| Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
| speeches
Vancouver, British ColumbiaSeptember 5, 2017 Thank you very much. It's wonderful to be back in Vancouver. I was here a number of times. Well, the first time I was here as a new Immigration Minister was to promote more transit travellers to consider travelling through Vancouver Airport, and how the federal government can help with that, with respect to having a more facilitative approach towards transit travellers for select number of cities and low-risk countries. If you have a United States visa and you're travelling from certain parts of Asia and you're going through Vancouver, then we will not ask you to obtain a Canadian visa. Through that, I was able to interact with the folks here, to learn about the potential of that traffic to dramatically expand Vancouver Airport and create real economic benefits for the region.
| Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
| speeches
Thank you for that kind and brief introduction. I’d like to begin by thanking all of you here for being here today, and thanking the Conference Board of Canada for helping guide national discussions on immigration with your insightful research. I’d also like to acknowledge the presence of my provincial colleagues from Quebec, New Brunswick, and Ontario. Thank you very much for attending.
| Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
| speeches
Thank you for that kind introduction. I want to start by talking about a young man who is on a journey to Canada. He is filled with conflicting emotions. One he’s thinking about the fear that engulfs him as he thinks about this new country and this new land and wondering whether people there will accept him, what are the norms there and the language and so on.
| Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
| speeches
Thank you very much. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today to discuss our government's efforts to resettle the Yazidi women and girls and other survivors of Daesh in Canada. I'm joined by my Parliamentary Secretary, Serge Cormier, and Dawn Edlund, the Associate Assistant Deputy Minister for Operations at IRCC, as well as David Manicom, the Department's Associate Assistant Deputy Minister for Strategic and Program Policy at IRCC, and also here is Sean Boyd from Global Affairs Canada.
| Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
| speeches
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen and especially our 26 new Canadians, good afternoon. It's a real pleasure for me to be here with you today. Let me begin by acknowledging that we are on the traditional territory of the Algonquin people and as you know indigenous people have played a fundamental role in our country's history, in the present and in the future.
