Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 13th, 2018

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

When refugees come here, is there any documentation or any data related to their being the subject of hate crimes?

[Ümit Kiziltan]

Post-arrival or before they...?

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Post-arrival.

[Ümit Kiziltan]

There are two sorts of data. There is the one that is not anecdotal scientific but based on research. When we look at research, and a number of academics are looking at it, especially qualitative research, we are encountering signs of visible minority refugees or immigrants facing some challenges in terms of translating their education to income. They have education comparable to someone Canadian-born, but they're having difficulties.

You must have heard about some research where an academic would send the same CV but with different names. The CV with a visible minority name wouldn't get the same number of callbacks as a Canadian with a regular name, which is more normally known and recognized. There are signs, and we do monitor these.

Again, as we investigate, we try to bring the insight and feed it back to our programming or policy colleagues so they can do course correction or use different ways of formulating interventions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Nuttall.

The floor is yours, Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Page six of the deputy's remarks talks about the increased supplementary money for Syrian refugees in the amount of $58 million. Overall, there's $762 million. I wasn't clear. Because there was so much attention paid to this file, and because you could get rapid results more quickly than normal, did you end up spending more money on the Syrian refugees, in terms of their settlement services, and therefore you needed to increase it across the board for everyone else, or was that part of a regular increase? I'm trying to identify what the driver was of the $58 million.

[Marta Morgan]

The driver of the $58 million was the cost of settlement services per refugee. It wasn't that it cost more per Syrian. It was just that, with the significant influx of Syrian refugees, it was going to cost more overall. When we look at our settlement program overall, refugees are the most intensive users of our settlement services. On a per capita basis, those costs are higher for refugees than for other categories of immigrants.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

On the last page, you say, “As a result, most provinces and territories are experiencing an increase”. What is that reflective of? Everybody got an increase. I'm just trying to figure out why.

[Marta Morgan]

It's the combination of overall increasing levels of immigration as set out in the annual levels plan—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm sorry. Is this considered part of an annual increase that's built into it anyway?

[Marta Morgan]

Exactly.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I see.

[Marta Morgan]

There's an annual increase built in based on the number of immigrants coming into the country and the profile of those immigrants. If the mix changes and there are more refugees, it would be more expensive on a per person basis than if there were more economic immigrants.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That answers my question. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We'll now move to Madam Mendès.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I have no questions, only observations. I also sit on the government operations committee, and this morning we had an outside consultant tell us that Canada is looked at as an example by many countries on many things, except procurement. We're very bad at procurement, and are seen as really not an example to follow.

One thing we're very good at, apparently, which many countries around the world look at us for, is our settlement services for immigrants and refugees. My job as an MP demands a lot of continued attention to the issues of immigration and refugees. Having worked in the field for over 15 years, I can absolutely attest to the excellent work you do.

I come from Quebec, so there's a little difference there.

To answer your question, Mr. Généreux, language services for immigrants are always in French in Quebec. There are no free language services for learning English, or any other language. If people want to learn more English, they absolutely have to pay to do so. All the welcome and integration services are provided in French. I am not saying that is bad: it simply reflects the reality of Quebec. It is how the province does things.

Let me end by saying that welcoming, settling and integrating immigrants and refugees is a matter of nation building, if that is the correct expression to use.

Nation building is what immigration is all about, particularly in a country of such slow and limited demographic growth, so hats off to you and to your department for what you're doing.

If we can help you with reports and recommendations, hoping to improve what can be improved, you can count on us.

Thank you again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madam Mendès.

I hope you realize that we have to write a report on this study. There is thus one other little question we would like to ask with respect to a part we would like to have in our study. The Auditor General brought forward recommendation 3.91 on performance measurement. The Auditor General called on the department to update its performance measurement strategy.

Obviously this question is for you, Ms. Morgan. Does the department plan to develop new, more precise longer-term performance indicators, such as labour force status, children's education—which Mr. Chen brought up—outcomes, etc.?

[Marta Morgan]

Yes, Mr. Chair, we have updated our outcomes monitoring framework and our performance information profile for the Syrian refugee initiative. We are also putting into place a multipronged data strategy to further strengthen our capacity to monitor, analyze, and report. Part of that would be, for example, the agreements I referred to earlier on heath data. We will be pursuing further reporting and release of statistical data, as well as reporting through our departmental results report.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have updated it. Is this something that is ongoing? Are you going to be continually looking at updating the performance measurements as you move forward, or do you think you've done the measures needed and it is completed?

[Marta Morgan]

This is something we will continue to look at over time. We're constantly updating and improving our ability to track outcomes of immigrants and refugees, including Syrian refugees. I would not expect this to be a one-time thing, but we have an updated framework. We will be working with it, and we will continue to improve it as we go forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Is that updated framework public?

[Ümit Kiziltan]

We haven't published it, but there is no reason that it couldn't be public.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

So it will be made public fairly soon.

The other question I have is more of a personal question. In my very rural Alberta riding, we have a number of immigration.... Especially around the Syrian refugees, a kind of umbrella organization came together in one of my communities, Camrose, a community of just under 20,000. They were initially disappointed that they were unable to access government-assisted refugees. They are 50 miles out of Edmonton, and they have a really strong record with refugee resettlement and working with refugees.

Today I heard some of the reasons why. Let me just make it very clear that some of these small groups and communities really take an interest in the process. It may not be a government program that's helping these refugees through; it can be community organizations or faith groups, such as mosques or churches, where everybody really gets engaged.

I would ask a couple of questions. Of the just under 45,000 Syrian refugees who came in during the timeline we're studying here, how many were government-assisted refugees, how many were privately sponsored, and how many may have been some blended form of visa office-referred refugees?

[David Manicom]

Yes, we have that data, if people have their pens ready: 21,726 government-assisted refugees, 13,942 privately sponsored refugees, and 3,958 what we call blended office-referred refugees. These are refugees referred to Canada by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, where the financial obligation is shared fifty-fifty between the government and a private sponsor.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

What are the typical characteristics of the refugees in these three categories? Are there different characteristics in government-assisted refugees, compared to privately sponsored refugee, for example a faith group that would bring in someone?