[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Wednesday, June 21, 1995
.1538 
[English]
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Dromisky): I welcome everyone. Let us begin our meeting. We are slightly late but I was just waiting for another person from the government side. They're on their way. However, we do have a quorum, and we can continue with our program.
We're very pleased this afternoon to have Moy C. Tam, the executive director from the Ottawa-Carleton Immigrant Services Organization. We're looking forward to your presentation. After your presentation, we will have a question period, and we provide x number of minutes for each political party as well as the government. You may begin now.
Ms Moy C. Tam (Executive Director, Ottawa-Carleton Immigrant Services Organization): Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of Parliament, and other members of the committee.
I'm very privileged to be here this afternoon to speak to you. I received very short notice for appearing here, which is why my presentation is rather brief. I'm hoping that you will, therefore, have more time for questions and discussion.
I've handed around a pamphlet of the services that our organization provides. If you're interested in knowing how a grassroots organization operates, you're free to ask questions about that.
I'll proceed to talk about the three questions that were posed to me last week. I'll first talk about accountability of non-governmental agencies in providing services and accountability to the government. I think that accountability from our perspective basically means two things: one is financial accountability, and the other is program accountability.
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Financial accountability has been fairly well established. There is no issue right now among the NGOs with regard to financial accountability to the government funders. There are established procedures for auditing. Audited financial statements are usually submitted to the government on a periodic and predetermined interval.
On the other hand, program evaluation is more of an issue at this time, probably because program evaluation of social services is not a terribly well-established art form right now. Even among the academics, it is still being researched, and program evaluation of social services is just not a very precise science.
With NGOs, where there's constant struggling with survival and other operational issues, program evaluation sometimes gets forgotten. For NGOs who have managed to do it, however, they do find it extremely valuable.
Our organization has found program evaluation very essential. It helps us to improve our services to evaluate different and alternative ways of delivering a service so that we're more effective in terms of helping our clients and also more cost-efficient in terms of saving dollars and making the dollar go further.
NGOs that are very inadequately funded try to make the dollars go as far as possible. It is in our best interests to make our programs very cost-effective.
There are two kinds of evaluations that are normally talked about among social service providers. One is what we call impact or outcome evaluation, where you ask whether this particular service actually helps the clients. In terms of settlement, we may ask if it helps in the integration of the newcomer.
As you know, integration again is not very well defined. Different people define it differently, as to who is truly integrated into Canadian society. Because that's not all that well defined, again it's a very approximate science when we try to measure outcome.
What happens more often is that we accept the fact that the service we provide is valuable, is helping the clients, and therefore we just move on to do what we call process evaluation.
Process evaluation is measuring the operational information, such as the number of clients served, the number of clients who are returning for different services, or breakdown of gender and age, and so on. It tends to be information about the clients and how long they have been in the country.
That's what settlement agencies tend to do in terms of evaluation. It is a limited process because the impact evaluation really is very involved. It could take many years in order to follow a group of clients over a period of time to study the impact over time of certain services on them.
Again, you have to isolate different factors that could affect their integration. We cannot claim all credit nor be discredited if people don't integrate. There are many other factors that affect their integration, such as employment or family situations. That's something that settlement agencies have generally not attempted to do.
If we're talking about the evaluation of the process, then we're looking at the operation. We know the government is interested in obtaining statistics or data regarding the type of people who are served, the number who are served, and other information such as their occupation in the country of origin and their occupation after they arrive in Canada.
It is very difficult to come up with one solution that fits all, the one program evaluation mechanism that will apply to all agencies. Agencies vary considerably due to rural and urban differences, the size of the agencies and the immigrant population that they could be serving, and even the origins and philosophy of some settlement agencies. What is meaningful to one agency may not be a meaningful measure to another agency.
That's why it's important to keep that to a low common denominator. The information you require every agency to collect should be fairly small and leave them enough flexibility so that they can collect information that is meaningful to them, and they will come up with those indicators that are meaningful to them.
.1545
Again, the data collection requirements shouldn't be so onerous that it takes away from the direct service delivery time. It should be something fairly simple to do so that they don't all need to have a program evaluation consultant on staff or on contract to help them do that.
The other thing to bear in mind is that a lot of this information does not need to be collected on an ongoing basis. A lot of evaluation could be done on a time limited basis, where it is based on a questionnaire or a collection of data over a selected period of time. There are different ways to make the operation a little easier.
As for developing a process evaluation mechanism, it may be beneficial to provide financial support to a small group of NGOs, or a particular NGO that is interested, to consult with the others and come up with maybe several models that are common that could apply to agencies in different situations. It may be a rural or urban area serving a particular group of immigrants or in a setting where there are many other services available, because there are so many variables.
An agency in Newfoundland that is the only service that provides settlement services is quite different from an agency in Toronto operating among 30 or 50 agencies that may provide services to immigrants. Your variables are very different, so you can't have one model that fits all the agencies in all cities. That's why it is very important to bear in mind the differences. A set of several different models could be set up so that agencies who fit those criteria can use the model and apply it to their own organization.
It would also be very helpful for the department to actually hold workshops or consultations to explain how it would work. Without very clearly explaining how a program evaluation works, you end up measuring apples and oranges. You may get a lot of information on your data sheet but it doesn't mean very much.
I will give you an example of something that was considered to be very easily measurable. It's a service to senior citizens, called Meals on Wheels, where you serve certain meals to seniors in their apartments. There's another program called Wheels to Meals, where you take the seniors together and serve them meals in a common setting.
People were collecting data on that and saying they served 200 meals. Another agency also collected the data and gave the number of meals served. On that basis, the government would then decide one agency was able to serve 200 people with less money than the other agency, and one seemed to be a better agency and more cost-effective.
When we looked a little deeper, we found that it wasn't quite the case. Although the numbers were provided, the things that were measured were quite different. We thought something as simple as meals couldn't be mistaken.
One agency was counting the number of meals it served not only to seniors but to all the volunteers who were helping out. The volunteers got to eat too. They couldn't just watch the seniors eat, so the meals the volunteers ate were counted. Meanwhile, the other agencies said volunteers were not seniors, so they didn't count those meals.
When you compare the cost-effectiveness, you're penalizing the agency that didn't count the volunteers. I don't know how many other ways you can miscount something as simple as that.
When you're looking at a service, it's a lot more complex in settlement orientation. The room for error is very high. If you end up with data with a plus or minus 30% or 50% error rate, it's not very meaningful data any more. You can't use it for management purposes.
When you develop a system like that, it's advisable to consult with the community-based agencies. They can tell you what their peculiarities are in providing services so that you can come up with more accurate information and a more accurate tool for measurement.
Lastly, I would just say that in order for service providers to focus on service delivery, improving the services, and conducting good program evaluation, it is important to let them know that there is a commitment to stable funding from the government and that there is a commitment to continue to support them. When agencies operate in a very uncertain environment, their minds are not on their services. All day long they're worrying about where their next pay cheque is going to come from. They can't really concentrate on improving the services when they are nervous.
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The next point I want to address is the structure of the local advisory committee. I'm not aware of what the background is or what you're thinking about. I'm just talking in a very general way of what I think would be useful criteria to bear in mind.
The advisory committee members should be knowledgeable about the issues related to settlement. They must understand that settlement is not a six-month, one-year or three-year process and that it could vary from individual to individual. They need to understand the issue quite well.
You also need people who are knowledgeable about program management or agency operational issues and finances. If you're looking at a local level committee, you should be very careful about conflict of interest.
Members should be compensated for their time. They're not staff; they're volunteers from the committee. But they should be compensated for their time so that they can put in a meaningful effort. Also it allows them to participate equally. I'm saying that because I have no idea what kind of structure you're looking at.
Also the committee should be representative of the immigrant population, with maybe some more recent immigrants and some longer-term immigrants.
While it's important to have a local perspective, we don't want to lose the federal or the provincial perspective either. We're concerned about consistency of services and standards of service across the province and the country. Otherwise you may end up with mobility between regions because there are better services in one region or county.
Again, in terms of devolving such responsibility to a local advisory committee, we cannot underline enough the problem of conflict of interest in smaller cities. You want to structure it so you avoid conflict of interest for people sitting on the committee.
There has been no shortage of different models of federal-provincial bodies or local advisory bodies. You might want to look at them to avoid their pitfalls and learn from their successes.
Lastly I'll comment on the role of the federal government. One very important thing to make sure of is that consistent information is given to overseas officers. We're very concerned. If each province has their own say in immigration, are you going to end up with different and conflicting information from different provinces?
Someone from another country doesn't necessarily remember what province the information came from. When they end up in Canada they may move around. We can foresee a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding.
Another role the federal government can have is making sure that settlement funds are allocated equitably based on the number of newcomers who arrive in each province and that the funds are indeed used for settlement services and not something else.
The federal government can also play a very important role in ensuring that there is a consistent standard of delivery of settlement services across the country. A communication role is also important so that the same information is communicated to NGOs and provinces.
Last but not least is to continue collecting the fees that have been established by the federal government.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Dromisky): Thank you very much.
We will start the questioning period with Mr. Nunez.
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[Translation]
Mr. Nunez (Bourassa): Thank you for your presentation. I see that your agency has been in existence since 1977. You have a lot of experience in the area of settlement and integration of immigrants. Would you give us a overview of the services you offer? Who is responsible for the program evaluation and at what interval is it done? Are all your services free of charge?
[English]
Ms Tam: I'll start by answering your last question. Our services are free of charge to the client, almost 100%. There may be the odd one where there's a tiny fee involved.
Our organization offers settlement orientation services to newcomers, both on an individual basis and in a group setting. That was one of the things we did to make our program more cost-effective. We provide to a group of newcomers information, for example, on employment, immigration processes, housing and the education system.
We also provide English classes. At one point we had a training program for foreign-trained nursing personnel to become eligible for practising as registered nurses' assistants in Ontario. We did that for one year, but due to funding cuts, we no longer do that.
We also provide personal counselling for individuals and families. As you know, there are refugees who have suffered trauma from torture or war, and we provide specialized counselling to them in different languages. Our services overall are provided in about 22 languages. The counselling program is continuing to expand its language pool. I think right now we have an eight- to ten-language capacity. If necessary, we can always bring in cultural interpreters who speak other languages.
We also provide a special program for immigrant women. It relates to child welfare legislation and family legislation - anything about wife abuse, nutrition, health, dressing for winter and so on.
We also have a community development program where we help smaller ethnic organizations to help themselves. We give them basic information and sometimes help them find space for self-help meetings for organizations among themselves.
We also have what we call a multicultural liaison program, where we provide services to immigrant children in the schools, to their parents and to the school staff. It's a three-pronged approach. We help the school personnel understand where the immigrants are coming from, their culture and what the barriers are for participating in the schools. We help the parents understand the education system so they can help their children do better in school or be more active in their participation in school activities, such as parent-teacher interviews and so on. Lastly, we help the children adapt to the system, because most of the settlement services in this country are provided to adults. Very few services are provided to children and youths; they're possibly non-existent.
That's what we do in terms of services.
In terms of program evaluations, our agency has been doing them for quite a few years now. Actually it was started by the United Way of Ottawa-Carleton. You will find that many United Ways across the country may require that from organizations they fund.
We have been doing program evaluation, but due to limited resources, we cannot afford consultants, except for one program that was evaluated by an outside consultant. Usually it's done by our board of directors. We have a voluntary board of directors, and some of the members sit on the program committee, where they look at each program and question why certain things are done a certain way. Again, we are limited to process evaluation.
.1600
I brought a few examples. If you're interested in leafing through them, you're welcome to do that.
It's done internally. The staff provide the statistics and then the board members will help pose the questions, so they're a more objective party to evaluate how well the programs are doing.
Mr. Mayfield (Cariboo - Chilcotin): As you were discussing these details of accountability, I was wondering if you could fill me in on the history of your organization and what your mission is. Could you just tell me a little bit about who you are and what your organization is?
Ms Tam: The organization was formed on a very informal basis in 1976, as I understand it, and it became incorporated as a not-for-profit charitable organization in May 1978, I believe.
We were formed initially to deal with the influx of the boat people coming from Indo-China at that time with Project 4000. I don't know if you know, and I wasn't around then, but that was the project Marion Dewar, the Mayor of Ottawa, started. A lot of volunteers were involved, so there was a voluntary board of directors.
It took them a year or two before they hired their first staff. In the beginning it was all volunteer-based. The volunteers would be teaching English. Of course there was no standard curriculum or standard qualification for the teachers. Whoever was willing and had the energy and the time would teach. That's how we operated.
Over the years it has developed. About twenty years later, settlement agencies have changed considerably in size and mandate.
Our mission statement says we are here to assist newcomers, immigrants or refugees, to become full participants in the economic, political and social life of Canada. That's our definition for integration. It's very broad.
We basically help people to become familiar with how Canadian systems work - how the health care system works, even how the transportation system works, what the laws of this country are and so on. We give them some of the tools.
At one point we ran something like a job-finding club, where we actually helped clients write résumés and look for employment. There was a time when it was very easy: you made a few phone calls and you found a job for your client. Over the years that has changed, and right now we don't help anyone to write résumés any more. They write their own résumés.
We have language training programs, where we give them basic language skills, sort of survival English, but there are other language training programs where people are trained to work in the job market. We don't provide that program currently.
We also provide workshops something like economic development projects. For example, for the immigrant women's program we ask them to tell us what they're interested in. At one point they were interested in sewing and at other points they were interested in operating catering businesses, where they cater to different outfits and make some money on the side.
More recently we've also delivered how to start your own business programs for immigrant women, just telling them these are the ropes; this is how you go about starting a business in Canada; these are the rules; these are the things to watch out for. If you're catering, there are health regulations and so on. We give them the tools they need to become self-sufficient. We try to empower them and recognize where their strengths are.
The latest project we did was a perinatal advisers program. We trained a group of women who had health backgrounds from their countries of origin. We put them through a training course given by the Department of Public Health. By the end of the program they were familiar with the hospital system and were able to provide support to newcomers who were going to give birth - women who were going to have their first child in Canada and had a language and a culture barrier and didn't know what to do.
These people will be available on a fee-for-service basis. We receive the phone call, screen them and refer them to the appropriate person. The perinatal health adviser will be able to accompany the woman to the hospital and the hospital will reimburse them. So there's that going on as well.
.1605
One other thing we do occasionally is to provide cross-cultural education to organizations that are seeing an increasing number of immigrants among their clientele but don't quite know how to deal with them. We tell them about some of the basic things such as customs or culture, because there have been a few incidents that are quite horrendous, yet their causes are very simple.
I'll give you an example of a school, the Cambridge school, I believe, which a few years ago had an evacuation in the middle of January. They evacuated the entire school because of what they felt was a gas problem. During lunch hour one teacher went into the lunchroom and smelled something that was like natural gas and alerted the principal. The principal called the fire department. The fire department came and the firemen stood in the cafeteria and sniffed and pointed at something that was directly under a ventilator. It was a little thing wrapped in Saran Wrap, directly under the ventilator, so the odour got sucked up into the ventilation system.
Later on the school found out it was a tropical fruit that has a very strong flavour. It's my favourite fruit, but a lot of people hate it. They think it smells like garbage or gas. So that was a very simple thing, but the entire school had to be evacuated, bundled up and taken to a neighbouring school. So a lot of things that seem so simple at face value turn out to be quite horrendous.
Another example we had recently involved our multicultural liaison officers, who work in the school and deal with different problems. They could be giving cross-cultural education workshops to teachers, but they could also be dealing with simple things. One Iranian child was noticed to have a pair of boots that he had outgrown a long time ago. The teacher couldn't communicate with the parents because of the language barrier. The teacher was concerned and called our Iranian worker and asked him if he could talk to the parents.
A parent might draw the conclusion that maybe this is child abuse, maybe the parent doesn't love this child and doesn't care for his well-being, or maybe the parents are so poor they can't afford a new pair of boots. You can draw any number of conclusions. But our staff found out that this child's father was a very devout Muslim. He would buy nothing less than a pair of halal boots, where the leather has to be properly processed according to the Muslim religion. He brought this pair of boots from Iran, I don't know how many years ago, and he's not going to have a Canadian product that is not halal. So the worker was able to explain that there are synthetic boots in this country and you could indeed buy rubber boots or whatever other boots. So happily for the kid he got new boots. But that wasn't the end of the story.
We found out this child was assumed to be two years older than his real age because of the way their calendar works. The Iranian calendar is different. Their New Year's is in March, and I think two different people must have added a year to this poor boy's age so that by the time he was registered he was reported to be two years older than he really was. So he was placed in grade 2 or grade 1, I'm not quite sure.
When they found out they decided to put him back two grades, so he was back to kindergarten, junior or senior. Then his little brother who was in junior kindergarten was sent home for two more years.
Just think for a moment. If this wasn't discovered, these two boys would have been labelled as either developmentally handicapped or been seen as displaying disruptive behaviour because they wouldn't be as mature as their peers. There would have been a lot of misunderstanding.
Those are the kinds of problems we deal with.
Ms Clancy (Halifax): Welcome, Ms Tam. It's nice to see you again. It's been a while.
By the way, I'm sorry I was late. I was held up in the House.
When I came in you were talking about the make-up of your board and people who work with settlement associations such as yours. One thing that interested me was you talked about making sure that there's no conflict of interest. What did you mean by that exactly?
Ms Tam: I was talking about accountability. I guess there are different speculations among the community agencies, who are asking themselves what this local advisory committee could be if settlement is indeed devolved to a local level. Who would end up sitting on this board? Who would decide to allocate the funds? Obviously, you don't want to have me sitting on that committee to allocate funds to my agency because that would be a very clear conflict of interest.
.1610
Ms Clancy: How about if we had people like you sitting on it and representing all the different agencies? In that case, the tension would be different again.
Ms Tam: That's right. And I'm not sure if I -
Ms Clancy: No, I'm not suggesting it. I just wanted to clarify what you were talking about. That's fine. I missed part of it.
Secondly, you brought up the point of consistency of service across the country, and I think that's a very important point because of some of the things we learned in the last round of consultations. I recall being at a consultation in Sarnia, Ontario, for example, where a number of groups said they would be delighted if more immigrants would choose to come to Sarnia. The difficulty is, of course, that people go where their families may be or where their friends may be or where there is at least an established community from their country of origin.
With regard to consistency of service, once you get out of the five major cities.... Really there are three major immigrant-receiving cities in this country. But even my small city of Halifax has a fairly active immigrant settlement association. So once you get away from that to the smaller cities, where there are fewer immigrants coming.... Do you, through your own knowledge or through your work, have any kind of a handle on what the level of service in settlement is like in smaller centres across the country?
Ms Tam: I'm not very familiar with what happens in other smaller cities, but I would say that when I say consistency, I don't mean uniformity.
Ms Clancy: No, I understand that.
Ms Tam: I think we just want to make sure there are services available in even the smaller cities. Maybe they need different models of service delivery and maybe this could be part of a larger organization that does a number of things.
I know in Newfoundland they have one newcomer welcoming agency and they do different work from what we do. They get into very detailed stuff that we don't ever imagine doing.
Ms Clancy: You'd need to know about the boots in Newfoundland, particularly.
Ms Tam: Right.
Ms Clancy: You talked about some misinformation and misunderstandings that can flow from policy and you were concerned that if too much were devolved to the provinces it might take place; different standards. In other words, if you thought when you left your country of origin that you'd be coming to Ontario and then you decided to move and you ended up in Saskatchewan or something.... What sort of information comes from provinces right now to immigrants? Are you aware of that?
Ms Tam: I'm not terribly aware, but I've heard of cases where Quebec has different information. I'm thinking of occupations or accreditation of foreign credentials, that different provinces may have different rules for recognizing them.
Ms Clancy: I wasn't sure if that was what you were talking about. So you're talking about professional associations, for example, or trade -
Ms Tam: It could also mean other things, even legislation that affects different provinces. I think if people aren't aware of what province they're going to end up in and they hear different stories, it can get very confusing for the overseas office because what people have heard is often misinformation. There are often people who claim they were never told in overseas offices that they cannot practise as physicians in Canada.
[Translation]
Mr. Nunez: Could you briefly comment on the financing of your agency? Are you financed solely by the government or also by private organizations, through donations, etc.?
[English]
Ms Tam: I'm sorry. You did ask me earlier. I didn't answer that.
We are funded by different levels of government, including the federal Departments of Citizenship and Immigration and Canadian Heritage and the provincial Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration. Occasionally, we receive some funding from the Ministry of Community and Social Services. We're funded by the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton, the City of Ottawa, and the United Way, which is also a very significant funder of our services. In addition, there are other donations and some productive work we do that generates some revenues.
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Mr. Nunez: How much is the total?
Ms Tam: The size of the budget?
Mr. Nunez: Yes.
Ms Tam: Our budget varies from $1.3 million to $1.4 million per year.
[Translation]
Mr. Nunez: For how many clients?
[English]
Ms Tam: About 5,000 to 6,000 clients per year.
[Translation]
Mr. Nunez: You stated that, these past few years, you have offered services to Vietnamese refugees in particular. Today, has your clientele changed, and how did you adapt to the change?
[English]
Ms Tam: Yes, I think we did start out offering services mainly to Indo-Chinese refugees. Right now, our clients come from Vietnam still, as well as Poland, Somalia, Russia, the former Yugoslavia, Spanish-speaking countries, and Southeast Asia as well. There's a variety. I think it's reflected in the number of languages our staff speaks: 22 languages.
The way we have managed is each time there is staff turnover when someone leaves, we will re-evaluate the requirements of our agency and hire staff who speak the languages that are appropriate. For example, five years ago when I started at the agency, we didn't have a single Somali-speaking staff member. Now we have about seven or eight Somali-speaking staff members. That may change again depending on who else is coming. We have two staff members who can speak Russian now, which we didn't have five years ago.
We try to adapt. As NGOs, one thing we're good at doing is adapting. We're so used to changes that we're constantly changing to deal with the changes.
[Translation]
Mr. Nunez: Do you have any figures on the number of clients you provide services to each year? What would it be for last year, for example?
[English]
Ms Tam: It's about 5,000 to 6,000. Again, we don't have a very accurate count because some may have been counted twice. Occasionally, if we don't cross-reference two services, there may be the same body. But I would say roughly 5,000 to 6,000.
[Translation]
Mr. Nunez: As an employee of your agency, do you provide services in French?
[English]
Ms Tam: About 30% to 40% of our staff speak French as well as English. We have a multicultural liaison project. We have done a year's worth of service in the French public board of education and we're hoping to continue that in the fall, and the French board has also committed some funds to it.
I forgot to mention the Ottawa Board of Education also provides some funding for the multicultural liaison program. They provide half the fund. In the fall we're hoping to do the same with the French public board and the Carleton Board of Education.
[Translation]
Mr. Nunez: Are you accountable to all those organizations? Do you have to provide financial statements?
[English]
Ms Tam: It depends on who our funders are, because other organizations may be funded a little bit differently. Some church-affiliated organizations may receive funding from churches so they may have a different accountability framework from what we do. Some organizations are not funded by the United Way of the local city. The United Way tends to require a lot of reporting. For example, we produced a multi-year plan for the United Way just last year. It's a four-year plan that we produced as to what services we planned to have.
We also provide program evaluation based on that. Again it depends on the funder. Different funders require different kinds of reporting. All of them require financial reporting.
[Translation]
Mr. Nunez: Is the government more demanding in this field? For example, are Citizenship and Immigration Canada or Heritage Canada more demanding towards private sector clients?
[English]
Ms Tam: I think the United Way is probably the most demanding because they're dealing with donor dollars, so they want to be very sure every penny that a donor gives goes to very good use.
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I think the United Way is probably the most stringent in terms of funders - not that governments are not demanding as well. I think the government funders are more demanding in financial reporting. We submit monthly claim forms, and for some funders we spend considerable time inputting a lot of client information.
For example, for counselling services from the regional government we have to submit the name of every client and also have them declare their income to be sure that they're eligible, that they are poor enough to require our services. If the names don't match up, if we have the last name and the first name switched, or if it is misspelled, we don't get the money.
Mr. Hanger (Calgary Northeast): I am interested in the funding aspect, apart from government funds. You've mentioned the United Way as being a contributor. What percentage of your funding would come from private enterprise, private donations?
Ms Tam: It's a fairly small percentage if I don't consider the United Way funds.
Mr. Hanger: Yes, not considering the United Way funds.
Ms Tam: Not considering the United Way, I think it's probably somewhere around 5% or less than 5%. We have tried very hard every year to have fund-raising activities. We find it is a very specialized field where you actually have to engage consultants. Once you engage consultants it means a cost that we can't afford to engage in, so we don't hire them. Therefore we do it on our own.
Again, we ask our board of directors, who are very good people, to spend more time to please run a fund-raising event. We did one last year that raised maybe $6,000. So it's not a huge amount of dollars. Some people do donate voluntarily. But because of that it's not a huge....
Mr. Hanger: You were saying there's a discrepancy in the delivery of funds to different organizations. Not every organization and NGO would receive the same percentage of funds, whether it be from government or whatever. Would you explain what you mean by that?
Ms Tam: I'm not sure I meant percentages of funds. What I was trying to say was that different organizations have different funding sources, so they will not be identical. For example, somebody may be funded by the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration but not by the City of Ottawa and not by the United Way. An organization may be funded by the Ministry of Education and another one isn't. So it's just a different funding source.
Mr. Hanger: Would there be a delivery of services by those particular organizations that would be equal to or less than your own?
Ms Tam: Yes, I think organizations of different sizes all deliver services to newcomers. There are some very small organizations with a two- or three-person staff that also deliver services to newcomers.
Mr. Hanger: Do they receive government funding too?
Ms Tam: They may also receive government funding.
Mr. Hanger: Or it may be church funding or whatever?
Ms Tam: That's right.
Mr. Hanger: I ran into a situation in Calgary that was interesting in that it dealt with a group of Vietnamese people who had concerns about the integration of their numbers into mainstream society. One particular company around Calgary had approximately 350 Vietnamese people there, and less than half of them spoke English. Of the ones who did speak a little bit of English, most of them would not be able to adequately handle the language or society very well.
The concern was that government services were not meeting the needs, nor were many church organizations meeting the needs as far as language training, etc. The plight of these people never changed and many of them had been here for several years.
Some church organizations wanted to go a bit beyond to help and assist. They sought a little bit of extra assistance from the government, but because they weren't classified in the same area as the Calgary Immigrant Aid Society, for instance, no funding was available for further language training. The government offered no further assistance when it came to them approaching businesses. This was their idea, that they would go to the business that hired all these people to seek help from the business in language training by providing time and probably an instructor.
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Has your organization looked at anything of that nature, a cooperative effort between business and your particular service?
Ms Tam: We have been hoping to have cooperative ventures with businesses. We have started by having joint partnership with school boards. We also work with Algonquin College in order to deliver the registered nurses' training program. That was a couple of years ago. With the businesses, we've been trying to offer them an employee assistance program, or we were thinking of providing cross-cultural education programs, but our staff is so busy and we're spread so thin we haven't pursued that. But it's been an idea we've been thinking about for a long time.
Mr. Hanger: If you look at the need that exists there and the number of dollars that are available, in a way I think the writing is on the wall. When you look at the budgets for the future, even in immigration and especially settlement, when you look at this government spending $500 million a year, somewhere along the way funding will have to be cut back.
What about the individuals themselves? What do you think about the people themselves paying for their own service?
Ms Tam: I thought they were now, with the landing fee and -
Mr. Hanger: Well, we spend $500 million a year.
Ms Tam: I think the $975 lending fee more than covers the whole settlement budget. It really does. When you multiply it by 200,000 people, more or less, I think it gives you that figure.
The other thing is that people often don't realize that immigrants who come here as adults are a real bargain because they've saved you all those years of schooling - 20 years of schooling - and child care. They save you a lot of money. So it's a real bargain where that is concerned. I don't know what more you want them to do. You could actually prevent the people you want from coming, if you ask them to pay for services.
Right now, the way I work it out, is if we provide services to 5,000 or 6,000 people a year and our budget is about $1.3 million or $1.4 million, everybody gets less than $100 worth of service. It goes a long way, and you can't be short-sighted when you look at immigration. You're saying some of these Vietnamese immigrants are still not speaking English. I know of a number of Vietnamese who when they came here were so eager to sponsor the rest of their families who were still in camps and so on, they went straight to a factory assembly line, wherever they could find a job, to save up as much money as they could in order to bring their families here. I was involved as a volunteer way back then in Toronto. That's what the people were doing. So they'd pass up the opportunity to learn English, which is why 10 years later you're still seeing them not speaking English.
It's the same with Italian immigrants. If you look at them today, they are seniors, but they still need help because they can't understand the forms they're getting. There were no language training programs in 1950 or 1960. But we won't have the same problem if we train them now.
Mrs. Terrana (Vancouver East): Thank you for saying what you have said. We have to review those figures; they are not correct.
I would like to ask you this: how large is your society or agency? How many people do you have on your staff?
Ms Tam: We have about 29 full-time staff and another umpteen part-time seasonal staff. There's a lot of changes because of program changes.
Mrs. Terrana: Do you deliver all your services from this address on Somerset and Hilda?
Ms Tam: No. Our offices are based at this location but our services are delivered all over the place. We have a staff person who works in the Ottawa Board of Education and she goes to different sites where there are adult ESL learners, talking to them, finding out their needs and referring them to appropriate services.
The community developer, again, goes to different places where ethnic groups are working with other mainstream service providers. So the services are outside. We have had a person at Algonquin College at Huron campus for two or three years. So we try to get our services out. The language classes are held in the St. Laurent Shopping Mall and the Forbes Community Centre in the east end.
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Mrs. Terrana: Is yours the only agency that provides language services?
Ms Tam: No. There are many others who provide similar language training, including school boards.
Mrs. Terrana: So the school board is also involved.
Ms Tam: Yes.
Mrs. Terrana: But you have the largest agency in the area of settlement in Ottawa.
Ms Tam: Yes.
Mrs. Terrana: You also talked about the United Way. In British Columbia we have a three-year plan and then we stabilize the funding. Is that what they do? Do they look at your plan for four years and then decide how much you're going to get over the four years?
Ms Tam: That is basically the idea, so they can predict how much money is needed. We present to them what our plans are. If we have any expansion needs, we tell them ahead of time, although we often find that within two years nothing any longer looks like anything that resembles a reality. However, we try to do our best to forecast and predict.
Mrs. Terrana: The other question has to do with the school/home zone workers that you were talking about. Again, in British Columbia, it is the school boards that employ them. In your case, is it -
Ms Tam: We employ them.
Mrs. Terrana: You employ them directly.
Ms Tam: Yes. We started it four years ago and we felt it was extremely important for us to be the employer of these workers so they are in touch with the settlement issues that are going on. The danger of them being employed by the school board is that they just become a tiny speck in the entire school bureaucracy, where they end up being secretaries or custodians of lost articles during the school day. It is very easy for them to become something else.
Mrs. Terrana: They can also be discontinued, such as is happening right now.
Ms Tam: Yes.
Mrs. Terrana: The other thing I wanted to ask you has to do with information. Do you feel that when the immigrant comes to...? I imagine numbers have increased. Has immigration increased to Ottawa? What is your feeling? Do you have more immigrants coming to Ottawa than before, or is it stable?
Ms Tam: I think it's fairly stable. We are staying at about 3% of the entire immigration figure and I think it's the third preferred destination among Ontario cities.
Mrs. Terrana: So, in this case, do you feel...? There was a feeling at one point that there wasn't enough information filtering through to the new immigrants. How is the situation here? Is there any idea you can give us?
Ms Tam: There is no real outreach program other than the one I just mentioned where this one staff person works in the Ottawa School Board. She can't be in all the schools. That's our limit to outreach.
In the past, we used to rely on Canada Employment Centres to refer...I am sure they still do and refer whoever is appropriate now, but there are no funds for us to do meaningful outreach or to publicize our services. It's really through word of mouth.
Mrs. Terrana: It's more referrals.
Ms Tam: Yes, it's referrals by clients.
Mrs. Terrana: Do you get referrals from the government or not?
Ms Tam: I am sure we get some from immigration offices and we also try to put out pamphlets in Pearson Airport, where they have a referral program.
Mrs. Terrana: My last question. You talk about the local advisory committee. Is this something you have? Do you have a local advisory committee here, or is it something you are suggesting?
Ms Tam: No, it is not. I am really responding to what I was asked last week when I was asked to speak, that I make some comments about that. If the federal government is thinking of passing the responsibility of immigration to the province or to other bodies, what would a local advisory committee look like?
Mrs. Terrana: These are just -
Ms Tam: Just my initial thoughts, yes.
Mrs. Terrana: Thank you very much.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Dromisky): Thank you very much.
We jump across now to Mr. Nunez. Do you have any further questions to ask?
[Translation]
Mr. Nunez: On page 2, you refer to a fair distribution of funding for the settlement programs for immigrants. What criteria could the government or other agencies establish to make sure that funding is equitable? Would it be based on the number of clients or on the seriousness of the problem?
[English]
Ms Tam: What has been obvious to us in the settlement agencies is that it should be based on numbers. I guess we are more familiar with using numbers as an indicator of what is fair. We are feeling that the amount of dollars that are allocated to the province should be based on the percentage of immigrants who are coming to the province. I think we feel that Ontario has been underfunded for a long time, receiving 42% of the funds when the population coming to the province probably exceeds 60%.
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Mr. Nunez: Excuse me for one moment. I can't agree with you because we have a specific problem in a different situation.
Ms Tam: I think that's one, but you may also want to look at qualitative differences. If you are getting all the refugees, refugees may need more help if none of them speak the languages. But only if you have the data that a very high percentage of the people coming to a particular province don't speak an official language, then they may need more help in terms of language training.
[Translation]
Mr. Nunez: Has you funding increased during the past few years? Has it diminished or has it stabilized? Have you requested more funds or are the amounts established in advance, so that you do not need to do anything to change them?
[English]
Ms Tam: It's a little bit up and down. One year we had.... That's why I'm saying our budget is somewhere between $1.3 million and $1.4 million, because it has fluctuated. I think it has gone down a little bit this year because we're no longer doing certain things that we were, and the federal funding has been cut in the language training area as well as in the settlement area. We've also received some additional funding, for example, from the two school boards I just mentioned. We are anticipating a small increment there. So it fluctuates a little bit over the years.
Our organization is not necessarily representative of all organizations. I know there are some small organizations in smaller cities that have completely closed their doors because of cuts in the Canadian Jobs Strategy.
[Translation]
Mr. Nunez: Could you tell us more about the make up of your staff? Do you have mainly immigrants or people who are born here? Do you ask for special qualifications for an immigrant to be able to provide services to other immigrants?
[English]
Ms Tam: Predominantly, they are female. As in most NGOs, you will find they are predominantly female, what we call pink collar ghettos. That's one clear thing.
The other is that the majority of the staff are immigrants, because we have this language requirement. Also, for them to understand the cultural background of the newcomers, they need to have that cultural sensitivity.
In terms of numbers, there are 29 full-time and about 15 or 18 part-time, seasonal staff, if we count everybody.
In terms of qualifications, pretty well everybody has a university degree of some sort. Because many immigrant-producing countries don't necessarily have disciplines like social work, not all our staff are social workers. Mind you, they may have a psychology background or even an economics background, but then, through their work experience, they have developed a real expertise in working with newcomers. I think the characteristic is that they are mostly immigrants with multiple language abilities and very, very dedicated to what they're doing.
Mr. Hanger: I am interested in your evaluation. You mentioned here you have two choices: a process evaluation and/or impact outcome evaluation. You indicated the impact outcome evaluation is very, very difficult to really grasp or to come to a firm conclusion on. So, obviously, I guess the choice then would be a process evaluation that would be the significant way to go.
Are we talking here about integration solely on these evaluations?
Ms Tam: On any number of the services that we provide. It is common with pretty well all social service agencies, not just integration. All social service agencies will find the same problems, the same challenges, in terms of evaluation.
Mr. Hanger: Do you think it is accurate?
Ms Tam: I have worked in other social service agencies before coming to this organization and where I worked was not immigrant-related. We faced exactly the same challenges, because if you want to have a perfectly scientific study, you will have to do a longitudinal study and follow your clients for 10 or 20 years and have measurements of the degree of integratedness. Frankly, I don't know how you do that.
Mr. Hanger: So you are not aware of any such reports or studies done?
Ms Tam: I am not aware of any.
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Mr. Hanger: I read of one that was conducted by or commissioned by the department that clearly pointed out that, for instance, the language training program really only serviced approximately 40% of those in need. In other words, there was a large percentage that required services but were not able to obtain the service for one reason or another, due to funding, due to lack of personnel, or just unable to reach the point where the service was offered. Would that be an accurate evaluation from your point of view?
Ms Tam: I'm not aware of the study so I can't speak to the figures, but I am aware of people who need language service and are not getting it. There are people on waiting lists.
Mr. Hanger: You may not be aware of the study, but would you think that the evaluation, though, does fit, from your perspective, where you see people in need and you can't provide the service?
Ms Tam: As I say, there are people who are in need of the service but are not getting it.
Mr. Hanger: For any one of those reasons?
Ms Tam: I don't know.
Mr. Hanger: So none of your evaluations have ever included those individuals, then.
Ms Tam: No, because there is no point of contact.
Mr. Hanger: I see.
Mr. Assadourian (Don Valley North): Thank you, Ms Tam.
Can you take me through your services when someone comes in, when a family, a husband, wife and two kids, for example, knock on your door? Can you take us through your service, what happens, briefly, please?
Ms Tam: It depends on what they need. In the past we didn't have one but currently we have an intake worker who actually assesses their situation and finds out what they need.
It could be just the man coming in. Actually, we see more men than women coming in because quite often the wives are not here or they don't speak English or are home with the children. So we tend to see the men, actually.
It depends on what they need. If it's an immigration-related issue, then the settlement worker will work with them and find out what the documentation is. Quite often they are trying to get their wife here, to be reunited, so we'll help them through the immigration process, help them send the documentation to wherever it's needed to be sent.
They don't necessarily know what our services are, so what our staff would do is tell them what is available, depending on their need. If it's a woman who is isolated and needs services, we'll refer her to the immigrant women's program. So it really varies. I don't think there is a standard procedure that we take them through.
Mr. Assadourian: Every one is different, more or less.
Ms Tam: Yes, very different, based on individual need.
Mr. Assadourian: I have two more questions.
Do you have any contact with similar organizations within this region? That's the first question.
The second part of that same question is, you say in the brochure that you support ethnocultural groups. How about the other way around? Do you get any support from ethnocultural groups for your services?
Ms Tam: I'm thinking really hard about that. I'm not sure. There may have been collaboration on different issues. We usually work with them to help them develop organizationally. I'm not sure if we get support. I can't recall. I'm sure if we'd asked for it, they would have provided it.
I'm sorry, you asked about something else.
Mr. Assadourian: What kind of contacts do you have, if you have any, with other similar organizations to yours?
Ms Tam: We have contacts with other organizations. Actually, we're meeting on Monday of next week. We have regular meetings to discuss issues of common concern. We also have an Ontario-wide body, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. So we have contacts on that level as well, where we discuss issues of common concern.
We also have workshops that can meet the needs of our staff, because it's too expensive for us to provide professional development for our own staff. So those things tend to be done jointly.
Mr. Assadourian: From your responses to the questions of my colleagues, I gather you have wide community-based support. You mentioned for your funding you got seven or eight different agencies or government departments that do funding for you to come up with a $1.5 million, a $1.2 million, or a $1.3 million budget. Further, you also said that you get contributions from ordinary citizens. Maybe some of them are individuals who have received your services in the past.
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I regret to see you only mention contributions and logo here. You don't mention the fact that you have a wide basis of support within the governments, the public, and different organizations.
I think it would be good, if I might suggest, to put those sources here so that when someone gets this brochure they know that your organization has a wide support at provincial, federal, and municipal levels, including individuals and corporations.
Ms Tam: The point is well taken. We used to have it on an old brochure. I think with this new brochure it was sacrificed for the map because we just moved last year. I take your point that it should be there.
Mr. Assadourian: When you get a good broad support from the public, I think it should be indicated in the brochure.
Ms Tam: Yes, thank you.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Dromisky): Ms Clancy, do you have a comment?
Ms Clancy: Mr. Assadourian asked you about support from ethnocultural groups. I'm just guessing, and I might be wrong about this, but in all likelihood, being one of the oldest of the cities in the sense of immigrant reception, ethnocultural groups would be better established in Toronto, particularly with some of the areas that you're dealing with, than your city of Ottawa, Mrs. Terrana's city of Vancouver, or my city of Halifax. Would it be fair to say that?
Ms Tam: I haven't studied Vancouver or the other cities so I really can't comment on that. I think you are right, though, that in terms of Toronto there are more and they are longer-standing organizations.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Dromisky): Thank you very much. Mr. Nunez, do you have any more questions.
Mr. Nunez: Yes, I have only one.
You mentioned a special program for immigrant women. Could you explain that, please?
Ms Tam: We tend to provide group service for immigrant women. One of the newer things we did last year was actually a bus tour.
For some of these women who are very isolated in their homes, they may not have a lot of English or French skills, they are very hesitant to get out, and sometimes there's a wife abuse situation. We try to familiarize them with the city itself, for them to know what the different major structures are - for example, Parliament Hill. I guess everybody knows that, but you never know.
In wife abuse situations, sometimes the women are very much kept in the dark. We try to let them know the significant places that are available so that they have a sense of the city of Ottawa. They are encouraged to participate.
We also try to provide workshops that they are interested in, such as how to start your own business. That was a workshop we provided to them. We also do things on nutrition, winter clothing, how to dress your children, and how to have nutritious meals for your children when the food here is different from your home country. It could be any number of topics.
With respect to child welfare legislation, many immigrant parents don't know that they cannot leave minors unattended.
Mr. Hanger: Just to correct an earlier statement I made regarding immigrant settlement funding, it is $276 million.
Ms Clancy: Thank you.
Mr. Hanger: Thank you, Mary.
I'm interested in this whole area of settlement. I've heard many conflicting points of view. I've talked to smaller organizations that say there's a great need out there in the community and that they don't have people or funds to go and look at it. That's just in my own riding.
I've been to Vancouver and seen the successful office that they operate there. In my way of thinking, it's probably one of the most efficient offices I've ever been in to date. Eight people literally work in one small office room, where normally I have walked into some in Calgary, for instance, and there's one person working in the same size room. They are meeting the needs of the people, that I can see. I haven't looked at their books to say that they're abusing the money, but just in the overall appearances I would suggest that they aren't.
If there was a large influx of people coming into the country in a very short period of time, how much of the services could you provide them without having to draw on more government funds? What other resources could you rally together in your organization to meet that need?
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I'll give you an example. Right now, 22,000 Vietnamese have been repatriated back to North Vietnam from the various camps. We've had a delegation of Vietnamese people in here concerned that there are still refugees amongst some of those people.
If a large group of people were brought into the country, would you be able to rally additional resources to meet their needs without looking to government for help?
Ms Tam: I think it would depend on the number. If you sent 2,000 people in a day, I can guarantee you we couldn't meet that need. But I remember when the Bulgarians came to Ottawa-Carleton on very short notice. On a Friday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. - I remember this scene quite vividly - five or eight Bulgarians just showed up from the east coast with one-way tickets and suitcases in hand. Our settlement counsellor was able to find them room and board for the weekend.
Our staff members work very hard. They also have to sometimes rely on volunteers, but volunteers are not reliable over the long haul. There would be inconsistency in the quality of service you're able to deliver.
You were describing a Calgary agency versus a Vancouver agency. I think there are wide differences in agencies from region to region. I think at face value it might look like Calgary has a big office. Maybe real estate is cheaper there than in Vancouver and therefore the office is a little larger. I don't know. There could be historical reasons.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Dromisky): Thank you very much, Ms Tam.
I would like to now conclude by making a couple of statements. First of all, I'd like to congratulate the members of the committee for the not provocative but probing kinds of questions, which I classify as being intelligent in scope and content. As far as an evaluation is concerned, I would give you all A plus.
But above all, the highest mark would go to Mrs. Tam because I think her presentation was not only comprehensive but very succinct, extremely professional and very informative. In such a short period of time you gave us so much information it's mind boggling. I really thank you for the kind of presentation you made here today.
Ms Tam: Thank you very much for this opportunity. I would say that anyone who is interested and has the time is welcome to come to our agency to look around. You'll find we are very efficient and cost-effective.
Mr. Nunez: I would like to ask our researcher to prepare a questionnaire.
[Translation]
Could you prepare notes as you usually do for our other meetings?
Mrs. Margaret Young (Research Officer): I sent notes yesterday. It will be done for the trip. Would that be alright?
M. Nunez: I didn't understand you. Did you send them to the members?
Mrs. Young: I only wrote them yesterday. They will be ready for Friday.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Dromisky): The meeting is adjourned.