Dozens of community groups have expressed interest in a proposed new scheme that would allow them to privately sponsor refugees to come to Australia.

More than 40,000 people have signed a petition in support of the program, which has already been successfully trialled in Australia and 40 local governments are backing it.

The trial, called the Community Support Program (CSP), is based on a Canadian scheme which sees private groups or community organisations cover the financial costs and settlement support for humanitarian entrants.

Canada’s program, established in the 1970s, has welcomed more than 300,000 refugees over four decades, in addition to the government’s resettlement schemes.

Australia’s immigration minister, Alex Hawke, told media recently he looked forward to “ensuring the program becomes a genuine, successful partnership between community, business and the government”.

But some advocates fear the government’s plans for the scheme will mean a cost shift of refugee program from government to community groups if the sponsorship scheme is not allotted extra places.

The CSP, has been criticised for being small, expensive and restrictive. The program is limited to just 1,000 places a year and – at about $100,000 to sponsor a family of four, including an application fee alone of $19,000 – it is more than three times as costly as the Canadian version.

And the program is available only to refugees aged between 18 and 50 years who have functional English and a job offer in Australia or skills that make them “job ready”.

Refugee advocates say any refugees sponsored by the community should not be additional to the government’s resettlement commitment, which was cut back to a near-historic low of 13,750 places in the federal budget.

The commonwealth’s Coordinator General for Migrant Services, Alison Larkins, conducted a review of Australia’s current support arrangements and has submitted detailed recommendations to Minister Hawke.

The review followed a separate inquiry into Australia’s humanitarian program by former senior bureaucrat Peter Shergold.

Mr Hawke said in a statement to media he was a “strong supporter of the community support program”.

“I look forward to ensuring the program becomes a genuine, successful partnership between community, business and the government, to provide beneficial outcomes to our refugee and humanitarian arrivals in Australia,” the Minister for Immigration said.

He said he intended to consider the report of the coordinator general in detail “and consider possible changes to our program which could strengthen our approach”.