Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Sandra Harder. I'm the director general for strategic policy at Citizenship and Immigration. I'm joined by my colleague David Manicom, Cam Carruthers from HRSDC, and Tamara Miller from Finance.
I'm going to make some opening remarks about four provisions in division 54, and then Mr. Carruthers is going to speak to some of the issues concerning the temporary foreign worker program. Then we're happy to answer questions the committee may have.
There are four key provisions in division 54 that refer to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The first one is the provisions that respond to those people who submitted an application in the federal skilled worker program before February 27, 2008. The provision in division 54 is to cease the processing of those applications and to refund all application fees and/or right of permanent residence fees that had been submitted at the time of the application, and to close those applications, thereby eliminating the oldest portion of the federal skilled worker backlog. That affects about 280,000 people—approximately 100,000 applications—because an application can have more than one person attached to it.
The second provision has to do with strengthening the authorities the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has with respect to ministerial instructions. This provision would allow for applying ministerial instructions to applications that are already on hand, as opposed to restricting them to new applications.
The third provision has to do with regulations. It would allow for new regulations to be applied to applications that are already on hand. This would allow for a more up-to-date provision of new policy directions with respect to applications that are already in the system.
The fourth provision would provide the ability to create targeted, small-scale economic programs to address current labour market pressures and needs. These programs are of a limited duration—up to a maximum of five years. They are also of a smaller number—the maximum number of applications that could be received under those programs would be 2,750. These programs would be evaluated. Should there be a decision to make them permanent, they would go into the regulatory process.
Those are the four key provisions.
There are two consequential amendments that are also outlined. These bring existing legislation in line with the proposals that are outlined here. Then there's some work that Cam will talk to you about with respect to the temporary foreign worker program.