Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll echo what John just said. We have entered into a partnership with another community-based organization to respond to this issue. We have been lucky to secure some funding from Ontario Trillium Foundation. We recognize that teenagers, young people, need a lot of support, and

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We can have Mike speak to that, but my quick comment about it is that even if the rent stays the same, the allowance, the money that the refugee has, lessens, so you have the same impact. If they are now not supported by the federal government any longer and they have to go on On

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Lucia might have a comment as well. My quick response to that is that part of what we have done—and Reception House has always given a bit of support to families who have privately sponsored refugees—because of the large numbers, as Tara said, is that we have tried to involve mor

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, I think it's very simple, the federal LINC program, as an example, has attached to it child minding. The other option for us is the provincial government ESL programs, which don't have child minding. If there's a wait-list for LINC, and you're looking at the provincial prog

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, that's a challenging question. We have 1,200 or so refugees who are now in permanent housing. That took a long time. I think, as I said, traditionally we try to get people into permanent housing within three or four weeks. This took a bit longer because of the high occupa

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think part of the work that we do is life skills and orientation. Child rearing is an example. Because of the committee that Mike and Ken spoke about, we had a very strong connection to the police. We had an incident in a hotel, as an example, where there was a family out in

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have dealt with health issues for 25-plus years. I think the uniqueness with the Syrians is the numbers. The process we set up involved working very closely with health professionals and having, within the first week, an assessment of families, so the children, the mother, th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. My name is Carl Cadogan. I am the executive director at Reception House Waterloo Region. I am relatively new in this position. I started at the end of March—up to that point Bert Lobe had run the organization—and came on to help the organization plan strategically wh