Finance Committee on April 28th, 2008

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

A lot of very qualified people are getting left behind. They won't even bother applying to come here, because they don't stand a chance of being processed in a timely manner. That's what we're trying to correct.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I agree that long wait times are a problem. It is an old problem that came from the former Liberal government.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

That's what we're trying to fix.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

You have ads out there saying that you're doing all this because of the long wait. These ads are deceptive. Bill C-50 won't have any impact on the 925,000 applicants who are backlogged. Even if this bill passes, it won't affect those who applied before February 27, 2008. There's no backlog on student visas or work permits. Yet Bill C-50 says your department will have the right to reconsider these applications. Even if they qualify for a visa, you are taking their right to a visa. There's no backlog. Why would you change this rule so it affects everybody else? It doesn't make sense, and these ads are deceptive.

The community is saying it's damaging, it's dangerous. Yesterday, I heard another D word, which is “dumb”. So you have your three Cs and the community has three Ds. That seems to be the comment out there.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

I guess there are a couple of things we need to clarify.

Number one, there are literally millions of people in China and in India alone who qualify for admission to this country. That doesn't mean we can accept them all. We have a finite capacity to absorb newcomers, whether it's because of our settlement funding--which we have dramatically increased--or, more importantly, because of things like our hospitals, our infrastructure, our housing, and jobs for these people. We cannot accept everyone who is “qualified” to come here. And coming here isn't a right; it is a privilege. We have a finite capacity to process the applications, to accept these people, and to have them be successful. We have to recognize that.

With the backlog, the courts have ruled that we must process existing applications under the rules that were in place when the applicants applied, and we'll be following the law. But that's where a lot of our extra resources will go, to getting at that backlog.

We're going to be doing things smarter and better, because if we can put more people on the job, doing the job faster, we can get that backlog whittled down, especially if we put the cap on—

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Minister, I don't want to run out of time. My friend will be mad at me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I realize you want to split your time with Mr. Mulcair. We'll allow that.

You have two and a half minutes.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

On several occasions in her remarks, the minister has said that is not their intention, that that is not what they want to do. Does she realize that by saying that, she is admitting that it is possible? Does she realize, as the president of the Association québécoise des avocats et avocates en droit de l'immigration du Québec stated two weeks ago, that the most significant change made by her bill is the change from a safe system where it says “shall”, to a purely random, arbitrary system that opens the door to discrimination? What happens if the word “shall” is changed—people have a right if they meet all the criteria—to “may”? What she is proposing is purely arbitrary. And that is precisely what concerns the groups from the various cultural communities. Can she understand that?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

No, not at all. Putting forth discriminatory legislation is prohibited. We have the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The government, the department, as well as the minister must acknowledge the charter and comply with it. And the charter stipulates that their action must not be discriminatory.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Chairman, does the minister understand that she is putting in place a structure to replace a system that has withstood charter challenges on several occasions? She is replacing something reliable, solid, and valid, with something that is purely arbitrary. She says that the charter is one of the guarantees, but what right would an immigrant have if he is not here yet? What right would someone in another country have to challenge a decision under the charter? She is creating an opportunity to exclude people by category, even by country of origin. That is exactly what becomes possible under what she is proposing, and she completely destroyed her own argument at the start of her presentation today, when she told us that the problem was the obligation to process all applications in the order in which they arrive. In saying that, she is confirming that she wants people to be able to take the place of someone else ahead of them in the line. She is admitting to something shameful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

A quick question and a quick answer. Go ahead.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

So I get a chance to answer. Thank you.

Our objective is to help business stay in business, to make sure that the immigrants who are coming here get a chance to succeed in their jobs. That means matching their skills with our labour needs. That hasn't been done.

If I could draw an analogy, it would be like saying, “Okay, you're going to build Team Canada as a hockey team and you'll take the first 25 people in line.” That might seem fair because they lined up in that order. That's the way our immigration system works. But if you take the first 25, you might end up without a goalie. That's not going to meet the needs of the team. So what we're doing is trying to make sure that we do meet the needs of the team.

For example, medical professionals at the front of the line.... Out of some 400,000 a year, we're not going to be processing 400,000 medical professional applications. There may be 400; there may be 4,000. That leaves a lot of room for the other people who have applied, to have their opportunity to come here as well. But we have to be fair to the people who are in the line; otherwise we're soon going to be facing 10-year wait times.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I have a point of order. Making an analogy with a hockey team is the most absurd thing I have ever heard here in the Canadian Parliament.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

No, I'm sorry, that's out of order, Mr. Mulcair.

We'll move on.

Mr. Menzies, you have seven minutes.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for coming here today.

I need to clarify with you, and I'm sure you will understand, that Ms. Chow's comments about groups not understanding this is not an accurate reflection of what many of us have heard in our meetings with groups. We have heard that indeed they do understand what is happening here and why it's happening. I'm sure we all have our own little horror story, if you will, from constituents.

I was elected at the same time you were, Minister, and one of the first issues I dealt with was family reunification. Maybe it's my failing—I don't know—but it still hasn't happened. So that's almost four years for one example of why the backlog isn't working. I congratulate you for putting this forward.

I tend not to deal in the past, but I can't help but ask—and you probably have a better understanding—what created this backlog. What is there in the system? What requirements in the system created such a backlog that we're dealing with?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

There are a number of factors. A few years ago there were 50,000 people in the backlog. When IRPA, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, was brought in, in 2002, we had a flood of applications in anticipation of that bill. Unfortunately, the bill as it was written requires us to deal with every single application, and some people put in more than one. So even if we have accepted an individual on their first application, if they've got two or three others in other streams or under related addresses or other names or whatever, we still have to go through and do the paperwork on each and every one. We have no control over the intake, the number of applications we receive.

It would be as if you had a policy to return every telephone call you received, but you could do it only in the sequence in which you received them. If you received a call from, say, somebody who called you five times, you would have to call them back five times. If you had a call from a family member on an urgent matter, it wouldn't matter. You would have to call them back in the order in which calls were received. So the system as it stands is totally inflexible. Not only does it not respond to our labour market needs, but frankly, it isn't fair, because it makes people wait for way too long to find out even if they're eligible to come. The really good ones have a tendency to go elsewhere, where they feel more welcome.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you.

You referred to Advantage Canada, and I think this is something we need to emphasize. This is part of a plan that was put forward in 2006. As you know, I come from Alberta, and we have a tremendous labour shortage in our part of the world, as I understand Ontario still has. How is this plan going to fix that problem for my province and yours?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Well, it will be in two ways. Number one, we're not looking at these changes in isolation. We have a total vision for immigration. Because of the huge backlog and the impact it's having, we're having to develop a number of workarounds to meet the needs of industry and to meet our other obligations. One of the things we've done is to expand the temporary foreign worker program rather considerably. We welcomed some 130,000 temporary foreign workers last year. We're recruiting foreign students because they contribute $4 billion to our economy, and by getting credentials here, they have the skills we want, so they can stay here.

So we're going to be making it easier for both those groups to apply for permanent residence from within the country, without having to go home and wait six years to think about coming back here. That's a new program called the Canadian experience class that we'll be launching next summer.

So we're doing a number of things to try to meet the needs of industry. Let's face it, if foreign students have Canadian credentials, why send them away? Let's keep them here. They go to school, get to know the town, meet someone, fall in love, and want to settle. Let's keep that talent here. Meanwhile, let's keep whittling down the backlog. Let's improve our processes. Once we get through the oldest of the files, each application on average will take less time. We'll be able to accelerate. With more people on the job doing it better and faster, we will eventually be able to process all applications faster and get everyone here in a timely and internationally competitive way.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

So you think this will give us the flexibility we need, as we heard before, to reunite families—that has to be a priority—as well as to fill this skilled labour gap we have.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

It will also be supplemented by our expansion of the provincial nominee programs, where we've been lifting the caps on the PNPs, so that each region, like Alberta, can identify the specific people they need, which may be quite different from the people who Nova Scotia or Ontario needs. Frankly, in my part of the world we don't have the big oil sands activities that you have, but we do have other challenges. So we're trying to make sure the systems are flexible enough to meet all the needs across the country.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Good.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Go ahead, Mr. Wallace.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Minister, for coming, and I appreciate your coming to Burlington last week and explaining to our constituents in Burlington what changes you're proposing.

We heard earlier through some of the questioning that some critics of the approach are assuming that we can just throw money at the immigration system. Maybe you can highlight for me why these are unrealistic, in terms of the assumptions they're making about throwing money at the problem, and why this approach is simply just not really feasible at this time.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

There are a couple of parts to that answer.

Number one, if we just throw money at it, we're throwing it into a big dark hole, because we're dealing with a fundamentally broken system. We could actually double the size of the department by spending billions of dollars and it would still take four years to chew up the backlog, assuming there was no increase in it, assuming the number of applications we received each year matched the total we process. With the rules we're given to work with right now, if we were to speed that up, we would be attracting more applications, so we'd have to put more money into it, which would generate more applications, more money. It would become a relentless spiral. It's already out of control. We don't need that. That's why we have to change the system itself. You just have to do it better; you have to do it smarter.

We need the flexibility, because, quite frankly, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act of 2002 was designed to protect the domestic labour market. We need to give it the flexibility so that it can respond to changing Canadian conditions, changing world conditions, as they change, and it needs to have a shelf life of more than three to five years, which this existing one has proven it has.