Canadian municipalities say the federal government’s narrow focus on helping new immigrants with language training and employment assistance ignores the basic needs of people coming to Canada from abroad – including affordable housing and public transportation.
In a report released Tuesday, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) also says Canada’s cities are routinely ignored as Ottawa forms strategies to help newcomers adapt to life in this country.
“The reality is that municipalities are the first line of support with respect to dealing with new immigrant issues,” said Berry Vrbanovic, a city councillor in Kitchener who is also president of the FCM, which represents more than 1,900 towns and cities across Canada. “We believe it’s absolutely essential that the federal government works in partnership with the municipal and territorial orders of government in terms of the delivery of these services.”
Federal immigration policy has traditionally been focused on helping immigrants learn English or French and aiding them in their search for jobs. But it is important to recognize that there are two important infrastructure issues that hit new Canadians harder than long-time residents of Canada, said Mr. Vrbanovic. “One is fixing the holes in the housing market, and the second being improving public transit,” he said.
Many new immigrants must rely on assisted housing in the years after their arrival, and they are twice as likely as Canadian-born workers to commute by public transit. Yet funding pressures are forcing some cities, including Toronto, to consider reducing transit service.
The FCM also says the settlement services provided by the federal and provincial governments should last much longer than the three years they do now. “The data has shown that it really takes most immigrants between five and 10 years to fully integrate and settle into the country,” Mr. Vrbanovic said.
All orders of government have recognized that immigration is needed to maintain Canada’s economic and population growth. But the FCM report says new immigrants are falling behind their Canadian counterparts and are taking longer to catch up than past generations of immigrants.
Unless the existing problems are addressed, the FCM says successful integration will become even more difficult in the future. It wants the government to take the $500-million annually it will save over the next 10 years when federal housing agreements expire and invest that money in new affordable housing initiatives.
Candice Malcolm, a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, pointed out that the federal Conservative government has tripled settlement funding since 2005, from $200-million a year to $600-million.
It has also shifted settlement resources to cities and towns where more newcomers are settling, and it is recognizing municipalities as key partners in immigration through a series of local agreements, said Ms. Malcolm in an e-mail.
But Monica Boyd, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Immigration, Inequality and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, said she agrees that a broader federal focus on immigration issues is necessary.
“Most people would argue that the very first thing that you need in terms of a successful transition to a new country is to be able to put bread on the table, for which language training and job searches are essential,” said Dr. Boyd.
But immigrants disproportionately go to the larger cities like Vancouver and Toronto where housing is expensive, she said. And “you cannot get language training if you cannot take transportation to the language training site. You cannot successfully hold down a job if you can’t get transportation to that workplace.”
