Services Newcomers: Refugees and Health Care

services newcomers: We were concerned about the department's inability to track whether the Syrian refugees had access to basic provincial services, such as health care and education especially considering that part of the department's objective was to help Syrian refugees benefit from Canada's social, medical, and economic systems, the auditor general's report said, according to Toronto Star. While a rapid impact evaluation the population was conducted by the government for the first wave of arrivals, the auditor general went digging over the longer term, looking to see whether Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada was both providing the services newcomers needed and tracking what happened next. Markers like how many kids are in school or how many Syrians are on income assistance weren't being measured between fall 2015 and the spring of this year, the period examined by the federal watchdog, raising questions about what happened to the population once they began to settle in Canada. This audit is important because the Syrian refugee initiative will succeed in the long term only if the people it brought to Canada integrate into Canadian society, the report said. Article Continued Below So what happened, for example, was that Syrians in some parts of the country faced lengthy wait times for language classes because the government wasn't keeping an eye on those wait lists and in turn ensuring funds were being allocated where they were needed most. react-text 151 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau greets newly-arrived Syrian refugees at Pearson International airport on Dec. 11, 2015. While the federal government did have a plan to track outcomes, it either didn't collect all the required data outright, or had trouble getting from the provinces and settlement organizations, the report said. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.