Toronto / August 2025
Our Refugee Determination system is in crisis with significant backlogs. Our affordable housing crisis continues and the two together have created a perfect storm. We are seeing it manifested on the streets and in the emergency shelters of large urban centres in Ontario like Ottawa and the Greater Toronto (Peel, York, Durham) and Hamilton region.
La version française est ci-dessous.
The federal government’s Bill C-2, the “Strong Borders Act” proposes sweeping legislative changes that will erode the rights of refugee claimants and migrants.
Watch OCASI’s webinar on Bill C-2, held on September 5 2025 - on YouTube.
OCASI has submitted 11 strategic recommendations to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance to the Committee’s annual pre-budget consultations
1. Invest adequately, appropriately and equitably in settlement services and language training for all refugees and migrants, regardless of immigration status. – say something about potential cuts – Include investment in Francophone settlement outside Quebec.
Toronto / August 2025
I sit to write this a few hours after returning home from Toronto’s symbolic ride on the freedom train- a remembering of the underground railroad- the network of ancestors and allies that brought many out of enslavement in the US to Ontario and other Canadian sites. It is symbolic of Nanny and the other grandmothers and grandfathers who led the maroons and their refusal of and resistance to enslavement.
Toronto / July 2025
I spent a recent afternoon in conversation with a few friends and acquaintances about Canada’s changing attitude towards im/migrants and refugees-decreasing support and open xenophobia; the decreasing support for Pride and other queer initiatives nationally and locally especially from corporate Canada; and the increasingly vocal debates happening in feminist spaces on transgender rights.
© 2016-24 Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. All rights reserved. | Terms of Use | Privacy Statement