See this interesting Toronto Star article. However, the better question is why there are so many "immigrant settlement agencies" who have over the years managed to develop a sense of entitlement to employ their own groups, and why there are so many immigrants who require assistance and funding when we have hundreds of thousands of applications in the pipeline from people who are ready to work, will not need any assistance, have arranged employment and will begin to contribute immediately upon arrival? There is obviously a disconnect....and no one is wiling to address it..
Dots on a map: Why newcomer funding is taking a hit - thestar.com
Dots on a map: Why newcomer funding is taking a hit
February 24, 2011
Nicholas Keung
In a conference room at Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Toronto headquarters on St. Clair Ave., Heidi Jurisic lays out a colour-coded map of the city.
The map — a crucial tool in determining where federal settlement dollars go — shows the location of scores of proposals by community groups for the fiscal year starting April 1, each meant in some way to help new immigrants integrate.
Across Ontario, 452 organizations filed 700 proposals this year, including 145 in Toronto, asking for money for everything from language training to job search workshops. The combined price tag: $734 million.
“We had to look at how many proposals we received for various (geographical) areas,” says Jurisic, the immigration department’s director of settlement services in Ontario. “That influenced our decision-making, because it is only a certain amount of available money that we have to fund these projects.”
Only 260 of the 452 groups got the nod. Many organizations that have served newcomers for years are seeing their funding slashed between 5 per cent and 40 per cent. And across the province, 34 groups, 16 of them in Toronto, will lose all of it — 100 per cent.
All told, Toronto is losing $18 million of Ottawa’s subsidy for immigration services, out of $43 million cut across the province.
The cuts prompted left-leaning Toronto councillors to ask that the city send a protest letter to Ottawa, but their motion lost by a single vote earlier this month. NDP immigration critic Olivia Chow has also tabled a non-binding motion through a House standing committee asking that the cuts be reversed.
On Thursday, Ontario Immigration Minister Eric Hoskins also made public the deepening dispute between the province and Ottawa over immigrant settlement priorities in negotiating an expiring immigration agreement. He announced $500,000 in funding to help relieve agencies affected by the cuts.
“We will not accept an unfair agreement that puts newcomers who settle in Ontario at a disadvantage,” Hoskins said.
Jurisic says that, despite the outcry, the cuts are justified because a declining proportion of Canada’s immigrants are settling here.
Between 2005 and 2009, the number landing in Ontario each year fell by 24 per cent, from 140,525 to 106,867. In Toronto, the number dropped 30 per cent, from 67,550 to 47,240. (Though new figures released Sunday show a slight rise last year, to 51,000 in Toronto.)
“The 13 per cent funding reduction (for Toronto) is significantly lower than what the reduction in the number of immigrants has been,” Jurisic says.
The immigration department currently doles out $138 million to 87 newcomer organizations in Toronto. As of April, that will come down to 75.
No one disputes that services should evolve with changing settlement patterns, and agencies agree that better coordination could reduce duplication and boost results. But they’re upset about the lack of consultation by Ottawa on how cuts could be absorbed and how surviving agencies could cooperate to fill gaps.
“These are significant cuts, and our members only got the news before Christmas,” said Debbie Douglas, executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, an umbrella group of 200 agencies.
“Let’s look at where the cuts are, where the gaps are, their impacts and how we can deal with it,” she added. “The end results could be similar and the same organizations would disappear. But any form of consultation would’ve made the process transparent and given the sector ownership.”
Douglas said allocating funding based on year-to-year immigrant arrivals doesn’t truly reflect the needs. For years, Ontario got the lion’s share of newcomers, but proportionally the least settlement money from Ottawa. Since a five-year immigration agreement was signed (in 2005), the federal government has been playing catch-up, pumping $700 million extra into Ontario.
Ninety per cent of the federal settlement funding goes to language training and settlement/integration programs. The rest goes to the HOST program, which matches newcomers with Canadian volunteers for community orientation.
The new approach brings Ontario into a funding formula based on immigrant arrivals in each province. Nine provinces will each get $3,400 in settlement funding for every new immigrant who makes that province home. In a separate deal, Quebec gets $5,000 for each permanent resident it receives.
“We reduced the total amount of funding (in Ontario) because we haven’t seen a corresponding increase in the uptake of the settlement programs,” Jurisic said.
For the record, Jurisic said usage of federally funded language, integration and settlement programs increased by 31.6 per cent between 2005 and 2009.
“This will in no way diminish the quality and availability of services for newcomers,” she said. “At the end of the day, what we want to do is to ensure value for taxpayers’ money.”
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told the Star that he won’t delay or reverse the cuts to Ontario because he has faith in his staff’s judgment.
“More money is not necessarily the solution,” he said. “Better coordination is.”
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