The first edition of this report was made public over six months ago, at the end of April 1999. In the intervening period, the authors made numerous public presentations, thoughtful comments were made about the report and some of its policy recommendations. The authors carefully reviewed the report and the comments made, and decided to publish a revised edition of Volume 1 of the report. This edition elaborates important points in the text of the report and upgrades certain policy recommendations in response to these comments and to recent policy changes in settlement services. While Volumes 2 and 3 of the report remain unchanged, this new edition of Volume 1 replaces and supercedes the earlier one.
We owe a note of warm thanks to our respondents who exceeded 1,500 in number. These are the men and women who were interviewed in this project, including refugees, community residents, and service providers. The cooperation of these individuals was absolutely necessary for the success of this research effort.
The field work was carried out, under our supervision, by the following team of 15 interviewers and support staff, all of whom were effective and sensitive to the needs of their interviewees: Thanh Lac Hua, Bojan Korenic, Tatjana Alvadj Korenic, Fadumo Robinson, Ljerka Karlovic Maslesa, Mitra Zarei, Humera Ibrahim, Rania El Saadi, Despina Alvanos, Milijana Setka, Anne Bosma, Ali Zaidi, Nina Acharya, Wendy Pollock, Leslie Crawford. We were fortunate to have such a high calibre, multilingual team of interviewers whose enthusiasm and commitment to the project was much appreciated. They traveled north and south in Alberta to meet with the respondents and they worked at odd hours to suit the needs of the refugees and settlement providers.
Thanks are also due to the following individuals and their organizations for their assistance in locating respondents, and for providing space for interviews, interpretation, equipment, and information: Ed Sandau of the YMCA in Fort McMurray; Linda Gale of Saamis Immigration and Jelena Krinc of Worlds of Women Together in Medicine Hat; Elma Guinto and June Ully of Flexible Learning in Lethbridge; Patty Smith of Immigration Settlement Services in Grande Prairie; Veena Chandra of Central Alberta Refugee Effort and Maria Therese Varese of Catholic Social Services in Red Deer; Alice Colak of Catholic Social Services, Laurel Borisenko of the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, and John Anchan of the Edmonton Immigrant Services Association in Edmonton; Fariborz Birjandian of the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, Hernan Guerro of the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, Lawrence Braul and Issa Mosa of the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers in Calgary; Suad Abdi of Edmonton; and Hubert Dénis of the Calgary Regional Office of Statistics Canada.
An additional expression of thanks goes to the following colleagues at the University of Alberta for facilitating the work of the research team in different ways: Judith Golec of the Department of Sociology, Chuck Humphrey of the Data Library, and Kama Jamieson and Marian Rossiter, both of the Department of Educational Psychology.
Navjot Lamba, a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta, assisted with different aspects of the project, from data collection to data organization and analysis. We wish to acknowledge her contributions with thanks.
The present study was contracted to and managed by the Population Research Laboratory (PRL) at the University of Alberta. For their well coordinated effort and helpfulness, we would like to thank the PRL staff, in particular Diane Dennis, who served as Project Manager, Donna Fong, David Odynak, Cathy Drixler, April Schneider, and Kelly McGuirk-Petryk. We also wish to thank the telephone interviewers selected for the Public Opinion Survey component of the study for their fine work.
Moreover, the Research Team wishes to thank Barbara Leung (Alberta Advanced Education and Career Development) for her helpful comments and advice at the start of the project and during the development of the data collection instruments.
The study was sponsored by the Edmonton Centre of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). We wish to thank CIC for their support, in particular Robert A. Vineberg (Director, Prairies/NWT Region, Winnipeg), Karen Granoski (Manager, Edmonton CIC Centre), and Treasure Ducharme (former Settlement Supervisor, Edmonton CIC Centre) for laying the foundation for the study. We also wish to express our appreciation to Sharon Flynn, our contact person within CIC (Edmonton Centre), for responding promptly to our many requests for information and advice. We extend our thanks to CIC staff in Ottawa for providing the research team with data needed for the study. The success of the study is also the result of the helpful assistance and feedback from other CIC staff in Edmonton and Calgary, particularly Gayle Taylor, Michael Fisher, Sharon Cochrane, Josepha Vanderstoop, W.F. O’Connor, and Louise Odland, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude. As well, we wish to acknowledge the helpful participation of the following CIC staff who were interviewed for the study: Sylvie Beauregard, Judy Durocher, Barb Fulford, Louise Odland, Marisa Sessini, and Edie West.
Finally, we would like to thank the Prairie Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Integration for co-sponsoring the study and for providing infrastructural support. The work of the following Prairie Centre staff is gratefully acknowledged: Aleksandra Rasovic, for her administrative assistance for the duration of the project, and Lenise Lévesque Edwards, for formatting and helping with the production of the questionnaires and the final report.
Baha Abu-Laban, Tracey Derwing, Harvey Krahn,
Marlene Mulder, Lori Wilkinson
Edmonton, November 15, 1999