Health Committee on Nov. 18th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I didn't get that. It's them being covered that you're concerned about.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Yes, it's health coverage.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I will go back to the numbers in a second because I'll ask staff to help me, but it's a good question. The good news here is that the asylum numbers have dropped significantly for 2025.

In terms of the health coverage, in the budget that we just introduced, there are also some conditions in there where there will be some changes to that as well.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Do you have the number of how much the asylum claimants have decreased this year?

[Soyoung Park, Assistant Deputy Minister, Economic Programs, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

From January to September of this year, 33% fewer people have submitted an asylum claim in Canada compared to last year.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Then that 100,000-person increase is hopefully on its way down.

How many asylum claims were either withdrawn, abandoned or finalized last year? Of those, what per cent were accepted?

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

For asylum claims, that would be the Immigration and Refugee Board's stats. From what I heard from other testimony previously, it's all public on their site. That's my understanding. I stand to be corrected.

It wouldn't be in IRCC, when you're talking about claims.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

You are not the minister who looks after asylum claims and their adjudication.

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

On the decisions, it would be the IRB, which is an independent body.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I guess my concern is you're covering these folks with the IFHP, but you're not sure what per cent of these claimants end up being true or false, basically.

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

The interim program does provide temporary health coverage to address these urgent and essential needs for refugees and asylum claimants. It's for refugees as well; it's not just for asylum. Refugees are people who are—

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

The majority are asylum claimants who have not yet been adjudicated.

Of these asylum claimants—the 440,000 we're currently covering with the $900 million that has ballooned—it is my understanding, from my perusal of the IRB website, that roughly half will be found to be not true and not accepted. The word “bogus” is used for these.

If we're spending $900 million a year on health coverage for folks, half of whom turn out to be not true refugees, would you have any plan to recoup these health claims once they're made, if their asylum claim is deemed to be false?

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

By international law, Canadian law or any law you want to look into, we are obligated to cover essential health for people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute.

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

If we don't, even if the law didn't allow it, I would say it's going to create a lot more problems for Canadians if people are in urgent need and we don't accept them. It does reduce pressure later on.

What I would say is we do have Bill C-12 and I urge you and your colleagues to support it because it will help speed up the process of these hearings. That is one of the reasons we're doing that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Fundamentally, we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on health claims for people who are waiting for their asylum claim to be adjudicated, which is your purview.

One thing that was really interesting, which this committee was told, is that anaesthetists throughout Canada are billing five times more when they perform a surgery on somebody under the IFHP than under provincial health programs. My professional association, the Ontario Medical Association, would recommend that we bill 2.5 times more, but it seems like the sky is the limit, so doctors are billing five times more than they otherwise would.

Could you explain this?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Strauss, you're going over time.

I'm going to have to ask the ministers to answer that question later on.

I would urge members to remember that the time is five minutes for questions and answers. If you want to use up that time making a speech, that's fine, but you may not be able to get the answer. The minister can answer that question later on if someone wants to repeat it.

I'm going now to Mr. Powlowski for the Liberals for five minutes.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Minister Diab, you can probably guess what I'm going to ask you because I've asked you the same question a hundred times in other situations.

Yes, we have too many immigrants in big cities like Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. That's causing problems. We've decided to reduce our numbers. However, in rural areas, we have the opposite problem. We don't have enough people to work in various sectors, but probably nowhere is this more apparent than in health care.

I'm going to give you an example from my riding, which is at Riverside health, which is Fort Frances to the Manitoba border. It's in the west of my riding. They run the health care system there.

Their numbers are from August. For temporary foreign workers, they have 43 PSWs and two registered nurses. They rely heavily on agency staff from places like Toronto because they don't have enough workers. They have to pay these agency staff more. They have 50 agency staff and they currently have a shortage there of 28 registered nurses, 17 RPNs and 11 PSWs. They can't find people to recruit.

Never mind that in Emo, they've had to shut the ambulance services because they don't have paramedics to work there. In Rainy River, they've closed their health centre at the moment because they have no doctors.

When we're cutting our numbers across the board, whether it's temporary foreign workers or immigrants, what can you do to reassure rural Canada that those cuts aren't going to further compromise our existing health care system?

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

Thank you very much, Doctor, for that question.

I haven't heard your specific stats before, but I know you are an excellent advocate for the rural communities and particularly the topic you're talking about; I know you're very familiar with it.

In the immigration world here, we are supporting the regional recruiting efforts for foreign-trained health care workers through regional programs, which I know you're familiar with, and pilot projects. For example, there is the provincial nominee program, and there is good news, again. In this particular budget, in the immigration plan, we have increased the provincial nominee program for all provinces and territories. It's going to be over 90,000 people in 2026. I know many provinces and territories are using a lot of those numbers for health care professionals.

Also, we have the rural and francophone community immigration pilots. I know there's one in your community, and I know that they are working extremely hard on that; I can give you some stats. The good news is, since 2023, there's been an increase—actually, some of it is a sharp increase—in the year-over-year number of health professionals who have been recruited into Canadian provinces and territories.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

You mentioned the rural and northern immigration pilot, RNIP, and the rural community immigration pilot, RCIP. Both have been very successful programs.

Would you consider increasing those numbers as we, perhaps, decrease the number of immigrants coming into larger centres? You're welcome to ask your department.

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

I know the program is working. I know it's needed. I know rural communities are in need of these programs, and these are things we are constantly talking about with stakeholders, provinces and territories, but also people in the field.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I know temporary foreign workers are Minister Hajdu's department, not yours, but it certainly seems to me, while we're working to address this problem in the long term, it would be very helpful if we automatically renewed existing work permits, particularly in the health care field with PSWs and registered nurses who are under that program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have thirty seconds.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I know maybe this isn't your department, but would your departments consider working with that department in advocating for this? It does affect health care and it does affect immigration.