Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 25th, 2013

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I just want to point out how much time it actually takes a visa officer to process a PR application. Half an hour, an hour? We can't really compress that time. The 90% or more of the wait time for permanent residency applications is a file just sitting in a queue. That's why the backlog reduction is so essential, because that's about cutting those queues.

We're actually compressing the time as much as we can with technology for the actual decisions to be rendered. It was the years that people were waiting to move up in the queue that was the problem.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

All right, Minister, I'm going to keep going, if you don't mind, so we can get more questions in.

The report on plans and priorities for this fiscal year mentions continuing to monitor and review the conditions in countries as well as the applications received by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada to support the new policy on designated countries of origin.

Following the report by the U.S. State Department on Hungary published last Friday, are you going to review the presence of Hungary on that list? Do you still believe that country to be safe?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Freeman.

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's interesting. I did write a letter to the Minister—if he actually read the letter and I assume he did—regarding the temporary worker program. You have an individual who comes to you and says, “Look, I'm establishing a business here. We want to bring in some machinery from overseas, and he wants to come in and set up that machinery." So he's looking for someone to come over to help him set up the machinery and then ultimately go back to China.

The Minister uses that as an example. I have news for you: it's called being a member of Parliament. You represent the interests of your constituents. You're supposed to be doing that. Having said that, I should also remind the minister that the program is a Liberal initiative. The difference between a Liberal government and a Conservative government is that we know how to manage the program whereas this government has abused the program. That's the difference, Mr. Chairperson. Canada does not need 338,000 temporary foreign workers, no matter which way you want to cut it, Mr. Minister.

The issue of the global case management system is, again, something that was initiated under Mr. Chrétien's term, and I appreciate the minister raising how effective that particular program has been, and we would expect that as technology is brought forward. We should pay compliments to our civil service who do an outstanding job, whether it's within Immigration, Revenue Canada, or OAS. All of these technological developments allow us to provide improved services in many different ways.

Then there is a responsibility of the minister, on the other hand, to ensure that there are feet on the ground. Trying to get immigration services or talk to someone live can be a challenge. We have a 1-800 phone number that is very difficult. The last time I tried it, I was literally waiting 45 minutes, depending on the day of the week. They recommend you call on a Thursday or Friday because then you don't have to wait the hour or however long it might be.

There's an issue of providing service to people who really need the service. The government's response to that has been cutting services. You've cut many offices all over the country from individuals who do need these services. I would be interested at some point, maybe not today, to get a response to that particular question.

I raise the issue of citizenship. I asked and emphasized how important it is that the minister deal with the issue of the processing times with Citizenship. It is, today, completely unacceptable. I'd like to give the minister a question, and hopefully he'll actually stay focused and try to answer this specific question. Are you prepared to commit to a minimum target of processing citizenship applications to within 12 months?

I recognize that we're not talking about 100% of all applications. We're talking maybe a minimum of 80%, but will the minister, at the very least, make that commitment today? Will he say to Canadians that he's going to take the issue of citizenship seriously, because he has been negligent, and will he make that commitment today?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I appreciate the fact that Mr. Lamoureux has actually allowed me to answer a question.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Let's see whether you answer it now.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

The answer, Mr. Chairman, is yes. I'd be delighted to have a processing time of 12 months or less for citizenship applications.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

When could we anticipate seeing that put into place?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I don't have an exact timeframe, Mr. Chairman. We have additional resources coming through—$44 million over two years—and we're looking at other operational changes.

Although Mr. Lamoureux says we have neglected the citizenship program, we've done the opposite. We have fundamentally retooled the program to ensure that the statutory requirements of the Citizenship Act are being respected, because in the past, we saw a large number of—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

That's only because of timing, Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Order.

Go ahead, Mr. Minister.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

In the past we saw a large number of applications from people who did not meet the residency, language, or—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Lamoureux has a point of order.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

On a point of order, Mr. Chairperson, I know the minister likes our asking actual questions rather than making statements. If the minister consumes time answering a simple question, that prevents us from asking questions, because he talks out the clock. That is one of the reasons that we have to conclude with four or five questions.

If the minister wants to have questions during this period of time, he should try to keep his answers short and concise. Then he'll likely get short and concise questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Is that a promise?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

That's a promise, for my part.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Lamoureux, you asked a question, and the minister is entitled to attempt to answer the question.

I will allow him to attempt to answer the question. We will start the clock again.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

To finish my sentence, we saw far too many applications in which people did not meet the statutory requirements. This is why we made policy and operational changes to ensure that, through third-party language testing, through the new knowledge test, and through more vigorous screening of the residency requirements, we now have a much better capacity to ensure that people actually meet the statutory requirements.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. James, we have five minutes for you, because we have a couple of votes at the end.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again I sat here and I listened to the member from the Liberal Party spew out a whole bunch of things without giving the minister proper time to answer those questions, including his denial that members of his party, including the leader of the Liberal Party, have written to the minister to ask for more temporary foreign workers for their ridings, for various reasons.

I have several questions that I'd like to ask, but I'm wondering whether you need more time to address those accusations and other denials from the opposition.

Thank you.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I think they speak for themselves.

I guess I would point out only one thing, which is that Mr. Lamoureux takes credit for the previous Liberal government's having created the temporary foreign worker program. In fact, as long as we've had an immigration system we've had work permits.

Essentially, the temporary foreign worker program is not really a program. It is a category that includes virtually everyone to whom we issue work permits. This includes intra-company transfers, when a Canadian company is bringing up one of their people from the U.S. to work for a couple of months. It includes the kids from Australia who were working as part-time ski instructors in Mr. Weston's riding on a working holiday. It includes people who come up for six months to work in agricultural industries for which Canadians are not applying.

It's a huge, broad category. I would point out that in that broad category, by far the largest growth in the past five years has been in the youth mobility program—the working holiday program. These are young people from such countries as France, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and so forth, who are coming on reciprocal open work permits.

If Mr. Lamoureux and his party think that these nice young people on their working holiday programs represent some kind of existential threat to Canada, its labour market, and its immigration system and want us to shut that down—which represents one-quarter of temporary foreign workers and by far the largest growth in the program—let them tell us so. I think it's a pretty benign subset of the temporary foreign worker program.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you. I'm just going to switch over to the federal skilled worker program.

In your opening remarks and in the written statement that I have here, you've indicated that people who arrive with a pre-arranged job in Canada are earning almost $80,000 as income after their third year, which is much higher than the average.

Also in your opening remarks you talked about changes to the new federal skilled worker points grid program, which focuses on language proficiency and youth—bringing in more younger people to Canada. I've been to many round tables in which representation around the table is very diverse. There's a common thing that everyone around that table says, and that is to succeed in Canada, a person needs to be able to easily integrate into Canadian society. At the top of the list for requirements is proficiency in either of our two official languages.

I welcome that change and I think it's long overdue, but I wonder. You talked about $80,000 for pre-arranged jobs for people coming into Canada. Do we have any statistics for people who have proficiency in either of our official languages, or who might be younger and able to integrate into Canadian society?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes. I don't have the exact figures with me, but I would refer you, Ms. James, to the comprehensive evaluation of the federal skilled worker program done by my department two years ago, which is on the CIC website. It indicates a very strong correlation of language proficiency and youth with economic outcomes for workers.

In fact, all of the research—not just that done by my department, but that done by independent academics—comes to the same conclusion, which is that official language proficiency, and frankly and more specifically, English-language proficiency, is the single largest factor in economic success for immigrants. This is not to say it's the only factor and not to say that people with limited language proficiency can't and don't succeed on occasion. But statistically, it's the single greatest indicator, as is the relative youth of newcomers.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Could I make a simple request? The minister has pointed us to a CIC website for this information, but could it be provided to this committee so that each one of us doesn't have to go independently and look it up?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes, we'll forward that to the clerk.