The Media Roundup provides links to recent and archived articles, in both English and French, on immigration and diversity appearing in the national and local news. Some international content is also included. Articles are updated weekly.
CBC – Balwin School an Oasis for Refugee and Immigrant Students
Rows of children sit in a school gymnasium with eyes closed. Some fidget but many match the stillness of their teachers and principal meditating up front. Soft music plays and ten minutes pass before the students are invited to open their eyes, do some deep breathing, then sing O Canada. Welcome to the start of each day at Balwin School in northeast Edmonton where many of the students aged four to 15 are refugees and immigrants dealing with challenges such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Yoga and meditation are helping them succeed inside and outside the classroom. […] More than 20 nationalities make up Balwin’s student population, largely of refugee or immigrant background. For many, the trauma of conflict or a refugee camp is more familiar than the classroom or the English language. Even Canadian born students can face tremendous challenges such as intergenerational trauma, integration, poverty or violence within their communities.
Le Devoir – Amnistie internationale appelle Ottawa à accueillir encore 10 000 réfugiés
Le monde, y compris le Canada, doit en faire plus pour accueillir le flot de réfugiés qui fuient la Syrie, somme Amnistie internationale. La communauté canado-syrienne, elle, se demande si Ottawa a été aussi timide dans ce dossier parce qu’il s’agit de réfugiés musulmans. « J’espère que la religion n’est pas un facteur. Mais malheureusement, c’est quelque chose qui se discute dans la communauté », a rapporté Faisal Alazem, du Conseil canado-syrien. « Pourquoi y a-t-il eu une réponse rapide pour [le tremblement de terre en] Haïti et les Philippines [qui ont été frappées par un typhon], mais tout à coup quand on en vient à la Syrie, nous avons l’une des pires réponses à la crise ? Même si c’est la plus importante crise humanitaire que nous ayons vue, selon l’ONU, depuis la création des Nations unies », a lancé M. Alazem, en point de presse vendredi. À ses côtés, les dirigeants d’Amnistie internationale étaient venus sonner l’alarme. Quelque 3,8 millions de Syriens ont fui leur pays chez leurs voisins, qui ont été forcés de fermer leurs frontières, incapables de répondre à la demande. Au Liban, la population a augmenté de 25 % en raison de cette migration de réfugiés syriens. L’ONU estime que 380 000 Syriens doivent être réinstallés.
Brampton Guardian – Settlement Agency for Newcomers Opens Offices in Brampton
AWIC, a community and social services, operating in Toronto for more than 35 years, has opened an office in Brampton. The new offices at 7900 Hurontario St. Suite, 207 will serve as a settlement, social and community agency offering a host of services for newcomers to Canada. […] Over the past few years, staff at the agency’s offices said they were fielding calls from people from Brampton and Mississauga seeking AWIC’s help. That prompted a decision to open a new location in Brampton. […] The agency offers new immigrants one-on-one counselling on the Canadian way-of-of-life and helps individuals and families with their job-search, and advice on accreditation of their credentials, housing and health services, explained Jayashree Pandey, counsellor, AWIC.
The Tyee – Tuition Fees Could Save Some Vancouver Community College ESL Programs: President
An announcement that permits public post-secondary institutions to charge students tuition for some English as a Second Language (ESL) courses means Western Canada’s largest ESL provider could continue to run some of its recently defunded programs. It isn’t enough to save the whole program, however, which costs $11 million a year to run. Four of five ESL departments at Vancouver Community College are scheduled to shut down at the end of this month after federal funding came to an end. Since 2010, the college has received provincial and federal funding for the departments through the Canada-BC Immigration Agreement. The agreement ended last April, ending federal funding and forcing the college to rely on a small amount of money to keep the departments running until Dec. 17. The departments offer a range of ESL level programs, from English for beginners, to pre-college and professional level English for students upgrading their education, wanting their foreign credentials recognized, or looking for a job in their field.
Edmonton Journal – Mexican Refugee Family in Edmonton Beats Long Odds to Gain Permanent Residency
The Dominguez family came to Alberta from Mexico after someone threatened to kidnap their middle child. It has taken six years, three applications to Canadian agencies, thousands of dollars in legal fees and countless hours of stress, but the Edmonton family last week received an early Christmas gift: permanent residency status. “It was a big relief and it was the outcome of the things we’d worked on as a family to get done,” said Jose Dominguez Morales, 20. He is the eldest son in the family of five and started to translate for his parents as soon as they arrived. He is now a student at NAIT who has received soccer scholarships to play at the school. The Dominguez family was part of a wave of Mexican refugee claimants who came to Canada starting in about 2005. Mexico was the top source country for refugee claims until 2009. But the acceptance rate for refugee claimants from Mexico has always been far less than for other countries. It was 11 per cent in 2008 when the Dominguez family arrived. The Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) maintains the NAFTA partner is a democracy that affords protection to its citizens.
L’Express – Toujours plus d’émigrants vers le Canada
285 000 immigrants pour 2015, c’est le chiffre record annoncé par le gouvernement de Stephen Harper, qui souhaite ainsi augmenter considérablement le nombre de nouveaux arrivants au Canada. Depuis plusieurs années, la moyenne annuel était en effet de 250 000 résidents permanents. “Mais le marché du travail a changé, explique Chris Alexander, le ministre de la Citoyenneté et de l’Immigration canadien, venu à Paris à l’occasion de la conférence de l’OCDE sur l’émigration, les 1 et 2 décembre. Nous avons besoins de travailleurs spécialisés, dans toutes les provinces, mais nous n’en trouvons pas toujours. Ainsi, la Saskachewan, qui connaît le plein emploi, peine à recruter.” Les francophones sont également encouragés à venir s’installer, et pas seulement au Québec. “La francophonie est la pierre angulaire de notre identité, ajoute le ministre, non seulement il est essentiel d’aider nos communautés francophones à relever le défi démographique, mais il faut aussi développer le bilinguisme, ce qui ne rebute plus les jeunes francophones. La preuve,30% d’entre eux vivent actuellement auYukon et autant en Colombie-Britannique, ce qui est relativement nouveau.”
