Zoning and Downtown ODP By-laws Enactment

Statement Watch

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. And good morning. Like they said, my name is Katia Avalos. I'm the Community Engagement Director for the Multi-Agency Partnership of BC. Those figures are actually outdated. We now have over 100 members across the province of BC who are agencies or individuals that support and work with and for refugee claimants. World Refugee Day is a day to honor all refugees, and whether they've come to Canada as government-sponsored, privately-sponsored, or asylum seekers, all of them face very high barriers, and I know that the first years, having experienced them myself, are very hard. MAP's work focuses on asylum seekers and refugee claimants, and those statistics and the numbers that we hear a lot of the times in the media seem to be alarmist and a bit high. But the reality is that Canada only sees a very small proportion of asylum seekers compared to other countries around the world. And we're standing at a time where conflicts seem to be proliferating every single day. And the list of countries that Canada does not remove individuals to because of the humanitarian conditions of those countries keep growing. It's a very long list. Some of those countries have been there for decades. And we also know that a lot of those countries are the countries that produce most refugees, and many of them come to Canada to seek protection. Coming to Canada is a very complicated thing, and people make harrowing journeys. I'll give you an example. Somebody from Afghanistan who's fleeing the Taliban might in the past have been able to get a humanitarian visa to travel to Brazil. and then cross the entire American continent by foot, crossing jungles, rivers, deserts, dealing with human traffickers and gangs and cartels that prey on them. And so just having that image on your mind should make you think about the sacrifices and the complicated pathways that people make to come to Canada. And unfortunately, we're standing at a time when policies keep creating barriers for those individuals, whether they're arriving here by land or whether they're already in Canada, increased barriers to legal access to protection. And so that's very important that the city of Vancouver is doing this work at a time when, you know, the barriers keep increasing and supports seem to be lowering. So we would like to recognize and thank you for the work that you do, especially in the access without fear and to racism policies. Because, you know, these new laws are creating a population of individuals with precarious status or with no status. And the services and benefits that they're able to access are very small. And so having this policy that allows them to access services in the city of Vancouver is wonderful. and just a little bit about the work that we do. And when I say we, I mean the agencies that make up the MAP community. They're very incredibly dedicated individuals who work to make the lives of refugee claimants a little bit easier to give them support and comfort as they start new lives in a country that they're unfamiliar with. And so a lot of the time that work also comes with a lot of emotional and mental health costs for the staff that do the support and work alongside refugees. And so I'd also like to acknowledge the individuals and thank the individuals that do this work to support refugees at a time where it feels like the support that they have is dwindling away. And I would like to invite next my colleague, Sara Lopez, to say a few words as well. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you, everyone here. Thank you, Council, for this proclamation. As a person with lived experience, I arrived in Canada in 2025 to seek refugee protection. no, 2012, sorry, to seek refugee protection. And unfortunately, I was sent to provincial jail by CBSA. So I was here a few years ago in this place speaking about how and why it was important to stop using provincial jails to incarcerate asylum seekers and immigrants in this country. thanks to the city council that approved that motion, now the whole country is not using provincial jails anymore. So thank you for your work, and I trust in exactly this access without fear and city, because I experience that. Thank you so much. And now I'm part of a community that support Katia works. I work on Kimbrace Community Society. We are based in East Vancouver, a very small organization that provides transitional housing for asylum seekers and refugee claimants, as well as a national program named My Refugee Claim, that is a public legal education for those that are seeking protection in Canada in partnership with the Immigration and Refugee Board. And they are presenting... the stage of what they will expect during the refugee hearing. And we are part of this job, supporting thousands of people from around the world, providing interpreters and information that is very needed. Thank you so much.

Statement Watch

Sorry, thank you.

So one more thing to note is that, as Sarah said, there's individuals across this country who are facing these higher barriers. So we want to thank the work that Cambridge does on a national level to provide legal education and information for asylum seekers and refugee claimants. And I think that people tend to think of refugees as something that's happening now, something new. And we need to recognize that refugees have been coming to Canada for generations and they make They form part of Canadian history and have contributed to Canadian society for decades. So when we think of refugees today, just remember that in a few years or in a few decades, them and their children will be as Canadian as you and me and will have contributed with their lived experience, with their talents, with their great contributions to this country.

Thank you. Thanks, everyone.