Finance Committee on May 28th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I appreciate that.

We have a couple of minutes, and I want to move to Mr. Lauzière.

You and I have worked together on charitable issues for some time now, and you've been before this committee many times. I respect your work very much. Are you at all troubled by any of the information that has been revealed by Ms. Krause concerning U.S. foundations funding organizations in Canada, organizations that are, according to the information she's presenting, doing largely political work rather than charitable work?

Does this concern you at all as someone who is involved in this sector? I take your point about certain language; that's fine. So I'm not going to use strong language, but are you concerned about this, as a leader in the charitable sector in Canada?

[Marcel Lauzière]

Well, there are two things. International philanthropy is not new, so dollars go across borders, and that has been the case for many years, on both sides.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I'm not questioning that, but I'm questioning—

[Marcel Lauzière]

No, no. So that's the first point.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

—money going across borders and then being used for political purposes.

[Marcel Lauzière]

If it's used for political activity within the 10% rule for charities, which is the law in Canada—if it's within the rules itself—I see no problem. As I was saying earlier, the 10% rule is there and has been there for a number of years. There should be good disclosure and transparency. If there's not, then there's a problem. But there should be; CRA is there to make sure it happens.

We've seen in the past many times that the CRA actually deregisters organizations that go beyond the 10%, and that's a good thing, because if there are charities that go beyond the rules, they paint the whole sector with a bad brush.

At this point in time, we haven't seen that, but it's for the CRA to make those decisions.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

This is a very lively public debate. A lot of information has been presented. You're a leader within a sector, and according to everything I've seen, you act always with absolute integrity, and others in the sector respect you tremendously.

As a leader, do you not see any concern? Mr. Ellerton raised a couple of questions, specifically one organization targeting one member of Parliament. As a leader in that sector, are you not concerned by any of these activities?

[Marcel Lauzière]

The Canada Revenue Agency is the regulator. It has all the powers necessary, and we've always encouraged that. There is more money going into it in this current budget for audits and education.

That being the case, absolutely, I'm concerned if I have a sense that CRA is not doing its job. My sense is that this is not the case. My sense is that CRA is actually out there. You know that there is a complaints-based approach. People can make a complaint, it goes to the CRA, and it will be reviewed by the CRA.

Imagine Canada is not going to put into question the regulator in doing its work. I think it has shown that it does its work, because organizations are deregistered, if they become rogue organizations.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. Unfortunately I'm out of time, and we have further meetings tonight with officials.

I appreciate your being here, all of you, and Mr. King's being with us by video conference. If there's anything further—some of you mentioned that you wanted to submit something further to the committee—please submit it to the clerk, and we will ensure that all the members get it.

Colleagues, we will suspend for a couple of minutes and resume with officials.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Colleagues, I hate to end the side conversations, but we have three more divisions that have been highlighted as key for members of the committee. We're going to do division 54, division 53, and division 46 in that order.

We want to welcome the officials who are here to discuss division 54 and ask them to make a brief opening statement, and we'll have members' questions after that.

Miss Harder.

[Sandra Harder, Director General, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

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.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Mr. Carruthers.

[Cam Carruthers, Director, Program Integrity Division, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada]

The last set of amendments in this division all relate to the temporary foreign worker program. I'm the director of integrity with HRSDC in the temporary foreign worker program. The amendments relate to section 4 and section 32 of IRPA and they all relate to compliance.

However, this is also a DRAP, the deficit reduction action plan proposal, and it's designed to produce $4.5 million of savings every year once it gets rolling. Those savings would all be from HRSDC. The temporary foreign worker program is a jointly managed program between CIC and HRSDC, but all the savings that have been planned would be in HRSD. They would be achieved by a reduction in upfront processing times for those employers using the foreign temporary worker program who have a clean compliance record, and that would be balanced off with strong compliance, both random and risk-based compliance activities, and compliance reviews, after temporary foreign workers actually arrive. So it would help us ease the bottleneck and increase speed of service.

All of that, the savings and the administrative changes, all happen basically with policy. The proposal in division 54 for legislative change activates all the compliance. So you don't see the speed on the service side of things, all you see is the compliance.

The changes are specifically in section 4 to add a provision that gives the minister of HRSDC powers and duties. “Powers and duties” in this case means decision-making, and it effectively would allow HRSDC to make decisions in relation to determinations of compliance or non-compliance by employers using the program.

The other changes are all in section 32, and it would add three new powers there: first, to set up requirements, conditions that can be imposed on employers; second, to give HRSDC and CIC the power to make inspections to verify compliance with those conditions; and third, it would provide the power to set up consequences for those employers who are not compliant with the requirements set out by the act.

The requirements would be set out very clearly for employers and detailed for them in letters when they get their labour market opinion, which facilitates them getting a work permit for their workers. The requirements would all be set out transparently for them. With respect to inspections, there would be, indeed, quite new authorities there for both compelling document production, as well as site visits in those rare cases where there was evidence that suggested that it would be warranted.

The consequences that are planned at this point involve a multi-year ban. That's the main consequence, as well as publication on a shared departmental website of the names of employers who are non-compliant, as well as the possibility of allowing temporary foreign workers who are in a bad situation the opportunity to move. If there's non-compliance by their employer and it puts them at risk of some kind, there would be provision to allow them to move.

That probably sums up my comments for the opening.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay. Thank you very much for your presentation.

We'll start members' questions with Mr. Mai.

Mr. Mai, it is your turn.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We hear that 280,000 people have been waiting a very long time. If I am not mistaken, we sometimes hear about applications dating from 2003. Is that the farthest back they go?

So there are people who have been waiting nine years and now everything is being wiped clean, and they are being told to start over and make a new application. Is there no way to do something else? Could there have been more people to handle the applications that have already been made? This is not something new: we were aware of it; you were aware of it. Why was it decided that these people were not important? They have to start over and wait more time.

[Sandra Harder]

Yes, there were a number of different alternatives that were looked at before this decision was taken, and as you know, people who are affected by this provision will be able to resubmit their application should they so choose. In doing so, they would be much more likely to receive, if they're eligible, a selection decision within six to 12 months as opposed to waiting any longer. In our calculations when we looked at the number of applications that are in the federal skilled worker backlog—the oldest portion of the backlog being those who had applied before February 27, 2008—we were looking at an ability to eliminate that backlog not until 2017. It's quite a long period of time away from where we are right now in 2012.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

If there were....

If we were to invest in getting people to go through those processes, that would be possible.

Also, my other question is that those federal skilled workers include, for instance, doctors, nurses, people with those types of skills, do they not?

[Sandra Harder]

Absolutely, they can.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Here right now we're moving towards a temporary foreign workers program. Are we putting forward a specific target in terms of immigrants who we want to have or workers who we want to have? Are we going towards more specific requirements?

[Sandra Harder]

Let me just address your first issue around resources, and if we had applied more resources would that have made a difference.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Yes—

[Sandra Harder]

The answer to that is actually that the output is always constrained by the immigration levels plan, so it's not necessarily a question of resources. It's a question of the amount of room that's in the national immigration levels plan, so that's one.

Your second question I think was in regard to if we are moving in a different direction with.... You mentioned the temporary foreign worker program—

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Or maybe—

[Sandra Harder]

These provisions apply to the federal skilled worker program, not to the temporary foreign worker program.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Okay. But now with the temporary foreign worker program, is there an interest in bringing in lower-skilled immigration for specific jobs? Is that what the plan is?