Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 1st, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 37, Tuesday, December 1, 2009. We are dealing with supplementary estimates (B) 2009-2010: votes 1b, 5b, 7b, and 10b under Citizenship and Immigration and the report on the operation of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for the year 2009.

We have before us the Honourable Jason Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and Multiculturalism, and his colleagues. There are too many of them to introduce. I'm going to let the minister do that.

Welcome, Minister Kenney, and thank you for coming once again to make your presentation to us and listen to our questions.

You have the floor, sir.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Citizenship]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman and colleagues. It's great to be back.

I'm joined today by our new deputy Neil Yeates, our director of operations Claudette Deschênes, our ADM for policy Les Linklater, and Mark Watters, our chief financial officer, who will answer any difficult questions about the estimates.

I am pleased today to place before the committee my department's supplementary estimates (B) for fiscal year 2009-2010. These estimates include new funding requests of $127.1 million to increase departmental spending authorities to $1.56 billion for the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

This funding involves several key areas. First, we request funding of $90 million to reinstate in this year funding related to the Canada-Ontario immigration agreement, which was initially re-profiled in the 2009-2010 main estimates. This is funding related to contributions to settlement organizations, principally in Ontario.

Secondly, we request funding of $32.5 million in 2009-2010 to support the imposition of a visa requirement for Mexican citizens.

The increase in refugee claims and the immigration violation rate for Mexico have resulted in significant costs for the refugee determination system. This funding is to establish a new permanent infrastructure for temporary resident visa processing for visitors, temporary workers and students.

Third, we request $3.5 million in 2009-2010 to significantly reduce citizenship proof inventories and processing times. These investments should allow CIC to respond to concerns by clients and other government departments through a reduction in processing times.

I propose to continue my remarks by addressing some matters concerning citizenship and immigration that might be of particular interest to the committee.

Let me first address the November 3 report of the Auditor General. I wish to thank her for her review.

We agree with her on the importance of a modern, efficient, and well-run immigration program and we are considering her recommendations very carefully. I am pleased to say that we have already begun making key improvements, and my officials have developed a plan to address the areas of concern identified by the Auditor General.

She has pointed out some administrative matters regarding temporary foreign workers—matters that we had already started to address through new regulations I introduced in October.

To guard against the abuse of foreign workers, our government has proposed regulations that allow for greater cooperation between my department and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, as well as with the labour ministries in the provinces and territories who actually oversee and enforce labour market standards.

These changes will help us recognize bad employers and provide better oversight to minimize the chance of exploitation and abuse of foreign workers. Many employers tell me that they would go out of business if they could not find foreign workers, which is why we need the kind of tools and regulations that we are developing to protect workers and support our economy.

Our immigration program is constantly evolving to respond to Canada's changing economic goals. As the committee is aware, the ministerial instructions as part of our action plan for faster immigration are a key tool in that respect. I would like to note that the government is addressing the AG's questions regarding the quality of analysis used to develop the ministerial Instructions. They were developed after extensive consultations with both public and private stakeholders, including provinces and territories.

Second, the department is taking the necessary steps to ensure that the instructions remain as up-to-date as possible. We are doing so by monitoring labour market trends, gathering information on changing national and regional employment needs, and we are closely monitoring the flow of new applications.

Mr. Chairman, the reforms our government has introduced have resulted in new applications in the federal skilled worker category being processed in six to twelve months, and a reduction of over 30% in the backlog of federal skilled worker applications received prior to the reforms. These are major improvements. Going from five years on average to less than a year puts us back in the game and competing for the world's best and brightest.

This is a substantial improvement, and the world is taking notice. To quote the CEO of Microsoft:

The Canadian government is more welcoming of getting the best and the brightest from around the world than the U.S. government.

As the committee is probably aware, last month I introduced some significant changes to how newcomers can become Canadian citizens. I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about them.

I'm committed to ensuring that new Canadians understand the values, democratic institutions, and history that have made Canada one of the greatest countries in the world in which to live.

That is why I was enormously proud three weeks ago to introduce a new study guide for those who wish to become new Canadian citizens.

This new guide, entitled Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship, is more reflective of Canada's diversity, history, and values than the previous edition. It aims to make Canadian citizenship more meaningful by providing information that all Canadians should know and be proud of.

For example, we recognize the history of New France—which goes back over four centuries in Quebec—and acknowledge the collaboration of French and aboriginal people.

We highlight the contribution of Canadians of Chinese origin to building the country, acknowledging the injustice of the Chinese head tax, and we note the government's apology for the same.

We talk about the waves of refugees who came to Canada seeking our protection, such as the Hungarians in 1956 and the Vietnamese in the 1970s, who fled communist oppression.

We recognize Canada's leadership in fighting slavery, the movement of the black Loyalists to Canada, and the contribution of abolitionists like Mary Ann Shadd.

We also highlight a broad spectrum of successful Canadians, including Olympic swimmer and athlete Mark Tewksbury.

Finally, I did not feel that the previous guide acknowledged that every year this country celebrates the contribution of over a million Canadians who served in our uniform in the past century and the more than 110,000 who made the ultimate sacrifice to defend our freedoms. This needed to change.

Compared to the previous edition, Discover Canada aims to underscore the diversity of Canada and our traditions of pluralism, unity, and diversity. It emphasizes that new citizens inherit both rights and responsibilities, something that I think was insufficiently emphasized in the previous guide.

It also emphasizes the importance for newcomers to Canada to integrate into our society and to learn one of our two official languages.

Many newcomers, Mr. Chairman, have told me that they found the outgoing book somewhat insulting—that it underestimated their interest to learn about this country.

I am confident the new guide will help them to adapt more quickly and take advantage of the economic, social and cultural opportunities that Canada has to offer.

Before I conclude, Mr. Chair, I hope the committee members saw our announcement yesterday, which I made with my colleague Diane Finley, Minister of HRSDC. It was the fruit of a lot of hard work, launched with the agreement that the Prime Minister arrived at with the provinces and territories in January of this year, to create a pan-Canadian framework for the recognition of foreign credentials.

We made the announcement on the way forward as a result of a $50 million investment in the economic action plan that will provide an agreement right across the country for common standards and a transparent pathway to credential recognition. We can't do that all at once for all 40-plus licensed professions; we have to engage those who are prepared to work with us. The initial list is eight professions from coast to coast. Next year we hope to roll it out to another six, and I believe and hope it will pick up momentum.

In those professions we are now getting a guarantee from the provinces who will be working with the professional agencies that people who apply will be getting an answer within a year, rather than two years of evaluation and another two years of testing. In many professions I think we will be going from a four-year processing time to less than a year. It's not perfect. We cannot and never will guarantee anyone will get a yes answer. But finally I think we see strong cooperation between the federal, provincial, and territorial governments to get some meaningful progress on the vexatious problem of credential recognition.

Thank you for your time, Chairman. I look forward to the questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Yes, Mr. Minister, the foreign credentials issue is certainly an area you need to be congratulated on. It's a difficult issue, and I'm sure there are many areas that need to be worked out.

I'll bet you the committee has some questions, and the first round is led by Mr. Bevilacqua.

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, Vaughan, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Minister, thank you for your comments.

I'd also like to welcome the officials from the department. We appreciate, obviously, your work as public servants on this very important issue of immigration and citizenship.

Minister, I read your comments, and every time I read--and I recognize these words, by the way--that people “reprofile funding”, I wonder what that means. Essentially, it's a polite name for money that actually wasn't used or was cut, and that, of course, is related to your fourth sentence, about the Canada-Ontario immigration agreement.

One of the concerns I have vis-à-vis the whole issue of immigration as it relates to immigrant settlement as well as language training is the amount of funding that actually lapsed. I think we all recognize in this committee that one of the major barriers for the integration of immigrants into Canadian society is in fact language. There are $81 million lapsed in that area, and $11 million, I believe, in the area related to settlement aid. I'd like an explanation for that, number one.

Number two, Minister, if I may, this is not necessarily related to the estimates per se, but it is an issue that you and I have shared concerns over, and that is the refugee reform package that was promised a while ago. We still have not seen the package. We would like to give that particular issue the respect it deserves when you have a staggering 62,000 backlog of refugee claims and a system that I think everyone in this room agrees is broken.

I wonder what the story behind that is. Have you presented a package to cabinet? Do you have the support of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance for the funding required? If yes, then when would you expect the package, and if no, then let's be honest with the Canadian people and say that's just not part of the agenda.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you for those questions, substantive as always, Mr. Bevilacqua.

First, with respect to lapsed funds, I think we need to understand the magnitude of the increase in funding for settlement that came about in 2006 between COIA , the Canada-Ontario immigration agreement, and subsequently the changes in budget 2006. We effectively about tripled the federal investment through my ministry in settlement services in provinces other than Quebec. Quebec goes up on an automatic escalator, but the other provinces are now finally in rough parity with Quebec in terms of per immigrant or per capita settlement funding.

This involved effectively tripling funding in one year, starting in 2006. When you do something like that, you need to make sure the money is being spent responsibly. Officials will tell you they worked very hard with the settlement sector—the settlement agencies in Ontario in particular, where we have most immigrants—to ensure those funds are responsibly invested.

Earlier this year it appeared we were going to lapse $90 million in the Ontario portion of settlement funding simply because we couldn't find enough projects to fund that match the terms and conditions in Treasury Board guidelines. I signalled to officials that we wanted to respect the spirit and the letter of COIA, and they worked very hard. I'd like to commend our officials for working very hard with the settlement sector to find ways to get these services out the door in ways that complied with the accounting rules of the government.

Initially we were going to take $90 million for this year and reprofile it into next year. We were not going to take it away but just keep it on the table, so it did not lapse in the budget year, and move it forward to next fiscal year. Because of the good work of our officials, we were able to invest those funds this year that will go into language training and other relevant programs this year. We're developing a system to make sure that goes forward without these blips in the future in terms of funding.

Second, on refugee reform, I appreciate the very thoughtful approach you've taken on that. I think everyone recognizes that we need to make improvements to the system, and I can tell you—Mr. Chair, I'm obviously not in any capacity to violate cabinet confidentialities or to discuss what may or may not be before cabinet—that as the Prime Minister indicated in September of this year, Canada and Parliament need to address this issue. I'm confident that both Parliament and government will be doing so in the fairly near future. I won't put a timeframe on that, but our officials have been working very hard on this issue. It's a very complicated piece.

Any kind of meaningful reform to the refugee system would involve statutory amendments, regulatory amendments, operational changes, with CIC, with CBSA, and the IRB, etc. It's a complex area in which some very sound ideas are coming up about a balanced system that obviously respects our legal and humanitarian obligations while creating a more efficient system, providing faster protection of the real refugees while disincentivizing abuse of the system.

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, Vaughan, ON]

Is there funding for this?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Chair, again, there is funding for the current asylum system. The IRB is fully funded. In fact, I'm pleased to announce in that respect that as of today, the IRB is at 98% of its full occupancy in terms of Governor in Council decision-makers, and I anticipate it will very shortly be at 100%.

The IRB itself is currently at full speed. In terms of any potential changes, I would just have to say we'll stay tuned.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. St-Cyr.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here today, minister.

I would like to continue on the question of the use of French at the Immigration and Refugee Board. We've been talking about that for a long time, you and I, and I am still as concerned about what is going on.

We are observing that, increasingly, newcomer files are systematically being opened in English by default. In fact, that has become the rule in Montreal. There are cases in which, even if the newcomer is neither francophone nor anglophone, the file is still opened in English. There are cases in which, if the newcomer is a francophile, or at least someone who has an affinity with the French language, the file is opened in English. Consequently, later on, when the matter goes before the immigration tribunals, the evidence is filed in English, government representatives want to proceed in English, and it is very difficult to get permission to proceed in French.

There was the specific case of Mr. Handfield, who asked, on behalf of his client, to be able to proceed in French in his case. The tribunal ultimately agreed, but refused to order the evidence to be translated. At the time, I questioned you about this matter, and you answered that the tribunal had made a decision and that, as minister, you could not interfere in the matter.

This matter of the use of French at the IRB is now before the Federal Court. In that case, the respondent party was the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. I have before me the brief filed by the Deputy Attorney General of Canada, which clearly states that he is acting on behalf of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. He sets out the points he is addressing, that is the claim of counsel and his client that the latter has a right to a trial in French, which, it seems obvious to me, presupposes that documents can be produced in French.

When I asked you the question in the House, you answered me that the applicant in question had first asked to proceed in English, which was inaccurate to say the least, not to say false. The briefs submitted by counsel representing you contain excerpts from the proceeding, and at no point did anyone say they wanted to proceed in English. At most, the board member asked him if he spoke English.

Minister, you know from having spoken personally with me that I speak French. That does not mean that I would agree to proceed in English before a tribunal. Those are two different things.

In view of all these arguments, why is your department engaged in this legal guerilla warfare to avoid proceeding in English from the outset and translating the documents?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your concern in this regard, Mr. St-Cyr.

Obviously, both of us strongly support the Official Languages Act. I clearly told the members of my department and those of all the agencies, including the IRB, that we expect the agencies to comply with the Official Languages Act.

It is possible that there may be an appeal to the Federal Court. As minister, I cannot comment on a case that is before the court for reasons you know very well. The proceeding is under way.

I have commented on the basic facts of the case with the IRB. Counsel requested at the outset that English be the language of proceeding. At that time, he had accepted all the documents in English. It was therefore counsel's decision on behalf of the applicant to accept all the documents in English, and they were all provided. I believe the IRB subsequently decided to change the language of proceeding at counsel's request. At that point, the documents were therefore provided in French.

Perhaps the matter should be taken up before the Federal Court. In the event it is, I should not make any comments out of respect for the proceeding under way.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

You previously commented on the matter in the House of Commons. This concerns me because the government is spending taxpayers' money, part of which comes from Quebec, to conduct what I consider legal guerilla warfare against the use of French in the Montreal court.

In the brief your counsel submitted, they were unable to show that any exchange had taken place before the court or that any form had been completed stating that the person wanted to proceed in English. If you don't want to talk about this specific case, let's speak more generally. The problem is that they only provided us with the form completed at the very start of the process by an immigration officer with the person, and the officer checked the “English” box.

The problem is that immigration officers in Montreal almost always check the “English” box, regardless of the person concerned and without really ensuring that is what that person wants.

Shouldn't you proceed in French by default in Montreal, and shouldn't English be the exception rather than the rule, as is currently the case? That's the nub of the problem.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

First of all, I believe this involves the Canada Border Services Agency and not my department, directly. Second, I agree on the principle that clients should have the right to be represented in the official language of their choice.

In specific cases, however, should we translate documents that have been accepted and requested in one language in particular? Should we change languages at some point? What are the implications of that kind of thing? Here's an example. If counsel decide to change the language of proceeding and all documents have to be translated into a second language during a criminal trial, what will be the implication of that action for Canada's judicial system? These are issues that—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We have to stop.

Colleagues, before I have Ms. Chow speak, I've spoken to her about her motions and she has agreed to put the motions on Thursday, so we can give our full attention to the minister.

Ms. Chow, you have the floor.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Welcome to the committee again, Minister.

The Auditor General last week said that the department has no strategic plan, no vision, made decisions without considering their cost, risk, potential impact on other programs, and delivery impact. So we have 192,519 temporary foreign workers in Canada. We have fewer families coming in, according to your 2010 targets. We have far fewer, half of the refugees, that are going to be accepted in Canada.

Since 2002, because the former Liberal government changed the point system, people who have low skills or manual labour, including the live-in caregivers, cannot come into Canada as permanent residents through the federal program. So they're coming in. We need low-skilled workers, there's no doubt about that, StatsCan tells you that, yet they cannot come in as permanent residents. How are they coming in? They're coming in as temporary foreign workers. So how many foreign workers do you expect to come in this coming year, 2010?

Let me read you one line that the Auditor General said:

Until it develops a strategic roadmap for the future and it evaluates the performance of its current programs, CIC will not be in a position to demonstrate that its programming best meets the needs of the Canadian labour market.

To make it even worse, she said there's no quality assurance framework to obtain assurance that decisions made by its visa officers are fair and consistent. So there's no plan, and the assurance framework is not there.

Then the third piece are these unscrupulous consultants out there telling people how to lie. It's a small number of them, but they're criminals, basically, and they are abusing the system, yet the victims are the ones who get punished. They lose their money, get deported, or never make it here, or the families never arrive in Canada because of these unscrupulous consultants.

We had a concurrence motion last week where Parliament said “act, please act”. We are sick and tired of these unscrupulous consultants—not all of them, but some of them. And right now there are no regulations. They basically do whatever they can. They can set up shop and—CIC is not working, we know that.

You talked about taking action on this front. When are you going to crack down on these criminals, some, a few? We don't even know where they are. So when are you going to take action?

What is the plan for this coming year, 2010? Are you going to balance the needs of the labour market and also Canada needing permanent residents? We need their kids here, not just their labour. Your October changes deal with some of the abuse, but it does not deal with the core problem of the entire program. In fact, it makes it worse, because you're letting them work four years and then you say to them that they cannot come back for six years. You should do that to the employers rather than the workers. So this is now reversed, and that means the temporary foreign workers have even less power.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you, as always, for these insightful remarks by our colleague Ms. Chow.

There is a plan, a very clear plan, to improve economic outcomes for newcomers and ensure that immigration is working for the Canadian economy. I agree entirely with you, Ms. Chow, that this means we must maintain a robust stream of economic new permanent residents. We're doing just that.

I don't think you give Canada enough credit in this respect. We are one of the only major developed countries in the world that is plowing ahead with ambitious targets for permanent residents in the midst of the global economic downturn. We are doing so because we think it's necessary to plan for the mid to long range, even though there is some softening in the labour market right now.

Everything we've done is calibrated to improving economic outcomes for newcomers. That's why we brought in the action plan for faster immigration to focus on people whose skills are most in need on a national level in Canada. It's why we've increased processing times in that stream, federal skilled workers, from five years to less than one year. It's why we've worked with the provinces to expand the provincial nominee programs.

Now we get criticism from some that supposedly we're reducing the federal skilled worker program, and people wrongly allege that we're giving up spaces in the federal skilled workers stream and moving them over to temporary foreign workers. As you know, that's ridiculous.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I didn't say that.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I know you didn't, but I was just getting this at a press conference yesterday from some people who might vote for your party, I'm just guessing.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Really? Tell me who they are. I'll go find them.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

But my point is, as you well know--I need to be clear about this--there is a permanent residence stream that we are protecting, that we are maintaining at 0.8% of the population. It's the most ambitious level in the developed world. The temporary stream is entirely separate from that--

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

But that's huge.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Particularly the temporary foreign workers stream is responsive to demand. We do not plan.... In fact, this year we anticipated we'd see a reduction in the number of visas issued to temporary foreign workers in 2009 because of the slowdown. But in fact, demand was very strong. Even though in January, HRSDC increased their requirement for advertising for Canadians to take up these positions.

So the overall goal is to improve economic outcomes, and we've done that through the action plan for faster immigration. We've done it through the expansion of the provincial nominee programs. We've done it through the introduction of the Canadian experience class, the first new pathway to permanent residency in a generation that will allow some of those temporary foreign workers and many--

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Not the low-skilled ones.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes.

But many foreign students will become permanent residents in Canada. We've done it through our tripling of the federal investment in settlement and language training. All of these things together are combined to get better outcomes for newcomers and also, of course, to address the issue of credential recognition.

But you've also raised the issue of consultants. I agree. This is an area that we must work on and we are working on it. I'll get back to it in another question, I'm sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We have to carry on to the next round.

Mr. Dykstra.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for appearing here yet again. I know one of the issues that committees have faced in the past is the difficult schedule that a minister may have in not always being able to get to committee on as regular a basis as a committee might like. Each and every time we make a request, you've been here. So thank you.