Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 6th, 2010

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Well, there's a legal distinction here. The spousal reunification is an automatic fast-track program under IRPA, whereas for parents and grandparents, it is discretionary, and for obvious reasons. People obviously have a greater need to be reunited with their immediate family members than with members of the more extended family.

First of all, I would point out that, frankly, this may be a reflection of the fact that we have the most generous family reunification policies of any developed country's immigration system that I'm aware of. Consequently, the demands are greater than our ability to welcome people here in a reasonable period of time. I agree with you that five years is a long time to wait.

The problem is, Ms. Chow, how to manage this pressure within the context of all the other pressures. We increased our resettlement targets for refugees. Everyone loves that idea, but it has to come out of somewhere. We responded to the NDP government of Manitoba and other provincial governments in increasing the PN targets, but Ontario is demanding higher federal skilled-worker targets. Quebec, under the Canada-Quebec accord, gets to virtually pick its number.

Then we have the autopilot programs, as I call them, such as FC1, family class one, spouses and independent children. That goes up or down, depending not on our discretion but on the number of applications we expect to be filed.

You look at all of these things and it becomes impossible, frankly, to meet everyone's hopes and expectations.

In terms of the specific question about allocations for particular missions, do you mind if I...?

Go ahead.

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

[Inaudible--Editor]...before. I think I know how it's allocated. I got the question in last time.

It really is an overall vision of who can come to Canada. I mean, 10 to 15 years ago, half of the immigrants coming to Canada were from family class. Now it's about one-quarter. So we have fewer family reunifications and more from the economic class. We have far more temporary foreign workers coming in. You know that I think we have too many temporary foreign workers. They are subject to exploitation. Their wages are not paid sometimes, and they get deported immediately, even though their wages haven't been paid. There's just been a recent case.

In terms of the vision, isn't family reunification more important than, or at least as important as, trying to get cheap labour into Canada?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I think that's a false choice, a false dichotomy, Mr. Chairman.

Obviously family reunification is an important principle of immigration, as underscored in IRPA , but in my judgment, for us to maintain the world's highest relative levels of immigration, we have to maintain a public consensus in favour of those levels. In order to do so, I think we need to demonstrate to Canadians on an ongoing basis that Canada benefits economically from immigration. And that's why I think our number one focus has to be on economic immigration.

Now, having said that, the government is actually being criticized, quite broadly, I might add, for the fact that only about 20% of the permanent residents whom we welcome to Canada are actually assessed for their human capital according to economic criteria.

Yes, 60% of our permanent residents come through economic streams, but two-thirds of them are dependants or family members of the primary economic immigrants. So 80% of immigrants coming to Canada are either dependants, spouses, parents, grandparents, or refugees. Only 20% are primarily workers.

I don't think there are trade-offs with the temporary streams. You do know that highly skilled temporary foreign workers have access to PR through the Canadian experience class, and that's growing and it's good news. Secondly, the largest pressure that we now have, I think, in the system is permanent residency landings for live-in caregivers who come here as temporary foreign workers.

So we're actually expanding opportunities for certain temporary workers to transition into PR, but there's not a saw-off. We're not taking away resources from processing family sponsorship PR applications in order to do temporary foreign workers. Those are separate streams. They're not in competition for the same resources.

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

I asked a question in the House of Commons, and your parliamentary secretary said that if we had a specific example of labour law being violated, then the minister would look at it and make sure labour law was not being violated.

In Ontario and in Alberta, farm workers are not allowed to join a union. First, I think the right to join a union should be a given human right, and they really shouldn't be barred—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Chow, you are well over time.

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

Second, should we say to Ontario and Alberta that if they're denying the right of collective bargaining, then they really can't participate in this program, because it's not fair and is violating the UN charter?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Provincial labour law is a provincial responsibility, and it's not for our government to dictate to Ontario, or any other province, what labour laws they adopt. That's up to their legislatures.

I will say that as a result of the regulatory changes we are making, there is much better information sharing between the provincial labour ministries responsible for the oversight of working conditions for most temporary foreign workers and our ministry. As you know, the objective will be that when abuses are reported to the provincial labour ministries, they in turn will be reported to us and we will put bad employers on a blacklist, so they don't have the same access to temporary foreign workers.

So we are taking action on that, and if you have issues with respect to provincial labour market regulation, I invite you to take that up with the respective provincial labour ministers.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Dykstra.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here yet again at our committee. I appreciate that you are always able to make time to be here. It's much appreciated by all of us on all sides of the House.

One of the things you briefly mentioned in your remarks was the whole issue of the imposition of the visa on Taiwan for the last number of years and the decision made a couple of weeks ago, as announced by the ministry, that we were in fact removing it. That was obviously appreciated by the Government of Taiwan and visitors from there, who won't now face the imposition of having to acquire a visa before coming here.

It's interesting, though, that the decision was a little while in the making. I wondered if you could comment on and let the committee know why Taiwan meets the criteria for the visa exemption, and what were the reasons leading up to it.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Periodically, Mr. Chairman, we do review the visa status of various countries. We have visa requirements. IRPA's default position is that all foreign nationals require visas to come to Canada, unless we grant nationals from a particular country with a special exemption based on certain objective criteria that we use to assess the prospect of a visa exemption, such as the refusal rate in applications for temporary resident visas; the rate of immigration violations; the number of asylum claims filed in Canada; security of that country's passports; bilateral cooperation on returns and removals of people subject to deportation; information on lost and stolen passports, the sharing of that information; national security issues generally speaking; as well as bilateral cooperation between the authority that issues the travel documents in Canada, in this case TECO, I suppose, the Taiwanese Economic Cultural Office, and passport production, issuance, and distribution processes.

We looked at the criteria, and Taiwan passed with flying colours. They had a very low visa rejection rate. I think it was in the range of 1% or 2%, which means that 98% were being accepted. So we felt it was a very low risk, and frankly, we believe the change will increase travel and tourism.

I would note that the United Kingdom granted Taiwan a visa exemption two years ago, and there have been little or no problems.

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

[Inaudible--Editor]...caught my ear on the second part of what I was wondering about, and that's the whole issue of how this is going to benefit Canada, how this is going to obviously benefit the Taiwanese-Canadian community. You mentioned tourism. What are the benefits that are going to extend to Canada, based on the decision made by the ministry?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

There are, I think, about a quarter of a million Canadians of Taiwanese origin, so it's a very substantial community. Obviously they all have relatives and prospective business partners in Taiwan.

It wasn't difficult for Taiwanese nationals to obtain a Canadian visa, but, like everywhere, it's an administrative burden. So we would anticipate that there will be more tourism, and particularly promotion of large-group tourism. We think that will be positive for the tourism industry.

In general, I think we'll see an increase in bilateral travel, so I think that will be good for both countries.

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

I'll give the rest of my time to Mr. Uppal.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Thank you.

Thank you, Minister, for being here today.

I notice in the estimates that we are transferring $2 million for refugee legal aid over to Justice. How much do we spend annually on this? Are we paying for appeal after appeal for failed refugee claimants to exploit the loopholes just so they can stay here year after year?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Perhaps I can ask our CFO, Mr. Watters, if he can say how much we transfer on legal aid in general.

[Mark Watters, Assistant Deputy Minister, Chief Financial Officer, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Our contributions to the provinces in total, including any transfers through the supplementary estimates, would be about $15.5 million a year. Those are transfers between the federal government, the Department of Justice, and the jurisdictions where there's a cost-sharing agreement for legal aid.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

That's specifically for legal aid.

[A voice]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

As to your second question, Mr. Uppal, I think the premise of your question is probably correct, that in fact these funds are used in part to pay for representation on appeals.

Can I ask the department, would PRRA and H and C applications be eligible for legal counsel for that, or would it just be representation at the IRB and the Federal Court?

The CFO tells me he believes it's just the IRB and the Federal Court.

So that wouldn't be the full range of de facto appeals.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Overall, how does immigration fraud, people using the back door to get into Canada, affect the department's resources in trying to manage fraudulent applications and that type of thing? Also, how does that affect honest people, honest people who are waiting in line, honest people who were honest with their applications?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

First of all, I should underscore that it's a Justice program. We just transfer money to Justice, because they say they have an obligation to help fund provincial legal aid on immigration matters.

I would point out to my friends at the Department of Justice and the provinces that we just saved the provinces about $1.8 billion through refugee reform. Once it's fully implemented, we calculate that over five years the reduced costs for social services, welfare, and legal aid, etc., will be in that range.

It does concern me that the provinces always seem to be putting pressure on the federal government for more, but I haven't had a single thank you note from a provincial minister of finance or immigration or social services for saving them nearly $2 billion on refugee reform. That does hurt. It hurts.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

How do you think fraud affects the honest people who are applying or waiting in line?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

This is a good question. We found that one of the reasons bona fide refugees are having to wait for over 20 months to get a hearing at the IRB is that the system is clogged up with so many false claimants. Roughly 60% of those who make claims in Canada are subsequently determined not to be in need of our protection.

This is most clearly the case in the pre-removal risk assessment and humanitarian and compassionate inventories, as we call them. You know, 97% of pre-removal risk assessments are rejected, and it's taking 18 months on average to get such an assessment.

That means someone who might be facing risk, someone in that 3%, has to wait for a year and a half to get a decision on his application, because 97% of the people in the queue don't really face risk but are taking advantage of that legal mechanism to stay in Canada longer. I think that's unfortunate.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Uppal.

Mr. Oliphant.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here. I need an hour for my questions. Maybe one day you'll invite me for dinner and we can actually talk about these things.

I hadn't come here with Bill C-49 on my mind at all, but because it was in the discussion, there is something I'm trying to clarify. Obviously there are two sets of punitive measures in the proposed legislation, one against the smugglers and one against the refugees later, as some sort of deterrent, as if death by firing squad is somehow not going to be deterrent enough.

What I'm confused about is that the punitive measures against the refugees happen only after the determination process has actually taken place. If the determination process is effective because of our new streamlined process, it's not going to have any effect on so-called would-be economic immigrants.