Irene Bader – Canadian Immigration Historical Society

Irene Bader worked for Citizenship and Immigration Canada and its predecessor departments, as well as with the federal heritage department, from 1972 to 2007. During that time, she worked in various capacities at the Ontario regional office, eventually leading that office as its director general.

In the 1970s, she worked as a regional resettlement officer and offers some of her memories of her work during that period in this interview.

Interviewer: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Your name, how you got involved in settlement, and the years you worked?

Irene Bader: My name is Irene Bader, and I started working for Citizenship and Immigration Canada in 1972. I retired in 2007.

With respect to settlement services specifically, I was an immigration officer on assignment at the Regional Office when the settlement services program was transferred from the Department of Secretary of State to Manpower and Immigration Canada. I was one of the first regional settlement officers, working out of Employment and Immigration Canada.

We had a number of files that had started at the Secretary of State, and we picked up those files. I remember one of the groups that is now a very large organization—the Italian Immigrant Aid Services, which has now morphed into a huge organization, COSTI, that provides a variety of settlement services across the greater Toronto area and beyond into what we now call ‘the 905 area’.

Interviewer: What policy or institutional changes occured while working in immigration and settlement?

Irene Bader: Well, there were a number of punctuation points, 1973 being the first one. The budget was quite small. The budget was never very big. I was only there for about a year and a half and then moved into the management stream.

But as a regional organization, I think it had a maximum of 12 staff, up until probably around 1996, 1997, when we got quite an infusion into the settlement budget. The other major change was when there was the reorganization of government in the mid-nineties, where immigration became its own department. I think that was in 1993, 1994, something like that. It became Citizenship and Immigration Canada. So, I was with Canadian Heritage at that point—I had left immigration in 1992 and didn’t come back to CIC until 1996.

So, the citizenship program that I had in the Department of Canadian Heritage, which had become Multiculturalism and Citizenship Canada, and then the citizenship component went to immigration—and it became its own standalone department called Citizenship and Immigration Canada. There were more changes at the national level in government where they were looking at who knows what? Who should do what? What should be devolved to the province? I remember speaking with someone when they were talking about settlement services and whether it should go to the province. This was in the mid-nineties, and I was the regional director general of Citizenship and Immigration at that time.

I think in 1996, I was the Director General, and I cautioned about funding going to the province for settlement services because my fear was that the money would just be absorbed into other things. So when we were negotiating the federal-provincial agreement on immigration with the province—which was signed in 2005—thankfully, Citizenship and Immigration kept control of the money. It ened up being more of a joint priority setting, and there was some more clarification in terms of what the province would fund and what the federal government would fund, so that we had a more holistic approach.

The biggest impact, I think, was the language of work program that we could fund, and the province would be responsible, for example, the recognition of foreign credentials.

Interviewer: How much liberty did you have when looking for solutions to individual or systemic problems?

Irene Bader: Actually, in the Ontario region, when we were doing our strategic planning, I remember specifically this five-year plan that we were working on, and we included a broad sector of people from outside of the department.

And I remember that we had the police services from Toronto there, we had NGOs there, and of course, the director of settlement—who was part of the regional management team. We were trying to have a holistic approach in terms of what impact Citizenship and Immigration would have on the broader community throughout Ontario. And one of the things that we heard—that I recall specifically coming from the police services—was that we really needed to focus on youth.

So when we received extra money for settlement services, we did a broad consultation looking at priorities, and a number of the innovations that happened in the region included settlement workers in schools and settlement workers in libraries—because we thought this was a good connection between a parent and a child, and the schooling and community. Those two initiatives started in the Ontario region, and they were picked up by National Headquarters.

Another big initiative that we had was called settlement.org. Elinor Caplan was the minister at the time we launched settlement.org, and this was a tremendous resource for anybody—whether you worked in children’s aid or whether you were an NGO, or whether you were in a school. Settlement.org is still functioning, and that was an initiative of the Ontario region—it wasn’t a top-down kind of initiative.

So, I mean, every region had different issues and priorities. Toronto was the biggest receiver, and still is, of refugees and immigrants—so demands were a lot higher here. And there was a lot of secondary migration from other provinces, specifically from Quebec, where the dollars that normally would support a settlement program didn’t come with the individual. So, we had to serve—or the NGOs had to serve—that increased base.

The other big change that I see as a real positive—and this is where the employment services, which was then called Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, where the English language training had been managed by Manpower for many, many years, and so that budget came and was administered through immigration. Up until about 1996, settlement services were centralized at the Regional Office, and because of that influx of money and more money going into the communities outside of Toronto, we decentralized settlement workers into the local Canada Immigration Centres so that they would be closer to the client base.

Interviewer: You touched on the budget earlier, so would you say then there was a funding issue?

Irene Bader: Oh, initially, constantly. I was just looking at my old CV, and our budget went from, less than $109 million and some contributions. But when we were working on the federal-provincial agreement, the budget for grants and contributions was in excess of $200 million.

So I mean, there was recognition of the need for settlement services throughout the province of Ontario, based upon the numbers that were coming in. In addition to the negotiations with the province in terms of the Fed-Prov agreement, we also worked with the association of municipalities, because at the end of the day, it’s the municipalities that are the feet on the ground, and that’s where the NGOs are.

There still is today, a policy issue in terms of refugee claimants and dealing with refugee claimants, whereas the NGO or the Community Service Agency just sees this person as a person in need and so the pocket of money coming from the Canada Immigration Centres doesn’t serve people who aren’t permanent residents, and I think that still is a challenge.

Interviewer: What would you say was the biggest issue with settlement, or perhaps or perhaps what’s one thing you would change or slightly alter?

Irene Bader: Actually, with the influx of funding that we had and the level of expertise that we had in the Ontario region—and it’s truly unfortunate that she’s passed away because Elizabeth Gryte was the go-to person internationally, in terms of settlement services.

They were very creative and innovative, and we had the flexibility to do that. I think that was changing with the change of government, where they wanted a lot more centralized control. I don’t know what the situation is today. I think you’ve got Wilma Jenkins on your list of people to contact, and she was the director of settlement when I retired in 2007, so she was living with the implementation of the Federal-Provincial agreement and also some of the changes that came with this change of government at the federal level.

I think one of the hallmarks of the settlement program was that it was a grants and contribution program. It wasn’t all grants. The grants were used to do research so that we could better invest in terms of looking at needs analysis, etc. The actual contribution part came for paying for services provided to the immigrants, whether it was language training or whether it was daycare for women who are taking language training, or the number of how many settlement workers should be in what schools or libraries.

Hopefully, that didn’t turn into what the multiculturalism program is—which was just a grant program. There wasn’t any kind of ongoing long-term funding that NGO organizations needed in order to do their own planning and to provide their own services. There was also coordination with other grant-giving organizations, the biggest one being the United Way, particularly the United Way in Toronto and Peel and others, but these were the big ones.

One of the other changes that came was providing settlement services overseas before people actually came here, and that gave them a leg up.

Interviewer: Are there any moments for you that stand out during your time working in settlement and immigration?

Irene Bader: Oh, certainly, the big influxes of cash were desperately needed.

How the community rallies around world events such as the Kosovo refugee movement, Operation Parasol. The flexibility and adaptability of not only settlement staff and NGO organizations stepping up to help the CIC where we could, you know, set up basically within two weeks a reception facility at Trenton.

The Vietnam boat people. I think, you know, it’s not really a settlement, but it really does help settlement where the group sponsorship program really does help in terms of settlement and integration of refugees. So, working in partnership with not just the NGOs but the community writ large. Those are a couple of things that really stand out.

Interviewer: What are your opinions now on the changes that were made to settlement and immigration services during this period?

Irene Bader: I don’t know, as I say, from 2007 (when I retired), that’s a big gap to today. My concern is that if it’s been centralized more so that everything is managed nationally, I think that’s going to miss opportunities, and it’s also going to not have your finger on the pulse of emerging needs—so that you can address them before they become a crisis.

The other big concern always is ensuring that there’s accountability. I know we undertook financial audits of organizations—particularly those that received significant sums of money—in order to ensure that the monies that are invested in the NGOs are actually there to service the client. I think the audit function has to be there.

But the biggest concern I have isthe devolution from a federal level to the provincial level, particularly in Ontario. The other big challenge is dealing with huge communities like Toronto, which has a higher population than many provinces. If the money funnels through the province and the province is having a snit with Toronto, then that translates into different reactions. So that’s one of the concerns that I have.

Interviewer: You spoke a little bit about the audits. Did you find that the funds were being allocated adequately through these audits?

Irene Bader: We did recover a significant amount of money—and this was a result of the amalgamation of all the Toronto school boards. When the city of Toronto was amalgamated into one, it used to be, Scarborough was its own city with its own mayor, North York, etc., and then it became a Megacity.

So Treasury Board guidelines had to be changed because we couldn’t sign contracts over a million dollars. Well—when you were doing English as a second language in a city that has over 50% of the immigration to Canada, those contracts have to be huge. As we were working through that and performing audits, we did recover some money. I think it was about 1 million dollars from the Toronto District School Board. But this is back in 2005, 2006. It also helps the NGOs in terms of fully understanding and looking at outcomes.

Interviewer: Do you have any final thoughts that you would like to share?

Irene Bader: Oh, wow, best time ever! The staff were incredible and so committed. I think Citizenship and Immigration being a standalone department really allowed the spotlight to be on that which makes the immigrant successful and integrated into Canadian society, and having, you know, both the settlement and a citizenship component really, really facilitated that.

Interviewer: Thank you so much for your time, Irene!