Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think we have more than a couple of examples. I would like to mention just a couple here because of the time constraint. The one I would quote is the project at Fort St. John. We have four full-time staff working there, helping to attract and retain professional immigrants in

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would like to assure the committee that Canada is a model for the world in receiving and welcoming new immigrants. We are rated the best country by the United Nations in welcoming and receiving new immigrants. We also believe that new immigrants have already paid back to the co

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's just a concern.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We've been advocating for regional immigration strategies. We believe that new immigrants should be exposed to different types of opportunities in both urban centres and smaller communities around them. But at the moment, because of a lack of information and support in some areas

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would like to echo that we thank the Government of Canada for the funding support to British Columbia through the Canada-B.C. agreement. As to the language vouchers, at this moment we have some reservations about the effectiveness of this system. We see there are a lot of othe

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We support the principle that all immigrants should be given equal opportunity in job interviews. We would support running some pilot projects in certain cities or regions to see the effectiveness of it and also the acceptance from the business owners. But from our observations

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would like to emphasize what I was talking about during my presentation. The first one of course is the business and economic integration program, which now is not funded by the settlement funding framework. We see its success over the country as one of the best practices. It

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In fact, we have been working with the provincial government very closely in evaluating the programs and services we've been providing. On an annual basis, and also every contract term, we have had a very comprehensive discussion and done an evaluation with the funders, the partn

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have two simple projects I want to share with you. One recently got project funding to develop a website on diversity so that all the business people from small and medium-sized enterprises can get onto the website, and through the website they will have the tools to assess th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are two ways that new immigrants can receive language training. The first one, of course, is through a government-funded program called ELSA, which is English language training for adults. It's a free program, but the limitation is that it only goes to level 4 or 5. That's

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I love that question because that's what we've been advocating for. That's why I mentioned that in 1995 we set up our own business and economic development centre with the settlement funding. The purpose of the centre is to help new immigrants connect with local business people.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think in B.C. also the settlement program is solely in the hands of the provincial government, although the money is federal. We would be very happy to see the government open up that opportunity. I think we have to be very creative in terms of getting more resources for public

Citizenship and Immigration committee  And as we have been doing for our business and economic development centre...we haven't received any money from the settlement funding, so we rely on fees, private sponsorship, and some project funding from other departments of the Government of Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This is the last point. We also recommend that the government encourage Canadian educational institutions to work with local NGOs to develop curriculums for skill shortages in top immigrant source countries such as China and the Philippines. Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good morning. My name is Thomas Tam and I'm the Chief Operating Officer of S.U.C.C.E.S.S., a multicultural social service organization serving new Canadians since 1974. Our mission is to build bridges, harvest diversity, and foster integration through different services and advoc