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.