Citizenship and Immigration committee  Let me answer maybe not your question, but I'll answer in this way. I came here as a refugee. I gave up my medical degree. I paid $34,000 with my family, with my sister and her three children to a smuggler to come here. And I know many people are going to give up both kidneys to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I am not aware of any.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We haven't experienced that as an organization. But when the safe third country issue came, it was one of the concerns, if we were going to see high numbers of people. There is no evidence of that. We have seen high numbers of people. However, under the government assistance prog

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Let me highlight one issue. Historically, meeting the needs of children and youth wasn't part of the package of services for newcomers. The issue is not that there is a system that doesn't work. There wasn't one. It wasn't recognized. The idea was because they go to school, they'

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One of the suggestions we have heard, a recommendation we have had that we are hoping we're going to see a positive response to with new money, is to include interpretation as part of the budget. Also, we advocate, we work with the other partners to say that language interpretati

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The kind of problem we are seeing...and I'm not talking about the people who have been in Canada for 20 years; I'm talking about the people who arrived one month ago. If you ask the individual doctors, very often they don't have money for it and they say it's not their responsibi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the system in Ontario of the agreement signed last year is one of the very positive agreement models, at least from the community perspective. I believe the federal and provincial governments have shared the same opinion on that. There is a limitation in that regard, but

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Based on the agreement, it was supposed to be $50 million last year, and this year I believe $175 million, but there has been some delay. The information is that the money is going to be there this year.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Actually, before new money came in, the Ontario region developed a new system, and as a part of that system right now there is a call for submitting a letter of interest. Basically they have asked individuals, private organizations, community groups, municipalities, and umbrella

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There is a hope it's going to improve in the near future. I'll put it this way. Yes, the current system has limitations because of the money and because of a number of issues, and because 90-something organizations in Ontario deliver it, but the new system they are implementing r

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. One is the limitation of the money the last few years. There never was an increase in the money, although there was an increase in the number of the newcomers who are coming. Also, there is the issue of the new immigrants or the refugees who may need more advanced services.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I am talking about specifics. For example, eligibility criteria for refugee claimants, they cannot access this through the federal government funded services.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I haven't heard. But is that a possibility? Yes, because we have some organizations that were funded based on the ethnic-racial specific community they are supposed to serve, but that criterion has changed. It should not happen. Is it possible that it happened? Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have a department that provides interpretation and that's not funded by any government department, provincial or federal. That's self-funded. I could say around 70% of all our requests are medical requests that are not covered by the medical community, and when you talk about

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Definitely. Again, in the experience of our agency--and I think other organizations have identical experiences--for example, in Hamilton, 80% of government-assisted refugees are children. Eighty percent. I believe that's a great investment for Canada, by the way. But at the same