Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 20th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We have to move on. I'm sorry.

Mr. Leung.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to share my time so the minister has time to answer Ms. Groguhé's question.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You're wonderful.

Carry on, Mr. Minister. I interrupted you in mid-sentence and he's letting you finish.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

That's okay. I managed to get it out.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

It's wonderful to talk about airplanes landing, seats, and so on, but perhaps to simplify this a restaurant analogy is better.

You have a long lineup of people and a maître d'. You have people who are seated, and so many meals to be served. If the capacity was increased you could bring in more people, but I think the person who is the gatekeeper, the maître d', has to inform the people in the lineup, “If you stand in line at this point it's going to take you 15 minutes. If you stand in line at this point it's going to take you 20 minutes.”

Using standing in line for a restaurant as an analogy for how we manage the backlog, at some point we have to look at the input and how many meals we can prepare—in the context of a nation, how many settlements we can handle.

Do you not agree that we have to look at some controls in the lineup? We should be transparent to people and say “Look, it's going to take you seven years if you want to stand in the line”.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes, I do, Mr. Leung.

Here's the problem: a system was created with a legal obligation to receive and process an unlimited number of applications. So we've got a world with almost infinite demand on Canada, a legal obligation to process all the applications that we receive, but obviously a finite number of people that we can accept.

I repeat: that finite number is a big number. Notwithstanding Mr. Davies' quibbling over whether it's 0.72% or 0.8% in any given year, it is the highest per capita level of immigration in the developed world, with, I believe, the sole exception of New Zealand right now. And it is the highest sustained level of overall immigration of any government in Canadian history, at 254,000 in average admissions.

By the way, we expanded the restaurant. We bought a bigger plane. We increased immigration by 14% over the admissions under the previous government. But as I have said, we could expand the restaurant again, buy an even bigger plane, and that would not solve the problem of backlogs and long processing times unless we also use the tool of limiting new applications, which is why Parliament gave the minister the power to do that under Bill C-50 back in 2008. So yes, it's absolutely essential, because I don't think it's fair, to use your analogy, to have our customers—those people who dream about coming here—waiting in a queue for seven or eight years.

You know, one of the reasons we created the action plan for faster immigration on the skilled worker program is that many of the world's best and brightest were able to immigrate to Australia and New Zealand, two of our key competitors for human capital. They were able to immigrate there in about six months, but we were telling them to wait in the back of our skilled worker queue for seven years. So which country do you think they chose to go to?

Thankfully, now under our action plan for faster immigration, at least new applicants in that program are able to get an answer and come to Canada in less than a year. And I can tell you I've met some of these people, and they are happy customers. They applied eight, nine, ten months ago and they're now in Canada. We're talking about very bright people coming in through our skilled worker program. That's where we need to go. When the customers show up outside the restaurant, when they buy a ticket on the plane, we should tell them that if they qualify, if they meet our criteria, we will welcome them within a year. That's where we need to go.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Weston.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Minister, you are on top of things in your department. You also know who wants to come to Canada. On behalf of the Canadians I represent, thank you for the energy and the effort that you put into the work you are doing.

You mentioned again the system that was started in 2002, requiring each application to be considered. Do other developed countries, such as Australia, the United States or Great Britain, have a system like Canada's under which each application must be considered even though it is not possible to accommodate them all?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

That is an interesting question. I think that Canada is the only developed country with an immigration system that requires every application to be processed and decided upon.

I know that New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and countries in Europe restrict the number of applications they process. I do not know why the previous government created a system with no limits on new applications. It made no sense.

In the United States, they use a lottery for new applications. In Australia and New Zealand, there is a processing period lasting several months for economic immigration applicants, whereas it is several years in Canada. That reflects the different policies in each country.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

That is very interesting. Did those countries previously have long delays in processing immigration applications? If so, what did they do to get a handle on the delays?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I am going to ask Mr. Linklater to answer your question as he is more familiar with that.

[Les Linklater, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic and Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Chair, in response to the question about applicants in the economic category in New Zealand and Australia, there is almost no delay because of the processing system they have. In the case of New Zealand, there is a kind of

“expression of interest”

which is a pool from which they choose the applications that meet the needs of the labour market. This model will shortly be adopted by Australia, as of next July 1, with the creation of a pool of applications from which Australians can look for those that most meet their needs.

In the family class, especially for parents and grandparents, Australia does have a backlog; wait times are about 10 years.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you. If I have any time left, I will share it with Mr. Opitz.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

As a new MP, I did learn from my esteemed colleague how to set a record for number of words in five minutes, but I will ask for a fulsome comment from you related to what Mr. Weston just asked, Minister. I think it's appropriate that we situate where we are right now and take a step back.

I'd like to know a little about more about where Canada's immigration level is right now compared to the rest of the developed world. For example, do some of these other countries accept roughly the same number of immigrants per capita as Canada? Do they have similar streams, for example parents, grandparents, live-in caregivers, foreign skilled workers, and also related to the proportions of these things, like family class, economic class, refugees? Could you take a moment to clarify those issues?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You can take 30 seconds.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I would say that the two countries with systems most similar in terms of the mix of immigration and relative levels would be Australia and New Zealand. Australia is a little bit lower than us per capita. New Zealand has developed the same per capita level of total intake.

The European countries are going in the other direction. In France this summer I think my counterpart announced that they're going down to, if I'm not mistaken, 25,000 economic immigrants they'll be admitting, for a country with a population of more than twice our size. Similarly, the United Kingdom is going down to 100,000. Our levels are orders of magnitude higher than in Europe.

The level of the number of economic immigrants--legal ones anyway--in Canada is significantly higher than the United States per capita and slightly higher than Australia and about the same as New Zealand.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have one minute, and I'm going to be very strict.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Right. I'm going to go really fast.

You said that with the federal skilled worker program you've had some success in decreasing the backlog. Right now the backlog seems to be in family class. Are you planning on putting a cap on family class, yes or no?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

It's important to make a distinction, because there are two family class programs. There is family class one.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

I have less than one minute. That's why I'm trying to go really quickly. Yes or no, are you planning on putting a cap on family class?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I can't answer yes or no.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

There are two categories. Sure.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

There are two categories. The first one, which is spouses and dependent kids, is processed on a priority basis pretty much within a year of the application.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Yes, and that's basically just in time at this point. Right? That's the time that I heard from the--