Cuts to Free English Lessons Could Dash Dreams

Samantha Mangabat immigrated to Alberta from South America a decade ago. She says there’s a key reason she is still here and now working with seniors after earning a health-care aide certificate.

“Without my English skills, I wouldn’t have anything,” she said. “I would still be in a cleaning job, earning $15 per hour. Maybe I would have given up and gone back to Ecuador.”

Mangabat credits classes she took through Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada, or LINC, a federal program that delivers free English lessons to permanent residents and protected persons.

But in Alberta, a province that welcomed close to 200,000 permanent residents in the last five years, changes to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s budget have caused three organizations to stop offering the language instruction program courses so far this year, leaving thousands of newcomers with no choice but to pay out of pocket for private English lessons or to stay in the low-paying jobs their language skills afford them.

“This means that only the people who can pay can access professional learning opportunities,” said Mercedes Veselka, a graduate student of adult literacy and language at York University. “It’s like this death loop of tragedy.”

A critical step towards independence

Experts say the harm extends beyond the dashed dreams of immigrants. The more newcomers earn, the more taxes make it into provincial and federal coffers to fund the public services all Canadians enjoy. This windfall goes unrealized when immigrants are stuck in the survival jobs they often get upon arrival — cleaning hotel rooms, driving an Uber or delivering takeout.

Consider the success story in the making for Nataliia Yepikhina. Fleeing war in Ukraine, she and her family arrived in Calgary in the spring of 2022.

Yepikhina knew her command of English was weak and that this would block opportunities even though she had been an accountant in Ukraine for 20 years. She enrolled in Bow Valley College’s LINC program full time.

“The LINC program is excellent because it’s not only about learning English,” she said. “It’s about using English in different aspects of life: grocery shopping, education, health care and the workplace.”

After completing Level 7 of the Canadian Language Benchmarks, a 12-level measure of language proficiency, Yepikhina felt confident to join the labour force in her new city.

During an interview for a serving job at a hotel chain in Calgary, Yepikhina’s accounting experience came up. The hiring manager connected her to the people who would offer Yepikhina her first job in Canada, as an accounting clerk.

“LINC will open more work opportunities for me,” she said. “If I want to work in a position with benefits and a pension, I must have a higher level of English.”

Recent arrivals left out by cuts

Ottawa’s decision to cut funding for settlement services is tied to recently lowered immigration targets. But defenders of the LINC program note those who are losing out are already here.

According to York University’s Veselka, it takes time and significant effort to get to the higher Canadian Language Benchmarks levels, which are key to improving professional prospects for newcomers. Balancing multiple jobs and family obligations in a new country adds to the challenges of learning a new language. Many of the 2.7 million permanent residents who arrived in Canada since 2018 are unlikely to have reached an adequate level of language proficiency yet.

“The first few years in Canada are really rough,” she added. “You’re in survival mode because you have so many cultural shifts and changes and loneliness. Research suggests that people’s ability to access language hugely impacts their well-being.”

Yet Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is set to terminate all funding for LINC classes beyond Level 4 by 2026.

“There’s a disconnect between the people who are on the ground doing the work and the people who are making the decisions about doing the work,” Veselka said. “I think policymakers would do really well to take some time to listen to people who are actually teaching in this field.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not respond to The Tyee’s inquiry about the apparent inconsistency of using future immigration targets to determine funding allocation for a program that serves newcomers who are already in Canada, especially in the wake of record immigration levels.

‘A very difficult situation’

When Samantha Mangabat arrived in Calgary from Ecuador in 2016, she juggled cleaning and retail jobs with English lessons in a LINC program then delivered by Chinook Learning Services. While completing Level 7 of the Canadian Language Benchmarks, Mangabat enrolled in ABES College’s health-care aide certificate program, an occupation that would lead to consistent work providing essential care to Calgary seniors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was an opportunity for me to help people,” she said. “You really have to use your English skills for health care.”

Today, having completed eight levels of the Canadian Language Benchmarks program, Mangabat looks beyond the caregiving she does part time at a seniors’ community.

Mangabat is on the second term of Bow Valley College’s practical nurse program, an occupation whose demand is forecast to rise over the next three years in Alberta.

“Our income is not enough,” she told The Tyee. “We have to pay our mortgage, insurance and food.”

The LINC program not only helps integrate newcomers into Canada’s labour force, note experts. It allows them to regain their independence and confidence and to develop a sense of belonging to their new community. Limiting the program’s reach is likely to undermine the quality of life not only of immigrants, but of all Canadians.

“This is a very difficult situation,” said Charlie Wang, interim CEO at Calgary’s Centre for Newcomers, noting that budget changes to settlement services add to the burdens many newcomers experience in Canada, including a lack of foreign-credential recognition.

Ukrainian Natalia Polevaya, for example, is a trained graphic designer who has completed eight levels of the LINC program. Yet three years after arriving in Calgary, she remains stuck in survival-level jobs in retail.

“I’ve struggled to find opportunities to start work in my area,” said Polevaya, who lost everything when Russia invaded her homeland. What gives her some hope is the improvement in her English skills made possible through LINC classes. “Without this program, I wouldn’t have achieved any goals in my life in Canada. It’s too difficult.”

Citing a $15.4-million budget shortfall, Bow Valley College in April shut down its LINC program, causing 1,300 newcomers to stall their language-learning journey while they wait for a space to open at a different organization. At the time of the closure, Immigrant Services Calgary estimated that the waiting list for the LINC programs across the city had surpassed 6,000 people.

For this reason, the Centre for Newcomers has asked the provincial government to fill the gap left by the feds, although action seems unlikely.

“I cannot be too optimistic about the provincial government,” Wang said, pointing at a recent survey circulated by the United Conservative Party government and its video floating the idea of withholding social supports from non-citizens and scapegoating immigrants for a declining standard of living in the province.

Neither the Alberta Ministry of Jobs, Economy, Trade and Immigration nor the Ministry of Advanced Education responded to The Tyee’s request for comment.