Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 5th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I haven't seen it. You haven't seen it. We'll wait and see. It will be a surprise.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Continue, Mr. Leung.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Life is full of surprises.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Indeed.

Can you start the clock again, please?

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

The point I wish to make is that when you look at the current situation, where we're going to 2013-14, we're saying what the status quo is. There are three lines there. If we stay on status quo, you'll see that your processing time will increase. You'll also see that if we apply the human resources and the financial resources to it, you will notice that it will decrease the processing time. If we go to the new model of it, a lot of times efficiency can be achieved through changing the way we do things, and that is what the economic action plan line shows: that we even will reduce that quite dramatically, so therefore....

You have been in business, and you know very well that not everything is achieved by throwing away more money in solving a problem. People could get more experience in what they do. As the deputy minister has mentioned, if they get trained—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Leung, before we get into a debate here, please direct your comments to the chair.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Yes, sir. That's my comment, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

That's it?

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Yes, that's it. I'm finished.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You're finished? Then we'll move to the next round, which is Mr. Sandhu's.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

I have a question for the minister.

In April 2012, the federal government announced that it would resume the management of settlement programs funded by the federal government in British Columbia and Manitoba so that these programs were aligned with those of other provinces, except for Quebec. These supplementary estimates show that reallocation of money from operating expenses to fund a grant of approximately $4.5 million for direct management or settlement support services in British Columbia and Manitoba.

However, I met with a number of service providers and also with the local university English-language program administrators. They're worried about not knowing what their funding will be in the coming year. Can you tell us when that's going to be done?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Sure. The transfer takes place as of April 1.

As you know, starting last summer, we had a very painstaking and careful call for proposals and review of proposals, in consultation with the province, to make sure that there was as much continuity as possible and as much sharing of expertise and knowledge as possible about the specific challenges of British Columbia in delivering service.

I think it's safe to say that not every organization that was funded by the British Columbia government before this transfer will be funded by us, nor will each one of them be funded at the same level. That is normal. That reflects our practice in every province where we provide settlement services. We're trying to get the best result for newcomers to Canada on the basis of this unprecedented funding that has grown threefold—and almost fourfold in the case of B.C.—since 2006. One of the focuses is language training, but there are a lot of other focuses.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

In a press release announcing that the federal government would resume management of programs funded by the federal government in British Columbia, the minister at that time, Mr. Kenney, also assured these agencies that this change will have no impact on the amount allocated to the basic settlement services, yet these organizations inform me that while the budget for British Columbia for settlement services was $210 million in 2013, it was lowered this year to provide only $100 million.

Why was the promise made by Mr. Kenney not kept?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

It was never $210 million in federal funding for settlement for British Columbia, not even close to that. I'm not sure where you're getting that number from. We spend roughly $900 million on settlement services across the country, and $300 million of it is for Quebec, with $600 million for the rest of the provinces. For British Columbia, my colleagues will tell me, it's a much smaller number than $200 million.

Our funding, now federally delivered, is on the same order of magnitude as it was when it was delivered by British Columbia. We decide how much funding goes to each province on the basis of the proportion of immigrants settling in that province. It's not any kind of a formula or arbitrary decision that we take. It's based on objective data about where newcomers are settling in this country, so it goes up and down. I can tell you that the share spent in Ontario has tended to go down in recent years as the proportion of newcomers going to other provinces—almost all other provinces, but especially western Canadian provinces—has gone up.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Minister, you mentioned in your speaking notes here that you inherited a broken system from the previous government and that wait times were up to eight years. I'm looking at our Canadian immigration website right now. To sponsor parents, it takes 45 months to process the application in Canada. In addition to that, it takes up to anywhere from 56 months; for New Delhi it's 61 months. According to my math, that's eight years and 10 months. You've had eight years to clean up their mess. Are you allocating any additional funds to get rid of this backlog?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

I'm very proud of the fact that in only three years, by the end of 2014, we will have admitted under the action plan for faster family reunification—

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

I'm not asking—

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

75,000 parents and grandparents. That's a higher rate than ever before in Canadian history.

We're also proud of the fact that a very large backlog that would be on the way to being 200,000 to 250,000 for parents and grandparents is now down to 86,000. At the end of last year we took in 5,000 new applications. That puts it around 90,000.

We're taking in 20,000 parents and grandparents this year. That translates into a period, Mr. Sandhu, by simple math that is much less than eight or nine years. That actually—when you take into account abandoned applications and inadmissible applications—takes it down to around four years. That's a huge improvement on the mess that the Liberals left us.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Sorry, Mr. Sandhu, we're over time.

Mr. Opitz.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I will be splitting my time with Mr. Komarnicki.

Minister, thank you to you and your staff for being here today.

I've been involved in this since I worked for Jason Kenney at one time and I've watched many of these new reforms come in that have absolutely, I think, made our government and country proud by being able to offer very flexible ways for people to either visit this country, come stay in this country, or rejoin their families in this country.

We've redistributed how immigration is allocated—as you just mentioned, Minister—across the country and how those funds are redistributed to recognize that redistribution, and of course we do targeting for francophones. We are part of la Francophonie, and I think that we have an obligation, of course, to work within that construct and develop those abilities that we have.

I've got lists and lists in front of me of our accomplishments in the last few years, which have been absolutely unprecedented.

I have just a quick question. We're moving money from contributions to grants and to the Institute for Canadian Citizenship in order to encourage national dialogue around and build awareness of Canadian citizenship, as we've already done in so many ways with our products. What other programs does the Institute for Canadian Citizenship run that you can tell us about?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

They run programs that I could call programs of inquiry into what citizenship means to Canadians in the 21st century, what being a citizen means to a Canadian today. We know that a lot of people attach importance to their citizenship as an expression of their freedom, their personal freedom, and our freedom as a country. We know that a lot of people attach importance to the history of Canada, which we are still discovering.

We just passed black history month. I don't think any of us around the table could count ourselves as fully knowledgeable about the history of black Canadians as we would like to be, and through the promotion of Canadian citizenship that this institute does, we are bringing that history back to life. They played a role in helping us design the Discover Canada guide. They do fantastic work promoting citizenship and helping us design the citizenship ceremonies to make them as meaningful as possible, and to associate them with different institutions in Canada that magnify the meaning that we all sense and the emotion that we all sense in those ceremonies.

I had the opportunity to be on the ice at the Canadian Tire Centre here in Ottawa, in Kanata, for a Senators game where new Canadians were on the ice thanks to an initiative of CanadianTire. That's the kind of innovation that's happening under the auspices of the institute and in partnership with us.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

It's absolutely foundational. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Kormarnicki.

You have a minute and a half.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Okay, thank you very much.

Obviously in Saskatchewan with the economy doing very well, there's been a fair amount of immigration and there have been settlement funds for settlement and integration. I think it's very important that those types of funds are allocated and they're allocated in accordance with some flexibility as the need grows. But in Quebec, I understand that through a particular funding formula a certain amount goes to support settlement and immigration services as well.

Now it would be interesting to know, and perhaps you could share with us, if there has been a comparative study undertaken with respect to the types of services that are provided in Quebec compared to the rest of Canada, whether there are some best practices we can adopt from the practices in Quebec or visa versa, and what progress is being made in that regard, what steps are being taken.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

It's a very interesting question. I think we're all impressed. I haven't visited that many of them because they are delivered by the Quebec government, they're not managed by us, settlement service organizations in Quebec, but I think we're all impressed by the quality of the work that many of them do. And we do as a department try to bring settlement organizations together to share best practices.

We had a conference this past fall where I had the opportunity to speak. Quebec was represented at this conference and it was very clear that there is a level of expertise in certain areas in Quebec that other provinces don't necessarily have. I would underline how generous the provisions of the Canada-Quebec Accord are. It dates from 1991, but unlike the funding for the other provinces—