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No easy answers – Somali Albertans face barriers to necessary services

The late-April murder of 19-year-old Somali-Canadian Abdinasir Abdulkadir Dirie in Fort McMurray may have been a tragedy, but it wasn’t necessarily unexpected. By community estimates, as many as 30 young Somali-Canadian men have died in Alberta since 2005, an alarming number that has many in the community calling for a provincial task force to investigate the root causes of the deaths and suggest ways to combat the problems.Though some of the deaths, including Dirie’s, may have links to crime, that is not true in all instances, and in any case the roots of the problem seem to go much deeper than that. As both community and government leaders are learning, however, these deaths are just the tip of a much bigger and more problematic iceberg: figuring out how the Canadian multicultural system can truly come to work for every community that settles here. Since Somali immigration began in earnest in the late 1980s and early ’90s—significantly in the form of refugees escaping the civil war that continues to this day—Canada’s Somali population has grown to one of the world’s largest outside Somalia: the official 2006 census pegged the number of Canadians born in Somalia or with Somali ancestry at 37 785, although unofficial estimates suggest the number may be as high as 200 000. Though initial settlement was concentrated in Toronto and southern Ontario, the recent oil boom and its promise of high-paying jobs has attracted more and more Somali-Canadians to Alberta—Dirie himself was a Toronto native recently drawn to our province. And yet, with many families having lived here for 20 years or more, Somali community leaders say that at least part of the problem is that both the government and the wider population have trouble distinguishing these rooted communities from recent arrivals: the perception that these are still immigrants to Canada has been very hard to shake.

“They keep talking about putting some money into immigrant youth, but these are not immigrants—they are Canadian citizens, most of them were born in Canada,” explains Ahmed Hussen, president of the Canadian Somali Congress. “It seems to me it’s the same conversation around immigrants and refugees, but this is a Canadian issue—it’s an integration problem.”

“I’ve done a lot of work on equality seeking and human rights, and this really is part of a broader picture,” echoes Edmonton-Centre MLA Laurie Blakeman. “As we welcome more and more communities to Edmonton, as they come with various backgrounds, it gets more complex. One size does not fit all.” That much can be evidenced in some programs that have already been tried to further integration. Hussen speaks of one well-meaning Edmonton Public School Board initiative that aimed to help refugees acclimatize themselves to the Canadian public education system. Good intentions went array, though, when some Canadian-born Somali children were marked for the program, despite having grown up with the system. He says it’s an example of how programs that lack sufficient community input or knowledge can ultimately lead to furthering feelings of alienation or difference. Because of the broad scope of the problem, Hussen and others from the Somali community have been calling for the creation of an Alberta government task force to both help with the investigation on some of the cases, many of which have gone cold, but more importantly to help the community identify exactly what it is that is causing their youth to so often meet violent ends. “The problem is that this community does not have enough resources to even know the scope of the problem,” said Hussen. “A task force is meant to deal with certain community issues that are extraordinary and beyond the scope of that community, or dealing with issues that are unique. “We would like a task force,” continues Hussen, “to really point out the scope of the problem, to look at the obstacles that are presenting the resolution or solution to the cases that are already outstanding and, last but not least, a task force could come up with credible recommendations that could then be implemented by the government.”

That last point seems to be of particular importance to Somali-Canadians. One of the struggles the community has had is that, though they do have some ideas as to why their youth are feeling alienated or being pushed to lives of crime, they often lack comprehensive statistics or studies to prove that, which can lead the community into a kind of Catch-22, where it is unable to begin to deal with a particular problem because it can’t convince others that it’s a root cause of the wider issues. Mahamad Accord is the director of the Alberta Somali Community Center. One issue he has noticed is that the original immigrants who have landed in Canada often have trouble finding jobs appropriate to their skill sets. This can lead to inability to provide a standard of living that is commonplace among other families, leaving the children of these parents feeling socially alienated from their peers, and some instances willing to take less than savoury routes to material reward. But, lacking hard evidence that the ASCC is unable to afford to gather, he’s been unable to make much headway on the issue.

“If I come to you and say, ‘The lack of jobs is why the kids are dying,’ it may be challenging for you to believe it. Most of the people are saying, ‘What does it have to do with the criminal cases?’ But it does,” says Accord. “If we have people with jobs, we will have resources within our community that can help, and we will have people working in the field, and there will be hope. We can show people that if you do well, this Canada will work for you. Helping the parents will help the children.”

Another barrier is the reticence by some in the community to engage with the wider community around them. Though Hassan points out that they have made significant strides in community engagement, he does admit that the Somali community is aware that the burden for seeing real change ultimately rests on them—though he does feel that the community needs the support of its government.

“We also have to do a better job at asserting our Canadian citizenship, and, for example, becoming more engaged with the government, with the political process, with the boards and commissions, with volunteerism, with the police,” he says. “But we have made strides, we’re doing our part—we want the government to meet us halfway.”

As of yet, there has been no motion on a task force, although Kim Misik, a communications officer for Alberta Justice, said that they have yet to receive a petition or other official document calling for it (one with more than 1500 signatures is circulating, but has yet to be filed). She did, however, point to other government initiatives that have been undertaken, including the recent announcement of $2 million dollars of funding for initiatives for the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, Big Brothers and Big Sisters and the Somali-Canadian Cultural Society of Edmonton.”They offer a whole range of services. For youth, there is access to mentoring, for families who might have trouble accessing resources, maybe they haven’t got their ESL program, they can access that. It’s a wrap-around approach to this,” says Misik. “And that’s something we’ve heard right from the community, is that there are barriers that they face.”

And Blakeman believes one of the largest barriers is the inability to access services that already exist. “The community is upset and they feel abandoned. They feel they’re not able to take advantage of what they see other groups taking advantage of. I feel that always with these kinds of issues, when you look at the longer-range picture, it’s both the community learning some things and the culture they’re in learning some things. If there’s a fault to be found here, it’s everybody’s fault. If there are solutions, they’re going to be found on all sides. “For Hassan, the provincial funding dedicated is nice, but not enough, particularly since, as he points out, many of the most affected youth are not newcomers.

“Money is not a bad thing in and of itself, but it’s not the only thing,” he says. “We need a comprehensive solution to a comprehensive problem.”

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