Health Committee on Nov. 18th, 2025

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

The way it works is that immigration is a shared provincial-territorial-federal jurisdiction—

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Is it yes or no?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

—so we work with the provinces and territories with respect to that.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Minister Diab, do you consider Canada's existing health care capacity before setting federal immigration levels?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

We have extensive consultations that happen. I personally did some as well, all summer long. As part of that, those take in stakeholders from the health care sector.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

You do consider it.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Of course, everything is considered.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

How many more patients can our health care system handle this year, according to your department's analysis?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

That's not a fair question for immigration.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Minister, you just said that you do consider it, so you must do some analysis.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

What I said was that we have extensive consultations that occur on a yearly basis when we set our target levels for permanent residency and temporary residency. We take all the stakeholders' views—most importantly provinces, territories, municipal partners, economists and many different industry stakeholders.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Do you know if your department does this analysis for the immigration levels?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Ms. Baird, please go ahead.

[Louise Baird, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

A lot of the information that we get that's related to the health care system is in fact from working closely with the provinces.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Do you do analysis or don't you?

[Louise Baird]

We ask capacity questions of our provincial counterparts. They provide some of that information to us.

What we did hear overwhelmingly during our consultations was that people were looking to use immigration to bring in health care workers.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

You don't have any analysis of how many more patients can be served due to immigration.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Again, the answer is pretty clear from my part. In the extensive consultations we've done with many across the country, the question that was raised was, how can IRCC facilitate, open pathways and work with—

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

That wasn't my question.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

—provinces and territories to bring in health care workers?

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

We'll get on to the next question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Mazier, will you allow the witness to answer the question?

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

She wasn't answering.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

That's not your decision to make.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Then she took a new question, but that's okay. I have another—