—mobility, not restriction; informed choice, not administrative assignment; coordinated funding, not fragmented responses; and measurable outcomes, not crisis management.
COSTI stands ready to—
