Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 25th, 2013

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We will have Ms. Sims, then Ms. Freeman.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I want to thank the minister for the history lesson to show that both the Conservatives and the Liberals really went out to delete the files of people who not only applied to come here but played by our rules, the rules we made, and we not only deleted their files but we did shatter many people's dreams and aspirations.

But moving on, Minister, as you and I are both keenly aware, Maricon Gerente became a Canadian permanent resident this past Tuesday.

For the benefit of the committee, I will give a brief synopsis. Ms. Gerente was granted permanent residency while comatose in a hospital bed in Oakville. She is brain dead and will die soon. Only life support is maintaining her. In lieu of a signature, officials went to the hospital and took a fingerprint, and I want to recognize those officials.

Ms. Gerente came to Canada in 2008 through the live-in caregiver program. She applied for permanent resident status in 2011.

Minister, Ms. Gerente's dream was cut short. She dreamt of becoming a permanent resident so she could give her daughters the opportunity for a life in Canada. Now she has been granted permanent residency within hours of her death. This will not help her daughters because, just hours old, the permanent residency will die with her.

Minister, the wait times are long—in this case, tragically long—and we know the program as it currently stands needs improvement. Even you have said as much, even in your opening statement today.

What are your plans to improve the live-in caregiver program—namely, to curb the abuse we know some nannies are encountering; to process permanent residency applications more quickly, and preferably not on someone's deathbed; and to prioritize family reunification?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you.

First of all, Mr. Chairman, we have tried to be very responsive to extraordinary cases of this nature. I don't know whether it's statistically true or not, but it certainly seems, in my anecdotal experience, that in the live-in caregiver program there have been a disproportionate number of caregivers who have unfortunately become very ill during their tenure in Canada.

That's one of the reasons, Mr. Chairman, that in the reforms to that program that we made in 2011 we effectively waived the requirement for a second medical evaluation to be done, so that if caregivers became very sick during the period of their temporary residency, that would not disqualify them from obtaining permanent residency on grounds of medical inadmissibility. That is an important change that has allowed, for example Ms. Gerente, to become a permanent resident.

I recently met with representatives of organizations advocating on behalf of live-in caregivers to discuss potential further changes to the program in addition to the broad package of reforms we introduced in 2011. We recognize that the inventory is unmanageable, ungovernable, as I said before. There are currently 45,000 people with applications in the system who are waiting for permanent residency, in addition to another 40,000 temporary residents in the program who eventually, we anticipate, will make PR applications.

We are looking for solutions, and if the member has ideas, I'm very keen to hear them. The challenge is that the program constantly cycles through people, so as soon as people get permanent residency they leave live-in caregiver work.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

I mentioned earlier the meetings that we had with the arts community, and one of the things that really became obvious, which I wasn't aware of before that time in the same kind of detail, is that some of the permanent exemptions were there to facilitate tours, such as Bruce Springsteen or The Beatles or whoever, coming in. But however unintentionally, these parameters are described so broadly that they include all theatrical productions. In most instances there is no, or very little, labour market shortage in this country for cast and crew in the area of theatrical productions.

Are you going to be reviewing that list of exemptions in the near future?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Could I just point something out? Mr. Lamoureux amplified the objections of ACTRA. The labour market opinion exemption that people in the performing arts category benefit from, of course, was implemented under the previous government. We're just continuing the Liberal policy right now, but we are looking at revising it, Ms. Sims.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Minister.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Minister, my advice is that sometimes you shouldn't follow that policy.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Sims.

Mr. Leung.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister and staff, for being here.

Immigration contributes to Canada's prosperity and therefore should be a net benefit for Canada. As we heard in a previous discourse, it has created the economic drain on our treasury.

Perhaps you can explain how the measures that were put in during your administration of immigration have contributed to the savings in our estimates. What does this do in terms of maintaining our control over the cost of immigration as we go forward?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I can say, Mr. Chairman, that our department has gone through two rounds of seeking efficiencies, initially through strategic review in 2010, where we reduced overall expenditures by 5%, and in the second round of the deficit reduction action plan, where we also found another 5% in operational efficiencies. Part of this was facilitated through greater operational efficiency and better use of technology.

As I've said to this committee before, a decade ago, even five years ago, our department was operating in almost a 1980s world in terms of technology, with a huge number of paper-based applications.

Think about this. Every time a member of Parliament put in a request to one of our embassies for a status report on an application, an officer would have to get up from their desk, go down into the basement, wheel through huge stacks of files, go in and find a paper application, bring it out, go back to their desk, open it up, and review it—taking 15 or 20 minutes just to check the status of an application. Now, with GCMS, they can, in principle, do it instantly online. If you multiply that by tens of thousands of files, you can see the efficiencies that we're realizing by applying new IT. That means we can make more decisions in less time at lower cost.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Could I ask you also to expand on how the implementation of the new assignment system has contributed to our efficiency, plus the super visa for parents and grandparents?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you.

When we first proposed the new fair and balanced asylum system, we estimated that it would realize savings for taxpayers, primarily provincial governments, of some $1.6 billion over five years. In fact, we now anticipate that the savings will be substantially larger, with perhaps an additional $400 million in estimated savings, because the number of new claims being made in the new system is down substantially, by some 65%. We were anticipating a reduction of only some 10% of the number of new claims under the new system, but in fact the reduction so far has been in the range of 65%.

This is a bit of a shot in the dark, but our best estimate is that over the course of five years, should the current trends continue, we will see something in the range of $2 billion in cumulative savings, primarily for provincial taxpayers, because there will be fewer people making claims and false claimants will be staying for months rather than years, meaning huge savings in terms of access to provincial welfare. Of course, there would also be savings through the interim federal health program and various other social benefits.

The other area was parents and grandparents. Well, we actually haven't made a cost estimate on that. Let me put it this way. We estimate that an immigrant senior who arrives at the age of 65 likely will consume approximately $125,000 in lifetime publicly funded health benefits if they arrive as a permanent resident. A couple likely consumes in the range of a quarter of a million dollars in public health benefits for the duration of their lives in Canada as permanent residents, in addition to other social benefits. For those who instead choose to come through the super visa, obtaining private insurance, a couple at the age of 65 would represent an estimated cost savings, just to the health care system, of a quarter of a million dollars.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Weston.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Going back to the temporary foreign worker program, I speak as one of 308 MPs, but I recall that soon after I was elected in 2008, and in accordance with our government's priority on economic growth and job creation, you came to the riding I represent. You heard directly from the Whistler Chamber of Commerce that the number one priority for them in federal policy was improving the processing of temporary foreign workers. In fact, businesses were going to go out of business if they didn't have people in, because they needed people to fill the jobs. In order to be able to employ Canadian workers as well.... I don't know if you recall that, but it was a very important thing for the riding I represent.

Moving back to the refugee program, Minister, you've spoken several times this morning about that. Looking ahead, I wonder if you might comment on how the improvement in our situation in dealing with asylum seekers may indeed affect some of our bilateral relations with some of the countries we deal with.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

As you know, Mr. Chairman, in the past when we had serious challenges to the integrity of the immigration system because of large waves of unfounded claims from particular countries, we had only one tool in our tool kit, and that was visa imposition. A good example of this would be the difficult decision I had to take in summer 2009 to impose a temporary resident visa on Mexican nationals.

Mexico, of course, is a very important trading partner, friend, and ally of Canada, and therefore it was not desirable to have the burden of a temporary resident visa on Mexican nationals, but we had received over 1,000 asylum claims a month from Mexico in the first six months of 2009. About 90% of them were ultimately deemed unfounded claims by the adjudicators at the Immigration and Refugee Board. So something had to be done because this wave of unfounded claims was creating a huge backlog in our asylum system, and frankly, was massively undermining the integrity of our immigration program. The only thing we could do was to impose a visa. Quite understandably, Mexico reacted negatively to this imposition of the visa and continues to raise this as an irritant.

I know you are the chairman of the Canada-Mexico parliamentary association, and you hear this all the time from Mexican legislators and government representatives. That is partly what motivated us to pursue fundamental asylum reform so that we could have other tools in the tool kit to address unfounded waves of asylum claims apart from visa imposition.

The success of the new fair and balanced asylum system will allow us, in due course, to more responsibly consider visa liberalization—I've been explicit about this—including Mexico. That's not a guarantee or a timeline towards a Mexican visa exemption. We want to continue to monitor progress in the new system. But at least so far the indicators are very positive.

Let me just add that the new asylum system, plus our planned introduction of an electronic travel authorization system in 2014 or 2015—I hope the former, not the latter—will together massively increase our options apart from visa imposition. The ETA, the electronic travel authorization, will be a light, online, virtual screen for people who might not otherwise be qualified to come to Canada. This is what Australia has done, the United States, and certain European countries. Those two reforms together will, I think, allow us to pursue a policy of visa liberalization quite broadly.

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

For the tourism sector, those are welcome words. We know that in Mexico the visa-processing system has become increasingly efficient, thanks to your direct responses to pleas from the tourism sector. So those are big improvements.

Also, from the tourism sector, you brought about changes relating to the inadmissibility of people for aged criminality records. Would you care to comment on that?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Weston. I'm sorry, but you're out of time.

Ms. Sitsabaiesan.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The supplementary estimates include a transfer from the Treasury Board to the IRB. I was heartened to actually read that the IRB office here in Ottawa was originally set to close at the start of this month and it has now been delayed until the end of the year. But delaying the closure doesn't actually fix the eventual consequences that it will force lawyers, legal staff...and require many refugees, who have very limited means to travel, to travel to Montreal within two months of arriving in Canada for their hearings.

Legal Aid Ontario has suggested that it might be able to fund the lawyers' travel, at least temporarily, and I wonder if that's even fair, shifting the burden onto the province. But what do you say to those refugees without the means of making the trip? Video conferencing is an option that you seem to be encouraging elsewhere. New facilities in Winnipeg and Edmonton suggest as much. But here in Ottawa, plans to close the video conferencing room still remain.

Why does it seem that refugees are the targets of so many cuts?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Not surprisingly, I disagree with that characterization, Mr. Chairman. I would point out there are a very limited number of IRB or Refugee Protection Division offices and limited capacity to hold hearings across Canada. If you are a claimant in Victoria, you have to go to Vancouver. If you're a claimant in Edmonton, you go to Calgary. If you're a claimant in Winnipeg, you go to Calgary or Toronto. If you are in Quebec City, you go to Montreal. In Halifax, you go to Montreal. Ottawa is two hours from Montreal, four hours from Toronto, so it's more approximate to places where there are robust resources at the Refugee Protection Division.

Last year we only had about 500 new claims being processed at the RPD in Ottawa. With the 65% reduction in the number of new claims as a result of refugee reform, I would anticipate that we'll be seeing only about 200 claims a year here in Ottawa. We simply can't justify the infrastructure of a permanent office based on that number of claims. Although as Ms. Sitsabaiesan has intimated, in order to address the legacy claims that are here in Ottawa, we have worked with the IRB to extend the closure of the office in Ottawa until the end of this year, and the IRB is looking at other administrative options as well.

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

Thank you, Minister.

In February, you visited Syrian refugees in Turkey, inciting a great deal of hope among those Syrians and their loved ones living here, not to mention many Canadians who are absolutely heartsick over their plight. The illusion was that you were visiting to assess how Canada might help these displaced people, but when pressed you've indicated that until the UN declares they are refugees, your hands are tied. The Syrian Canadian Council keeps calling my office to say that you're ignoring their phone calls. People are being killed by the millions and are being displaced. Canadians are worried about the safety of their family members.

I see in the estimates that there is a $410,000 transfer from DFAIT. Can I be optimistic and assume that the transfer will serve to expedite the processing of Syrian refugees? How many have been extradited so far? What about family reunification? Can't some of them be evaluated on those grounds as well?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

In terms of family reunification, beginning 14 to 15 months ago, we had already put in place accelerated treatment for applications for family reunification of Syrian nationals who have relatives in Canada who had sponsored such applications. My department tells me that by the end of next month we will have completed all the family reunification applications that were in our inventory for Syrian nationals.

But in terms of refugee resettlement, let me be clear. I was explicit about this when I was in Turkey in mid-January that we were not proposing a refugee resettlement program for Syrian refugees, but I did announce very clearly an increase in our resettlement targets for government-assisted refugees in Turkey, primarily Iranians and Iraqis. These are people who are already waiting for resettlement opportunities, have been referred to us by the UNHCR, and have no durable alternative in the region.

I spoke to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, who told me in December, and whose representatives continue to tell us, that they are not referring Syrian refugees for resettlement. There is an immediate humanitarian crisis, some two million displaced persons, over a million IDPs, internally displaced persons, within Syria itself. The UNHCR always says to the resettlement community in such circumstances that it would be a misallocation of resources to begin the work of referring people for resettlement, when they are desperately focused on housing, tents, shelter, food and clothing, and safety for the people who are refugees in the theatre.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Menegakis, we are now back to the seven-minute round.