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.
Over the last couple of weeks or so, our daily news roundup that goes out to the membership each morning, has been filled with news on immigration - cuts to annual immigration targets, cuts to refugee healthcare, and significant reductions in temporary residents. The latter is not necessarily a negative as we have bemoaned our country’s shift to a two-tiered immigration system over the last two decades, where the focus was on temporariness with little options for permanence for the vast majority of low waged workers that were brought in. We treated them as cheap labour, used them as scapegoats for the outcomes of privatization on steroids (lack of affordable rental housing, increasing costs of life basics like food and medication and an out-of-control youth unemployment crisis especially for poor un-networked, Black and racialized youth – Canadian born and immigrant.
Now we want them to leave, after they’ve scraped together a living, established families and a sense of community and did the necessary work that few others want to do. Why would they?
We have watched for six decades as seasonal agricultural workers, primarily from the Caribbean made their way each spring to the farms across our country, many leaving families behind to come here to live in substandard housing with little if any privacy, to work their hands and back to the bones, to be disrespected, to pay into our systems like Employment Insurance and not have access to the benefits when they need it. We have heard and read the many stories of accidents resulting in serious injuries where workers are sent back to their home countries instead of being able to access the necessary medical care here. We know of deaths, where the families back home receive the bodies of their loved ones and nothing more. We have seen the seen the racist practice of carding of Black agricultural workers- forced to submit to DNA testing, having to prove their innocence when they’ve done nothing wrong. Only exist in melanated skin.
In a major development for migrant labour rights, a court has certified a class action suit last week, granting seasonal agricultural workers the chance to fight for access to the Employment Insurance benefits they help fund.
Congratulations to the workers who made the risky decision to put their names forward as representative complainants and to our comrades at J4W (Justicia for Migrant Workers) who for two and a half decades have supported and kept the injustices experienced by seasonal agricultural workers front and centre on the national advocacy agenda. May their ancestors and the sound and fair judgment of those hearing the case assure a positive outcome.
The news has also been filled with discussions of federal government (IRCC) cuts to the immigrant and refugee serving sector across the country and the impact on this critical social ecosystem that work to ensure the successful inclusion of newcomers into our communities, labour market and other social systems like education. Whole programs are being discontinued. A report commissioned by the United Way of Greater Toronto in partnership with the City of Toronto and OCASI, warns of the significant disruptions in some communities. While focused on agencies in the Greater Toronto Area, we know from our members that the negative fall out from the cuts of 2024 will be further exacerbated by the recently announced additional cuts of $31.7M in Ontario for fiscal year 2026-2027. This brings the total cuts from IRCC to our sector to $89M (2025-2027).
It doesn’t end there. We know that these cuts resulting from the federal government’s Comprehensive Expenditure Review (CER) will continue over the next two fiscal years with planned cuts of about $150M (2027-2029) to the national settlement and integration budget. We guesstimate that Ontario region will see further cuts of about $50-$60M over this period. This will have devasting impact on agencies and their programs. The uncertainty of immigration targets post 2028 remains a point of anxiety for the sector as well, as settlement funding is tied to permanent resident arrival numbers (except Quebec).
We do not know where our province stands on all of these federal cuts to our sector. There has been no meaningful dialogue between our political leaders on Ontario’s immigration program and the sector that supports their successful settlement and integration. We have not seen a funding increase in years. The additional $13M investment to the sector three or so years ago at the height of the asylum claimants’ crisis, is long gone, rescinded in spite of our pleas to roll the funds into the sector’s base funding.
Both levels of government have been preaching about employment and productivity and economic successes. Our sector employs a significant number of people, primarily women. Many come from immigrant backgrounds. Many are racialized. Disinvestments by the federal government and the provincial government leads to lay-off and unemployment in the midst of an affordability crisis. We cannot get an ear. The media has been filled with stories of the ‘missing’ federal minister of immigration. Like other civil society organizations, we have reached out to her office for a meeting, but so far - crickets.
Similarly, our provincial minister, while not as elusive, addressed OCASI members once since Immigration and Settlement was added to his portfolio some years ago. That is not good enough. He must do better.
Our members are figuring out how to minimize the fall out on clients as well as staff. They are having sleepless nights worrying where the funds will come from to pay severance to the employees they will need to lay-off. Despite years of advocacy, the sector’s largest funder, IRCC, continues to flatly refuse our request to use their funds to fairly compensate staff for their years of committed service. Their funds cannot be used to pay severance. The provincial dollars are not enough. What are we to do?
Today in this moment I will sit with silence. And in the stillness the path will become clear.
In Solidarity
dd