Ottawa scales back underused immigrant support program
Funding just 16 groups to deliver pre-arrival help
OTTAWA • The federal government has scaled back an immigration program designed to help newcomers adjust to life in Canada that was used by fewer than 10 per cent of immigrants despite having its budget nearly tripled in 2015.
As of Jan. 1, Ottawa is funding just 16 organizations to deliver pre-arrival services, down from a high of 27 in 2015. The program’s budget for the next five years is $113 million, or $22.6 million per year, down from $32 million in 2016-17.
Pre-arrival services are intended to help economic and family-class immigrants and refugees prepare for life in Canada before they land, and can include help with skills training and professional qualifications, connections with employers and mentoring.
The changes come after an audit last year revealed problems, including ineffective promotion and low uptake. Service providers were struggling to reach clients, serving as few as 13 in a single year at a cost per client of up to nearly $28,000.
The retooled program is meant to streamline the process, with just four organizations providing orientation and core services to economic and family-class immigrants, and then referring clients to more specialized providers.
“Providing services to newcomers before they arrive in Canada is critical to successful integration,” Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said in announcing the cuts Thursday in Vancouver. “These services help newcomers make decisions about the life they want to live in Canada as early as possible in their immigration journey.”
One of those four core organizations, B.C.-based S.U.C.C.E.S.S., will receive $22.4 million, Hussen said. The organization has provided services to 14,800 newcomers since 2008. In November, CEO Queenie Choo told the Post that the government needed to review the number of service providers in the program, “to streamline what is regular and what is needed.”
Ottawa has funded prearrival services since 1998, initially only for refugees. The program was broadened to include non-refugee immigrants in 2001, and was expanded dramatically in 2015 under the former Harper government to 27 service providers, up from just three. Its budget jumped from $9 million in 2014-15 to $32 million in 2016-17.
Last year’s audit found that the services are helpful to those who use them, but the majority of immigrants surveyed — 71 per cent — had never heard of them. In fact, just 7.3 per cent of eligible newcomers had used the services between April 2015 and August 2017. The report found that the government’s efforts to promote the program had “largely been ineffective.”
Another issue was that the 2015 expansion provided funding to organizations that targeted very specific groups of immigrants, such as professionals moving to Calgary or mechanics, carpenters and power engineers moving to British Columbia.
“Currently, there are too many service providers with very small client numbers and overlapping services, as the program grew rapidly from 3 to 27 providers in 2015,” reads an April 2018 memo to the immigration minister obtained by the Post through access-to-information.
Ottawa launched a new process to select service providers in May 2018, and agreements with 16 organizations, which the government says have “proven results,” came into effect on Jan. 1. Several of the niche service providers don’t seem to have made the cut.
Pre-arrival services are largely delivered online, though they are also offered on the ground in China, India and the Philippines. There is also a pilot project for in-person francophone services in Morocco.
The new developments follow a similar announcement in November, when Ottawa revealed that La Cité, the largest French-language college in Ontario, would be the first point of contact for pre-arrival services for francophone newcomers, and would then refer immigrants to four regional partners. Previously, only one of the four francophone service providers had reached more than 100 clients between April 2017 and January 2018.