A national alliance dedicated to providing an evidence base for newcomer settlement & integration and the promotion of welcoming communities in Canada
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.
Pooria Behrouzy was honoured to be offered a full-time job as a COVID-19 vaccine support worker at Trillium Health Partners last month. But a roadblock stopped Behrouzy from accepting the full-time shifts offered: as an international student, he can only work a maximum of 20 hours per week while classes are in session or he risks losing his study permit and legal status in Canada.
A Calgary woman facing terminal cancer says Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has approved her permanent residency application and her Alberta health care coverage is on the verge of being reinstated. Alexandra Schrage moved to Canada from the Netherlands in 2006 with visitor status and received a work permit two years later. Her attempts to secure permanent residency were unsuccessful and she eventually lost her work permit, her job and her medical coverage through Alberta Health.
According to the 2016 Census, about 20 per cent of physicians in Canada are immigrants. That means about 28,000 people here are immigrant physicians. Those numbers are even higher in certain rural areas in Saskatchewan and many big hubs like the GTA. Racism in medicine is not rare. This reality is extremely harmful to the delivery of care in our country. In a nation where health-care delivery is filled with inequalities, the lack of representation leads to further inequities and worse outcomes.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/pov-masri-racism-against-doctors-1.5871844
The organizer of a virtual celebration to mark the fifth anniversary of Canada’s welcoming Syrian refugees says Canadians’ support for the newcomers has been a beautiful example for the rest of the world. In an interview with The Canadian Press, the executive director of the Syrian Canadian Foundation Bayan Khatib says thousands of Canadians have volunteered to help Syrian refugees in almost every city and town in Canada.
Canada welcomed 341,000 new immigrants in 2019, and continued to accept high levels of new immigrants at the beginning of last year, but those efforts and the immigration system were completely derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. A Statistics Canada report said that Canada’s population “essentially stopped” due to COVID-19, increasing by just 2,767 from July 1, 2020 to Oct. 1 2020 – virtually zero per cent.
Communities in northern Ontario should be inclusive and make newcomers feel welcome if they want to help bolster dwindling populations, a newly released report urges. The Come North report, which is the product of two conferences held by the Northern Policy Institute last February, suggests the communities develop a “co-ordinated marketing plan” to attract immigrants and people from other parts of Canada.