Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 27th, 2026

[Amandeep Sodhi, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

In the last minute I have, I'd like to give you the opportunity to give the committee any recommendations you might have. Is there anything you'd like to say?

[Prof. Christina Clark-Kazak]

To reiterate what I said before, I do think there needs to be more coordination across all levels of government. This is a federal committee, but you can't do this alone. You need to coordinate with the provinces and the municipalities.

The other thing I would say is this: Think very carefully about what services are available in what areas of the country. Don't just drop people into an area where there are no refugee lawyers, for example. That's what happened in 2024-25. We had people going into other areas where there was no legal support for them. There was no way for them to make their claim effectively. They were sitting in the system for a long period of time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michelle Rempel]

Thank you.

That takes us to the end of this panel. I want to thank the witnesses very much for their time and their testimony.

We are suspended for five minutes to set up the next panel.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michelle Rempel]

Welcome back, colleagues.

I'd like to make a few comments for the benefit of our new witnesses.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. If you are appearing by Zoom, at the bottom of the screen you can select the appropriate channel for your interpretation, and it's similar for witnesses in the room. I would advise you to set up your interpretation, if you have not already done so, as committee members can ask questions to you in either of our official languages.

I will attempt to let you know when you have about a minute left in your remarks, and you have five minutes to make your remarks. All comments should be addressed through the chair.

I'd like to proceed with welcoming our witnesses for the second panel.

We have Dr. Lisa Kaida, associate professor with McMaster University. We have Karen Kobussen, chief executive officer of the Saskatoon West Business Association. Then, appearing on Zoom, we have Alina Murad, director of federal government relations with The Refugee Centre. Welcome to you all.

We will begin our round of opening remarks with Dr. Kaida.

[Lisa Kaida, Associate Professor, McMaster University, As an Individual]

Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

My name is Lisa Kaida. I'm an associate professor of sociology at McMaster University. As a sociologist and social demographer who has been studying the integration of immigrants and refugees for over 20 years, I'm honoured to be here.

In this opening statement, I will make three points based on my research on the secondary migration of refugees, in which I analyzed Statistics Canada's data on permanent residents.

First, it will be helpful to carefully distinguish between resettled refugees and asylum seekers. Resettled refugees are approved for admission before arriving in Canada, and they are granted permanent resident status upon arrival. In contrast, asylum seekers are initially temporary residents. If their asylum claims are accepted, they are approved as refugees and therefore become permanent residents. This process may take a few years. My past research focused on the integration of resettled refugees.

I will now turn to my three points.

First, the main take-away from my research is that resettled refugees are more likely to leave their initial destinations than economic immigrants, mostly because resettled refugees are more likely to settle in smaller communities first, but more than 50% of resettled refugees do stay in their initial destinations even if they are small, remote communities.

Second, will this apply to asylum seekers? I cannot directly answer this question, because asylum seekers' experience in smaller communities may be different from that of resettled refugees. Resettled refugees are mostly government-assisted refugees or privately sponsored refugees. Government-assisted refugees are assigned to designated communities upon arrival. Through the resettlement assistance program, they receive income support for up to 12 months, as well as immediate resettlement services. Privately sponsored refugees are sponsored by groups of individuals or religious or ethnic organizations. Their sponsors are spread across Canada. They provide financial support, accommodation and social support to privately sponsored refugees during their first year in Canada. Asylum seekers are not entitled to such social and economic support from the government or sponsors.

Third, my research does not provide statistics on the secondary migration of asylum seekers. I defined the initial destinations of resettled refugees and other categories of immigrants as the places where they landed as permanent residents. If they move out of the initial destination later, that movement is treated as secondary migration. In my research, if asylum seekers are successful in their applications and given permanent resident status, then their statistics are recorded as “other refugees”, along with other categories of refugees, such as those admitted on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

My research shows that more than 70% of other refugees initially settled in either Toronto or Montreal, but it is possible that asylum seekers arrived elsewhere first. When they became permanent residents, they might have moved to Toronto or Montreal. To precisely identify where asylum seekers initially settled, we would have to look at where they filed asylum claims or where their intended destinations were, as recorded in Statistics Canada's data on non-permanent residents.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I look forward to your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michelle Rempel]

Thank you so much for your comments.

We'll now move to Karen Kobussen, from the Saskatoon West Business Association.

You have the floor.

[Karen Kobussen, Chief Executive Officer, Saskatoon West Business Association]

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members.

My name is Karen Kobussen. I'm the chief executive officer of the Saskatoon West Business Association. We represent and advocate for businesses on the west side of Saskatoon. We work to address issues that affect business owners, their customers, their employees and those who live and work in the neighbourhoods that surround them. These issues include business attraction and retention, community safety, housing, public services and the overall health and vitality of the area.

I'm not here today as an immigration lawyer or a constitutional expert but as someone who works closely with local businesses and our community partners, including NGOs and CBOs. I see the consequences of these federal policy decisions on the ground.

The motion before this committee is focused on efforts to relocate asylum seekers to other provinces. From the perspective of Saskatoon, I would urge the committee not to mistake redistribution for a solution. Moving asylum seekers from central Canada to Saskatoon does not fix the broken system. It simply moves the pressure from one place to the other. We heard earlier that Saskatoon is overwhelmed, and that is true. I am here today to support that. The real issue is that our asylum system is overwhelmed, backlogged and no longer functioning in a timely or credible way.

When claims take years to resolve, people remain in limbo. That is unfair, and it creates uncertainty. During that time, they need housing, health care, schooling, income support, legal services and other community resources, and these pressures are not carried by Ottawa or the federal government in any real, day-to-day sense. They are carried by citizens, provinces, schools, hospitals, shelters, local organizations, serving agencies, businesses and neighbourhoods.

Saskatoon is a generous city. We have welcomed newcomers for generations—including my family. Our businesses understand the importance of immigration. Many newcomers have started businesses, filled jobs, paid taxes, raised families and made our community stronger. However, there is a vast difference between orderly immigration and an uncontrolled asylum backlog, and there is a major difference between welcoming people successfully and transferring this federal system onto communities that are already stretched thin.

Saskatoon currently faces a serious housing crisis. We have residents who are struggling to find affordable places to live. We have less than a 2% market rental vacancy rate, and that's just in Saskatoon. We have extraordinary homelessness encampments. You heard earlier that we welcomed the displaced persons from the northern wildfire season, and we have shelters and community organizations dealing with the growing demand. We have employers who are concerned that their workers cannot find housing they can afford. Simply adding more people into that pressure cooker without first fixing the system will not help these asylum seekers, and it will not help Saskatoon.

We know health care and education are under strain. People cannot find family doctors. Exploding school classroom sizes, complex-needs students, language barriers.... You name it. Saskatchewan and Saskatoon are not in a position to increase this capacity right now. This matters.

For this reason, I believe this committee should focus on the root problem, which is that the system needs to be fixed. The solution is not to spread the consequences of failure across the country. The solution is to stop the failure.

Canada should continue to protect refugees who are genuinely seeking asylum for legitimate reasons—that is a very important responsibility—but we need to restore the basic principle that our immigration and asylum systems must be effectively and efficiently managed, not through backlogs, loopholes and unmanaged pressure. Relocating asylum seekers to Saskatoon is not compassion. It's downloading, because it asks communities to absorb the consequences of a federal policy failure.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michelle Rempel]

Thank you so much for your remarks as well.

I will now turn the floor over to Ms. Murad from The Refugee Centre.

You have five minutes.

[Alina Murad, Director, Federal Government Relations, The Refugee Centre]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear today.

My name is Alina Murad, and I'm here on behalf of The Refugee Centre, a non-profit organization that supports refugee claimants through wraparound services, including legal support, employment assistance, language programs and community integration services.

Thank you to the committee for undertaking this study, as refugee claimants, who contribute significantly to Canadian society and communities across Canada, should be able to benefit from these contributions.

The redistribution of asylum seekers in Canada is an inherently intersectional issue that requires an equally intersectional response. Any discussion surrounding redistribution must take into consideration not only where claimants are relocated but whether those regions have the infrastructure, services and opportunities necessary to support long-term retention, dignified work and successful integration.

The reality is that people naturally gravitate toward areas that have received sustained investment, where opportunities exist for them and their families and where they can realistically build stable lives. If certain regions remain underpopulated, we must ask why that is the case and address those underlying conditions directly. It is crucial that any redistribution policies or programs remain voluntary and based on the informed consent of the claimant.

Data from Statistics Canada demonstrate that interprovincial migration trends are heavily influenced by employment opportunities and affordability. Historically, people move toward regions where they are more likely to find stable work, better services and stronger economic prospects. Refugee claimants are no different. Like anyone else, they are making decisions based on where they can support their families and establish long-term stability. This is why the central issue is not relocation itself but retention.

In 2022, The Refugee Centre launched a pilot program to respond to post-COVID labour shortages, which helped facilitate refugee claimant relocation to less populated areas in Canada. This pilot program operated until 2024 and has since been put on hold due to funding constraints. From our experience, in many smaller cities and regions outside major urban centres, the limited availability of education, employment opportunities, public transportation and settlement services poses a significant barrier to successful integration. Without robust job opportunities, self-sufficiency becomes far more difficult, increasing reliance on already overstretched social and community services. This is not the goal of redistribution, nor is it beneficial for claimants, municipalities or provinces. “No job” means “no retention”.

At The Refugee Centre, we see every day how access to employment support, language training, legal assistance and community connection dramatically improves integration outcomes. However, I must highlight a major policy gap. Many non-governmental organizations that receive government settlement funding are currently unable to provide services to refugee claimants, because funding eligibility is often restricted to permanent residents, accepted refugees or government-assisted refugees. This places community organizations in an extremely difficult position, as you've heard today. Organizations are forced to scramble for precarious funding sources while continuing to respond to urgent needs on the ground.

If Canada is interested in redistribution efforts, opening government funding streams to organizations serving refugee claimants should be one of the very first policy changes implemented. Doing so would strengthen the organizations already operating outside major cities and better equip them to support increasing numbers of claimants settling in those regions. It would also improve retention by ensuring that claimants have access to the services necessary to successfully integrate into local communities.

For this reason, we recommend increased investment in employment preparation programs, credential recognition support and targeted labour market-matching initiatives for refugee claimants. We also recommend the creation or expansion of a program modelled after the EMPP, which would allow refugee claimants already in Canada to voluntarily participate in labour-matching opportunities connected to regional economic needs. Such a program would assess a claimant's professional background, language capacity, family situation and employment background and connect them with communities that are experiencing labour shortages and are prepared to support long-term integration. Claimants could then relocate with the assurance of stable and dignified employment.

A program like this cannot operate in isolation. It would require federal coordinated calls for proposals engaging organizations across Canada and Quebec, with implementation anchored under Economic and Social Development Canada. This would help ensure that redistribution is not simply about moving claimants across the country but about creating more meaningful pathways to employment and long-term integration. It would require coordination between the federal government, provinces, municipalities, employers and community organizations, as well as investments in social infrastructure.

Risk assessments could be collaborative with local stakeholders to ensure that communities actually have the capacity to support newcomers sustainably and humanely.

If redistribution is approached through investment and partnership, it can become a meaningful strategy in—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michelle Rempel]

We are out of time. I apologize. Thank you for your comments. I'm sure you can respond with further thoughts during questions.

With that, we will move to our first round of questions.

I believe we are starting with Mr. Redekopp again.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing before us today.

I'm going to start with Ms. Kobussen, my fellow Saskatonian.

You spoke about how this study is about redistributing asylum claimants across the country versus dealing with the root of the problem. Could you speak a bit more about that? What is the root of the problem, and how should that be fixed?

[Karen Kobussen]

Thank you for the question.

The root of the problem is that we're not effectively measuring where these people already are or what their needs are. I get the sense that simply redistributing people without taking into consideration.... Let's do an overlay of a municipality, for example, Saskatoon's capacity. What is your shelter capacity? How many people do you have there? How many people are you currently serving? How many refugees are there? When we don't measure, we can't manage. What we don't measure becomes invisible, and they just fall off the system.

That coordination we heard a little about earlier and that measurement piece really need to be a coordinated effort, especially among the municipalities, because they're the ones taking the brunt of it.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

You represent businesses. If there was an influx of asylum seekers into Saskatoon, what sort of impacts would that have on the businesses that you represent?

[Karen Kobussen]

Mr. Redekopp, as you know, Saskatoon West is probably a bit of a lower socio-demographic area in the city. We have many immigrants, and a lot of them are business owners. They came through the Saskatchewan immigrant nominee program and the entrepreneur stream. They're looking for workers. They're looking for stable housing for the people they need, so we have less than a 2% vacancy rate in Saskatoon.

I wouldn't want to see that sacrificed. These people are taxpayers. They're business owners. Some of them are homeowners, but their employees need to be housed. They need to have doctors. They need to have schools. Let's allow them to have the means and to have access to these without overburdening a system that's already overburdened.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

For Saskatoon services—you talked about housing and other services, like health care and things like that—is there a difference between orderly migration and bringing in a whole lot of asylum seekers in a short period of time?

[Karen Kobussen]

Yes, definitely. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think if we look back, the immigrant nominee program, or SINP, in Saskatchewan has been extremely successful. We had targets, and we would allow people to come in based on those targets. We knew that was going to happen, and we could project whether it would be health care, education or housing.

The other thing that I think is important about that is the labour market growth. We can also project who's coming in, who's opening businesses and how many employees they need. Saskatchewan has one of the lowest unemployment rates of any province across the country, so it's really hard to find workers. That needs to be orderly, managed, efficient and effective.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

You talked about processing claims faster than redistributing people around the country. Do you feel that's a better solution?

[Karen Kobussen]

I think it gives certainty. Again, downloading is not compassionate. I definitely think the faster we can process claims, the more certainty it gives to the individual, so that they understand their future. They know what they're going to be doing in three or 12 months, or whenever. I think we owe it to these people to ensure that they have that certainty. Who wants to live like that? That's not very fair or compassionate.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

You would agree, then, if we have an asylum claimant who has failed, that we need to process them, and if they need to leave the country, they should leave the country rather than be moved from wherever they are to a place like Saskatoon.

[Karen Kobussen]

Definitely. What's the point of having the rule if we're not going to enforce it?

If the decision has been made to deny that claim for a reason, then yes, that individual, or whoever we're speaking about, for whatever reason, needs to be returned. I think the due process is very important, but I also think that following the decision of that due process is equally important.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Again, in the scenario where we bring more asylum seekers to Saskatoon, what are the different pressures? You talk about housing. Are there other things, like homelessness or health care? What are the pressures that would come to bear on the city?

[Karen Kobussen]

Certainly, we can look at cultural supports, depending on the asylum seekers' countries of origin. We're not Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. We do have a diverse culture there, but it's maybe not diverse enough. Cultural supports, language supports, other public services, transportation.... Saskatoon is a car city. You know this. You need to have a vehicle. Can they get that? Can they figure out how to get around?

Housing is just the tip of the iceberg. Legal supports would be another one. Labour market, cultural and legal supports, language....

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Michelle Rempel]

Thank you.

Mr. Fragiskatos, I understand that you are sharing your speaking time with Mr. Deschênes. Is that correct?

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

Certainly, I'll give my colleague three minutes, because that's the study Mr. Deschênes proposed. With all due respect, I'll start my questions with that.

Thank you to all the witnesses.

Professor Kaida, you spent your career studying international migration and the immigration system in Canada, as I understand it. I have a very simple question, but I think it's core to what we're looking at here.

What does the general evidence that you've looked at suggest with respect to what makes for a successful asylum policy and successfully responding to those seeking asylum in a democracy like Canada? What allows for a country's response to be successful as opposed to the opposite?