I apologize for having come down the hall a minute or two late. We were under the misapprehension that a certain vote was still happening.
I am pleased to be here to present my department's supplementary estimates (A) for fiscal year 2013-2014 and to answer your questions together with two very talented deputy ministers from my department.
I am pleased to put the supplementary estimates in the context of the many positive reforms that we continue to implement to Canada's immigration system. These changes will help ensure that immigration has a more direct and positive impact on our economy. They will continue to reduce abuse of our immigration and asylum system and modernize the security dimension of our immigration system as the demands placed upon it by immigrants, by visitors, by students, and by business people continue to grow—and indeed need to grow for us to realize the growth potential of this country and to seize the moment that we are all very conscious deserves to be seized.
Supplementary estimates (B) include allocations that will help us continue to implement some of these important reforms, among them, and perhaps the most consequential, being an $8.4 million allocation to support the implementation of electronic travel authorization, or eTA. The eTA is a very quick online form for travellers who don't need visas to come to Canada. This simple process will help us to prevent criminals and terrorists from entering Canada and will protect the vast majority of legitimate travellers from being tied up in the bureaucracy and scrutiny that these higher-risk groups need to be subjected to.
Travel authorization for all visa-exempt passengers before ticket purchase will buttress Canada's security systems. It's a best practice. Many of our partners—maybe not many, but several—have it in full measure.
As you know, Mr. Chair, under the action plan on perimeter security and economic competitiveness, we committed to work with the United States to enhance the security of our borders, and eTA will allow us to screen visitors from countries that do not require a visa and who travel by air to Canada. The exception, of course, would be our American neighbours, who are with us inside the perimeter. Working together, our travel authorization systems will not only help to address possible security threats to North America, but they will also help us ease the flow of travellers who do not pose any potential risk to our countries. That's because we'll be able to identify and screen out inadmissible individuals while they're still overseas rather than when they arrive at a Canadian port of entry, which potentially represents a considerable cost savings as well.
Another commitment under the beyond the border initiative involves Canada and the U.S. working together to establish and coordinate entry and exit information systems. I know you have discussed these arrangements in this committee, and they have been raised at Public Safety as well. Under this initiative, Canada is developing a system to exchange land traveller information with the U.S. so that a record of land entry into one country is considered a record of exit from the other.
Once this system is in place, we will know who entered Canada and when they left, which is invaluable information when one is tracking the integrity of one's immigration and visitor visa system. This will provide my department with valuable, objective travel information that will assist with the processing of cases and identifying instances of fraud across multiple business lines.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada's supplementary estimates include an allocation of $1.2 million to upgrade our IT system to access entry and exit information.
To further protect our borders and safeguard our asylum system, $3 million is being allotted for the global assistance for irregular migrants program. This program furthers our government's commitment to combatting human smuggling, which regrettably and sadly is a profit-driven criminal activity that exploits vulnerable people and poses a threat to the integrity of our borders.
Through the program Canada is providing support to migrants who are intercepted as part of the destruction of a human smuggling operation. The program will also help manage the basic needs of intercepted migrants, ensuring that they have food, water, and shelter, as well as facilitate voluntary returns and reintegration in their country of origin.
As you know, Mr. Chair, under the 2012 budget implementation act passed by Parliament, CIC is terminating applications and returning fees paid by certain federal skilled worker applicants who applied before February 27, 2008. The elimination of this large backlog of applications will allow the department to focus on new applicants with the skills and talents our economy needs right now—talented people from around the world who will most successfully contribute to our future prosperity.
It also sets the stage for Canada's move from passive economic immigration to active recruiting under a new application intake system.
This relates to the dramatic reduction in processing times that we've seen for the federal skilled worker program, from seven or eight years at its peak in its legacy form we inherited from the previous Liberal government down to approximately one year now.
Mr. Chair, our number one priority remains the economy. Immigration is a key part of the government's plan to grow it, to spur job creation, and to ensure long-term prosperity for all Canadians. Our immigration plan for 2014 will help meet our economic needs by maintaining the highest sustained level of immigration in Canadian history.
As we continue to welcome record high numbers of immigrants, we are also committed to transforming the immigration system into one that is faster, more flexible and focused on meeting Canada's economic and labour market needs.
Let me emphasize that many of the immigration security measures being implemented by transfers made under these supplementary estimates (B) flow out of recommendations of this committee. If you look at electronic travel authorizations, the need for biometrics, migrant smuggling prevention, exit and entry, all of these relate to your previous studies, to your input, and so they are a matter of a high level of consensus within this Parliament and across Canada.
We have completely transformed the federal skilled worker program with new criteria to select skilled workers who will be better positioned to succeed and contribute to the Canadian economy. Let's keep in mind that the economic outcomes from our federal skilled worker program remain among the best we have, superior to almost every other immigration program in the country. We want them to stay that way.
We've also created new economic immigration programs that respond to emerging economic trends. Two have been launched this year alone. One of them is the start-up visa program, unique to Canada. It's a step to ensuring that entrepreneurs, particularly in the technology field, but anyone who wants to be part of this start-up nation, are cleared to become a permanent resident once they do a deal with a venture capital partner, an angel investor, or an incubator. This gives us a particular focus on innovation and entrepreneurship.
The other is the federal skilled trades program, created only in January in response to requests from Canadian employers to more quickly and efficiently bring to Canada skilled tradespeople to work in construction, transportation, manufacturing and service industries. The first ones, as you know, arrived in August.
Mr. Chair, these programs and our immigration system as a whole are vital to Canada's long-term economic health and to our competitiveness on the international stage and our long-term prosperity.
Immigration itself is a competitive field. The measures we are carrying forward with these estimates help us remain successful as we compete with other industrialized countries who must also rely on immigration to help fuel their economic growth. We want the best people to come here and not go there.
Our government fully believes that Canada can and should compete actively to attract the best and brightest newcomers to resettle here. To that end, as you all know, we've been working on a brand new recruitment model that will select immigrants based on the skills and attributes Canadian employers need. We're consulting the provinces, territories and employers on this new way of managing economic immigration applications that will create a pool of skilled workers to be matched to employers and who benefit from expedited processing.
We've discussed it here before. There will be two steps: firstly an indication of interest step, which will involve providing information electronically about skills, educational credentials, language ability, work experience, and other attributes. Those who meet the eligibility criteria will have their expressions of interest placed in a pool, placed in priority order, and ranked against others in the pool. Only the best candidates, including those with in-demand skills or job offers, will be invited to make a formal application for permanent residence.
It will be faster. We will only be inviting those in numbers we have the capacity to process. It will make our system dramatically better. Because candidates can only submit an immigration application if and when they are drawn from the pool and invited to apply, backlogs will become a thing of the past. We'll certainly be able to match application intake more efficiently to capacity and speed processing times
but that will be done through a well-established partnership with the provincial and territorial governments and with the private sector.
Mr. Chair, this new recruitment model is an effort to move from a passive approach to an active one, from the mechanical processing of applications in the order we receive them to the proactive selection of the people our economy needs from a very large pool of candidates—in other words, the best candidate, not the first one who applied.
Needless to say, it will be more responsive to Canada's ever-changing labour market needs and will help ensure that newcomers achieve greater success and make positive contributions to Canadian society as soon as possible after their arrival.
With these changes, Mr. Chair, we will remain on track to continue updating Canada's immigration program, modernizing it, and tailoring it to the needs of the 21st century economy, which moves at the speed of business and in which we compete with other potential countries with active immigration programs.
Thank you for your attention and for the opportunity to present. I look forward to your questions.
