Executive Director's Message

Toronto / April 2026

The long- awaited Ontario Budget has been tabled. Our immigrant and refugee serving sector, underfunded for a number of years, will need to wait a couple of more weeks for the expenditure estimates before we know whether the programs that support newcomers’ settlement and integration- language training, employment supports, investing in women’s futures, preventing and addressing gender-based violence and intimate partner violence will be adequately funded.

Toronto / March 2026

I watched the faces of the sector leaders who sit on my Board as they received news of their Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC) settlement funding allocation for the coming fiscal year. Although a virtual meeting, I watched the air and energy get sucked out of the space. This immediately following a meeting with IRCC National Headquarters (NHQ) and Ontario Region. The pain has begun for our sector here in Ontario.

Toronto / February 2026

"We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes
We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes
Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers’ sons
We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes"

Toronto / January 2026

We are in a season of uncertainty in the world. For those of us steeped in migration policies - from refugee and asylum policies, to the treatment of migrant workers, to settlement and ‘integration’ supports for immigrants - there is an emerging tension between the conflicting feelings of inertia and a sense of urgency.

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.