We'd be looking for resettlement.
That said, resettlement is a voluntary activity of states, just like the donations we rely on. It's up to Canada to decide how much it believes it can contribute to us.
It's the same thing with resettlement. We have to start from that and try to figure out what makes the most sense.
As you can imagine, we're looking for refugees with the most acute protection problems in the countries of asylum. It's not just that they're a refugee and that they had to flee their country of origin; in the country of asylum, they now have a serious protection problem. We use seven different categories, and I won't get into all the detail, but I'll just say that one of the categories where we look for refugees is in those with legal physical protection needs when they're facing detention or forced refoulement back to their country of origin or when they may be attacked by other refugee groups. For example, think of an LGBTQI refugee who's fled their country of origin; now, in another country, they're experiencing the same type of persecution.
There are also survivors of violence and torture. Because we don't have the psychosocial supports to respond to the needs of such refugees, we may pursue resettlement.
These could also be refugee women at risk. We talked earlier about some of those challenges. Dr. Clark-Kazak spoke about some of the gender gaps. Gender-based persecution is a problem. We sometimes use the women at risk program to respond to that. For example, about 20% of the refugees Canada resettled last year came through the women at risk program.
Those three categories make up the vast majority of refugees we refer. We select people with the most acute protection problems. There are obviously many more refugees who could benefit from resettlement and are in need of a solution.
Last year was a record for us. We referred people to all states, not just Canada, since we work with about 26 states to find and identify refugees for potential resettlement. That was about 150,000 people. I gave you the scale of 122 million people forcibly displaced, 32 million who are refugees under UNHCR's mandate and 2.9 million whom we estimate are in need of resettlement. With the reality that we'll have about 150,000 to 160,000 spaces—which is a record level—we have to make some very difficult choices, as you can imagine, in trying to respond to that.
You're right that it's very resource-intensive to move someone from one part of the world to another part of the world. The Canadian experience has turned out to be positive, in the sense that yes, it's a potential loss for the country of origin, but it's shown itself in reality to be a benefit for Canada. The statistics demonstrate that refugees make important contributions to Canada. Even though we selected them because of their vulnerability and the danger they were in or because we were responding to the various problems they had, the statistics show that Canada has done well by integrating them. Over time, we find that those first five or 10 years—depending on which academic you talk to—are hard, but to be fair, what Canada does well is that every year it gets better.
You mentioned that you're from Edmonton. There was a study done by Bronwyn Bragg and Dan Hiebert. A paper they wrote recently looked at housing in the six largest cities in Canada. What they found was that after 20-plus years, refugees had higher home ownership than Canadians in five of the six cities. The one exception was Edmonton; in every other city, refugees had higher home ownership.
Housing is an issue for us in Canada right now. I understand that, but I'm just saying that over time, we see these improvements. The access to opportunities pays off for everybody.