Evidence of meeting #43 for Finance in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was immigration.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President, Canadian Ethnocultural Council
I would obviously have to find more than the $27 million that's been.... How much is it...?
We obviously need to identify those applications that clearly qualify. We do background checks on them, we ensure they're medically fit, and we give them visas. We don't wait three to five to six years to call them in for a ten-minute interview and then say yes, everything checks out. That's one way you can reduce the backlog.
As far as who's in the backlog, we have 900,000 or 950,000. I can speak only from personal experience. Very few of my clients actually withdraw their application. Most of them stick it out for the long haul because they want to come to Canada. They want to be Canadians. They want to contribute to Canada's economy.
So there are ways one can expedite these applications. Mr. Bissett is right on--it's going to take a long time. Even if the minister adapts some of what I'm saying, it's still going to take a lot of manpower and a lot of money to do this, but it doesn't take as much money and manpower if we target those applicants who are truly qualified.
The other thing is that while I applaud the idea of bringing these people over on a work permit in the short term to get them here ASAP, I'm afraid we'll have a lot of people here on temporary work permits who possibly never get landed. They may be here three years or four years, and then goodbye.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Thank you very much.
Now we'll move on to Mr. Tweed, if there are no objections. We don't have a paper for Mr. Tweed, but if there are no objections to his doing questions--and I see none--the floor is his.
Mr. Tweed, you have five minutes.
Conservative
Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I seem to have a lot of paper in front of me, but whether it's relevant or not....
Mr. Ferreira, I have a couple of questions. You're a lawyer?
Conservative
President, Canadian Ethnocultural Council
I'm a former senior immigration officer. I'm duly licensed by the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants. I'm not a lawyer.
Conservative
Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
So basically your responsibility is to provide services for immigrants.
President, Canadian Ethnocultural Council
Exactly. I specialize in immigration.
Conservative
Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
But you don't litigate against the department or anything like that?
Conservative
President, Canadian Ethnocultural Council
No. In fact, I've been very loyal to the department. I was a loyal employee. I left because I wanted to leave. I wasn't dismissed. I left with two other immigration officers who had given approximately 15 years of their lives to the commission, as we used to call it. Now we use our experience to help people.
I speak from experience: Monday to Saturday basically all I do is immigration, as do a lot of the members of Parliament around this table. Maybe in some centres 80% to 90% of your constituency work involves immigration issues, so you're very well versed on the immigration problems we're confronting.
Conservative
Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Mr. Pang, I appreciate your comments. Previously I had the opportunity to serve on the immigration committee, in opposition. We saw the targets of these numbers continuing to grow. I think we're all challenged here to try to come up with the resolutions that resolve the problem, not necessarily create new problems.
Your organization has come forward supporting the bill. Obviously there was some concern within your organization, I would suspect. Was there anything specific or outstanding from your association in the opposition to your supporting this bill? Was there any concern that maybe it wasn't the right direction to go in?
Acting President, Chinese Canadian Community Alliance
No. Our only concern is that probably the backlog will not be decreased fast enough. That was why we put a question to the minister last week, during a press conference. In summation, her answer promises a right direction. It's probably not fast enough, but at least it seems to be leading in the right direction.
Conservative
Merv Tweed Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
I appreciate that.
I think a lot of people have said--and I think even Mr. Ferreira said it--that when it continues to grow and grow, obviously you start to question the direction the government is taking. I'm pleased that your association has endorsed what our government is doing, and I agree, if it's done as quickly as possible.
I refer to Mr. McCallum's comment about the $100-million-plus that we're going to invest over the next five years. If you look at the entire budget of immigration, it may be a small percentage, but if you look at the settlement costs or the actual funding put forward to assist this, it's probably quite a bit larger percentage of dollars. That's more for the record. I did want to clarify that.
Mr. Bissett, you talked about Australia duplicating our points system. You suggested that you were involved in the development of that program. If you were to look back today at when you were developing that program, what specific changes...? Are we not implementing it the way it was designed? Is there something you think we should or could be doing on top of this to fast-track it?
As an Individual
The selection criteria today are still in the point system, but the factors of selection have changed over the years. I think the most fundamental change, which I don't think was a good one, was the tremendous emphasis given to education as opposed to skills and occupations. It means, in effect, that a lot of highly skilled tradesmen can't get into Canada because they simply don't make the points. On the other hand, we're getting very large numbers of highly schooled academic people who can't find jobs when they get here. That would be one change that I would certainly recommend.
The other, and I think it's what this proposed regulation addresses, is that you have to have a system to control the numbers and the flow. Unless you do that, you're going to cause a great deal of hardship, and the building up of backlogs.
The original selection criteria did have a thermostat built in that slowed the movement down when the government wanted it slowed down and stepped it up when the government wanted it to go ahead. That mechanism is missing under the 2001 legislation. I said it was recognized by the government a year later. They tried to fix it by making the backlog people meet higher criteria than they had originally, and the courts threw that out.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
I want to thank you very much. Thank you for coming in and contributing to this part of the dialogue on Bill C-50.
I want to thank the committee for their questions today.
With that, we'll dismiss this part of the meeting. We'll suspend for two minutes as we say goodbye to our guests, and then we'll be back.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Could we have you take your seats for just a quick minute? There's nothing more on the agenda, and I don't want to belabour this meeting at all. I just want to give you a little bit of information.
The Monday we come back, we'll be having one more panel. I believe we have five more guests who will come on Bill C-50, and then we'll be going to clause-by-clause--as to your motion--on May 27, and hopefully will be tabling this bill on May 28.
On May 28 we'll be going to our next priority as a committee, which is asset-backed commercial paper. Our proposal is to have a list of five witnesses. We haven't invited them yet; it will be subject to their availability. But we want to have some of the sellers of this product as well as the group who negotiated the agreement on asset-backed paper here as a panel. And then we would move on to discerning what further meetings we would like with regard to asset-backed paper.
I think what we'll do is have one panel of five. If there's no objection to that, we'll move forward that way. With the subsequent meetings, we certainly are open to whoever the committee would like to hear from.
Mr. McCallum has a suggestion there, I'm sure.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
So your idea is that the first meeting should be a panel of five. Who are they?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
The sellers of the product, the asset-backed paper, as well as Mr. Purdy Crawford, and perhaps some of--
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
I would think, since Mr. Purdy Crawford agreed earlier to come and he was right at the centre of this, maybe he should come by himself.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
If you'd prefer that. We were thinking about this, and that's why I want to talk to you about it now. We could certainly have him for the first hour, and have the second hour with the sellers.
Would you prefer that?
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
I think he could give us a helpful overview, and I think we want to have the federal regulators at some point, clearly. I'm okay with the panel of sellers first.
Conservative
