Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. As I said in my opening remarks, there are some 2,000 identified Armenian-Syrian refugees who are waiting for sponsorship now. If the SAH quotas were lifted, they could be filled immediately. There is frustration in a number of other communities that either very low quotas h

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, it would be to get on with it, but to lift the quotas would also mean putting some significant resources in place in Winnipeg and on the ground in Lebanon and Jordan to actually process and transport people.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can certainly speak to that. There is a great shortage of affordable accommodation in Toronto and the surrounding GTA. The accelerated arrivals caused problems just in being able to go to enough places and to ensure that the leases...that families weren't taken advantage of by

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In the case of the Armenian Catholic community, they want to be close to schools and public transit.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  If I could just make that point again, the incomplete point, I have heard some allegations that concern me about immigration officers at our embassy in Beirut who have been very skeptical and unsympathetic to applications made by Christians and have said that they are not subject

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, the government-sponsored refugees are from that traditional pool of refugees, but some of the privately sponsored refugees are accepted as unknown quantities. However, for those communities that will carry their sponsored families and individuals into Canada, it only makes se

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For highly rapid integration.... There was an event that I attended, and I believe one of my colleagues here was at the same ceremony. The mayor of Toronto said that he wondered why there was such a hot spot on the map of the greater Toronto area with a large volume, thousands, o

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I understood from Minister McCallum's remarks—and we're friends and we go back a long way—that he was saying ”Enough with the Syrian refugee program. We've got to look at our global obligations of 12,000-24,000 refugees a year beyond Syria.” My response to that was that the gover

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, it's to be consistent. I'm only asking for them to be consistent.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For the last 15 years I've been involved with TRIEC, the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council. I've been well aware, and Canada, as I said, over the decades, has been exceptionally welcoming. I can't answer.... Again, I'm here as a private sponsor, speaking to the wonderfu

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The government should complete the promises they made, and I think those promises are only half fulfilled at the moment, certainly with regard to the privately sponsored refugees and the SAHs. New quotas haven't been issued to the private SAHs. In some cases, it's a matter of 100

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I think much more was spent in the rush to hit a target in an unreasonably short period of time. I think it should have been done over a more controlled and regulated period. If we take another 20,000, I think that's wonderful as long as, again, they're properly selected,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. The private sponsors, particularly in the communities I've been working with, are bringing in members of their distant communities. The Armenians from Aleppo have been persecuted. Many of them were displaced by the Armenian genocide a hundred years ago, but the comm

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly in my case it will, and in the cases of those private sponsors I know.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I suggested in my remarks, for those who are having financial difficulties and who are running into short-term cash-flow problems, I would suggest that there should be an assistance program and perhaps a repayable loan program, but they should not be handed over to collection