Thank you for allowing me to testify.
I am speaking to you today because I have grave concerns about the provisions in division 23 with regard to the proposed changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
As an immigration lawyer with over 16 years of practice, I have worked with tens of thousands of individuals who have immigrated to Canada through skilled migration. The changes that are proposed in this bill are extensive and will have a significant impact on hundreds of thousands of people who are looking to immigrate to Canada. They are controversial and should be examined thoroughly by experts in the field as a bill on its own, not as part of a budget bill.
For those of you who are not well versed in immigration law, let me explain briefly what the proposed amendments mean.
The proposed amendments have to do with a system called the express entry system. This system chooses the vast majority of immigrants in our immigration system. The latest figures published by IRCC list applications at over 332,000 in 2019—in one year—and this does not include accompanying family members.
Here's how express entry works. Individuals who qualify under the three most widely used skilled migration categories are able to submit their profile into the express entry pool. The kicker is that just because they submitted their profile into the pool does not mean they can actually apply. They are issued a score based on their background, such as age, education, language proficiency, work experience, etc. In the current system, the government issues draws based on the individual's scores and the categories they qualified under to send invitations to apply. If a person receives an invitation to apply, they can apply and receive their permanent residence.
The provisions in this bill essentially seek to change how individuals will be selected to receive these invitations to apply. They would allow the government to create groupings, which are currently undefined, to select those who can apply and obtain permanent residence.
There are several reasons that this is problematic.
First, without identifying which groups the government will be using for selection, these provisions provide the minister and all ministers after him with the power to define these groupings without parliamentary oversight. For example, a minister could decide to limit immigration based on nationality, as the United States does. This could lead to severe inequity in processing times based on nationality, as is currently the case in the States.
I have also heard that a minister may wish to use these provisions to select based on occupation. This is problematic, as the minister does not have a transparent system for how they select the occupations. As such, the system is prone to lobbying and influence by large industries, leaving smaller, less powerful employers and those with lesser-known occupations without the ability to hire and retain workers. The occupations-based program has already been used several times in Canada's immigration history without success, yet the minister may be using this factor again.
Maybe I'm wrong and occupations-based selection is the bee's knees. If so, then the provisions should state occupations-based selection, not groupings that are undefined, and provide opportunities for other expert immigration witnesses to provide evidence to the parliamentary standing committee on immigration to examine this. These provisions, which give the minister the unchecked power to select based on whatever groups they wish to in the future, would not allow this process for checks and balances to happen.
Second, ambiguity leads to unpredictability. The permanent residence system requires applicants to spend thousands of dollars, and many spend years to prepare to qualify. With this ambiguity of not knowing whether or not they would qualify even if they invested their time and money, many individuals would be turned off by the system. Canada is in competition for the best and brightest of the world through our skilled migration system. The unpredictability that these provisions bring to the system would deter many of those whom we aim to attract to our country.
Our immigration system chooses who forms our labour pool, but it also chooses who our neighbours are and who will become part of our community and our country. Surely, choosing who will form the vast majority of immigrants to our country warrants more than a brief consideration in a budget bill.
Thank you.