Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm pleased to have received your invitation to testify on the immigration measures in Bill C-38, part 4, although it's a very small part of a rather large pie.
For background, I'm an economist who has studied immigration issues. I collaborated with Professor Herbert Grubel to do a study for the Fraser Institute, which estimated that since 1987, immigration has been costing the Canadian government $16 billion to $23 billion per year.
I'm also on the advisory board of the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform. This is a new organization that was established to advocate for immigration policies that are more in Canada's economic interest. We believe it makes no sense to continue to bring in so many immigrants every year when there are so many Canadians unemployed and immigrants are performing so poorly in the labour market. Our view is that immigration should be used only to complement the existing workforce in Canada and not to provide a quick source of cheap labour for employers that discourages Canadians from entering the labour market.
We also believe we should rely on our own education and training infrastructure, which is among the best in the world, to meet our labour needs, and we believe it's capable of doing so. We also think we should only rely on temporary foreign workers in exceptional circumstances. It shouldn't have been blown up the way it has in recent years, as almost a first supply of labour for many employers.
For more than 20 years, the performance of immigrants has been deteriorating from what it was in the past. Immigrants were able to come, and after a period of adjustment they were able to gradually adapt and earn as much as other Canadians. It's been only since the Conservative government came in during 2006 that serious efforts have been made to address this problem.
You're all aware of Bill C-51, in 2008, to deal with the huge backlog that had built up following the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act back in 2001. There were three sets of ministerial instructions.
Important measures have been introduced by the government that we think are very good. There is the Canada experience class, particularly recent attempts to put more emphasis on arranged employment and job and language skills in immigrant selection. Also, there are the Bill C-31 reforms to help fight human smuggling and protect Canada's immigration system, and of course the other measures to combat fraud, including marriage and refugee fraud. It's important that people have confidence in the function of our immigration system if it's going to continue to have political support.
Turning now to the immigration policy changes in Bill C-38, part 4, in spite of the steps taken, the backlog problem has persisted. There was no real evidence that the performance of recent immigrants was improving in general, except for maybe those with arranged employment or some of the federal skilled worker groups.
The backlog has threatened to undermine the efforts made in improving immigrant selection. You have a group of people you've committed to bring in who were selected under old rules, and they're getting older every year. You have a waiting time of up to 11 years, so by the time they get here, not only are they unsuitable, but they're much older than optimum immigrants would be.
As I pointed out when I appeared before the committee on immigration and citizenship last October, the only choice the government really had to prevent a further deterioration in immigrant performance and growing claims on the fisc was to legislate away the skilled worker backlog, which is what they're doing in this bill.
The government also needs the authority to deal with the issue of refunding the application fees. The minister of CIC requires the authority to issue the ministerial instructions needed to implement his proposed new immigrant selection procedures, since the old ones weren't working.
