The Immigrant Welcome Centre, which has offices in Courtenay, Campbell River and Port McNeill, has had its federal funding cut from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). This has led to a reduction in staff, cutting of upper-level language classes and necessary pivoting by the organization.
“The funding cuts are quite significant, it is about 10 per cent of our next three-year budget and that means we are laying off six people,” said Shams Alibhai, executive director of the Immigrant Welcome Centre. “There are four people who will be going on March 31st and a couple more people within the next year.”
The Immigrant Welcome Centre has been in the community for over 30 years and offers a variety of services to newcomers to the community, be it those needing English language skills, those on student visas and attending North Island College, settlement services or naturalized citizens who are often overlooked.
With the reduction in funding, the cuts are being felt throughout the organization.
“It’s people at different levels in the organization, from entry level right to the very senior level. We’re going to have a couple of managers that are leaving and it also means that for our Campbell River location, for example, our Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) premises that used to be at Shopper’s Row, we had to close our third floor, where all the classes were. We’ve started having classes at the Robron Centre,” said Alibhai.
Once a newcomer has finished the first three levels of the LINC program, they tend to need help with navigating workplace language and knowing their rights when it comes to employment standards.
“One thing that will change due to IRCC’s decision, that’s major, is the decision that classes for higher level LINC, which is levels five to eight, are not going to be offered anywhere,” said Alibhai.
“I’m frontline staff. Helping newcomers integrate, whether they have questions about enrolling in school or questions about documents or just other things in the community. We use this partnership called LIPs,” added settlement co-ordinator, Mark Laska.
LIPs are BC Local Immigration Partnerships that exist with other non-profits in the community that can aid newcomers in other areas that the Immigrant Welcome Centre cannot, such as local government, education, businesses, parks, recreation and culture, policing, libraries and volunteerism.
“They will get us in contact with different organizations so we can refer our clients out. So part of our job is information orientation. We explain a variety of things, whatever they have questions on and then refer our clients out. If they have questions about work, we refer them to CEAS - Creative Employment Access Society,” added Laska.
One of the other changes that comes with the funding cuts is that the centre is now only signing a three-year agreement with IRCC instead of the usual five.
But it isn’t all bad news, as they have partnered with Royal Bank of Canada in Campbell River for funding of their Language and Culture Hub of $25,000, which aims to enhance the ability of newcomers to thrive in the Canadian workplace.
“Even though there are cuts, I think we’ve actually been creative and innovating in finding and working with our partners to look at different ways of delivering our services,” shared Alibhai. “We’re not going to have the same capacity to be able to work in the community in the way in which we had before.”
Through a partnership with North Island Employment Foundation, the Immigrant Welcome Centre has been able to open a part-time office in Port Hardy with one staff member, one day a week. While it may not be ideal, at least the service exists in that community now.
One way that IRCC was deciding on funding cuts was by targeting areas that had seen a decrease in immigration in recent years and focusing on those communities. Unfortunately, that means smaller areas are affected more.
“For example, Powell River has lost their IRCC funding. Another 18 or 20 smaller communities, just in B.C. also have. However, a positive thing is that [Powell River] had a conversation with us and knows that we are in Courtney and can support them through our other offices,” said Alibhai.
“I would say that [immigration] has slowed down slightly and also there is an impact, like a big driver, of our clients who were from the college. There has been a documented cut with the college and that is impacting some of our services. As the IRCC’s programs have changed, we have seen a steady decrease in service. We’re still consistently seeing clients, but we’re not as busy as we were. We were obviously at our busiest with the Ukrainian immigrants. There were about 300 Ukrainians new to the Valley,” said Laska.
The IRCC has also made recommendations to the Immigrant Welcome Centre about how it provides its services. But this comes with more issues, such as access to technology and understanding online platforms.
“IRCC is encouraging us to move to online training rather than in-person. For example, the clients we have in Powell River, won’t be able to come to us directly; they will join us remotely. It’ll be hybrid learning,” said Alibhai.
“We have a large client base and with everything becoming digital, that impacts newcomers who may not have access to technology and we have clients that have lived in the community for 30 to 40 years, seniors, who have issues navigating it,” added Laska.
Despite the funding cuts through IRCC, the Immigrant Welcome Centre has found that individual donors exist and have stepped up after hearing about the funding cuts in the media.
“We know you are going through cuts, we want to contribute on an individual basis. That is fantastic,” said Alibhai. “If we had two or three banks that said they will support us, if we diversify our funding, then we aren’t as dependent on IRCC and it is a more sustainable strategy.”
