Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 7th, 2013

[Maia Welbourne]

Again, depending on the stream, if you're hoping to hire somebody through a stream where there is an LMO requirement, then yes, you would be dealing with Service Canada, undergoing the advertising—

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Once I get that—

[Maia Welbourne]

Once you've got your LMO—

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Once I get that, then I access the folks on the EOI list, right?

[Maia Welbourne]

Then you're on job bank and that's one—

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

They access me.

[Maia Welbourne]

I'm not the expert on job bank or the plans, but my understanding of the way job bank currently works, and will work, is that in order for you, as an employer, to access job bank, you have to register and there are certain requirements. You don't register unless you've got a job to offer. All of that will continue to be the same. The idea is that, within that job bank frame, there will be a place for EOI candidates to post their interest in looking for work.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Lauzon.

Go ahead, Mr. Brown.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is on the EOI program. How are you going to market that abroad to make it sound exciting and cutting edge?

[Maia Welbourne]

We're developing plans to try to make it sound exciting and so on. One of the first things we're actually working on is finding a new name, because apparently EOI is not compelling enough. That's part of our marketing, but yes, there will be a communications approach to ensure that individuals are aware of the introduction of the new system. It will be linked with some work about why people should want to immigrate to Canada.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

With some of the historic immigration programs, one of the challenges we've had is backlogs. What plans do you have in place to ensure we won't have backlogs into the future with this program?

[Maia Welbourne]

Again, one of the fundamental goals of EOI is to eliminate or move away from a backlog situation. The ability to only invite applications from people to the number for whom we have available processing capacity and spots in our annual levels plan will prevent the accumulation of that kind of inventory of applications.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

There was mention earlier in one of the questions about the provincial nominee program. I just wanted to put it out there.

I understand that for 2014 the number of provincial nominees is between 44,000 and 47,000, which is the highest since 2006. I think that was one of the questions that might have caused some confusion. What type of support are you finding for this EOI from partner organizations? Is there a lot of support from the provinces? Has there been any opposition in the consultations you've done so far?

[Maia Welbourne]

We've been working very closely with the provinces and territories for well over a year, talking about EOI design and policy development. Those discussions are ongoing and have been very helpful and productive, and they will continue.

As well, we've had a number of opportunities to consult with employers and employer associations through a series of round tables that were held at the end of 2012. We also have what we're calling an employer technical reference group that's chaired by the RDG, which meets about quarterly, to keep them informed of our progress but with the ability to feed into our policy and design work.

I think there's good support and interest in EOI as a concept and lots of interest in continuing to be part of the discussions as the details get worked out.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you.

Chair, that covers my questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Madame Blanchette-Lamothe.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to ask a question before I hand the floor over to my colleague.

A little while ago, Mr. Weston mentioned a very widespread phenomenon he had observed in his riding. He referred to the situation of a doctor who, after immigrating to Canada, was working as a cab driver. That's a very common occurrence, but not necessarily because jobs in the medical field are lacking. That brings me to the matter of prior learning and recognition.

Will the program you told us about today change anything in that respect? Will it be easier for someone to have their prior learning recognized? Will individuals who come here under the EOI program have had their degrees or credentials recognized before arriving in Canada?

What can we do to prevent the phenomenon of new immigrants not finding jobs because they aren't able to have their degrees and skills recognized?

[Maia Welbourne]

I have two aspects to answer on that front.

The emphasis we're going to place is the importance of a job offer. Having employers able to provide job offers to these individuals in itself gets at part of that, in that presumably employers would not be offering jobs to individuals who are not qualified to undertake those jobs.

Going back to what I said previously, the EOI in itself doesn't change program structures or requirements. The work that is ongoing right now as related to foreign credential recognition will continue to go on within the department, and the EOI will be more of a reflection of whatever changes or developments happen there, rather than a driver for those changes.

I don't know if that's clear, but requirements related to entering under the federal skilled worker or federal skilled trades programs, or what have you, will be developed outside of the EOI context, but EOI necessarily as a pre-application stage for those programs will reflect any changes that are undertaken.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

As for the questions you weren't able to answer today, do you know when you will have more details for us? Right now, we have the basics on the program you're in the midst of setting up, but who's going to make the final decisions? When can we expect some information on that?

[Maia Welbourne]

Quite honestly, I think we'll be developing EOI in sort of phases between now and January 2015, when it's intended to be launched.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

With respect to that, if you have additional information for clarification, could you send that information to the clerk?

[Maia Welbourne]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Sitsabaiesan has a couple of minutes.

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

Thank you.

I'm not going to address the resourcing right now; I'm going to talk about the LMOs, because I don't think we have an answer for the resourcing.

We've seen the LMO system fail before in the context of the temporary foreign worker program. Can you expand on how this expression-of-interest system will work with respect to the LMOs and what safeguards will be put in place for this system to ensure that Canadians will have the first opportunity for the available jobs?

[Maia Welbourne]

I guess what I've been trying to explain is that EOI in itself doesn't change things related to program requirements or processes outside of it, so EOI in itself doesn't change the LMO requirements. Those requirements are related to the specific program streams that may be run through EOI. I guess what I'm saying is that.... There is a lot of discussion, as I'm sure you're aware, around things like the LMO. Whatever developments happen in that area between now and EOI being launched will be reflected in the EOI system once it does launch.