Changing Lives

Sharon Chomyn, former Area Director, North Europe and the Gulf for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, describes the lasting impact that helping 25,000 Syrian refugees, including many children, had on those involved.

Transcript: Changing Lives

Video length: 1:37

Light music plays.

An image fades in of refugees making their way through a border crossing. A man is holding a baby.

Text appears: Operation Syrian Refugees – Phase 2

The image fades to black and turns into a blurred background.

Text appears: Changing Lives

Screen fades to black and music stops.

Transition to a woman speaking to the camera. There is a TV set in the background that reads #WelcomeRefugees.

Text appears: Sharon Chomyn, Former Area Director, North Europe and the Gulf, IRCC

sharon chomyn: We had to reinvent our own processes and find ways to speed things up. We obviously have processed refugees before, but never so quickly and never in such a tight time frame. We had a visa office in Beirut where I worked, but it was far too small to handle anything of this size, so we wound up opening an operations centre, and we consolidated in that centre the facilities and the people that we needed to do the various tasks. We had assistance from our new colleagues at the Department of National Defence, CBSA and other parts of the Canadian government to help us do processes that we normally would have handled ourselves.

The image fades and we see a couple speaking to a border services officer. The image then cuts to a close-up of Syrian passports. The image then cuts to a man with his daughter sitting on his lap. The man is holding a cell phone and is talking to a border services officer.

sharon chomyn: Our colleagues who interviewed clients, I think they all came away with quite touching stories of personal hardship and personal experience that will probably stay with them for the rest of their lives. In my own case, I wasn’t involved on a day-to-day basis interviewing applicants, but what I noticed the most was all of the children…

The image fades to a young boy and his mother receiving food from a soldier. The image then cuts to a shot of 3 kids attempting to fly a kite. In the background we see UNHCR tents. The image then fades back to Sharon speaking.

sharon chomyn: …and I couldn’t help but think of how we were changing the course of their lives and how in the future they would contribute to building a Canada that we are very proud of and that hopefully they would feel part of as well.

The screen fades to black.

The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada corporate signature along with the copyright message “Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, represented by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2020.” are shown on screen followed by the “Canada” wordmark.