Prepared by: Nuzhat Amin

Citizenship Development Branch

OCTOBER 1987

Settlement work has gradually evolved to become an intrinsic part of the social services available to the residents of Ontario, the majority of whom are immigrants from a rich variety of origins. Widespread awareness of what the term itself means, and how much of a service to the general prosperity of the province is thereby represented, has yet to come. As part of the effort to achieve a greater recognition, the Ministry of Citizenship is very pleased to offer this initial documentation of the history behind the growing network of settlement services.

As a preliminary study, this paper does not attempt to be comprehensive nor to provide a definitive analysis. Reflecting the selectivity of a single research process, it is nonetheless not intended to be taken as representative of any one of the several interest groups involved in the settlement process. It is a first attempt to coordinate the data and document significant aspects of the development of settlement work in Ontario. We hove it will inform, stimulate discussion, and prompt more extensive work on the subject which can be developed to serve as a record and a training tool. To this end, we invite you to read it critically and to expand it with your own experiences and sources of information.

Workers in this field, who have always been instrumental in creating and maintaining programs that make this service so important, have again contributed much to the present project. We would like to thank all those interviewed, whose knowledge and experience constituted our most fruitful source of data. Further acknowledgements are due to:

- Nuzhat Amin who researched and wrote up this paper

- Louisette Laliberte who typed it under pressure all the way

- Larissa CairncrOss who edited it.

- Diana Abraham

- Newcomer Integration Training Unit

- Ministry of Citizenship

INTRODUCTION

Three time periods in this century can be isolated as a useful framework in which to understand the growth of settlement work in Ontario: 1900-1949, 1950-1969 and 1970 to the present. public policy with regard to immigration and to social services had significant impact on the population groups immigrating to Canada, on the nature of new programs, and on social attitudes related to these developments. Services to immigrants are closely tied in to these factors. Differences in such policy fall into a pattern within this breakdown, and are reflected in the status and extent of settlement work in each period.

In the first period there were virtually no services. Immigrants were helped to some extent by already settled family members or members of the community or neighbours₁ to some extent by churches and, later, by settlement houses.

By 1950, when mass migration started from Europe in the wake of World War II, some services had evolved and during the next two decades a number of voluntary agencies geared specifically for immigrants were born. These offered limited services, were dependent on voluntary workers and relied largely on funding from philanthropic organizations and foundations.

The period 1970 to the present can be looked on as a period of growth and consolidation of the agencies and a period during which there was a natural growth of the voluntary agencies into social service and community organizations. In this period government at both provincial and federal levels began to acknowledge its responsibility toward immigrants. While some services for immigrants were offered during the 1950s, government involvement with settlement work increased greatly over the following two decades in terms of both programs and funding. All the signs are that this involvement will continue.

At the same time the nature of settlement work in Ontario falls into two stages. Between 1900 and the immediate post-World War II years, assistance to immigrants was provide by individuals and charitable and/or religious organizations. The "settlement workers" of that period were primarily women motivated by sentiment, "noblesse oblige" and in some oases religious duty. They were of course volunteers. They were dedicated people who committed a lot of time and very often their own resources to assisting newcomers. It is clear that they made an enormous difference to the lives of many; their efforts in fact constitute the groundwork for the more complex role filled by the settlement worker of the present. They were however operating on a very different set of assumptions from that which prevails now, and it is this change that represents the most significant development in the character of settlement work.

The guiding principles behind present program delivery assume that the adaptation process is a two-way exchange in which the recognition of cultural integrity and the protection of cultural diversity are the objectives which the front-line worker seeks to maintain. The role of the settlement worker has therefore also evolved from that of a "good Samaritan," a volunteer, a well-meaning but not specifically qualified person to that of a highly committed and multi-skilled worker who may him or herself have been an immigrant.

The growth of this field, the changes in its philosophies, and developments in the political climate of the province could mean a period of further transition for these concepts and roles. Are settlement workers to function as facilitators for an acceptance of the established order? Are they to function as advocates for change? These are questions that present themselves as a result of the consideration of the activities of settlement work over time, and of its intrinsic part in the development of the economy and of social programs. Further documentation and analysis will be essential to a clearer understanding of the issues they raise.

Due to its small population, Canada has always had to look beyond its own borders to satisfy its labour requirements; immigration has been and still remains a necessity for economic growth. However, in spite of its labour requirements, Canada has always been selective as to the sources from which it drew its immigrants. Traditionally, Canada has given preference to immigrants from Britain, the United States, and selected European countries.

For instance, in the latter part of the 19th century, Canada offered free land to anybody from the British Isles. Unable to attract enough people from there, the federal government recruited 15,000 Chinese workers to build the transCcanada railroad. There were two advantages to this; these workers were paid less than European or Canadian, and they landed in British Columbia, saving transport charges that would have been incurred by Europeans who would have landed on the east coast. However, once the railroad was completed, the government tried to stoc further Chinese immigrants by imposing a head tax.

The Chinese example is one of many illustrating Canada’s immigration policy; even now its labour requirements determine its immigration policy to a large extent.

The aggressive settlement of Canada started in the late 19^th century during the Wheat Boom when Clifford Sifton became of the interior. The ideal settlers and immigrants from the Canadian government’s point of view then were of British or American stock; self-reliant English speaking farmers who would farm the Canadian prairies.

However, Sifton’s government had difficulty recruiting these "ideal" settlers. Substitutes from Europe fell into a descending hierarchy depending on how "visible" and how "foreign" they were and how far removed from the ideal immigrant C hence Scandinavians, Germans and Ukrainians were considered followed by Jews, Italians, South Slave, Greeks, Syrians and the Chinese.

Parallel to the official government system which favoured English and North Europeans were the requirements of the labour intensive North American factories. North American employers wanted to recruit South Europeans because they saw them as unpoliticized and unorganized workers who could be paid lower wages and who would have no recourse to unions.

At first it was the Canadian immigration authorities who tried to attract such immigrants from various countries in Europe by paying agents and steamships a commission, but soon the steamships and the factory owners got involved in recruitment themselves. They coaxed employees to encourage relatives to join them and even offered them pre-paid tickets (it cost $25 from Europe to Toronto via New York by any steamship). Letters from Europeans workers in Canada to relatives in the home country described streets lined with gold; this description was confirmed by the money they sent home to their impoverished families.

The next step was for the steamships and factory owners to actively hunt for more workers; a Dominion Coal agent told a Royal Commission in 1904 that he paid sub-agents 25 cents a head for recruiting Italian workers. Canadian Pacific and other steamship lines also had agents who gave inducements to their workers such as paid holidays to their own country so that they could bring back relatives and fellow countrymen with them.

By the beginning of the first World War, the cities of the midwest in North America reflected the mass migration of people from Europe who were escaping political and/or religious persecution or grinding poverty and repressive class-bound societies.

The population of Toronto doubled between 1891C1911. Some of it was composed of immigrants from Britain and the United States; however, the 1911 census shows that there were already 18,000 Jews in the city (mainly from Russia and Eastern Europe). The census also shows 3,000 Italian born people, sizable Chinese and Macedonian communities and smaller Syrians, Polish, Ukrainian, Finnish and Greek communities.

When these immigrants arrived in Canada, they had little money, no credit, knew little English and had even less knowledge of Canada. In Toronto, as in other cities, landlords exploited the situation and turned their properties into high density, low maintenance housing for the newcomers, which became increasingly crowded with every new wave of immigration. The "foreigners" were not made welcome in Canada by the government because they did not speak English, were not Protestant and, what was even worse, they did not want to go to the rural areas. The older residents of "Toronto the Good" were no more charitable or welcoming. Firstly, they feared for their jobs. Secondly, they noticed only the newcomers’ failings; in their minds, the newcomers became linked with scares of typhoid, scarlet fever and cholera.

Even the social workers of the day, who were operating within the context of Evangelism and Canadianization, were not much more sympathetic. Immigrants, to them, were synonymous with dirt, squalor and disease.

Such then was the welcome the Asian and European immigrants received in the New World, at least those who came to urban Ontario.

Immigration continued steadily after the beginning of the century and in 1913 reached the highest annual intake. This was the time when the business community was, once again, clamouring for workers. The years before World War I saw the admission of large numbers of non-British Europeans.

By the time these immigrants came, the big towns, especially Toronto, had some informal services for them. People gave food and temporary shelter to newcomers from their own country; often they rented a room to them in their already cramped quarters. Neighbours and people from the same community showed the newcomers where the nearest hospital was, where to buy groceries, and which school to send their children to.

There were many entrepreneurs among each ethnic group. By the end of World War I they had bought houses and small businesses and each community could boast of people who had made good C people who had learned English, which was the first step to success, and then become doctors and lawyers. These established people gave donations to groups which were involved in trying to settle newcomers from their country.

Over the years, each ethnic group formed its own church and local society in order to practice their own religion and to celebrate their festivals, to have music and dance and to impart the old culture to Canadian born offspring. As many of the immigrants were illiterate or barely literate, this was the only way they could give their children a sense of the Old World. Benevolent agencies and village brotherhoods were started up to protect the immigrant worker from sudden hardship, to give a loan for a wedding feast or for burial costs. The priest organized Sunday school or afternoon school at the back of the church for children to learn their own language and culture, as during the day they learned only English.

This is not to say that each community helped its people; there were many people who took advantage of the newcomers’ ignorance, desperation and helplessness. "Helpers" sometimes had hidden motives. Elizabeth Szalowski cites the example of various immigrant groups arriving in Halifax as recently as 1948. By the time the train reached Toronto, the "helpers" had got the newcomers ₃ to sign contracts saying they would buy furniture from them. It was also not unknown for people from the same community to get newcomers to work for them for wages lower than the market rate; the newcomers often did not realize for a long time that they were being exploited because they assumed that their countrymen were helping them. Loan sharks also made capital out of their countrymen and neighbours.

Apart from the family and community, there were a few agencies and organizations involved in assisting these immigrants at that time.

Says Elizabeth Szalowski: "In 1900 there was no settlement work as such." The churches were involved as were the "good Samaritans." But, she says, this help was not seen as helping someone to settle but as giving a newcomer a foothold in a new country.

The official task of Canadianizing the foreigners fell to educators, civil servants, social workers, religious leaders and public health officials who tried to remould the foreigner in their image. The churches were the first to come out and offer help. The YWCA, which started in the late 19th century, tried to help with housing and English classes and by giving newcomers free membership so they could have some social life. The Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire (IODE), which was formed around the 1920s and which did not have settlement services per se, rallied round and provided the newcomers with housing, furniture and food.

Settlement work in Toronto in the early part of this century was dominated by the three settlement houses’ which were working in areas with a high immigrant population: St. Christopher’s, University settlement and Central Neighbourhood. All had a commitment to the Canadianization of the foreigners. While the teachers at school tried to minimize the influence of home on the school children and overcome the "shortcomings" of the home environment, the workers at the settlement houses did the same with the adults as well as with the children.

Funding for the houses came from the churches, from private donations, from fund-raising activities organized by volunteer workers and later, from the united Community Fund (now called the United Nay of Greater Toronto), an umbrella charity organization which provides funds for charitable causes.

The concept of settlement houses has its origins in Toynbee Hall which was opened in the east end slums of London, England in 1884 by University Settlement Association. This was a committee sponsored by Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Fired by missionary zeal, Canon Barnett, the first warden of Toynbee, tried to bridge the gap between rich and poor, between educated and non-educated, by asking concerned individuals, the "settlers" and others from the Church Hall C all those who wanted to work with the poor C to move into the poor areas and "settle" there.

These settlement workers saw and recognized social inequalities in a paternalistic framework. They wanted to relieve the sufferings of the poor in the name of social harmony and Christian duty.

The settlement house principle was transplanted onto American soil by Stanton Coit. He founded the Neighbourhood Guild which later became the University Settlement of New York. The American experience was secular and included ll aspects of neighbourhood and community welfare.

The first Canadian house, Evangelia, was opened in 1899 in Toronto by the American Quaker, Sara Libby Carson, who founded the Christadora House in New York and who, later, helped to organize and supervise all the Presbyterian Houses across Canada.

It closed down 20 years later but during those 20 years it had a number of achievements. It opened the city’s first supervised playground and nursery school, organized a medical clinic and a small hospital, developed clubs for adults and children and gave some form of assistance to the recently arrived immigrants. Evangelia was the forerunner of the settlement houses like St. Christopher which still exist in Toronto.⁷

Cultural and educational programs, public lectures, health programs and activities for children were typical of all the houses. In addition, night schools which offered instruction in technical, office and household skills and many courses in English flourished. English classes were also being held by churches, Protestant missions and by Evangelists, many of which predated the settlement houses’ efforts.

The typical workers at the settlement houses then, as in other settlement agencies which started later, were women, many of whom were religiously motivated and all of whom gave their time and services free. They spoke only English, were familiar with only Canadian culture and had no understanding of, or interest in, the background and culture of their clients. They were dedicated and well-meaning but untrained for most of their many responsibilities such as supervising club activities and teaching ESL, maths, crafts, household skills etc. to adults, or providing medical help when required. There were many women like Sara Libby Carson who devoted their lives to their work. (See Chapter on Settlement Worker).

By the 1920s the workers in the settlement houses, realizing that they required practical training as well as an academic base, began to lobby the University of Toronto to have courses in Social Work. Workers from the settlement houses subsequently became teachers and students of these courses.

Around this time, a conflict arose between the founders of the houses who were religiously motivated, and the social workers as to how they perceived the goals and objectives of the houses. By the 1950s great changes had come about in the original concept of the settlement houses. The biggest change was that the "live-in" worker was no longer feasible. Due to increased program activity, shortage of space and funds, and a change in how the role of the settlement worker was perceived, the residents began to live out while the living quarters became program space.

Thus began the necessary evolution of the settlement house into a neighbourhood serving agency and into today’s community centre. As soon as the workers began to live out, local resident involvement in running the house, in decision-making and in the staffing of the houses increased.

Over the next few decades, this commitment to bringing local residents into the houses increased in all the houses as it became evident that it was more practical to have small community centres which eventually replaced the need for the large settlement houses.

The training that the settlement workers had received made them realize that they had to revise their mode of work. By the 1950s the workers in the houses were trying to understand the background/way of life of the immigrants they were dealing with. An indicator of this new direction was that St. Christopher hired an experienced multilingual worker to develop social and recreational programs for non-English speaking immigrants. Charlyn Hoxze became St. Christopher’s first neighbourhood community worker.

The settlement houses still exist, but they have evolved and taken on new directions, while many of their earlier settlement activities have been taken over by community centres and neighbourhood houses which mushroomed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They served a purpose in the early part of the century, but once Canada’s social service system expanded and became institutionalized, many of the services provided by the settlement houses were made redundant. The concept of the settlement worker, too, has evolved over the years; no longer is it that of a good Samaritan handing out alms to poor grateful wretches and making them more dependent. The community worker of today looks on her work as giving a helping hand to newcomers in order to enable them to stand on their own two feet.

CHAPTER 1

1 Robert Harney and Harold Troper, Immigrants: A Portrait of the Urban Experience, 1890-1930. (Van Nostrand Reinhold Ltd Toronto) See Preface.

2 Ibid. Chapter 1, "The Coming of the Immigrants".

3 Elizabeth Szalowski was Executive Officer of the Ontario Multicultural Council from 1973 to 1979. She was also associated with the International Institute of Metropolitan Toronto for many years. She made this comment in an interview with the author in August 1987.

4 Ibid.

5 Robert Harney and Harold Troper, Chapter 4, "Education and The Canadian Way".

6 A settlement house is defined as "first of all a home - a resident group of socially minded people who are eager to learn about the problems neighbours faced and join with them in seeking the solution". From United Neighbourhood Houses of New York 1918.

7 The Story of the Toronto Settlement House Movement 1910 - 1985. (Toronto Association of Neighbourhood Services, 1986)

8 Ibid.

With mass migration (mainly from Europe) in the wake of World War II, the need for services to newcomers increased greatly in Ontario, especially Toronto. The churches and settlement houses stepped up their activities and programs for immigrants as did voluntary agencies like the Red Cross and the YWCA/YMCA. Among the newcomers were refugees from Germany, Austria, Italy, France, the Ukraine, Poland and Yugoslavia. These included many widows and children. The YWCA provided housing for the women and children and, later, the women were able to attend English classes there. The YMCA provided similar services for the men.

A few years later, both the YMCA and the YWCA in Toronto were involved with the settlement of the Hungarian refugees in 1956 and of the Czechs in the late 1960s. The Red Cross provided initial settlement services for the Hungarian newcomers. Another agency which helped these groups of refugees was the IODE which sponsored families, gave them food, housing and furniture and steered them towards the few services which existed at that time. Services provided by agencies in the 1950s were child placement, translation of documents, English classes and showing newcomers, most of whom had never heard of a social agency, the services which were available.

Many Hungarians and later Czechs made their way to Windsor. The Windsor Family "Y" held English courses for the

-Hungarians as well as classes to orient them to the Canadian L way of life. The classes were conducted by Madeleine

Harden, also a Hungarian, who immigrated to Canada from England just before the Hungarian refugees arrived.

According to Ms Harden the classes were not formalized; she organized club activities such as dances and picnics for the "New Canadian Club" as it was called.

About the Czechs, Ms. Harden says: "By then we knew what to do because of our experiences with the Hungarians." She describes the Czech political refugees as a "very cultured group" but adds that "it was hard to work with them because they wanted to go back to their country."

Ms. Harden started with the Y as a volunteer worker and recruited other volunteers as the Y did not provide funds to pay for these activities. By now the settlement houses and even some of the agencies were headed by trained social workers who received a small salary. But, in the main, the agencies followed the example of the Y. The expanded programs of the older agencies were run largely by an evergrowing army of dedicated women volunteer workers who helped to make the immigrant's initial period in Ontario less painful.

By now it was evident that the existing agencies and houses were far from enough for the large number of immigrants. In answer to this need, a number of immigrant aid agencies, both large and small, sprang up. In the forefront were COSTI, Italian Immigrant Aid Society (IIAS), Jewish Immigrant Aid Services (JIAS) and the International Institute of Metropolitan Toronto, each with a slightly different mandate and thrust but with the similar objective of helping immigrants to settle.

The International Institute was formed in 1957 with donations mainly from the United Community Fund (UCF) to provide social, cultural and educational activities which would help newcomers become established in Canada and integrate themselves into Canadian life and, at the same time, enable Canadians to know and understand newcomers.

According to Tine Stewart , who was the Institute’s Executive Director from 1968 to 1974, many of their efforts were also directed towards finding jobs for their clients. The Institute, which was situated in the heart of an immigrant population, had clients from many countries C Latin American, East Indian, Portuguese, Italian and Greek. Six counsellors who between them spoke 25 languages, helped clients with the bureaucracy.

The Institute was responsible for carrying out two studies showing the problems being faced by Portuguese, Italian and Greek peasants who had come to Canada as labourers, had very little education and were unfamiliar with the work of a social agency. The two studies, entitled Newcomers and New Learning and Newcomers in Transition compiled by Edith Ferguson, were instrumental in making both the general public and government aware of the plight of these groups, and in furthering the Institute’s aim of enabling Canadians to know and understand the newcomers.

Her reports received a great deal of attention because "no one had been working with immigrants and nothing like this had been written before," says Edith Ferguson. She added: "I think people didn’t realize until they read my books how helpless these people - the Portuguese, Greeks and Italians - were in a large city. They couldn’t find their way around; they were frightened, they couldn’t talk to the public health nurse about their children’s sickness, they couldn’t fill in all these forms, so sometimes they disregarded them and got into trouble. A lot of them didn’t know how to use the phone or who to phone for help. Workers would have to go with them to the social agency otherwise they wouldn’t go." She described how one of her workers took eight children to a hospital to have their eyes corrected. "She couldn’t get their mothers to go to a hospital - in their country you only went to a hospital to die."

In a criticism of the bureaucrats her clients had dealings with regarding Unemployment Insurance or Workmen’s Compensation, she said: "I would get on the phone with my Canadian voice and ask to speak to the supervisor and I would get something done. They listened to me whereas they wouldn’t listen to the people with the accent..." Happily, she says, that attitude is changing now because "there are so many people around who have an accent but who speak with some authority..." ⁴

The Institute achieved many firsts. It made people realize that these immigrants had needs which were different from those of Northern Europeans and that their existing programs were not suitable for these communities. Secondly, Edith Ferguson worked with bilingual women workers who could explain to her what problems their community was facing and tell them what services were available; on the basis of her discussions with them Ms. Ferguson also made efforts to have the required services provided.

The Institute also held English classes for people from these three communities. "It was hard to reach them but we managed to make some of them go," said Ms. Ferguson.⁵ The classes were held in collaboration with the provincial government who paid rent for using the Institute’s premises, supplied the materials, and paid the teachers, who had previously been volunteers.

The Institute finally closed down in the 1970s because of shortage of funds; first, the UC? withdrew its support but the real death knell sounded in 1974 when the provincial government moved the English classes from the Institute to the recently opened Ontario Welcome House.

-While it was active, the Institute worked closely with the other main immigrant settlement agencies of the time such as JIAS, University Settlement House and St. Christopher. Its other major contribution was that, under the federal Local Initiative Program (LIP) (see Chapter on Government’s Role), it helped start up many smaller agencies such as the Centre for Spanish Speaking People and the Portuguese Interpreter and Information Service.

COSTI is the abbreviated form of a name which, translated roughly, means Centre for Organizing Technical Training for Italians. When it started in 1962, it was meant only for Italian clients. Its thrust was to assist people who had trade qualifications from Italy but who required upgrading to be able to work in their trade in Ontario, such as plumbing, steamfitting, the electrical trade, watchmaking and motor vehicle repair. COSTI later made an arrangement with the York Borough Board of Education to conduct special courses called "pre-certification courses" to prepare immigrant tradesmen for the qualifying examination.

There are now a number of agencies serving Italians in Ontario; however, COSTI remains in the forefront although its mandate is no longer confined to the Italian community. Italians and Portuguese now form only 30 percent of the client base; its multiethnic commitment is obvious from the fact that a large number of students in its ESL classes are from China and Latin America. Languages spoken by the agency’s workers, ranging from Swaihili to Mandarin to Spanish, also reflect the breadth of its client base.

In 1981 COSTI joined with another organization which was started by Italians for Italians C the Italian Immigrant Aid Society (IIAS). When IIAS was formed in 1956, its focus was immediate settlement services for Italians such as meeting immigrants at train stations, finding them housing and helping them through the "bureaucratic maze that immigrants had to get through at that time,"⁶ says COSTI/IIAS’S Associate Executive Director Timothy Owen.

The rehabilitation services which were started by COSTI in the 1960s to assist injured workmen find new employment still exist, but in the 1970s COSTI also started offering counselling to clients; this includes not only initial counselling but also intensive counselling vis-a-vis problems in the family - a need of the new conditions and times and the kind of clients COSTI has today.

Tim Owen says that the demographic profile of the immigrant and, therefore, of the COSTI client is very different now. In the 1960s, immigrants were primarily European. Now, most immigrants are from other parts of the world. Secondly, at that time, many of the immigrants were labourers with primary school education. Now, many immigrants are highly educated professionals in their own countries although they might not speak English.

He describes what has happened to some of the immigrants of those days. Because they had to work right away, and did not have an opportunity to learn English then, they still do not speak English. Part of the agency’s job is to help these long-term Italian residents with bureaucratic formalities as they do not have the necsssary knowledge and language ability. On the other hand, he says, there were also people to whom the agency provided initial services 20 years ago and who have since become modest success stories, and have been able to give jobs to new arrivals.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Canada’s Jewish population was around 10,000; after World War I, it rose to 100,000. The present population is approximately 300,000.

JIAS was born in Montreal in 1922, in the wake of World War I, when the need for a special immigrant aid program to take care of post-war immigration and resettlement of new arrivals became apparent. JIAS, a community created and community supported agency, works in collaboration with such agencies worldwide. Its mandate is slightly different from other immigrant aid agencies; its services are restricted to the Jewish community and the range of services is all encompassing. "We are unique in what we are doing in Canada", says the Toronto region’s Director of Settlement Services Maurice Benzacar, "because not only does JIAS help immigrants to settle in Canada, but we also give them financial help and make presentations on their behalf. we sponsor families to come to this country and we also give guarantees to the government when required for families who would otherwise not qualify for entry."

Says Maurice Benzacar again: "When an Italian comes here, he usually has relatives, some money and a family who will help him... But when a family comes to us, they have nothing. They have just left a Communist country in Europe where one or our sister agencies helps to process their papers and looks after them until they are accepted into Canada..." JIAS’s services for clients start as soon as they reach Canada. It has 28 communities across Canada and one of them arranges to meet the newcomers at the airport or port.

The settlement process, he said, was different for each individual... in some cases four weeks, a few months or a year while "hard core" cases could take even longer. "When I receive someone at the airport, I intuitively know whether he’s going to be a problem or not..." ⁹

The settlement process today, he says, is shorter and "less painful" than it used to be. In those days, he continued, the immigrant had to slog during the day, was exploited because he didn’t know English and had to go to night school. It took him years to settle himself. Now he can have a six month adaptation period during which time he can afford to attend ESL classes during the day as he receives an allowance from the government.

There were not many organizations and agencies in that period which offered all the services which JIM did. Other agencies which provided some services for immigrants were the Junior League of Toronto and the New Canadian Services Association. The Immigration Section of the Catholic Family Services made travel loans to persons wishing to nominate or sponsor relatives and also conducted an information and counselling service. The Travellers’ Aid Society contributed about a quarter of its services to immigrants while the Family Service Association offered the same type of individual and family counselling service for immigrants that it gave to its Canadian-born clients.

Around this time the Information Service of the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto started adding multilingual staff to increase its services to immigrants while the West End YMCA, situated in an Italian district, employed an Italian worker to develop a special program for immigrants. A few "Y" branches across Ontario had, by this time, organized special activities for immigrants, such as English classes or a weekly special program. The International Centre in London, Ontario was also offering English classes, information and counselling services as well as a social and cultural programs. English classes were also being offered by COSTI in Hamilton, to shift workers and night workers.

By this time there were hundreds of ethnic organizations in Ontario; the majority were social clubs but there were also political, sports and cultural clubs, professional associations and welfare organizations. These ethnic organizations did help new immigrants because they extended them a hand of friendship, and newcomers could find friends through them. Some of them also supplied counselling and material help; but they did not claim to be "settlement" agencies.

There were also many ethnic religious groups in the province at this time. Toronto alone had over 130. In some cases, communities brought over clergy from their countries of origin to help meet the needs of the growing congregations. The clergy did counselling and interpreting but the service was dependent on their interest and time. A few churches conducted language classes while the Roman Catholic Church had a director in its diocese in Ontario and the Baptist Women’s Missionary Society employed four immigration workers in Ontario.

This period saw the emergence of a host of settlement agencies and immigrant aid agencies as well as a number of ethnic organizations and clubs. In addition, agencies which had been born earlier in the century increased and expanded their existing programs. They realized that, firstly, their services were far from enough to meet the needs of the increasing number of immigrants who were drawn to Ontario every year and, secondly, that they were not offering a complete service to their clients. There was also the important realization that the role of the settlement worker had to evolve to meet the new needs of immigrants (See Chapter on Settlement Workers); and, often, that the whole agency had to take a new direction.

CHAPTER 2

1. Madeleine Harden, herself orginally Hungarian, moved to Windsor, Ontario, from England in

1956. She became involved with the YM/YWCA right away as a voluntary worker. She came on staff in 1967 as Adult Program Director and retired earlier this year (1987). She made these comments to the author in a phone interview in August 1987.

2. Tine Stewart was the Institute’s Executive Director from 1968 to 1974. She was also involved with the lODE for many years.

3. Edith Ferguson is one of the best known names in Ontario settlement work. She has been active in community centres serving immigrants, has conducted study projects on the adjustment pro services blems of immigrants, and has assisted in the examination of government to immigrants.

4. In an interview with the author, August 1987.

5. Ibid.

6. In an interview with the author, August 1987.

7. In an interview with the author, August 1987.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

There are two landmarks in settlement work in the 1970s C 1973 when Ontario Welcome House was opened as a pilot project, signaling the provincial government’s growing recognition that it had an immense responsibility to immigrants; and 1978/79, when people from all over Ontario, :n fact Canada, sponsored thousands of Vietnamese refugees and opened their homes to them.

Ontario Welcome House, run by the former Ministry of Citizenship and Culture*, was established in 1973 in response to the expulsion of Asian Ugandans by Idi Amin. n the beginning it served only Ugandan Asians but in fiscal 1973/74, it was decided to make it a multilingual resource centre to serve other nationalities and peoples. Gradually, it began to house all the programs and services which were already being offered at other premises by the Citizenship Branch such as settlement services, language classes, orientation and citizenship training. When the first Chilean refugees arrived, the women requested a preschool program for the children of adult learners. This service was implemented and still serves those in the OWE language classes. The downtown Welcome House continues to serve mostly refugees as each successive wave arrives.

The concept of the OWE grew out of a report written by Edith Ferguson for the Ontario Economic Council in 1970 which recommended that there be a multilingual resource and reception service for new arrivals at Toronto Airport. Peggy Mackenzie, now Senior Manager of the OWE network, set up the reception service in 1971. She and her colleagues then conducted a survey by mail to find out in what areas the new arrivals needed assistance. Sixty percent of the immigrants they wrote to responded and showed they needed "more assistance than could be given them quickly at the airport after a long flight," said Ms. Mackenzie.

The next step was for her team to visit all the major ₃ettlement workers and agencies to better inform themselves of the needs of the new arrivals. Meanwhile, at the Heritage Ontario Congress held in 1972, there was a recommendation that centrally located premises be found to bring together all the services already being provided by the provincial government such as ESL classes and translation of work-related documents.

* The Ministry of Citizenship and Culture has now become two separate entities. The Ministry of Citizenship is responsible for all the programs referred to in the report.

OWH has grown considerably since its opening. In 1983, apart from the original welcome House, three more branches were opened in areas nearer the settlement areas of the immigrants and, in 1985, a Welcome House was opened in Hamilton. Ms. Mackenzie says that none of the community agencies can play the role that Welcome House does. She explains why: Many of their clients are elderly people who crave anonymity and do not want anyone in their community to find out that they are in need, especially financial need. Elderly people from many countries come to Canada when their children call them and find themselves trapped in an apartment looking after grandchildren. Such people, she says, are too proud to go to anyone in their own community for help. OWE can, and does, help such people without causing them any embarrassment.

According to Peggy Mackenzie, Welcome House represents different things to different people. "One person described it as a raft that she clung to while she was getting started". The principle of Welcome House is, she says, "you help people get started, they will become full members of our society ¼and we have had many success stories..." Welcome House also acts as a referral agency. "We work co-operatively with the community agencies to help newcomers as we believe that networking is very important.

Apart from being a symbol of welcome, statistics prove that Welcome House has played and continues to play an important role in the initial settlement of immigrants. In fiscal 1986/87, for instance, 68 percent or 23,000 of the almost 34,000 newcomers to Metro were serviced by the four Welcome Houses. Altogether the four houses in Metro now handle 2,000 clients each month.

The 1970s are also important because, symbolically, this is when Ontarians accented the newcomers in their midst. Kerry Reade, a program specialist with Employment and Immigration Canada’s Settlement Mission for Ontario, says: "The settlement movement in Ontario started in 1978/79 when people from all over the country, and especially Ontario, sponsored the Vietnamese refugees." Of the 60,000 boat people who came to Canada, 30,000 were sponsored by Ontario residents. Until then, according to him, people here really did not realize how difficult it was to get services of any kind, especially for people who looked different and could not speak English. "Immigration services made leaps all over Canada in these few years." ⁶

Peggy Mackenzie describes this phenomenon as a "mind-blowing experience", and agrees with Kerry Reade that the South East Asian movement heralded a new attitude toward newcomers by people from all over the province. People sponsored the refugees from towns which were so small that, as a colleague put it, if you sent a family of ten there, you would probably have doubled the ¹⁰.

"Sometimes" she says, "they almost killed the people with kindness".⁷ The historic significance of the South East Asian movement was that more services were opened for immigrants in small towns and cities which, until then, had been virtually unobtainable outside Metro. (See Settlement Work Outside Metro, 23 - 26). Many people also look on that positive response to refugees by Canadians as the beginning of a softening of the federal government’s attitude toward refugees.

The post-sixties era is also significant as the immigration policy was revised to remove racist principles; the "point system" was instituted in 1967, placing emphasis on job skills and educational qualifications of potential immigrants rather than on ethnic and racial characteristics. With the introduction of the point system, there was a geographical shift away from the traditional source countries such as Britain, Europe and the United States. A majority of the new immigrants now were from Asia, East Africa and South America; people who had traditionally been barred from entering Canada. In 1966, fox example, just a year before the point system was enforced, Europeans represented 76 percent of immigrants; by 1973 they represented only 39 percent.

Under the point system applicants for immigration fall into three categories; the "independent" applicant who has to score high points for education and job skills, "nominated" applicants who have to score only a few points and "sponsored" people, usually close relatives, who do not have to score any points.

Settlement responsibility for sponsored and nominated immigrants lies not with the government but with the sponsor/ nominator. The nominator is supposed to find them accommodation and employment and sign a guarantee that the newcomers will not become a public charge during their first five years in the country.

Many independent immigrants have, subsequent to their own settlement in Ontario, sponsored or nominated parents, grandparents, wives, children, cousins and still continue to do so. In most cases, the first immigrant in the family takes on most of the responsibility of helping the other family members. Newcomers live with their sponsor who helps them find work, gives them guidance regarding. OHIP, shows them where the nearest supermarket and doctor’s office are and how to use public transport. It is with such help and guidance and through the sponsor’s friends and contacts in the community that these immigrants "settle" themselves.

This is much like the practice in the early part of this century with established family members helping newcomers. This method of settlement was often not very successful then, and is even less so now in a more complex and institutionalized social system. Often the "settlers" is not equipped for this responsibility and need help themselves; there are pressures of time and money on him and also of adjusting to a new society. He often does not know enough about the social services available to be able to guide anyone else. A common scenario is that nominated and sponsored relatives, who are often highly educated and have professional qualifications, take up low-paid factory jobs or work in small organizations run by their countrymen. Cases have been reported even recently of people being paid lower than minimum wages for many months before they find out that their countrymen are exploiting them.

The sufferings of immigrants, the displacement, the loneliness and the loss of status they have to live with in Canada is well described in "The Immigrant’s Handbook".

"All around us there are immigrants - men, women and children - caught and confused by a society that shows only a sporadic, poorly-coordinated interest in them, even as contributing members of Canada’s much-talked-about mosaic.

The most common immigrant reality still follows a classic pattern. The father finds work well below his potential. The mother contributes to the family purse with a low-paid job in a factory or cleaning offices. Long and incompatible work hours disturb the pattern of home life, and rarely is there the comfort of an extended family to cushion the strangeness and the loneliness of the new situation. The children, thrust into a different, hostile world, come to terms with their own urgent needs by becoming determinedly "Canadian". Their parents cannot understand the new norms of behaviour of their offspring. Often they cannot even speak together with any subtlety₈ or depth in a language they all understand".

As immigrants from Asia, East Africa and South America started coming to Ontario in large numbers, settlement workers and the federal and provincial governments became aware that the needs of these people were very different from those of the earlier immigrants. People from Britain, the USA, Northern and Southern Europe had some cultural and historical similarities with Anglo-Canadian 'norms'; the new immigrants were from different worlds - they looked different, spoke other languages and had distinct cultures. In the latter half of the 1970s and then the 1980s, they were followed by refugees from the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan and from Ethiopia and Central America.

Hence settlement programs in both government organizations and in voluntary agencies were expanded to include interpreting, information and referral services as well as counselling and health education. Bilingual outreach workers were hired by a number of agencies.

This was a time when the voluntary agencies of the 1950s and 1960s evolved into social service agencies with the help of government funding. originally they had been financed by small contributions from established community members and could afford only limited operations. Often the new arrivals from some countries were greater in number than their established communities so that the services could not be very effective.

This was the era of increasing government funding. Established agencies which had proved that they could, and did, provide services, could get government funding for many more projects than before. With the introduction of the federal Immigrant Adaptation and Settlement Program (IASP) in the late 1970s, and funding from the Secretary of State as well as the Citizenship Branch of the Ministry of Culture and Recreation, the voluntary agencies began to evolve into social service agencies. (See Chapter 4: Government’s Role in Settlement)

The same can be said of the neighbourhood information centres which mushroomed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, some of which were ethno-specific while others provided services for anyone living in that neighbourhood. These agencies also increasingly developed the character of a social service agency by the late 1970s.

Other agencies also sprang up during the late 1970s and the l980s. Now there are a number of agencies and groups offering similar services. However, representatives of most agencies say that the services are still not enough and that demand still far exceeds supply.

Another landmark in the 1970s was the emergence of the umbrella organization, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI), the raison d’etre of which is, firstly, to help agencies supply the best services to immigrants and, secondly, to advocate equal access to all services for immigrants from all countries.

At present OCASI has 80 members - 30 from Metro and the balance from over the province - in centres like Ottawa, London, Thunder Bay, Kenora and Fort Frances among others. It has seen rapid growth; it was formed in 1978 with only II Metro based immigrant aid agencies. Its origins can be traced back to November 1977 when agencies serving the needs of immigrants in Ontario gathered to attend a conference at the close of which a "steering Committee of Agencies Serving Immigrants" was organized to discuss and act upon common concerns.

Metro members then decided to make the membership of OCASI province-wide; government funding made it possible to hire an outreach person to "take our message to Ontario" as Acting Executive Director Pearl Chud puts it. OCASI’s first office was a small room in Welcome House; since then it has been a recipient of funding from both the provincial and federal governments.

How does Pearl Chud see OCASI’s role vis-a-vis, firstly, government and, secondly, its member agencies? One is intertwined with the other C as member agencies have a shared goal of achieving equality for immigrants in every aspect of Canadian life, OCASI looks on its role vis-a-vis the government as "one of advocacy" on behalf of member agencies. According to Pearl Chud this role was identified at one of the earliest workshops. A recent example of advocacy was OCASI’s lobbying the provincial government for multiyear operational funding. OCASI, speaking on behalf of its member agencies, said that the project to project funding they were receiving was a "terrible way of funding" as the agencies could survive only from project to project. Ms. Chud says that their lobbying was instrumental in the then Ministry of Citizenship and Culture’s introduction of multiyear core funding under the Multiyear Services Program Grants (MSPG) introduced in 1985.

OCASI enjoys a close consultative role with three levels of government and acts as a link between the community, service providers and the government. It identifies various issues and needs of the agencies and immigrants and has been used as a resource organization by various government agencies.

Regarding its role vis-a-vis member agencies, OCASI helps with their internal development, provides upgrading for their professional training with seminars and workshops and facilitates a flow of shared information between them to avoid duplication of effort.

Do people in this field agree that OCASI succeeds in accomplishing all these aims? They agree that an organization like OCASI has an important role to play and that it has made a contribution. However, some of them say that it has lost "something" during its dramatic growth. When it started, it was a comparatively informal group consisting of frontline workers; now, they say, it has become formalized and bureaucratic and consists of entities rather than individuals. Also, they say, agency representatives are often from the administrative levels rather than frontline workers who have first hand knowledge and experience with immigrants.

Replies Pearl Chud: "OCASI has changed and has become bigger but it hasn’t become a bureaucracy... We are constantly getting input from the community and from direct service workers and we don’t make decisions without consulting our member agencies."’⁰ She added that they encourage agencies to select frontline workers as their representatives to OCASI’s Board but that the agencies are free to select who they want.

It appears that OCASI does provide opportunities for front-line workers to meet; apart from the regional network there are other smaller networks such as one for Metro workers and another for members of agencies in Ottawa, Kingston and Belleville where workers can discuss issues. Another platform for such meetings and discussions is provided by various committees run by OCASI on Race Relations, Women’s Issues, Workshop Planning and Development and ESL.

Pearl Chud says that at OCASI they are aware of the problems that may arise with the growth of an organization. "But we are trying to be as democratic as possible within the demands being put on us."

Settlement work in Ontario outside Metro Toronto is a relatively new field, barring a few exceptions. Peggy Mackenzie (OWH) who toured various towns such as Ottawa, London, St. Catharines, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Windsor and Hamilton between 1972C75 to study settlement needs says: "Services at that time were virtually non-existent. Ottawa was possibly the brightest light for a while..." She added that there were church groups in some towns which were providing some settlement services.

Until the 1950s, immigrants who moved to the smaller towns had to rely on their relatives and countrymen, a few ethnic groups, and church groups to give them initial help. It would appear that their settlement was not as difficult as the settlement of their countrymen in Toronto, firstly, because many of them chose to go to towns where they had relatives and friends and secondly, as a settlement worker out it, there is a community spirit in the smaller towns which encourages people to know and help each other.

The agencies in these towns could also benefit from the experiences of Toronto. They had a pattern to follow; as in Toronto the first facilities offered were English classes and club activities to give the newcomers an insight into the Canadian way of life. Some of the agencies were short of funds like their Toronto counterparts and relied greatly on voluntary workers. Those which started later received United Way funding and some government funding after a few years which made it possible for them to plan their programs and activities.

The family "Y" in Windsor was one of the earliest agencies to set up programs for immigrants. In 1956, Madeleine Harden organized English classes and club activities for the Hungarian refugees. This was followed by similar settlement activities and programs for Czech refugees in the late 1960s and then for Ugandans in 1973.

The Cross Cultural Learner Centre, established in 1969, is the oldest agency in London. It started as a library for scholars interested in the Third World and then went into settlement work. A small service opened in Thunder Bay a year later. JIAS has had a presence in Ottawa for many years while the Catholic Immigration Centre opened in 1970 in Ottawa. The Ottawa Carleton Immigrant Services Organization (OCISO) opened in 1977 following an organization formed to help Ugandan Asians. It is the largest agency in Eastern Ontario and fifty percent of its work is geared towards immigrants. It was the first agency in the federal capital to offer such a wide program; it even offers family and crisis counselling. OCISO has seen considerable growth; it started with only one oaid worker while the rest were volunteers. Now it has 20 people on staff. The next step for the agencies involved in any kind of settlement work was to offer interpreter and translating services. Now most agencies have a multilingual staff speaking the languages of South America, Central America and South East Asia where most of their clients come from.

By the 1970s a few agencies had sprung up in the various cities and the federal government had a presence in most of these towns.

In smaller communities, ethnocultural organizations had formed multicultural councils and folkarts councils. With the arrival of the South East Asian refugees (or sometimes prior to that) many of these evolved to provide settlement services in addition to their previous activities.

Most of the agencies outside Metro Toronto offer similar services, with the larger agencies offering a range of services comparable to those available in Toronto. Agencies in these towns work closely with government. Employment and Immigration Canada helps immigrants with job hunting, then refers them to these agencies for help with housing, OHIP and orientation, and/or for citizenship and English classes.

The agencies are funded by private donations, by the United Way and by the provincial and federal governments. A popular program offered by a number of agencies in these towns is the Hosting program which is financed by the federal government. The agency sends an outreach person to churches and colleges to get volunteers to look after immigrants, but not to house them.

A number of the clients in these agencies in the smaller towns, especially towns bordering the USA, are refugee claimants, mainly from Central America, who have entered Canada illegally via the USA, and for whom there is no government funding. Yet most agencies would not and do not turn the refugee claimants away.

But this situation appears to be causing a strain on both the agencies and the workers. The churches, which have always helped newcomers and people in need, now find themselves in a confrontation with the federal government over this issue.

Settlement workers in these agencies say that they expect the number of clients to grow and that they intend to keep pace with them in terms of offering them more and more services to help them integrate.

A noticeable trend during the 1970s and 1980s is that settlement work is being looked on more seriously by both the public and the authorities.

In the past, agencies and settlement workers had to rely on churches, foundations and the United Way to provide them funds; now much of this responsibility has been taken over by both the federal and provincial governments. Agencies still say that there is a shortage of consistent operational funding, but the realization is that there is much more funding than before.

However, this appears to be a mixed blessing for many agencies. The situation is, in a way, a throwback to the 1950s when the settlement houses which were always short of funds, joined the United Community Fund. The donors expected to be told how their dollars were being spent; the house then had to spend some of their funds in setting up an accounts department to monitor the larger budgets and to provide detailed expenditure sheets to the funders. This ultimately led to a hierarchical structure within the house with a head for each department. The next step was for staff to form unions. The result was that the house no longer had an informal set-up. Many wondered if the new hierarchical structure, in going against the grass-roots tradition of the houses, was a positive move. There were fears that too much money might be going to administration and not enough to programs and services.

CHAPTER 3

1 Edith Ferguson, Immigrant Integration, (A Report of the Ontario Economic Council)

2 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

6 Ibid.

7 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

8 The Law Union of Ontario, The Immiarants Handbook: A Critical Guide, (Black Rose Books Montreal)

9 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

13 The Story of the Toronto Settlement House Movement 1910-1985 Toronto Association of Neighbourhood Services

Government has come a long way since the year 1900 in recognizing a moral and social responsibility towards immigrants. Government attitude to urban immigrants evolved from hostility at the turn of the twentieth century, to indifference a few decades later, to a realization in the 1950s that they should do "something" for immigrants. By the 1960s the government was paying for English classes, helping immigrants find jobs, translating work-related documents and giving newcomers some assistance in terms of health and housing. By the 1970s, the scope of the services had expanded considerably and a number of agencies were receiving grants from both the federal and provincial governments while the two levels of government were also offering many services themselves. Budgets for settlement services have been growing ever since.

The federal government’s attitude towards immigrants has to be seen in the context of the conditions and policy decisions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the early part of this century, it was seen as the responsibility of the individual to provide for his family. Poverty and the inability to earn an income were seen as minimal problems, to be resolved by the family or community.

Aid was provided to the destitute sometimes, but it was given with such moral condemnation as to make the recipient feel worthless.

This attitude began to change as economic development created more and more such casualties but, finally, it was the Great Depression of the 1930s, characterized by mass unemployment and destitution, which made people re-examine their attitudes. The prevailing views and philosophies could not accommodate the new realities of the industrial society. The experiences of this period provided a concrete basis for a philosophical and political transition to a more enlightened understanding of modern society. Gradually a social security system was introduced whereby the individual had a social right to non-demeaning aid, and various universal benefits such as Unemployment insurance, Family Allowances and Old Age Security were introduced in the 1940s and 1950s.

In the early part of this century, Canadian officials expected immigrants to be tough, independent and selfC sufficient. Before new attitudes took effect, immigrants had to suffer at the hands of immigration officers who literally robbed them of their identity as soon as they stepped on Canadian soil. History books are rife with examples of the immigration officer’s arrogance; not only did the newcomers look strange, they also spoke strange languages. He could not understand the names of the Chinese, the Ukrainians or the Italians, so he wrote down what he thought he heard on their immigration papers. And from then on, that was the name of that immigrant. As one immigrant put it: "The only things our grandfathers brought with them were their accents and names.. .but they were deprived of their names right away."

The government attitude did not change visibly over the next few decades; this was before the Family Benefits and Old Age Security Acts were introduced. The immigrants were helped by their communities, families, churches, voluntary agencies and settlement houses.

After World II, the manufacturing industry boomed and the government looked to Europe once again to provide labourers. How did the government behave towards these immigrants whom they had "invited" to Canada? Edith Ferguson comments; AI think the government was not very interested in settlement problems. They were only interested in getting the workers to come to Canada but they never had a history of being interested in them as people..." ¹

Asked if the government gave any funding to agencies aiding immigrants in those days, Edith Ferguson replied, >WI don’t think they realized the necessity for it... I don’t think they thought they had much duty towards the immigrants. They were here and it was a wonderful country and they all got along... Immigrants always got along.., you didn’t worry about them...

However, changes in the concepts of economic and social policy also influenced changes in the policies affecting immigrants.

By the 1950s there was a visible softening in the government’s attitude towards the urban immigrants. Immigration Division, which was responsible for the settlement of immigrants, developed a substantial settlement unit in Toronto after World War II and hired 60 staff members. In the 1960s, the Immigrant Settlement Branch began to operate a service for independent applicants. For a year after arrival, immigrants received help with employment and related services from an Immigration Settlement Officer. Under the Occupational Training Act of 1968, retraining courses were available to them and they were also given an allowance.

The federal government’s next step was to provide a reception service at Toronto International Airport which functioned for a few years; later the reception function was integrated into the workload of the immigration officers. In 1971 the provincial government started its meet-the- newcomers service at the airport which was an expanded version of the earlier service. There was a multilingual staff who helped immigrants with custom and immigration formalities and gave them information about housing and facilities. However, a short while after the opening of Ontario Welcome house (OWN) in 1973, this service, along with various other services being offered by the provincial government, were centralized at OWN.

One of the first services which the federal and provincial governments provided to immigrants was English classes. Initially the two governments negotiated an agreement under which the Province provided classes and was reimbursed for 50% of the related salaries by the federal government through the Department of the Secretary of State. A later agreement supported provincially-developed materials for these classes. Programs were run in community locations such as COSTI, YM/YWCA’s and the International Institute, by the Ministry of Education and later the Citizenship Branch of the Department of the Provincial Secretary and Citizenship in Toronto, Hamilton and Windsor. Several large boards of education also ran programs at night.

The parent and preschool program started in 1967 with four pilot programs. In 1970, following an evaluation, it was made an on-going program and formed the basis of the Citizenship Branch’s community-based language training programs. In 1978, this program became the newcomer language/orientation classes (NLOC) grant program which now funds approximately 350 programs, about 120 with preschools. All are now co-sponsored by boards of education which pay teachers or volunteer supervisors in the adult program using funding from the Ministry of Education.

In the late 1960’s the federal department of Employment and Immigration began purchasing seats in boards of education and then community colleges for immigrants needing English to obtain employment. Presently this funding flows through the Ministry of Skills Development to the colleges.

Teacher training is still carried on by the Citizenship Development Branch which ran a teachers’ summer course on behalf of the Ministry of Education in the 1960’s. Since that time, the Ministry of Education has developed a three-part summer course offered through faculties of education. Some colleges also run programs.

The Ministry of Citizenship runs generic methodology courses and specialist courses in citizenship, phonology, structure and ESL/literacy. It also produces related resources for teachers and teacher-trainers.

By the 1970s services being provided to immigrants included language training, information and referral services, employment and assessment counselling, interpretation and translation, basic needs support and health facilities. Some of the services were being offered by both the offices of the Department of Manpower and Immigration and Ontario Welcome House (Ministry of Citizenship).

In the past decade the Ministry of Citizenship and Culture has taken on more of the social and cultural services while Manpower has concentrated on "economic" services.

The federal government has also increased its funding to agencies providing services to immigrants. In 1973, the Secretary of State declared its commitment to support services for immigrants; a year later Manpower and Immigration followed suit and embarked on a needs assessment to formulate a policy for providing services which ultimately led to the Immigrant Settlement and Adaptation program (ISAP) in the late 1970s.

Meanwhile, from 1971 to 1976, services were developed under the federal government’s Local Initiative Program (LIP); five-month grants were provided to small agencies and community groups through Manpower and Immigration for projects related to work with immigrants.

Another federal program was the Local Employment Assistance Program (LEAP). The province supported projects through its newcomer integration grants. However, these piecemeal allocations were not well received by agencies who were demanding ongoing funding to be able to sustain their programs.

Today, federal funds for settlement services being provided by various immigrant aid agencies come from Employment and Immigration Canada’s ISAP. It is limited to agencies giving direct settlement services for new immigrants. Settlement here specifically refers to those services considered necessary for the integration of immigrants such as referral, orientation, reception, information, employment, interpretation, translation and counselling.

Its emphasis is on initial settlement facilitation; consequently the services provided by ISAP are only for newly arrived immigrants and are divided into purchase-of-services and short-term projects which are directly related to the provision of such services

As ISAP funding provides only project funding, many agencies lobbied the federal and provincial governments through OCASI to provide long-term operational funding so that they could plan their programs better. In response to this, Ministry of Citizenship and Culture introduced the Multicultural Service Program Grants (MSPG) in 1985 to help maintain the stability of such community-based organizations. Immigrant aid agencies which have a successful record of delivering multicultural services and programs can receive operating funds under the MSPG. The Secretary of State has recently announced operational funding as well.

Traditionally, funding for settlement houses and immigrant aid agencies has come from private donations, ethnic organizations, foundations and the United Way. Now government is the biggest single provider or funds for the various agencies in the province which are providing services to immigrants.

There is also the acknowledgement that immigrants are an invaluable asset to the country and any dollars spent on their initial settlement will reap benefits for Canada, as has already been proved by many immigrants.

CHAPTER 4

1 In an interview with the author, August 1987

2 Ibid.

At the turn of the century, urban immigrants encountered agencies and officials who would try to assimilate and control them. The task of remoulding a new individual out of Old World clay fell to an unspecified collaboration of educators, civil servants, social workers, religious leaders and public health officials who considered themselves the "guardians of the Canadian way." ¹

Apart from Church officials, the only other people at that time who one could remotely call settlement workers were the social workers with the settlement houses. The typical workers at these houses, as in other settlement houses which started later, were women, many of them religiously motivated; all of them gave their time and services free. They spoke only English, were familiar with only Canadian culture and had no understanding or interest in the background and culture of their clients. They were dedicated and well-meaning, but untrained for most of their multitudinous responsibilities such as supervising club activities, teaching ESL, maths, crafts, etc. to adults at night school and also being nurse/doctor when required.

As the teachers were not trained to teach, their students became frustrated and dropped out of the language classes and tried to learn English as well as they could on the streets. Some of the other courses also show how removed the workers were from their clients: one such well-meaning effort was a mothercraft class held by the Public Health Department at Central Neighbourhood House around 1915 for Italian women. All the women who attended the weekly meeting were mothers many times over but were taught how to bathe a baby by a well-meaning worker. Moreover, the class was in English, so the Italian mothers needed an interpreter! ²

These armies of untrained volunteer women workers at the three settlement houses came under the guidance of the head worker who was usually male and who received a small salary. Their qualifications usually consisted of religious training and some knowledge of social work. Around the 1920s, the workers in the settlement houses began to realize that they required practical training as well as an academic base; the University of Toronto was persuaded to hold courses in social work where the senior workers from the houses taught and the juniors were the students.

By the 1930s, a deep conflict was visible between the aims of the church leaders, the founders of the houses, and the social workers who were becoming increasingly interested in community development and integration; their perception of the aims and role of the houses and of their own role was becoming further and further removed from that of the church leaders.

The training and studies at The University of Toronto made the workers realize that they had to revise their philosophy of settlement work. By the 1950s, the voluntary workers and even the head workers of the houses were trying to understand the background/way of life of the immigrants they were dealing with.

By the 1960s, there were two kinds of settlement workers C those who were trained social workers and received a salary and the majority who were untrained voluntary workers. Most of them were women. At the International Institute, for instance, there were six paid counsellors who, between them, spoke 25 languages and who helped their clients with the bureaucracy. The directors of the settlement houses were all qualified social workers.

The typical volunteer worker had at least a secondary school education, she ran clubs, looked after babies, organized dances and picnics and held charity bazaars. What was her motivation? According to a number of well-known settlement workers of those days, "For most of the women, it was just a need to help disadvantaged people."

Although they were volunteers, they were required to be reliable and responsible in their work. They were therefore subject to some of the same work conditions and disciplinary measures as paid staff.³

How did the immigrants regard the volunteer workers? According to Tine Stewart who was associated with both the IODE and the Institute in those days, "They were a source of great puzzlement to the immigrants who couldn’t understand why these women were doing all this work for nothing".

What qualities and qualifications were settlement workers expected to have then? They had to have empathy and to be genuinely interested in the immigrant. They were also expected to have some skills such as another language but this was not essential. As Edith Ferguson points out, school teachers used to get the children to interpret to them what their parents were saying while hospitals and other organizations were hiring people from other countries as janitors and cleaners; they were called in when a compatriot was sick to tell the doctor what the ailment was. Neither of these arrangements was satisfactory and they were eventually to change.

It was only as recently as the 1970s, following mass migration mainly from Asia, East Africa and South America, that there was a visible change in the role of the settlement worker. Services for immigrants were expanded to include interpreting, information and referral services as well as health education and counselling. The settlement worker was expected to retain all the human qualities of yesteryear, but combine them with skills in the above-mentioned areas and, at the same time, attend relevant courses to upgrade her skills.

What do immigrant aid agencies expect of their workers? Says Elizabeth Szalowski: "It is very helpful at times to have a MSW, but I think there’s nothing wrong with the neighbourhood worker who just has the empathy, skills and knowledge." Adds Edith Ferguson: "The most important qualities are cross-cultural communications and sympathy. Workers should have a knowledge of as many countries as they can and an understanding of how other people live, especially as we are getting people from all over the world now... I think the workers should also know about the religious backgrounds of these people because whether someone is religious or not, everything in his culture has been influenced by his religion... I would include religious studies in any course for social workers... ⁶

Maurice Benzacar says: "You have to have a warm heart and be willing to see someone who comes without an appointment... and even after 5 p.m. You also have to have contacts in the community which can only be made after years of working with them." He says a little sadly, "You see a number of people who are professionals... they do what they have to do¼ but they won’t go out of their way¼ to go apartment hunting over the weekend for clients, to meet someone at the airport at midnight and to ensure that there’s a quart of milk and orange juice for him in his hotel room... to provide the warmth people need..." ⁷

People wax lyrical about the ideal settlement worker and expect Old World qualities from her; qualities which were an outcome of a bygone age when virtue was its own reward. That is not to say that it is not possible to find such people anymore; but it is difficult to find a person with these characteristics plus all the other skills and qualifications that are now expected from a settlement worker.

What qualifications do today’s workers have and what qualities/qualifications do they consider important? A 1986 Ministry of Citizenship study shows that workers today are still "predominantly female, in the middle age ranges, trained outside Canada, and with high levels of education in a variety of disciplines." Their professional training is of a high level and covers a variety of fields such as family law and psychology; but not all of these are related to their present occupations. The immigrant workers’ areas of training have a higher degree of relevance to their settlement work than those of their Canadian counterparts.

The following six skills were judged by the workers in the survey to be essential in order to provide services in a professional manner: interpretation, culturally relevant counselling, understanding of and sensitivity to different cultural values and norms, understanding of community and government institutions and how to access them, understanding of issues related to immigrants, knowledge of laws and regulations related to services offered and also an ability to provide up-to-date and accurate information and referral.

The 1970s and 1980s is a period in which settlement work has become more complex and the demands on the worker heavier than before. Firstly, she is dealing with people from many more countries and backgrounds than was her counterpart in the 1920 or 1950s and, secondly, each group has its own particular needs. The Ugandan Asians, for example, "were a challenge" says Madeleine Harden. "They were the cream of Ugandan society, civil servants, professionals and merchants... rulers in their own country. They were used to servants, to having things done for them. They were penniless in the new country... and needed special help..."

Many of the political refugees need counselling and, say settlement workers in London, Thunder Say, Windsor and Toronto, some of them are Avery difficult’ to deal with because they do not want to settle in Canada, and want to go back to their country as soon as possible.

Settlement workers also admit to feeling inadequate with regard to the counselling requirements of some of their refugee claimants. "Many of them have been tortured, others are here without their children and wives - they know and we know they will not be able to bring them to Canada for at least three to four years... They are very, very depressed people... and we cannot lessen their pain..."

The training of staff and volunteers who provide services to help the settlement of newcomers has been a major area of interest and commitment of the Ministry of Citizenship. At present, this work is suffering from the same tendency to deskill its functions as other social services which started as voluntary services. For the same reasons, the workers’ contributions in this field have not received enough formal accreditation and recognition. This means, firstly, that the workers receive a lower pay than their counterparts in a number of other professions and, secondly, that their work is undervalued.

The current perception of community workers, says Pearl Chud, is due to the fact that, traditionally, they were "do-gooders working on a voluntary basis" and "handing out charity," and this perception, she adds, has to change. She is not against voluntary workers but AI don’t want settlement work to be considered a voluntary field." Another point to bear in mind, she says, is that settlement workers of today are "helping immigrants to become independent, rather than dependent on them¼ and their contribution should be recognized... ¹⁰

Other people in this field have similar views on the issue of training of settlement workers: Peggy MacKenzie, O.W.H. says simply; "I believe very strongly in training." Welcome House does provide training for its new counsellors and, she says, their settlement workers are well trained. "But I believe you can never get enough training so we continually have training courses." ¹¹

Kerry Reade of CEIC says that there is a need for further training of workers which should be geared to their individual needs and the kind of clients they are dealing with. Society is much more- complex now than, say 50 years ago; Ontario has immigrants from many countries so the worker’s job is much more complex than it used to be, he says. ¹²

At COSTI/IIAS, just as at Welcome House, workers are given some training. But, says Tim Owen, "a lot of the training comes from working on the job." He feels a worker should "appreciate and understand others" but the workers at their agency are also expected to have linguistic skills and to know where to get information from and the ins and outs of government bureaucracy in order to get government assistance.

The agency has a number of BSWs: "People are seeking and obtaining a higher degree of formal education than they did in the past". However, he added, "some of the agency’s workers make up in experience what they lack in academic qualifications." "They know exactly what buttons to push to find the information they require." ¹³

Other agencies show similar trends. Their workers receive on-the-job training and are also given a chance to attend workshops organized by the community.

Does Tim Owen consider professional qualifications necessary? One of the services offered by the agency is long-term family counselling; formal training is required to do this properly, he says. Counsellors who work in vocational rehabilitation also need training, he says so that they can make a vocational plan for an injured worker and some of their workers are attending such courses at community colleges.

Pearl Chud says emphatically, "I feel it’s important for workers to attend courses," and laments the lack of training facilities available to workers. Everyone in this field, the workers, the administrators and the Ministry of Citizenship, agree that settlement workers need further training. The 1986 Ministry of Citizenship study also points to this need. But the problem is that, firstly, there are few relevant courses for settlement workers; most of the courses offered in the MSW program are not pertinent to a settlement worker’s requirements. Secondly, even if such courses were available, workers do not have access to them. For although the agency wants a worker to receive further training, they cannot afford to pay her while she is attending the course. The worker, however, cannot afford to attend the course unless she continues to receive a salary.

A system is required which will make it possible for the worker to first receive further training and then to be able to utilize the training. It is also felt that the worker should be given a "reward" for her initiative and hard work in terms of either a pay rise or more responsibility or both. Training should also be given to voluntary workers.

There is a need to design courses which are relevant to the needs of today’s multicultural Ontario and its inhabitants. A related problem is the co-ordination and standardization of these courses and of accreditation of specialized training.

The primary need of the day is appropriate public policy change. Government has already realized that there is no cheap way of delivering services in a professional manner. The days of making do with volunteer workers is over and the report on settlement worker training has shown that the needs of Ontario’s immigrants and refugees are too complex, too many and too varied to be satisfied by untrained service providers. Even if all the services are there but the service providers are not adequately trained, the end result will be mediocre, if not poor as the services will not be delivered in a professional manner.

Hence government has to recognize that there should be a commitment to further train the worker who will deliver the services to newcomers on which so many public dollars are being spent.

Settlement work has become a comparatively established profession with less dependence on volunteer labour. But it is still not a profession which commands either a good salary or a high professional status, a situation which should be rectified. The general public needs to be informed about what an important role the settlement worker is playing in enriching Ontario, since well settled and integrated immigrants can make more of a contribution to their society than those who are not. The immigrant is unlikely to be properly settled without help from a trained worker.

The primary motivation for workers in this field at the moment is their own commitment to the demands of the work, and to the community. Popular recognition is yet to come.

Some may draw the same satisfaction from their work as Maurice Benzacar, who says: AI am happy that some of the people who came to Canada and to our organization 20 years ago have done so well. When I meet them, I tell them, "I consider myself a farmer... I planted the seed and you are the flower." ¹⁵

CHAPTER 5

1 Robert Harney and Harold Troper, Immigrants:. A Portrait of the Urban Experience 1890-1930, Chapter 4, "Education and the Canadian Way".

2 Ibid.

3 In an interview with the author, August 1987

4 In an interview with the author, August 1987

5 In an interview with the author, August 1987

6 In an interview with the author, August 1987

7 In an interview with the author, August 1987

8 Report on the Training Needs of Settlement Workers, 1986, sponsored by Settlement Workers Training Group.

9 In an interview with the author, August 1987

10 In an interview with the author, August 1987

11 In an interview with the author, August 1987

12 In an interview with the author, August 1987

13 In an interview with the author, August 1987

14 In an interview with the author, August 1987

15 In an interview with the author, August 1987

What the settlement needs of Ontario will be from now until the year 2000 will depend largely on how many immigrants come to Ontario every year for the next ears and where they come from.

Settlement workers feel that immigration cannot and will not be reduced over the next decade. In fact, Tim Owen of COSTI/IIAS thinks immigration will increase as Canada "has no choice economically or morally," adding that projections show that if the current birth rate continues Canada would need 200,000 immigrants a year by the turn of the century in order to maintain a stable population. ¹ OCASI’s Pearl Chud reiterates: "The country needs more people; even this government is projecting increased immigration levels. ²

Other people in this field look on Bill CC84 as the government’s attempt to slow down immigration. Speaking for the federal government, Kerry Reade (CEIC) predicts that there will be no drastic change in immigration patterns in the foreseeable future. The point system will continue as will the category allowing entrepreneurs into the country. The family class will also be retained while the country will continue to accept refugees; since the late lS7Os, refugee intake has been a separate component of immigration planning.

Indications are also that many of Canada’s immigrants in the near future will continue to be drawn from the less developed countries, countries with unstable economies and countries where there is strife or natural disasters.

The question that arises is: how many people will come to Ontario each year from each of these categories? That will determine, to a large extent, the services that will have to be provided and the direction settlement agencies will have to take. As Elizabeth Szalowski puts it: "Settlement needs of the future will depend largely on the newcomers’ cultural background and expectations. People who came to Canada after the war had no expectations... but now we are talking about a different kind of immigrant." ⁴ Maurice Benzacar adds: "Immigrants now are in search of a better life for themselves and their children and today’s sophisticated communications system have also raised their expectations."⁵

It is obvious that the existing services will have to be expanded. Administrators at various settlement agencies say that they already have a much greater demand for services than can be met; this is true of the larger, established agencies as well as of the myriad newer and low-profile immigrant aid agencies. The four Welcome Houses in Metro, for instance, handle 2,000 clients a month.

Many workers feel that they have failed and continue to fail their clients. In the 1960s, they say, because there were not enough services available, immigrants with educational and linguistic disadvantages retreated into their ethnic groups and did not integrate. Edith Ferguson has described the plight of semi-educated Italian, Portuguese and Greek parents in the 1950s and 1960s whose children attended school in Ontario; the children were ashamed of introducing their non-English speaking parents to their teachers. Many of those people have still not integrated into Canadian society and still need help from agencies when they are dealing with government bureaucracy. Not providing adequate services to those immigrants was obviously a false economy; this mistake should not be repeated. However, community workers say they feel that in some cases, the clients of today are in a similar situation even if they do learn English. "Our clients include economists, professors and majors in chemistry; people who were professionals in their own country but who have come here as refugees. If they are working here as janitors or cleaners, we have to recognize that that’s a failure on our part because, firstly, the country is not benefitting from their qualifications and, secondly, these people must be very depressed because their expectations are not being met..."

Agency administrators say that another shortcoming of their work is that there is not enough co-ordination between the various agencies and the government. They feel that they do not have all the information necessary for service planning such as the number of immigrants they will be serving a year hence, their source countries, language skills and education. Their services are therefore remain "crisis-oriented", though much less so than before. Speaking for the federal government, Kerry Reade says that agencies have not approached the government to provide such information; and that it is possible for the government to give them relevant indicators.

Another way of resolving this issue would be for the federal government to keep the various immigrant aid agencies posted of its immigration policies and send them regular reports about the number and kind of immigrant they think their country will be receiving in, say, year 1990, 1995 and 2000.

Talks with people working in settlement also reveal that they have doubts about the effectiveness of the services they provide. Said one worker: "A model of the process of settlement is missing, so it’s hard to evaluate the effectiveness of our services." Executive-level people in these agencies add that the referral system operates in many agencies, particularly in the more specialized agencies. Hence they do not know if the client whom they referred to another agency actually did get access to the service he/she required. They recommend that a central registry be set up so that there is no overlapping in services and so that a record is kept of clients’ visits to agencies. Some agencies have also started an "evaluation" service; they ask their clients to give the agency an evaluation of the services they were provided. It is proposed that more agencies do this; another way of getting such valuable information is through the central registry so that this kind of information is centralized.

Everyone interviewed in the course of this study felt that educating the public about immigrants was one of the biggest needs of the times. "The government is unduly concerned about a backlash against people of different races entering the province and that’s unnecessary as the backlash has not been that great in the cities where they’ve actually settled," opined one. However, it is a harsh reality that even now some Canadians resent the money that is spent on training immigrants, on teaching them English and on providing them settlement services. But as Edith Ferguson wrote in Immigrant Integration: "any expenditure on behalf of immigrants is an investment in human resources". ⁸ The public has to be educated into the understanding that the country needs immigrants, that they have made, and continue to make, an invaluable contribution to the country and to Ontario, as well as immigrants in the future.

The whole area of settlement work has changed considerably since the 1950s when the agencies had an informal set up. The client, then, determined the direction the agency took whereas now that agencies have become more hierarchical, departments do not touch base with each other while executive-level people, the equivalent of the head workers in the settlement houses who actually lived in the houses to be closer to the immigrants, are far removed from the people they are supposed to be serving. Their experience of immigrants is no longer direct and first-hand; they know of them through reports written by their workers.

Elizabeth Szalowski describes today’s settlement work as "an industry" ⁹ and many people in the field agree with her that bureaucracy and formalization have harmed the services given to clients. Firstly, the worker has many restrictions placed on her by her agency so her approach is institutionalized rather than individualistic. Secondly, the immigrant probably also feels intimidated when approaching these formalized agencies. The other area of concern is that precious funds which could be used for direct services are being eaten up in administration, rent and salaries.

What about the immigrant? What kind of expectations should one have from him? Tine Stewart (IODE, International Institute), says the main drawback with settlement work today is that "there is too much government involvement and so many organized agencies and groups that they are taking away a great deal of the initiative that the immigrants have". When we came here, we had to do everything ourselves - why do these people have to be handed everything on a silver platter?

But very few people involved with settlement would agree with Tine Stewart. Most feel that not enough is being done for immigrants either by the government or by the agencies. Even the federal government concedes this fact. Kerry Reade says that society is much more complex now than it was in the 1950s and newcomers would not be able to survive if left to their own devices.

Another issue that needs looking into is whether people of one country can be better served by an agency and workers from their own country or whether it is better for them to be provided services by any agency? The obvious advantage to having a settlement worker from the same country as the client is that they speak the same language and, presumably, have the same cultural background. JIAS’s Maurice Benezacar is in favour of such an arrangement because, he says, "an Italian, for instance, will feel more comfortable in an Italian environment." ⁷ Tine Stewart, however, disagrees:"If you have a Korean agency and only Korean workers helping new Koreans, they will make the newcomer into a Korean Canadian rather than 'an all-round' Canadian whereas if the newcomer goes to an agency providing services for all immigrants, he would get exposure to other cultures and points of view, which is much healthier." ³

Peggy MacKenzie of Welcome House gives another reason why it may not be a good idea to have immigrants served by agencies staffed by people from their own country. Many immigrants crave anonymity; they do not want anyone in their community to find out that they are iv₄ need, especially when it is a family or financial matter.

This is another issue that we need to look at more closely. We have, until now, assumed that people from the same country get along better with each other than people from different backgrounds; we have to examine the ideas put forward by Maurice Benzacer, Peggy MacKenzie and Tine Stewart which are based on many, many years of settlement experience.

Another issue that should be addressed is whether there is any conflict between settlement and the government’s commitment to multiculturalism. Some people say that the two cannot co-exist but a distinction has to be drawn between providing assistance and information to a newcomer which will help her or him integrate into a society, and multiculturalism, which is really the acceptance of different cultures within our society. In telling immigrants how to avail themselves of the facilities available to newcomers in the province or, for that matter, to any resident, the settlement worker is not, in any way, destroying the newcomer’s native culture or his ethnicity. Newcomers to Ontario need assistance but the government is not, in this way, trying to make "instant Canadians" out of Pakistanis, Brazilians and Italians. These are two totally different programs and should not be confused; but members of the general public often do so. In the campaign to educate the public about the contribution of immigrants to Canada, such misconceptions should also be cleared up to further defuse hostility against immigrants.

When talking about immigrants, we often tend to forget that amongst them are hundreds of thousands of women. Women immigrants fall mainly in the sponsored and nominated class and have, until recently, received very few settlement services; in fact their situation can be compared to that of all immigrants in the 1950s/1960s. The government and private social service agencies have only recently recognized the fact that these women have particular needs which should be addressed.

Many government programs were, and are, meant only for the head of the family. Women have, therefore, been pushed into menial jobs. Where training and language courses are available to them, the women can often not attend them due to a number of factors such as inconvenient scheduling, distance or lack of babysitting arrangements.

Happily, in the last twenty years, both government and community agencies have started offering programs for women and a number of agencies have sprung up in the province which deal only or mainly with immigrant women. Programs are geared to helping women acquire job skills, find employment, and also to offer them emotional support as they grapple with the problems of adjusting to a new society and often to strain and conflict within the family unit. Hopefully, more and more programs will continue to be organized for women.

Wife assault among immigrants, for instance, is a phenomenon that the Ministry of Citizenship has become heavily involved in; it is working closely with women’s groups and agencies to collect more information on this issue and to work out a modus operandi.

What should the government’s role be in settlement work? Many agency representatives say its main responsibility is to ensure meaningful and secure levels of operational funding to immigrant aid and community agencies in order to ensure continuity of programs which will enable this sector to develop and maintain a viable and professional presence and to be able to provide initial settlement services as well as long-term integration programs.

Most agency representatives say that they do not get enough funding. "We must increase funding levels and it must be secure funding", says Pearl Chud. She wants agencies to receive more funding of the MSPG kind so that an agency can keep functioning even between projects. "There have been cases of agencies having to release their workers because they couldn’t receive funding for a particular project in time", she said. ISAP, under which project grants are given, is, she says "miniscule". MSPG has helped to provide stability to agencies because it is multiyear core funding. But, according to her, the two drawbacks are of MSPG are (1) it is insufficient for today’s needs; (2) an agency has to have had project funding from the government for at least three years in order to qualify.

Many small agencies are thus disqualified.

Government, both at provincial and federal level, has realized that core funding is essential to the existence and growth of the agencies. The government also recognizes that these agencies are best equipped to promote and facilitate interaction between newcomers and society. Firstly, there can do it more cheaply and, secondly, as one community worker put it, "A community worker can, and does give more to her own community than a government employee because she is more involved with her people... "

Pearl Chud says that immigrants prefer to go to community based agencies rather than the big government organizations. The government should also ensure funding for smaller agencies which live in the shadow of the bigger agencies but which provide services of the same standard.

Other agency representatives see a conflict between the government’s two roles as a giver of funds and as a direct provider of services. One agency representative says that, in recent years, she has noticed a move in the government towards contracting out work to the community agencies but that this was creating problems with the trade unions in government offices.

Most agency representatives agree that the best working relationship would be for the government to work "in partnership with the agencies for the betterment of the community, and especially for the immigrants." They say that the government should be responsible mainly for providing the funds, for legislation and for providing resources for the community centres. Actual programming should be the responsibility of the agencies.

This issue needs further examination and discussion. We need to see whether such an arrangement is the one that can deliver services most efficiently or whether there are other kinds of partnerships possible between the government and the settlement agencies which would be more effective.

CHAPTER 6

1. In an interview with the author, August 1987.

2. In an interview with the author, August 1987.

3. In an interview with the author, August 1987.

4. In an interview with the author, August 1987.

5 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

6 Edith Ferguson, Immigrants in Canada, (Governing Council of the University of Toronto, 1974)

7 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

8 Edith Ferguson, Immigrant Integration, (A Report of the Ontario Economic Council, Chapter VII, "Citizenship Participation".

9 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

10 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

11 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

12 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

13 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

14 In an interview with the author, August 1987.

15 In an interview with the author, August 1987.