Executive Director's Message

Toronto / December

The December 2025 blog post by OCASI Executive Director Debbie Douglas features recent expert presentations examining Canada's immigration system.

OCASI Board Chair Alfred Lam served as a witness before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration (CIMM). He was invited to speak on Tuesday, December 2, 2025, as part of the Committee’s study on Canada’s immigration system.

Toronto / November

The last week has been a whirlwind of meetings in Ottawa with colleagues from across the country, and the federal funder of our sector; with a side trip to our appointed House of sober second thought, as a witness to the Senate Committee on National Finance. They are studying housing, including the newly formed Build Canada Homes entity charged with building affordable rental housing.

Toronto / October 2025

Solidarity is our watch word this year at the Council. And it’s mirrored in the theme of this year’s annual conference- Solidarity in Vision and Action. The theme speaks to the need for us to regroup as a sector as we face the headwinds of austerity agendas that threaten the foundational integrity of our sector organizations.

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.

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.

Toronto / June 2025

It seems like we can’t catch a breath, before another unexpected announcement of a legislative, by-law or policy change is announced by one or another level of government. All negative. All curbing individual and group rights. All must and will be challenged- in calls to elected politicians, in the streets and in the courts.

Toronto / May 2025

Toronto / April 2025 - There is much discussion at various tables across the broad national Immigration and settlement sector on ‘Canada’s immigration program’, ‘the future of settlement services’, ‘visioning a new immigration program’ and ‘a new vision for Canada’… you get my drift. All important. All timely. However, the urgency I felt for these conversations just a month or so ago, has receded.

Toronto / March 2025

“When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed, but when we are silent we are still afraid, so it is better to speak.” (Audre Lorde)