Finance Committee on May 31st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 54 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance.

Pursuant to the order of reference of May 10, 2022, the committee is meeting on Bill C-19, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022 and other measures.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. Per the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on March 10, 2022, all those attending the meeting in person must wear a mask except for members who are at their place during proceedings.

I'd like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

This is a reminder that all comments should be addressed through the chair. For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can, and we appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

Pursuant to the motion adopted in committee on Monday, May 9, the committee will continue today with the clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-19. We have witnesses from various departments here with us who will be able to answer questions as we move through the clauses of the bill.

Members, just before we go to clause-by-clause on Bill C-19, the clerk distributed two budgets for our pre-budget consultation travel. Last evening you should have received them around 6:31 p.m. We are looking for approval of those, as the clerk has to bring them to the Liaison Committee.

I am looking for approval.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you very much for that.

(On clause 377)

We are now on clause 377. You should have just received a new NDP-5 amendment.

I will go to MP Blaikie.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to say thank you to the committee for having adjourned a little bit early in our last meeting to create some time to just get the wording right on this.

Obviously there is another complementary amendment to this one. The idea of them both is that the budget implementation act would establish some pretty important authorities for the minister in respect of the express entry system. We felt strongly, and I hope others around the table will as well, that there should be some checks and balances on that.

The idea there is to ensure that these new categories for express entry would not be established without having a robust and obligatory public consultation process with some direction as to how that process ought to unfold. As I said, the discretionary powers without this are considerable.

We've often heard the department and the minister talk about occupational categories, but in fact that's not in the legislation. The legislation just talks about groupings or categories of people. I think this public consultation process is an important component in order to make sure that a government or a minister can't make these choices willy-nilly, if you'll permit the phrase, but that they have to do that in consultation with others and get advice from people who have their feet on the ground and well understand the labour market needs of Canada as well as the situation of the folks who may well come under the express entry system and the special categories established by the minister.

The new amendment that I am presenting here is the first part of a two-part effort to establish that accountability through public consultation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Blaikie.

I did see a number of hands. We have MP Beech, MP Ste-Marie, MP Albas.

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank Mr. Blaikie for his work as well as echo his comments thanking the committee for their patience and allowing some of this good work to happen. It shows how many people are working on many aspects of this BIA, including other colleagues who aren't necessarily on this committee and numerous staff alike. We're very happy where it landed, and we're happy to support this clause and the consequent clause that will be forthcoming.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, PS Beech.

We have MP Ste-Marie and then MP Albas.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As I said at the previous meeting, I won't be proposing BQ‑14 and BQ‑15 because I think the NDP amendments will allow us to achieve our objectives.

I would like to ask Mr. Blaikie what the exact difference is between the new amendment that he's proposed to us and NDP‑5. There seem to be only a few changes at the bottom. Can he explain what those changes are?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, we have MP Blaikie, please.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

The main change in NDP-5....

The text of the amendment is different. In fact, it may not have been the same in French.

In the English, it referred to a “committee”, and there was some language around an advisory committee. That language has changed to language about “a public consultation process”, which is laid out rather specifically in the next amendment that we'll be presenting. It's a little bit of a change in language, but I think the spirit of that amendment is still very much the same. I think the next amendment does a good job of prescribing how that public consultation should unfold.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

MP Albas.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Certainly the time that has transpired since the earlier meeting and today gave me a chance to reflect a little bit. While I certainly have expressed concerns based on some of the testimony we heard that the government would essentially give the minister too much discretion in regard to establishing categories on whatever criteria that particular minister, he or she, would want, this may not always just apply to the current minister. It will apply to future ones. I really didn't like the arbitrary design of the legislation. I certainly appreciated that MP Blaikie sought to make an amendment. The original amendment, where you would have a committee process, at first seemed to be more ideal than just the minister deciding on a particular category with very little warning as to what he or she was thinking.

The problem, though, with that is that, when you have a committee you ask yourself who this committee would consist of. If it's at the discretion of the minister, then it could be a committee of staff members. It could be a committee of Liberal supporters. It could be a committee of experts at large. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on the composition. Ultimately, if a minister was simply just to say, “Well, it's actually the committee that is the reason why I'm putting this group category together,” that would be less than ideal because ultimately I think what MP Blaikie is looking for is a little more accountability. If you just say you're doing this because they told me to, you're pointing the finger at someone else when you're the decision-maker. I do think that having some sort of consultation process is key, but the question is what that is.

With your permission, Mr. Chair, I would like to ask the officials who are present here today about this. Currently, under the immigration and refugee protection regulations or the act, IRPA itself, is the use of the term “public consultation process” defined?

[Philip Somogyvari, Director General, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you for the question.

Offhand, I don't believe it is, but we'll have to look into that and perhaps get back to the committee.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Okay.

Maybe I'll talk for a moment, Mr. Chair, because if it's not defined in the act itself then it converts to, in my understanding, the dictionary interpretation. Again if the consultation process is ultimately decided by the minister as to what form that will take, I'd be very interested to see what the minister would believe that to be. Because if you put 20 immigration consultants in a room, I'm sure you'd probably get 20 different opinions of the word “public” and the word “consultation”, and maybe even more.

I see that MP Blaikie has signalled that he might have an answer to my quandary, and I would certainly appreciate his enlightening me.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you.

I am going to give full credit to our immigration critic, Jenny Kwan, for her good work on this. Jenny probably shared some similar concerns about the vagueness of what a public consultation entails.

In the next amendment that I believe we'll be discussing, it makes modifications to the budget implementation act in order to flesh out very specifically what public consultation would mean in the context of this specific provision. For instance, the next amendment states that:

For the purpose of establishing categories of eligible foreign nationals under subparagraph 10.3(1)(h.1)(iii), the Minister must engage in a public consultation process with stakeholders

Then it names what those stakeholder groups ought to be:

including provinces and territories, industry, unions, employers, workers, worker advocacy groups, settlement provider organizations and immigration researchers and practitioners, to obtain information, advice and recommendations in respect of the labour market conditions, including occupations expected to face shortage conditions, as well as on how categories can be formed to meet economic goals.

It also stipulates that, in the course of that public consultation process, it has to be based on written submissions, so it can't just be informal, verbal exchanges that the minister happens to have with some people and then says, “We did it, and it's done. Isn't that great?” There will be documentation for that consultation process.

Then I believe the next clause also has a reporting requirement to Parliament on what categories of eligible foreign nationals issued from such a consultation process, the selection criteria and the process applied for the establishment of those categories.

I definitely hear your concern. Jenny has heard your concern from afar and has done a good job of clearly stipulating what this public consultation ought to look like so that it doesn't end up being the kind of pro forma, informal style consultation that we have too often seen take the place of a proper process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Blaikie.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

If I could just respond—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Go ahead, MP Albas.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd certainly like to thank MP Blaikie for the explanation. Just for future reference, if he had just said, “Flip the page over, Dan”, I probably would have been able to read that, but I certainly appreciate his reading it out, because the people who are watching us.... Believe me, Mr. Chair, there are people who watch us, so hello to people who are watching us. I appreciate that you take an interest in Bill C-19.

I am going to just again thank MP Blaikie. I am more satisfied now that this is more of a public process because it has been defined, and I extend thanks to the member.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I might just add, Mr. Chair, that it was indeed for the people at home that I preferred all of that detailed information. Of course, I know that Mr. Albas is quite capable—

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

No, I was enlightened.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

—to read that for himself, but I didn't want anyone to miss a beat.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I thank all of you. Thank you, MP Blaikie.

I also want to thank the legislative clerk for helping get this done, prepared and ready.

Members, shall the new amendment NDP-5 carry?

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'd like a recorded vote.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])