Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 19th, 2013

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Mr. Menegakis, you have approximately three minutes.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses for being here.

Mr. Kydd, my question is for you. You mentioned that the construction industry needs skilled and experienced workers, and the industry hasn't been that successful in penetrating the immigrant worker market, if you will.

In your opinion, how will the EOI system be able to facilitate immigrant construction workers specifically?

[Michael Kydd]

I thank the honourable member for his question.

We understand that this system is being replicated from a very successful model out of New Zealand and Australia. The numbers seem to indicate that over the past couple of years we've seen a rise in permanent long-term immigrants, from about 8,000 to about 20,000, just in New Zealand alone. Those are people who are entering the skilled trades because the demand is there and there's a process in place that's allowing them to fill those demands.

With New Zealand, for example, the request for construction workers is basically coming from two major populations: India and China, with China being the number one country. Since 1999, the Chinese have had 20% growth in the construction industry, year over year. They have approximately 24.1 million people working in the construction industry alone.

What we've seen is that countries who have adopted this model are recognizing those niche markets. They are able to pull those workers in and offer them employment and stability within their respective regions and within the respective supply and demand force.

I think the EOI model allows that system to flourish by being able to work together.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Wallace, I pass the question over to you, sir.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much.

To Mr. Kurland, very quickly, it's on a completely different topic, in a sense. I agree with you on information sharing, particularly from CRA.

You're an immigration worker, is that correct?

[Richard Kurland]

Yes, sir.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Based on your support of information sharing, to be able to make decisions and not force employers to repeat things.... We have another ministry whose responsibility is to find those who come to this country, who have applied for landed immigrant status, have now been denied it and are on the lam, let's say, or they're here illegally. That organization, the public safety ministry, does not have access, for example, to CRA records to see if those people are paying taxes and where they're living, so we can find them and send them on their way.

Are you in favour of CRA being able to release that information to that organization?

[Richard Kurland]

No.

For practical reasons, the CRA senior people have advised me year after year that it may interfere with the integrity of their revenue collection potential. People need to know, even if they're doing bad things, that CRA will not share information with law enforcement.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Thank you very much. Time has expired.

Mr. Kurland, once again, thank you very much for appearing before this committee.

Before wrapping up our meeting, I would like to give you one last message.

At our next meeting, committee members will have an opportunity to recommend amendments to the Standing Committee on Finance. You will make our job much easier if you send your amendments to the clerk 24 hours in advance. If you don't, please bring copies of your amendments in both official languages so that they can be circulated to the members of the committee. Once again, the purpose is to make this committee's job easier.

Thank you very much, colleagues, for your cooperation.

The meeting is adjourned.