Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2013

[Prof. Patti Tamara Lenard]

I think that's exactly the spillover effect. The reason to have high-quality temporary labour migration programs, the reason to have fair refugee consideration strategies, is that, as I said in my opening comments, these people will find ways to cross borders. If you want to keep track of them and if you want to adjudicate their cases fairly, you need to have transparent and legal procedures by which they can make their cases to Canadian immigration.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Professor Lenard.

Mr. McCallum, you have up to three minutes. Let's hope no one notices we're past one o'clock.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks for the indulgence of my colleagues here.

To Professor Lenard, I think the phrase about Canada being a world leader is overused, often applied in areas where we're not world leaders at all. You said we were world leaders in immigration.

I think if you take a period of decades when we opened our country to non-Caucasian people from around the world, I would agree, but if you look at the situation today, I go back to my quote from the Mexican ambassador saying that we have the most stringent visa system for Mexicans of any country in the world. We're always looking to other countries for guidance. We seem to think Australia is doing better. The Mexican ambassador referred to these crazy questionnaires for Mexican business travellers. I guess my idea, my view, at least in this area is that we're not leaders at all.

My question for you is whether you think we have structural or systemic problems in our processes.

I agree with the particular recommendations made by committee members today, but does it go beyond that? It seems we have attitudinal issues that do not make us leaders in the world.

[Prof. Patti Tamara Lenard]

Thank you very much for that question. I am grateful to be able to say what I think, which is yes. I wrote that sentence yesterday, that Canada is a world leader, and then I added, using track changes, “but this is at risk”. I think you have identified features of that risk.

The reason we were a world leader was that we abandoned racial considerations when admitting immigrants, but—and I've been writing about this a lot—some of the most recent changes, in fact—and I don't even know how to say this—are nearly completely crazy to me. We have a temporary labour migration program that is effectively modelled on the German system. We know historically what happened to the German system of guest workers. Those people ended up marginalized and isolated at the margins of German society. That's a lesson right there, and for whatever reason, we're not understanding, we're not learning that lesson. In fact, what we're doing is the government has created a visa overstayer problem.

Simply put, that is evidence that we are no longer the world leader. If we're going to regain that status, we need to look inward, not simply at the economic considerations of immigration, which, in my view, is what the government has been doing, but at the general contribution. I'm not the only one on this committee who thinks we need to have a discussion about the overall contribution that immigrants make. It goes nearly without saying that immigrants should not simply be measured in terms of their economic value or their economic cost.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you. I'm sorry, sir—

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

I assure you, that was not a planted question, but I like the answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Of course it wasn't, and I would never suspect or challenge you on that.

Mr. Collacott, Mr. Bissett, it's always a pleasure to have you here. Professor Lenard, I hope we see you again. You have all given excellent counsel, and we appreciate that very much. Thanks for coming.

This meeting is adjourned.