For me, the issue is determining what we need to know from these people to be able to feel comfortable that they have the competencies we require to do the job.
I think we're spending a lot of time asking for things that may not be necessary. When I meet with immigrants, they want to show me what they can do. They want to show you what they know. I asked a group of immigrants what they would do if they were the fairness commissioner. Every single group I met with said that they would create a way for someone to show people what they could do. Immigrants say, “Can you look at what I have and tell me what I don't have? I have to meet 10 things and maybe I have only eight. Tell me what I don't have, and tell me what to do to get it”.
Right now we spend a lot of time on things such as good character, including on criminal records checks, for example. Everybody who goes through immigration has to go through a criminal record check. If people are here as landed immigrants, they have already done that, yet many regulators ask people to do that—not in Canada but back in their home country. That costs some people $800 and takes about eight months. So if you are a nurse and you do that, it takes you eight months of time that you have to be recognized.
Then you write the English exam and you meet the requirement, but guess what? The English exam is valid for only two years, and if the results are already two years old, you go back. By then you have all the other papers they have asked you for and now they say, “Sorry, that exam is already two years old. You have to go back and take that test again”.