Citizenship and Immigration committee  You all will be getting a copy of my little dissertation here, so that's great. I do want to comment on the travel expenses issue. To my understanding, we're the only country in the world that charges refugees travel expenses.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  First of all, I guess we should go back and say that to my understanding, there are 60 million refugees in the world in 73 countries, so we have a huge problem for mankind. It just happens that with the Syrian refugee crisis, we decided as Canadians to jump on the bandwagon. It i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The first family is arriving tomorrow. We have no idea about the next. We have two other families that we're going to bring in. We have no idea. Small-town Canada has gone out and...in Barrie, Ontario, they've leased the property. They've had it leased for three months. They have

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Do I get another seven minutes?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You put me on the spot here. We're the only country in the world that's responded to the Syrian refugee crisis on a private citizen basis. We created private, BVOR, and community sponsorships across the country and raised millions of dollars of support. There's an opportunity th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. We would all agree that teaching new refugees English is a top priority. What ESL services are available to rural Canada? How do we know if local families have the same cultural background or extended related...? We need to create a resource-based information file and all

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to present today. My name is Thomas Vincent, and I'm co-chair of the Collingwood Syrian family sponsorship group. While Canadians across the country are very supportive of the federal government in its initiative and resettlement prog