Citizenship and Immigration committee  Starting 44 years ago in 1973, Gays for Equality offered a telephone information line, peer counselling service, and a resource library on the University of Manitoba campus. The group went on to become a leader and an important resource for the gay and lesbian community, providin

Citizenship and Immigration committee  —who may otherwise not be sponsored. While not involved directly in sponsorship as a centre, we know that clients who have been sponsored by community members have a much easier time integrating into the community and require less support from our centre.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As a centre, we look forward to partnering with IRCC to meet the increasing service needs of permanent residents and convention refugees who access our centre. We are currently providing these services with the financial support of our communities and through—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  —existing service agreements not designated for newcomer work. Further, we hope to—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Since 2012, Reaching Out Winnipeg, which is our local sponsorship organization, has brought seven LGBTQ refugees into the community. They're all well settled, as far as we know from the updates we've received. One of the sponsorships did receive direct funding through Rainbow Ref

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I would agree with the summary, first of all, and also the other speakers. I think that, yes, there could certainly be cases where someone is going to pretend to be LGBT to seek asylum here in Canada, but I think they will be few and far between. I'm not quite sure why anyon

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The other question that I might ask is, how gay is gay enough? How long are people going to have to remain gay for? We know that sexuality is fluid, so there are people who have been in same-sex relationships, who ultimately end up in opposite-sex relationships, and vice versa. A

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would agree with everything that has been said. Certainly, we would welcome an increase in ongoing funding. I think a targeted measure would be appropriate, as would an ability to respond when we see instances of increases in violence like we're seeing right now in Chechnya.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not sure. I think coming up with that number would require working with my colleagues from across the country. We ourselves are not that well connected, and I think this is an opportunity for us to think about how we can better support one another in doing refugee settlement

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One of the things that I mentioned was the IRB guidelines that came out. As an organization, we're using those guidelines as a training framework to work with other settlement agencies, and as guidelines for the overall education work that we're doing out in the community. I th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good afternoon, members of committee. Rainbow Resource Centre has a 45-year history in our community. We've been engaged in education for better equity and inclusion for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit, and queer people in business, education, and social and gove

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the only other piece I brought up in my presentation, which I think is important, is to also be trauma-informed at some level to understand how this process can re-traumatize victims—not only SOGIE claimants, but anyone who is appearing before the IRB.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I have no knowledge of the complaints process to date.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In our experience, they have not been applied consistently, and this is something that as an organization we need to start tracking and reporting on more consistently. I still think that the guidelines themselves are quite good. The problem comes in when they are delivered or tr