Evidence of meeting #43 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
Vice-Chair, Board of Directors, Immigrant Access Fund Canada
Absolutely. The cost to Canada is $30.7 billion. If their credentials and skills were recognized, the increase in income would amount to about $30.7 billion. That's the statistic I had. Do you want to speak...?
Executive Director, Immigrant Access Fund Canada
That was a study done by RBC.
When you move somebody with an income of $16,000 to $50,000, that's $6,500 more in income tax paid in that first year. In Abdul's situation, he was, I think, 41. If you assume he's going to work for another 20 years the multiplier of that is profound. There's no question that when immigrants are not fully employed in their field there's a true loss to the economy.
We're not taking advantage of the fact that the investment in their education and their training and their experience was made before they came to Canada. They're coming to us work-ready, with the exception of being able to work fully in their field with their licence.
Liberal
Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC
According to you—either one of you can answer—what can the federal government do?
Executive Director, Immigrant Access Fund Canada
I think there are a few things.
Let's move away from the funding because our core funding comes from the federal government. When you get an organization like Immigrant Access Fund that is ready to think about innovation.... When we look at the capacity we need to deliver more loans, right now we have $2.4 million ready to us in loan capital from the private sector. We could write a cheque tomorrow for loans for $2.4 million. Our lack of ability to do that comes from not having capacity.
Let's start thinking with some innovation. Let's do a full exploration of social finance opportunities, pay for performance models, and impact investing, things that move this organization away from annual contribution agreements or grants to building an infrastructure that will allow us to tap into the outcomes that we're seeing. The gains to the economy, let's feed that back into the organization so that we can continue to do this work and continue to do more and more loans going forward.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Thank you very much.
Thank you to all of you for your insight and experience, and for sharing that with us today. These sessions clearly are not long enough to get through what we need to get through. I really appreciate your time today.
We are going to adjourn. Would you mind getting a quick photo of us? We'll come around and fill in behind you if that's okay with you.
This is just some housekeeping for the committee. We need to be in the lobby no later than 12 o'clock. We have about 15 minutes to pack up and ship out. We're going to be heading to our first site visit and lunch.
Thank you.