Kenney asks community to step up, but it’s not that simple, say queer groups
Buried inside the recent bill on reforming the Canadian refugee system was a provision to increase the number of spaces in Canada for refugee resettlement by 2,500 — but only 500 of those would be for government-sponsored refugees. The rest would be for private sponsorship.
Days later, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney publicly encouraged more queer groups to sponsor refugees, which came as a surprise to some of those organizations.
“Is he looking to create a two-tier system?” wonders Helen Kennedy, executive director of Egale Canada. “I don’t quite get where he’s coming from on this because he knows that we’re already doing it. MCC is already doing it. Now we’re not doing it to the extent of say, the Anglican Church or other churches across Canada because we don’t have the resources.”
The Metropolitan Community Church in Toronto is currently sponsoring two refugees under the Joint Assistance Sponsorship (JAS) program. While private sponsorships require a financial commitment of $10,000 a year for two years per refugee, JAS sees the government provide the financial assistance while the organization — the MCC in this case — provides the social support.
“The social support is crucial, because it’s helping people set up a bank account, helping them find a place to say, helping them with the subway system, finding English as a second language courses — all the stuff that surrounds supporting a refugee,” says Rev Brent Hawkes of MCC.
MCC’s use of the JAS is part of a longer-term plan that will allow it to build up some expertise before it considers private sponsorships, along with giving it time to fundraise. But while money is always an issue for queer organizations dealing with refugees, one of the largest concerns is the current lack of capacity and expertise.
“It’s one thing to sponsor a refugee, but you also need to make sure that the community supports are in place so that this person can live well and be comfortable, and that it’s done ethically,” says Sharalyn Jordan of the Rainbow Refugee Committee in Vancouver.
While many refugee organizations may be built around a heteronormative idea of families, existing queer organizations may not have the relevant experience necessary for dealing with refugees.
“Yes we’ve looked at the homophobia that we’ve dealt with, but do we look at the way that some of our organizations can reproduce racism?” Jordan asks. “There’s some capacity building to be done there. Many of the refugees that will be coming will have experienced some fairly severe traumas, and mental health services need to be prepared to work with people who’ve experienced traumas around their sexuality or their gender identity, and that’s not something that the refugee-serving organizations have.”
“All of the supports that any refugee or newcomer needs, need to be done with a queer lens,” Jordan says. “Language, healthcare, housings, safety and security, city orientations — often newcomer organizations will provide orientations to the city, but they don’t talk about what neighbourhoods might be better for a transitioning queer person of colour. And that’s a struggle that we’ve seen people have. Everything from how to take the bus, to how to land a job when you’re an engineer needs to be given a queer twist.”
“Our challenge is the staff support,” Hawkes says. “You want these teams to do a good job, and they need to be supported and they have a million questions and every sponsorship is unique, so there’s unique questions or issues that come up. So they need staff support.”
Currently, MCC is seeking external funding to hire a staff person at either half-time or full-time to train support teams and provide supervision.
“The church is very willing to help train some teams if they’re outside the church, but my personal feeling is there needs to be some accountability, supervision system so that these teams aren’t just off independently on their own,” Hawkes says. “If the church was able to find some funding to hire a staff person to help, we could be a central coordinating agency for other groups or organizations that want to do some sponsorship — we could bring them together, we could train them, we’d have the supervisor.”
Hawkes points to the MCC’s work in providing home hospice care during the AIDS crisis. The expertise MCC developed allowed it to train others to provide the same support for their own dying friends and family.