Position Papers & Backgrounders

OCASI Presentations to UN Special Rapporteur VAW

OCASI was invited to make presentations to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences, Ms.  Dubravka Šimonović, during her country visit to Canada on 11 - 23 April 2018.

OCASI made presentations on:

Policy priorities for refugee, immigrant and migrant women in Canada.

The Peer Champion Model as a Best Practice for Anti-VAW Work.

OCASI Submission on Caregiver Program

OCASI participated in the Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) consultations on the Caregiver Program held in March - April 2018. The consultation gave OCASI the opportunity to raise the many long-standing concerns that caregivers themselves, and OCASI and other civil society organizations have put forward over the years.

OCASI Statement - International Women's Day 2018

Policy: 

March 8, 2018/Toronto – Today, on International Women’s Day 2018, OCASI – Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants celebrates the strength, vision and creativity of our sisters who work and lead in Ontario’s immigrant and refugee-serving sector and allied sectors.

We celebrate the gains we have made in raising awareness and educating about violence against refugee and immigrant women and women with precarious immigration status.

OCASI welcomes Heritage Committee report on systemic racism and Islamophobia

Toronto/February 7, 2018 – OCASI – Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants welcomes recommendations by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to update and reinstate Canada’s Action Plan Against Racism (CAPAR), and tackle systemic racism and Islamophobia.

Joint Submission on Medical Inadmissibility of Immigrants

November 16, 2017 - OCASI - Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, together with Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic (CSALC) and South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO) made a joint submission to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, for their Study on Federal Government Policies and Guidelines Regarding Medical Inadmissibility of Immigrants.

Click here to download the Joint Submission [PDF].

Growing gap: immigrants, racialized residents in the 2016 Census

Toronto / October 31, 2017 / - OCASI welcomes the release of immigration and ethocultural diversity data by Statistics Canada on October 25, 2017. Thanks to the reinstatement of the mandatory long-form Census (after a ten year interruption) we once again have the much-needed demographic and economic information about the lives of immigrant and racialized residents. The data highlights the need for government action on several OCASI priorities such as:

UN Committee Questions Canada’s Record on Anti-Racism

Policy: 

Media Release

Geneva / August 15, 2017 / - Colour of Poverty – Colour of Change (COP-COC) and several of its co-founding members were successful in having Canada vigorously questioned on its record on addressing racial discrimination by a UN human rights Committee at its review of Canada today in Geneva.

The civil society groups were in attendance at Canada’s review by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

Submission to UN CERD Committee

Joint Submission to the 93rd Session of the Committee for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) – Review of Canada August 2017

By: Colour of Poverty – Colour of Change, Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants and South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario. (CSALC, OCASI and SALCO are founding Steering Committee members of Colour of Poverty - Colour of Change)

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