The Centretown-based organization that helps Chinese immigrants settle in Ottawa is looking for alternative ways to meet the needs of a growing number of international students – a group it isn’t funded to serve.
The Ottawa Chinese Community Service Centre, located on Kent Street, provides an extensive range of settlement services for new immigrants in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Executive director Sharon Kan describes the centre as a one-stop service for help with everything from improving English to finding a doctor. The only problem is that the centre is funded to serve new immigrants with Canadian citizenship, not students with temporary visas.
While the number of the students grows each year, the gaps in services for the newcomers are also widening. Local institutions are working to meet the increasing demand, but reallocating resources for such a niche yet rapidly growing sector isn’t a simple task.
Carleton University has seen a 43-per-cent increase in international students in the last 10 years. China is the largest source country for international students in Ottawa.
“We always help those who are not eligible,” says Kan, but adding later, “We can’t help them for free.”
Because of the absence of funding to provide services for these students, the OCCSC has begun hiring them as volunteers to help with office duties, event planning, and teaching seniors to use computers. The students build a network of support with each other, Kan says, and it helps them connect with the host society.
There are more than 100 international students registered on the OCCSC database, all of whom sought out the centre themselves.
“Grown, mature immigrants need help—but these are teenagers,” Kan says.
The nearby Catholic Centre for Immigrants on Argyle Avenue is one of the rare centres funded to help newcomers holding any citizenship status in Ottawa, including international students.
Maria Teresa Garcia, CCI settlement manager, says that the universities do what they can to help international students, but the host schools’ objective is to provide an education to students, not to help them settle.
“The expertise of settlement lies in our sector,” she says. “You need to have experience with immigrants.”
One of the challenges the sector faces is providing a range of services in a range of languages.
Many of the centres work as a coalition and partner with universities to offer this language and service diversity. The CCI, for example, specializes in intensive settlement services, while the OCCSC focuses on employment support, though both centres help newcomers settle in almost any way they need.
This problem is why, Kan says, the OCCSC needs its own funding for students instead of referring them to the CCI, which doesn’t have a Mandarin-speaking counsellor. To bridge this gap, the OCCSC is applying for funding to hire one more staff member dedicated to helping international students with problems they might experience in Canada such as homesickness, academic pressure, and trouble accessing medical or legal help.
“(International students) have made a huge economic investment in Canada,” Garcia says, referring to tuition rates. A Canadian undergraduate arts student at the University of Ottawa this year will pay just over $7,000 a year, while an international student in the same program will pay over $24,500.
“If we are not providing services, we are not paying back what they have invested.”
The province of Ontario initiated a pilot program, called International Student Connect, in 2014. The program funds agencies such as the CCI to offer settlement help in sessions and workshops on campuses, including the University of Ottawa and Carleton University.
“This project supports Ontario’s interest in attracting and retaining international students,” Bryan Leblanc, provincial communications officer for citizenship, immigration and international trade, said in an email. Cultural diversity and labour market benefits as some of these provincial assets.
But despite the increase in awareness among universities and the province, Kan worries that the recent shift in priority toward settling Syrian and other refugees in Ontario will take resources away from supporting international students already here.
“If they fail and they go back, that’s a waste of resources,” she says. “So I hope we will make them more successful.”