Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak about our government's ongoing efforts to resettle Yazidi women and children in Canada.
Let me be clear that the government concurs with the committee's report. Indeed, the committee's findings will help inform what we have learned already through the Yazidi resettlement initiative. The report will also help guide our programs going forward.
As members know, Canada is committed to helping vulnerable and marginalized populations around the world. Our refugee protection program was designed to save lives, offer protection to displaced and persecuted persons, and to respond to international crises by resettling those in need.
As members may recall, in October 2016, the House of Commons voted unanimously that the Government of Canada provide protection for Yazidi women and girls who are escaping genocide. Since Canada does not offer protection on the basis of religion or ethnicity, but rather on vulnerability, the government's response to this motion focused not only on Yazidi people at risk but also and more broadly on survivors of Daesh.
However, because the Yazidi community suffered a particularly high level of violence at the hands of Daesh, Yazidis figured prominently among the cases referred to us by the United Nations Refugee Agency for resettlement.
The Government of Canada committed to resettling 1,200 survivors of Daesh, including vulnerable Yazidi women and children, as government assisted refugees by the end of 2017. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada worked closely with the United Nations Refugee Agency, the International Organization for Migration, resettlement assistance program service provider organizations, and other partners to meet this commitment.
With the help and advice of German, Iraqi, and Kurdish authorities, as well as Yazidi leaders, the government determined that the focus of these efforts should be on helping the most vulnerable individuals, rather than on large-scale resettlement. The government also facilitated the private sponsorship of individuals who fall within this vulnerable group, meaning that more Yazidi women and girls, as well as other survivors of Daesh, could arrive in Canada as privately sponsored refugees.
Canada has now welcomed more than 1,400 survivors of Daesh, including 1,310 government-assisted refugees and 94 who were privately sponsored.
As highlighted in the committee's report, the resettlement of this vulnerable population has not been without challenges. That said, I am pleased to report to the House that Yazidi families in Canada are generally integrating well and are showing increased independence in their daily lives.
One of the ways we are facilitating the arrival of this population is to promote connections between service providers and Yazidi leaders and associations to help newly arrived families connect with the broader community. Some are also starting to leverage faith-based community organizations to build further connections within the community.
Among other instances of community building, there is a strong indication that families are feeling empowered and have a clear willingness to engage with the broader community. This is positive news and a good sign that these families will soon be fully integrated into Canadian society.
One of the committee's recommendations is to help foster precisely this type of community building within the Yazidi community. The government is pleased that the committee's thoughts are in line with what we are already doing. More specifically, the committee recommends that we offer newly arrived Yazidi women and children information about existing Yazidi communities in Canada to help build a supportive Canadian network of Yazidi people.
In addition to our efforts to build bridges between service providers and the Yazidi community, the government is exploring the best means of providing information directly to newly arrived Yazidi refugees regarding Yazidi communities in Canada, both before and after their arrival.
As with all government-assisted refugees, Yazidis are resettled in areas where they will be most likely to integrate into the community and have the support they need.
The core cities selected for the resettlement of survivors of Daesh were Toronto, London, Winnipeg and Calgary. These core cities were chosen after comprehensive consultations with various stakeholders and agencies, and the criteria were based on various aspects of the resettlement process. Among these criteria are adequate medical and psychosocial supports, the availability of interpreters, and adequate community capacity to support high needs clients.
The government took great care in choosing these locations to help ensure the best possible resettlement outcomes for this population. While the government supports all efforts to improve access to services by Yazidi women, we do not concur with the committee's recommendation to directly assist Yazidi women in relocating them to areas that are in close proximity to services. That is because Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada plays a limited role in offering housing supports as part of the integration of newcomers.
Through the refugee assistance program, the department offers temporary accommodation to government assisted refugees and the service providers who assist newly arrived refugees in finding permanent housing. Service providers work with refugees to find affordable housing that is in proximity to essential services and to other Yazidi community members. In addition to the settlement assistance program, Yazidi women and children are also eligible beneficiaries under the interim federal health program. Under this program they receive basic coverage for services that include mental health services provided by physicians or services provided by mental health hospitals. They also receive supplemental coverage, including mental health services provided by allied health professionals such as psychotherapists or counsellors.
We also know that the services funded by the interim federal health program are not the only way for Yazidi women and children to receive the support they need. Specialized refugee clinics or even family physicians often play a key role in providing mental health services in response to the traumas this population has faced. Furthermore, all newcomers can access mental health supports through the settlement sector.
The government will continue to work with these health professionals and community organizations in these centres to ensure that the coverage provided through the interim federal health program translates into the services that Yazidis need.
The committee recommends that the government work with relevant partners to invest in improving mental health supports for all refugees in Canada and that we improve access to mental health support for Yazidi women and children in their mother tongue. The government fully supports this recommendation.
In terms of its settlement programming, IRCC also partners with organizations such as the Canadian Mental Health Association and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health to help settlement, social service and health care providers identify the mental health needs of refugees and equip them with the training and resources. IRCC will continue to build on our partnerships with these organizations as well as other levels of government to support the mental health and well-being of refugees.
On a similar note, the government also supports the report's recommendation that IRCC anticipate linguistic capacity needs in its resettlement initiatives and expand the provision of professional interpretation for newcomers.
The support services offered by service provider organizations funded by IRCC include child care, transportation assistance, crisis counselling, provisions for persons with disabilities, and translation and interpretation services.
Translation services are available to all newcomers who may need them at any point in the settlement process. Of course, this includes Yazidi newcomers. The government also supports the report's recommendation that IRCC work with other levels of government and professional associations working in interpretation and translation to ensure that professional interpretation is provided to newcomers in Canada. To that end, IRCC has increased its engagement with provinces and territories at both multilateral and bilateral levels.
The government also agrees with the report's recommendation that IRCC continue to support language training for all permanent residents, including refugees. Indeed, IRCC spends about 36% of annual federal settlement funding on language training and an additional 3% of the envelope on language assessment for all eligible clients, including refugees.
Speaking more broadly, the government supports the report's recommendation to increase Canada's refugee resettlement targets. Canada has committed to resettling 27,000 refugees in 2018 and that number will increase to over 31,000 in 2020. With this commitment, our country will be the largest resettlement country in the world. The 2018 immigration levels plan also committed the government to growing overall refugee settlement levels by 17% and, as I said, that takes us to over 31,000 refugees in 2020. In budget 2018, the government committed to resettling an additional 1,000 vulnerable women and girls from conflict zones around the world.
On top of Canada's domestic resettlement initiatives, our country also works with our international partners through the global refugee sponsorship initiative. We already have uptake from at least five countries that are now engaging in resettling refugees in their home countries using the privately sponsored model pioneered in Canada. This initiative is helping those countries set up their own community-sponsored refugee programs modelled on our system. This will help boost resettlement capacity all over the world.
The Government of Canada partially supports the committee's recommendation that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada work with stakeholders to facilitate the private sponsorship of Yazidi women and children and deem these applications over and above the sponsorship agreement holders allocations until 2020. While the government will continue to work with sponsors to facilitate the private sponsorship of survivors of Daesh who are outside their country of nationality, it must ensure that it can manage the number of applications it receives each year in order to process them in a timely manner.
Because demand from sponsors to submit new applications has long outpaced available spaces in the levels plan, we have experienced long wait times and backlogs, which create barriers for Canada to offer timely protection. The current sponsorship agreement holders allocations were selected to support the government's commitments, balancing the interests of Canadians to sponsor with the additional space our levels plan has provided in order to reduce application inventories and processing times.
The Government of Canada certainly supports the report's recommendation that it help internally displaced Yazidi persons return to northern Iraq by working toward creating a favourable environment for that return. Indeed, in 2016, the Government of Canada announced a three-year comprehensive strategy providing humanitarian, developmental, stabilization and security assistance in Iraq. Canada is providing $179.5 million in humanitarian assistance in Iraq to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. Canada is assisting in creating a favourable environment for returns through its stabilization programming in liberated areas. Canada is at the forefront of international diplomacy efforts to bring Daesh to account for crimes against vulnerable groups in Iraq and Syria.
The Government of Canada also supports the report's recommendation that IRCC continue to support settlement service providers assisting Yazidi women and children in developing shared capacity and best practices. It also supports the report's recommendation to work with relevant stakeholders and experts on the development of a best practices guide or series for the settlement sector on the resettlement and integration of vulnerable groups.
In response to the report's recommendation that IRCC support family reunification for survivors of Daesh by considering an indefinite extension to the one-year window of opportunity for them to include immediate family members, the government is partially in support. More specifically, the government will not extend the one-year window provision indefinitely, but it will develop eligibility criteria and implement a temporary extension of this provision for immediate family members of survivors of Daesh.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you and all members for the opportunity to address this important issue in the House this evening and remind Canadians of this government's clear commitment through our immigration levels plan to help grow our economy, to provide opportunities for more family reunification, and specifically on the issue we are here to talk about this evening, continue to be a global leader in providing safe refuge and resettlement opportunity for the world's most vulnerable.
Let me remind everyone in this House that it was this government that reinstituted the interim federal health program that Yazidi women and girls are now accessing today to ensure that they have the mental health supports they need. Let me remind this House that it was under this government that 1,400 survivors of Daesh, the majority of whom were Yazidi women and girls, have been resettled into Canada. Let me remind this House and anyone watching that this government is doubling the spaces available for refugee resettlement in Canada and quadrupling the number of spaces provided to private citizens who are taking a leadership role in helping vulnerable persons, refugees around the world, come to Canada, resettle and make a life for themselves and their families.
We know we have more work to do to ensure proper settlement and immigration of all vulnerable persons when they come to Canada, and that particularly includes Yazidi women and girls, on which the conversation is focused this evening. We will continue to be there, working with our provincial and territorial counterparts, working with the great service provider organizations that I have the pleasure of working with in my home community of Fredericton, and the great service provider organizations that I know are providing particular services to Yazidi women and girls and children in places like Calgary, which I had the chance to visit back in October.
We will continue to play a leadership role when it comes to the global trends where we are seeing more people migrating around the world than ever since World War II, and the refugees that we are seeing being hosted in some of the least developed countries around the world. We will work with them to do our part as a global leader in resettlement and also co-operate internationally with other countries to develop their capacity and ability to provide long-term, sustainable solutions for some of the world's most vulnerable.
