Finance Committee on May 12th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

We have the witnesses here and we have the committee members, so with that we'd like to call the meeting to order.

We'd ask that the cameras leave the room.

Today we have two panels--one taking us from 3:30 to 4:30, and the other one from 4:30 to 5:30.

We're dealing with Bill C-50, and on our first panel it's our privilege to have with us the Canadian Arab Federation. I will introduce you and then yield you the floor at the appropriate time.

I will start by introducing Mr. Boudjenane. I believe you have with you Ms. Sherazee. It's good to have you both here.

The floor is yours. You have seven minutes.

[Mohamed Boudjenane, Executive Director, Canadian Arab Federation]

Thank you very much.

My name is Mohamed Boudjenane. As you said, I'm the executive director for the Canadian Arab Federation. With me is our legal counsellor, Amina Sherazee.

I'd like to thank you for the invitation.

Briefly, just to give you a little bit of information about our organization, the Canadian Arab Federation is a national non-profit, membership-based organization representing Canadians of Arab descent on public policy issues. Since its founding in 1967, CAF has sought to create a non-partisan relationship with the media and government officials in order to highlight issues of importance to the Arab community, including those concerning immigration and refugee protection rights.

The Arabs in Canada have been here for a while. The first wave of Arab immigrants came here in 1880, from the Syrian and Lebanese communities. But of course we receive newcomers on a regular basis, and according to Statistics Canada, the Arab immigrants now are one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations in Canada. According to Stats Canada, we have between 350,000 and 500,000 Arab immigrants or Canadians of Arab descent. Recently, in Quebec, for example, this immigrant population increased 45% since 2000, especially in the Montreal region. Those people, of course, come from north Africa--mainly Morocco, Nigeria, and Tunisia.

Arabic is the second most frequently used language in francophone schools in the Montreal region. It is a rapidly growing community, and it has very serious concerns. For the past three years we have, unfortunately, been witnessing a particular phenomenon: a sharp drop in the number of Arab immigrants, and more particularly, refugees. The waiting lists are longer for these communities. One has the impression that the Arab and Muslim world is being subjected to a system that is different than the one that is used for other immigrant communities, because of the so-called anti-terrorism measures that were instituted after September 11, 2001.

We are not here—with all due respect to the democratic process and the invitation that was extended to us—to validate or endorse today's exercise. We feel that this bill, or at least the section of the bill dealing with immigration, should be debated separately. Part 6 of Bill C-50 should become a separate bill, since, in our opinion, the proposed changes should not be taken lightly in view of their wide- ranging effects on Canada's immigration system.

Therefore, we are not here today to validate the work of this parliamentary committee. However, we do have serious concerns and we would like to share them with you. We feel that the powers being sought by the government—and particularly by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration—are arbitrary and completely unprecedented. Unfortunately, we do have some concerns relating to the Arab and Muslim community. We feel that these measures could eventually lead to racial profiling. As I have already said, there are clear and rather distinct trends to indicate that immigrants from the Arab and Muslim world are being processed differently from those originating from other communities.

Also, we feel that an emphasis on what is being called an economic type of immigration challenges the fundamental values of Canada's immigration system. Economic considerations have never been the sole determining factor in Canada's immigration policy. Through immigration, Canada has always sought first and foremost to build and create this multicultural, diversified and multi-denominational country. We believe that an emphasis solely on business immigrants will eventually affect other immigrants, particularly those who are in the family reunification category.

The minister has stated that this type of immigration should be stimulated in order to maintain Canada's dynamic economy. We share the same view, and feel that the first step should be to tackle problems related to discrimination and the barriers that prevent immigrants here from accessing employment. I can give you a list of 250 doctors who have settled in the Montreal area, who are of Arab origin, and who have passed all of the tests that are required for them to practice here, yet they cannot work because no hospital wants to take them on as interns.

I can also give you a list of 1,000 foreign-trained doctors living in Toronto who have not yet found employment. If the government is really serious about employment access for foreign-trained immigrants, then it should take this situation seriously.

We are not against bringing in experts from the oil and gas sector, perhaps to help Alberta's economy or whatever, but there should be an objective approach when dealing with business immigration.

Moreover, we feel that this bill does nothing to help with the backlog in the system and the long waiting lists that the government claims to want to deal with. As you know, changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act will only affect people who apply after February 2008. Therefore, the argument in this case does not hold water.

Finally, I would simply like to tell you that we have not come here only to criticize, but to make a constructive contribution to the debate on immigration. We feel that if the government truly wishes to be inclusive and democratic, it will split this bill, make part 6 a separate bill, and consult with communities such as ours.

I will now ask our legal advisor to discuss the clauses that are of particular concern to us and the fundamental changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move on to Mr. David Cohen, as an individual. He is an immigration lawyer....

I'm sorry, Ms. Amina Sherazee, you have a little more time. Go ahead.

[Amina Sherazee, Legal Counsellor, Canadian Arab Federation]

I too want to hear my colleague David Cohen. I understand he has some very interesting comments to make to this committee.

I have set out the basis for our organization's concerns with respect to this bill in our policy paper. I would commend the entire paper to you and would ask you to read it closely. I don't have the time to go through it, but there are very important points that need to be made, which will expand upon our reasons for taking the position we have with respect to Bill C-50, and in particular part 6.

There are ten parts to this bill, and nine out of the ten deal with fiscal matters, money matters. Then we have part 6. The rest of the bill deals with money matters, and we seriously question why it is that this government has disingenuously--and, in our submission, deceitfully--snuck in IRPA amendments to this bill that otherwise concerns money matters.

This leads us to our submission that, if you examine the provisions, if you examine the actual proposals, they neither give power that the minister doesn't already have with respect to....

I would respectfully request committee members to allow me to make my submission. I only have seven minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Actually, it's seven minutes per organization. You're with the Canadian Arab Federation, so there are seven minutes for the two of you.

[Mohamed Boudjenane]

We were told that we had seven minutes per person.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

No, it's per organization.

[Amina Sherazee]

Then I can save my comments for questions.

I would commend the report to you and would welcome your comments.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

That's fine. We'll have more time for questioning, so we'll be able to get it in that way. Maybe that would be the fairest way to continue.

Now we'll move on to Mr. David Cohen.

Mr. Cohen, the floor is yours.

[David Cohen, Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I asked to appear before you today because of a story that my late grandfather told me when I was young and impressionable. He spoke of how his younger sister fled Poland just ahead of the Nazi occupation and how she managed to secure a residency permit in England, valid for one year. My grandfather did everything he possibly could to convince immigration authorities in Ottawa to allow her to join him in Canada. His plea, however, fell on deaf ears. The door to Canada was shut. In the end, his sister was expelled from England back to Poland. She was never heard from again.

Truth be told, we haven't always had an immigration policy to be proud of. I have been practising immigration law for the better part of 30 years, and I state candidly to you that it was only in 2002, with the introduction of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA as it's known, that decisions based on discretion were removed from the immigration selection system, at least as it pertains to economic immigrants.

IRPA, in its present form, is a fine piece of legislation in which the selection of economic immigrants is based purely on objective criteria. It is based on the fundamental principle that everyone who chooses to submit an application to come and live in Canada is entitled to fair and equitable consideration.

The government is now proposing to amend IRPA. As part of the proposed changes, the Minister of Immigration would have the authority to issue instructions to immigration officers related to the processing of applications. More specifically, there are instructions as to which type of applications to process quickly, which applications to hold for processing at a later date and, most importantly, which type of applications to return to sender without any consideration whatsoever.

These amendments, if passed, would change our immigration selection system from one that provides fair consideration to all applications in the order they are received to a system based upon discretionary selection and outright denial of consideration. This would expose the immigration system to the type of discretion that IRPA finally eliminated.

Please understand that the issuance of instructions by the minister will not magically change anything. In practice, the minister will have to delegate the exercise of discretion to immigration officers who will pick and choose the applications to be processed. This will unavoidably make Canada's selection system vulnerable to human bias, or worse.

Don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for Canadian immigration officers who, as a group, are professional and fair-minded. That said, I would like to place into the record a copy of the message posted on the public forum located on my law firm's website as a practical example of the danger of discretionary selection. I'm going to quote from the beginning of the posting on our forum:

Here you will read the RANTing of a Canadian Immigration Officer. I've HAD IT!!!! I am so sick and tired of dealing with all the liars, cheats, frauds etc. This line of work has tainted me to the point that I can't even look at most immigrants anymore without pre-judging them as losers.

The person purporting to be an officer--and I'm satisfied that the person is an immigration officer--continues on to denigrate a particular ethnic group, and then concludes by stating,Well this felt good to rant a bit and I'll probably do more of this...but for now I have to go and deny a few people entry to my country.

This is the danger when discretion is allowed back into the immigration selection system. It's real, and it will affect people.

The minister states that these amendments are required to streamline and modernize the immigration system. In particular, the government intends to use the amendments to clear out the current backlog consisting primarily of 600,000 skilled worker applications. In addition, the government contends that the amendments are necessary in order to bring applicants whose skill sets are in high demand in Canada to the front of the immigration line.

In fact, these proposed amendments are not required to achieve the desired goals. IRPA, in its present form, contains the mechanisms to control the flow of economic immigrants and to bring applicants desired by Canadian employers to the front of the immigration line. IRPA does it objectively and transparently.

Please allow me to explain. Simply put, the backlog exists because the number of new applications received every year is more than the number of visas issued during the year. We can all understand that. One of the IRPA regulations foresees this eventuality. It empowers the minister to set the minimum number of points required to qualify as a skilled worker, keeping in mind the number of applications currently being processed versus the target number of immigrant visas to be issued.

The minister may, therefore, simply raise the pass mark above the current level of 67 points to curtail the number of fresh applications. People can count. They won't pay $550 in government processing fees only to be refused on the merits of their application--but the merits of their application will be considered.

The minister may also make use of restricted occupations, as provided for in another IRPA regulation. After conducting the appropriate consultations with provincial governments and other relevant stakeholders, the minister may designate as “restricted” certain occupations for which there is little demand in the Canadian labour market. Potential applicants with experience in restricted occupations would receive no points for their work experience, which would prevent them from qualifying under the skilled worker category. They would therefore have no incentive to apply. This would ensure that Canada selects a higher number of immigrants who meet the immediate labour market needs.

Finally, the present legislation allows for arranged employment in Canada. A genuine job offer from a Canadian employer entitles an applicant to an immediate temporary work permit or accelerated processing of the permanent resident application. This allows the best and brightest to be brought to the head of the immigration queue.

To summarize, IRPA currently provides the mechanisms that permit the government to achieve all of its goals--namely, cutting through the existing backlog of skilled worker applications and prioritizing the processing of applicants whose work experience is in high demand. IRPA is fair, and it could work.

I don't know if I have any time left, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of notes about the backlog in general, and it would only take another minute.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Okay, very, very quickly. I'll allow it.

[David Cohen]

Very quickly, the subject of backlogs is complicated, and it's more complicated than meets the eye. The government gives us the impression that the backlog is a single line of 600,000 skilled worker applicants stretching as far as the eye can see. In fact the reality is very different. Some visa offices, like the one in New Delhi, have huge backlogs, with a five-year wait just to be considered. Other visa offices, like the one in Buffalo, can process an application to conclusion in under two years.

The situation is a direct result of the fact that the minister sets yearly targets for visa issuance at each visa office and assigns the resources necessary to achieve those targets. Therefore, the total number of pending applications is not the only aspect of the equation to consider. The allocation of resources is also an integral part of the problem. Perhaps the situation requires a redistribution of resources to the visa offices with the longest processing times instead of completely shutting the door.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

And thank you very much.

We'll now move on to our last presenter, the Canadian Urban Transit Association. We have Michael Roschlau, and Louise Poirier is with him.

I don't know how you're going to split it up, but the floor is yours for seven minutes.

[Michael Roschlau, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Urban Transit Association]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you so much for the invitation.

It's my privilege to serve as the president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, the organization that many of you may have come to know as CUTA.

With me is a member of our executive committee, Louise Poirier, who is our vice-chair, municipal councils.

I say it's my “privilege” to serve as CEO of the association because I feel passionately that serving CUTA's mandate of establishing public transit as the primary solution to urban mobility in Canada is at the cutting edge of public policy in this country, and touches so many of the important issues of the day.

As MPs, if you think about climate change or clean air, transit is front and centre as a solution. If you think about increasing our economic competitiveness based on efficient travel and commuting, you have to think of transit. If you think of healthy living and quality of life for the majority of Canadians, again, transit is there. Picture this: one city bus carries as many people as 50 cars, and one commuter train can replace 15 lanes of traffic.

I'm sure many committee members have also heard from constituents about the increasing cost of gasoline. Again, transit is the solution.

I'd also like to underscore that our transit systems have never been more optimistic about the future of public transit in this country. I can tell you from travelling across Canada that our members are engaged with the public, and there is a new spirit of cooperation about building and achieving greater things for Canada based on improved public transit.

Louise.

[Louise Poirier, Vice President, Municipal Councils, Canadian Urban Transit Association]

Now it is my turn to speak.

You know that the public is realizing that using urban transit improves the quality of life for everyone. Moreover, people who work in urban transit regularly tell me that the public is now in favour of more investment in mass transit. The fact that the government has shown more leadership in urban transit serves to strengthen the public resolve. I can say without any hesitation and quite impartially that in recent years, all federal parties have played a great role in championing urban transit. They have been true leaders when it comes to funding, tax measures and other public interest policies related to urban transit.

For example, we would never have been invited to this committee 10 years ago to discuss urban transit, and the federal government would not have considered it to be part of its jurisdiction. Fortunately, times have changed, and all of the party leaders with whom we have met on numerous occasions have demonstrated that they support federal involvement in mass transit. We would therefore like to thank all of the parties for the leadership that they have shown on this issue.

We have already accomplished a great deal together, but there is still much work to be done.

[Michael Roschlau]

This brings us to the essential element of the bill before you today: the establishment of the public transit capital trust and the investment of $500 million. This is an extraordinarily important investment and is part of what leads to the optimism about public transit that we referred to earlier.

The public supports investment in transit. This funding will make a real difference to allowing transit systems across Canada to meet the growing demand and growing expectations. The investment is good for the environment, the economy, and healthy living.

That said, many pundits, politicians, and the media have raised the issue as to whether or not this is enough to meet the needs of Canadians and the needs of public transit. This is an important question, but in a sense it's less important than the question of how can we move forward to build world-class transit infrastructure and service in Canada? How can we do better?

Clearly cash injections are positive, but they have severe limitations. They're unplanned, and in an industry that requires long-term planning for capital projects, that poses problems. Regional considerations are also much more difficult to manage with a one-time spending process. So while the investments made in this bill provide real value, there's a better way for future spending.

Canada remains the only G-8 country without a national policy of long-term, predictable, dedicated trends in investment. This prevents Canadian transit systems from achieving their full potential. Together with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, CUTA is urging the implementation of a national transit strategy.

The proposed strategy has five elements: dedicated federal investment to maintain, renew, and expand transit services across the country; federal tax incentives for individuals who choose transit, such as an income tax exemption for employer-provided transit benefits; support for research to enable innovation and make transit operations more effective and more efficient; a requirement for recipient communities to approve integrated land use and transportation plans that make transit the primary means of serving future growth and travel demand; and finally, intergovernmental cooperation to ensure that accountability measures are in place.

[Louise Poirier]

In closing, Mr. Chairman, since I am a member of the executive committee of the Canadian Federation of Municipalities as well as that of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, I can tell you how important it is—and we all feel the same way—for Canada to have a national urban transit strategy.

Moreover, the increase in ridership levels demonstrates that the public is ever more willing to use mass transit. In Canada, in the past five years, the number of riders has increased by 10%. As chair of the Société de transport de l'Outaouais, which is just across the river, I can tell you that our ridership has increased by 60% over the past 10 years. We are experiencing a crisis, since we must manage a growth that is beyond our financial capacity.

I will close by saying that Canada's urban transit network requires stronger leadership from the federal government, in partnership with provincial and municipal governments, in order to achieve an effective long-term plan for urban transit.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much for your presentations. We'll now move on to the question-and-answer part.

We'll start with Mr. Turner. You have seven minutes.

[Garth Turner, Liberal, Halton, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you very much to our guests for coming here today. We appreciate the effort.

My first question is for our witnesses from the Canadian Arab Federation. You've come here today and been given seven minutes, on a panel of three groups, to discuss an issue that deals with the immigration policy of our country.

Do you feel this process is giving legitimacy to what you have to say? Are you satisfied by what you're part of right now?

[Amina Sherazee]

No. Actually, one of the concerns we have is with respect to the process itself. The reason is that we are appearing before the finance committee; with all due respect, you do not necessarily have the expertise or the history in this area.

Second, we have not been given adequate time and we have not been given adequate ability to make presentations. Radical changes are being made. In fact, these are some of the most important changes that are being proposed by this government, and it's being done in a very quick manner. As I mentioned earlier, they're being snuck into a fiscal policy, which is a really big concern. I think it has raised a lot of eyebrows.

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist; this is what we're hearing in our community. Why are they doing it in this manner? Why are they railroading these changes in this manner?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I want to let the committee know--this won't cut into your time--that Mr. Cohen has to leave for the immigration committee, because they're studying this, and we're looking for information coming back from the immigration committee. So if you have any questions for him, please be aware that he'll be leaving at 4:20.

Go ahead, Mr. Turner.

[Garth Turner, Liberal, Halton, ON]

I think your first recommendation to our group was that this bill should not be presented in the form that it is being presented. You believe it should be split into two bills, with a separate immigration bill. Is that correct?

[Mohamed Boudjenane]

Yes, that's right.

[Garth Turner, Liberal, Halton, ON]

Do you have an opinion, coming here today, as to why my colleagues across the way refused to do that? Have you had any feedback from the government as to why they will not--

[Mohamed Boudjenane]

We're not here to comment on political decisions. This is up to the government to decide, but I think the most concerning element in what we're hearing from the government side is the fact that even if we're going through this exercise, even if the immigration committee apparently had a motion to look at it, at the end of the day they're not going to change one iota from this piece of legislation.

So it's confusing not just for our communities, in terms of being invited here and presenting, but also for the parliamentary system as a whole. Why are we debating it if the government, at the end of the day, is not willing to change anything?