Health committee  Thank you very much. My name is Queenie Choo, and I'm the CEO of S.U.C.C.E.S.S. S.U.C.C.E.S.S. is one of the largest social services agencies in British Columbia, serving new Canadians, seniors and those in affordable housing. Thank you for inviting me to present to the commit

Justice committee  Definitely, I support that, regardless of an election. I think that divisive.... You know, the opportunity for this hate crime online is only going to divide our country. It's not going to uphold our values of diversity and inclusion, regardless of government or election. I thi

Justice committee  That's a very good question. I think if it is done, it isn't done enough. In my presentation, I talked about creating dialogue and community engagement among particularly those people who are under-represented. Those are newcomers in particular. Those are the people in the comm

Justice committee  As I mentioned before, I think the legislation needs to take the following into consideration: defining what a hate crime is and how to report it, what happens after the reporting, and what people actually need to do when reporting a hate crime. For the education piece, the trai

Justice committee  Thank you so much for inviting S.U.C.C.E.S.S. to present before you today. We believe that this is an important topic of the study and we are honoured to provide our perspective. To provide you with some context, for those people who are not familiar with S.U.C.C.E.S.S., we are

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. Again, thank you for the question. I personally was an immigrant to Canada 38 years ago. I did not receive any services, and neither did I receive foreign credential recognition. I had to struggle through in my own way in terms of getting to know the country and getti

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly. Last year we served over 5,600 newcomers. This year we are already on pace to exceed last year's number by 30%.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They're from India, China, the Philippines and others.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's a very good question. Thank you for asking it. We want to connect with them sooner rather than later. A lot of it is word of mouth. I personally went to visit the Canadian visa office in Hong Kong, because they issue all the visas to those individuals who receive invitatio

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. Thank you MP Kwan. I think this is very important. We look across Canada at not just recruiting the brightest and the smartest people to come, but also at a way to retain them. One of the strategies for that is to ensure there are resources available across our provi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The first recommendation had to do with investment in the entire continuum of settlement services from pre-arrival to post-arrival to ensure that all newcomers have the information, resources and tools to succeed in Canada. Funding for settlement services needs to take into consi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. Thank you. Certainly by supporting the vulnerable newcomers earlier, we anticipate cost savings down the road, as they will be less likely to require more costly health services, legal services or financial assistance from the government.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think this is my fourth recommendation. There's a need to support language training for newcomers. As you know, for newcomers in a new country with a new culture and language barriers, we would certainly like to see as soon as possible—within the first year or even six months

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would suggest that a better way would be to provide some specific language training pre-arrival, maybe six months before they arrive in Canada, related to the jobs they are going to take. That would be a perfect way to support their journey.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We did, in fact. We are only one of the providers for the pre-arrival services—our AEIP—and I wanted to share with you some of the client outcomes. People are very interested in employment knowledge and skill. Over 93% of the people we served indicated that their employment kno