Keynote Speech with Catrina Tapley, Deputy Minister at IRCC
December 30, 2021To response to the challenges of the pandemic, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has been agile and innovative in updating internal systems, introducing one-time immigration pathway, and advancing their commitment to anti-racism work. In this keynote session, Catrina Tapley spoke about IRCC’s efforts to support the post-pandemic recovery, facilitate settlement and integration amid the pandemic, the Municipal Nominee Program, Afghan refugee resettlement, among other pertinent issues. In this session, Catrina explored how the election results might impact federal immigration policies and Ottawa’s efforts to welcome newcomers.
Speaker: Catrina Tapley, Deputy Minister at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)
Moderator: Deborah Tunis, Acting Chair of the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership
Selected Highlights
- Catrina highlighted the important role of community organizations. Throughout the pandemic, organizations, such as OLIP, have continued to demonstrate resilience and ingenuity as they adapted to changing public health landscape. To support these efforts, there will be additional funding focused on service delivery improvement projects, a total of 110 million in funding will be available over the next three years (2021 to 2024). Many of these projects have been approved and will be launched in the coming weeks.
- The deputy minister also outlined IRCC’s commitments to anti-racism to ensure our department is working to build a diverse, equitable, and inclusive society including an Anti-Racism Taskforce and value statement, an anti-racism advisory board, an employee survey to understand the impacts of racism on the workforce, in terms of psychological safety, organizational culture and productivity, a multi-tier effort to normalize discussions about racism and promote anti-racism work across the department, and a pilot racial impact assessment tool for policies to examine how different racial and ethnic groups could be affected by proposed IRCC actions and decisions.
- An additional important update was the revised wording of the oath of citizenship in response to the Truth and Reconciliation commission 94 calls to action to recognize Indigenous People’s rights. Despite these actions, the deputy minister recognized that for many these actions are not happening fast enough and are long overdue.
- To support the central role of newcomers in addressing labour shortage during the pandemic, the deputy minister mentioned IRCC has modernized their digital platform to serve an increasing number of clients more efficiently, and to leverage data and analytics to better inform the design of our policies and programs.
- Furthermore, Canada has launched a one-time pathway to permanent residents for tens of thoughts of essential workers and international students. In conclusion, the deputy minister emphasized the value of OLIP and other community partners across country who are integral to building a stronger and more inclusive country.