We can adopt two approaches when we conduct a study in the field in an attempt to understand difficulties or obstacles. We can use a more qualitative approach whereby we meet with a representative of such an association who knows someone else, and by doing so, we build a small sample. We spend about an hour or an hour and a half interviewing these people, who tell us about their experiences, their problems integrating, and so on.
This approach gives us a picture which, even though it is not necessarily statistically significant because it is not representative of the whole immigrant population, does nevertheless enable us to obtain information on obstacles, difficulties, and constraints facing certain groups. Of course, we cannot extrapolate and say that this picture applies to all immigrants in Canada, but it takes into account French-language immigrants and those kinds of things.
We can however draw on this kind of survey when we are developing more standardized and more widely-administered questionnaires. As for surveys conducted by Statistics Canada on French-speaking immigrants, we are really at square one.