Thank you very much, Mr. Chairperson, and welcome to all members of the committee.
We have submitted our written brief in advance, as the other organizations have.
Our three principal recommendations are, first, that immigration fees should be forgiven for recent newcomers to Canada. By “recent” we mean within the last five years. We are very fortunate in Winnipeg to have a large number of newcomers coming into the province. This is a result of both federal policies and much reinforced provincial policies. Many immigrants in the economic class and many refugees are coming to Winnipeg. But unlike in the past, when the experience was generally a positive one, when immigrants came in and began to earn income, we are now finding many, many recent immigrants—and thus their children—ending up in poverty. We are just about to release a report at the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg detailing this with Statistics Canada figures, mostly from the census.
In our brief we say that 31.9% of children in families in Manitoba with at least one parent as a recent immigrant—that is, within the last five years—fall below the after-tax low-income cut-off. The low-income cut-off, of course, is a statistical construct from StatsCan. It is not perfect, but as a measure of poverty it's not bad—and there is also a before-tax low-income cut-off. Now, if you look at that figure for Canada, it's actually even worse. Again, quoting from Statistics Canada, the Canadian figure shows that 35.9% of children of recent immigrants live in poverty, if one uses the after-tax low-income cut-off. Using the before-tax low-income cut-off, it's almost another 10%, at 44.2%.
These figures are not included in the brief, but because they give the national picture, I want to make sure we get them on the record. So the figures for Canada as a whole are worse than the figures for Manitoba, and these figures show that essentially one in three children of recent immigrants live in poverty.
Removing the newcomer fee is not a panacea. It's not a silver bullet or the end of all problems for newcomers to Canada, but it would remove this head tax, if you will. That's essentially what it is—we've reintroduced a head tax. It was cut in half fairly recently, but let's cut it to zero. Is it a significant source of income at $121 million? Of course, every penny counts when you're putting together the budget, but we think it's a measure that could easily be foregone. We think most Canadians aren't even aware there is this head tax. Most Canadians who are already here aren't paying it off. So we would say that a good investment in the future of these families, so they can do well in Canada, would be to remove this additional burden from them.
Our second recommendation is on employment insurance. I realize it's a bit controversial around the table as to what should happen to the employment insurance program, but we believe and know that the regional variations in this program were undertaken in good faith to recognize that some Canadians needed more help than others. Obviously, we believe that. We believe that given our diversity, both regionally and by income levels, we sometimes need to do that, but we don't think this particularly is the program where it should be done. So we would like to see a national 360-hour qualifying period of work for employment insurance. The honourable members are certainly aware of the number of Canadians who pay into the system, which is then not there for them when they want it. We say in our brief that they amount to 150,000 Canadians.
Am I out of time?