Good morning, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Barton, for your service, on both the public side and the private side, for many years, for Canada.
Earlier this week, we had the Bank of Canada governor and the deputy governor come speak to us. In their writings in the last few papers they've put out, they've talked about two broad impediments to increasing our long-term growth rate. I think their forecast is about 1.5%. One is the labour force, specifically, the labour force growth rate. The other is the broad bucket of innovation/productivity and how Canada can do better.
I'm just specifically looking at the labour force growth rate, not really the participation rate, because that hasn't really changed in the last 20 years. The labour force growth rate is slowing down. Our demographics are not the worst in the world, but they definitely could be better, and we have this immigration system. One of the key recommendations you and the Wise Persons' Committee put forward is to increase immigration from 300,000, gradually, up to 450,000.
I'm a proponent of that. I think it's been proven that immigration is good. My concerns right now are that when I look at a number of very, very successful entrepreneurs in this country, people such as my parents, under our current system, they wouldn't get in. I would say that probably the top business people in Canada currently could not immigrate to Canada under the current system.
The LMIA process by employers is broken, as I call it. It's slow. It's tedious. I've heard a lot of feedback that basically you are guilty until proven innocent when you are trying to prove that you actually need the person to come through.
I'll stop in a second, but I'm an individual who had the privilege of working for a U.S. investment bank for almost a decade, in the United States, going there under an H-1B visa, and seeing how their system worked. I'm not saying it's better or worse.
I want you to focus your comments this morning on the importance of immigration, not only attracting the best but having a larger piece of the pie come over.