Finance Committee on April 28th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Madam Minister, you would hope....

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Can I just add one thing?

I would point out that of our nominations, more than 50, I believe, have been reappointments.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Del Mastro.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Madam Minister, first, I have an apology. You would think that someone who opened their questioning by saying they don't understand a lot about immigration would have stuck to questioning rather than petty partisanship; they might have learned something about immigration. Unfortunately, we do see that at this committee from time to time from that individual.

In terms of history in Canada, we are all relative newcomers to this country, so we understand the value of immigration. We understand the very real contributions immigrants have made to Canadian society. With that in mind, could you please share with us more details with respect to how the proposed legislative changes in part 6 are crucial to the ongoing future success of Canada's economy and to immigrants to Canada?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Thank you. What a very good question.

By 2012, according to all the forecasts, net labour growth, all of it, will be from immigration, because as a country we have an aging population, early retirements, and people having fewer babies much later in life.

To keep our economy going, we need people. Businesses can't stay in business without the right people. They have to be the right people in the right place at the right time. Right now we're not getting those people through our existing permanent resident program, which is why we've had to do workarounds. But workarounds aren't sustainable in the long term. The system is fundamentally flawed. That needs to be fixed. The previous government talked about doing it. The problem is that they never did. Under their watch, the backlog ballooned from 50,000 to over 800,000.

Because there are systemic flaws, we can't just throw money at it, because that won't make the systemic flaws go away. We have to fix the system, the structure of it, which is what these amendments will do, and put more resources towards it, which is what we're doing--$109 million. But we also have to get smarter about how we do things--deploy more current technology, review and revise all our processes--so that we're doing things as efficiently and as effectively as we can to get more people here faster.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to share the balance of my time with Mr. Dykstra.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Okay.

Mr. Dykstra, go ahead.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Through you to the minister, one part of all of this, and it's been alluded to a few times, is that there are millions of dollars involved in this year's and next year's budgets and in subsequent budgets. There is up to $37 million a year in increased funding to try to deal with the backlog and to try to address the issues you've outlined here today. One of the important parts of that I think is to understand the changes to IRPA in part 6 of Bill C-50 and exactly how those funding increases will assist you, and more particularly, assist those working within the ministry, to do some of the work you've outlined in the bill.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

For one, we'll be able to hire more visa officers overseas. That's a good thing. It's just putting more volume in, which is what many here have suggested we do.

It will also help us fund systems and allow the centralizing of processing, because, quite frankly, it costs us less to have someone in this country do the processing than in many places offshore. We will be able to modernize our systems; some of our computer systems are ancient, by any standard. We have members of Parliament who are younger than some of our computer systems. So we need to take a giant leap forward—into the 1990s, in some cases.

We're also going to be coding files so that we can identify newcomers or applicants by their occupation, and by their province of destination, so that we can share that with the provincial nominee programs.

We're going to be doing a letter campaign to the oldest files, asking them if they'd like a refund if they've decided to get on with their lives, or whether they still want to come here. Hopefully, that will withdraw some people from the backlog as well.

So we're going to take a number of measures.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I have one really quick question. Do you think it is part of the reason the Liberals in the former government introduced an almost $1,000 landing fee? Was it a way, in part, to stop the backlog from growing from where it was?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

To be honest, I hadn't thought of that. Frankly, I see that as the wrong kind of barrier, because it discriminates against large families and it doesn't recognize that we need a wide range of people coming to this country—and it doesn't help us serve anybody faster.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

I want to honour the minister's time. We have one more questioner, Mr. McKay, and I'll give him a couple of minutes.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Minister, this request in Bill C-50 is all about expanding your discretionary power, yet with the IRB, and under your watch, you have increased the refugee backlog by something in the order of 300%, from about 20,000 up to 60,000. You've reduced the number of judges available. At one point, there was a backlog of about only 10 appointments, and now it's up to around 60 appointments. To no one's great surprise, therefore, the processing times have gone up exponentially.

Then, in a blatant political move, you substituted your own political discretion for the advice of the advisory panel, and a week later the advisory panel quit en masse. Then you come to this committee and say, “Trust me, I want to have more discretionary power.”

My question is quite simple, Minister. Given your track record with respect to the IRB, where you reduced appointments and increased wait times, and in effect substituted your own political decisions for those of the advisory panel, why should we trust you with respect to this increased discretion?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

I think one of the key things is that when we present figures, we present them in the entire context to give people the background needed. To say there was a 100% increase in something could mean that the number had maybe gone from one to two, or maybe from 100,000 to 200,000. On a scale of magnitude, that's a big difference.

When one looks at the IRB backlog and how it's grown, there are a number of factors that have caused that. When we took over, there were approximately 100 vacancies imminent; they weren't open on the day we took over, but they were imminent within the next few months, and nothing had been done to fill them. So we looked at how the appointments were done and said that's not good enough. We improved the quality and the standards. We've made over 100 appointments—and we have several more in the works—and we've also expanded the total number of positions we're trying to fill.

Another reason for the backlog growing is that we've seen a significant increase in the number of applications. Remember, as I said before, we can't control the number of applications that come in. If more come in than we can process, then, yes, the backlog is going to grow significantly. There are a couple of reasons for that. There have been particular responses to the activities of our neighbours to the south that have caused dramatic increases in the number of applications we've received. No, we can't process them all, but we are well on our way to filling a much larger complement of IRB positions with very competent people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

We want to close this part of the session and thank the minister for her time and for coming to our committee and answering our questions.

We'll have the department stay behind. We have another hour, if there are further questions from the committee.

I want to thank you, on behalf of the committee, Madam Minister, for spending the time with us.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I call the meeting back to order.

We have with us Andrea Lyon and Jamie McNamee from the department. We have them both here and we will continue with our questioning.

First of all, next in line would be the Conservative Party.

Do we have any questions from the Conservative Party? If not, we'll move to the Liberal Party.

Mr. McCallum, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

My first question is, would you define a foreign student studying in Canada as a new Canadian?

[Andrea Lyon, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic and Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada]

I guess, Mr. McCallum, that would depend on the context in which they were arriving. As the minister described in her remarks, the government is moving to implement a program that will facilitate the movement of foreign students and certain temporary foreign workers into permanent residency in a much faster manner. That program will come into place sometime later this year, and as I say, it will greatly expedite that process of permanent residency. So it really depends on where on the continuum this person falls.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

But that hasn't happened yet, and not all of them will become landed immigrants, so how can you refer to those students and temporary workers as new Canadians?

[Andrea Lyon]

The system or the new program will be in effect very soon.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

But even if there is a new program, they won't be new Canadians until they've applied and been accepted. Is that not true?

[Andrea Lyon]

That's correct.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

So then you can't say there are 400,000-plus new Canadians admitted into the country in a given year.