Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 7th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Minister.

That completes our seven-minute rounds. We will now go to five-minute rounds. I think we're going to begin with Mr. Wilson.

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Minister.

I just wanted to cover off your preamble, which I have to thank you for, when you said you're going to seek our help and guidance in meeting these challenges. I appreciate the ability of all parties to work together.

As I said the last time we met, I think the biggest challenges facing Canada are, first, our lack of skilled workers and, second, the ticking time bomb we have with our aging population. By 2012, 2014, we're going to have more people in retirement than we are going to have working for Canada.

Luckily, we have a solution at hand to the problem of our lack of skilled workers, and that is the 800,000 people who are waiting to come into Canada, 500,000 of whom are skilled workers, who take, on average, 58 months to get in here. But luckily, after 10 years of prosperity here in Canada, the government of the day has an enormous fiscal capacity to deal with this. Mr. Minister, I have to say that a $277 million increase in your budget is fabulous, and it's going to go a long way.

In my experience, in business and outside government, though, if I ever gave a manager, or if I was ever given as a manager, an increase to a budget of 33%, or $277 million, I'd sure want to make sure I had measurable goals and objectives. Last year, Canada accepted 262,000 people. The goal the department is setting for itself is 255,000, which is 7,000 fewer people than last year, with $277 million more in the budget. As a Conservative, how does that lack of fiscal responsibility...? How do you square the circle?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Well, the $277 million you're talking about is really for settlement. It's for settlement agencies and provinces to use to ensure that when people come and land here, they get the help they really need.

I take your point. I think there are a couple of things we want to do. We want to address labour market needs. So one of the things we want to do is ensure that we bring in a number of permanent residents on the high end of the target set by the previous government. Hopefully, we can go over it, but we're shooting for the high end, because we do need people. But once they get here, we also have to make sure they get the services they need, because as I pointed out before, they're not doing as well as previous generations.

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

In British Columbia and Alberta there is a dire, dire need for anybody in the construction industry. Anybody on our waiting list of those 500,000 people, any of them who are plumbers, electricians, drywallers, or who can pick up a shovel, will have a job waiting for them at good pay. Our first priority should be to increase the number of people we can get into Canada to deal with our labour shortage.

But I understand what you're saying about outcomes; outcomes are important. I don't think, though, an adequate comparison can be made looking at 1980 numbers and 1996 numbers. It's 2006; these are 10-year-old numbers, so they're pretty much meaningless where we are right now, and even from that standpoint we're talking about their level of income after one year here. After one year here, if you start on a job site, you start moving lumber, and you move up as your skill develops. I would suggest that the department take a look at where they are after three years, after five years, after ten years, and I would suggest that those numbers are going to ramp up significantly.

So what statistics or what benchmarks are you going to use to judge the success of outcomes?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I've seen numbers along the lines you described, and I'm sure we can get them for you. It's true that people's outcomes do improve over time, but they don't look at all as they did for previous generations. The numbers I saw were pretty recent too. We think by getting to people with more funding when they first arrive, especially for language training, people will have better outcomes.

One of the differences between this generation of immigrants and the previous one is the source countries. The source countries in the past tended to be countries with Latin alphabets, where it was typically easier for people to learn language skills. Today we have a lot of people from Asia, who may not have had the benefit of a Latin-based alphabet, so it's more difficult for them to pick up the language skills. We want to put as much funding into that as we possibly can, so people who have great skills and abilities can put them to work right away.

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

I question your facts. Tell me how Latin-based immigrants can learn English or French faster than Asian-speaking immigrants. If I heard you properly, I think that is just ridiculous. I think immigrants from around the world have the ability to learn other languages, and I would question the premise you're about to launch.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

In many countries, English was one of the languages that was quite common, and this was less the case in a lot of Asian countries. We want to make sure people get that language training. You don't have to take my word for it; I think we can provide you with information that will back that up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We move to Madame Faille, who has five minutes also, and a little bit extra.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I'd like to go back to the issue of foreign credentials. I didn't understand whether you were going to submit a report to us on the recommendations of the various departments concerning the problems encountered in the context of the agency's establishment.

I thought the group that's establishing the agency had expressed some reservations about its establishment and the difficulties they'll encounter in setting it up. I'm not asking you to answer us right now, but to give us a detailed report on these kinds of obstacles and to see how we could find a compromise solution.

When you answered my colleague Mr. Siksay, you seemed to recognize the need for an appeal based on merit in the Refugee Appeal Division. I recognize the efforts you've made to date to try to find a solution. It seems it's no longer the number of applications or the money that are causing the problems and that there are no more problems with human resources. You say you want to make changes and that some cases are causing problems. You say those cases have been dragging on for a number of years.

Are those cases marginal or do they represent the majority of cases in the refugee determination system? What changes would you like to make to the system?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Let me first of all go to the issue of the agency. We announced in the budget $18 million to do consultations. We're some distance away from actually making proposals yet. We'll be working with stakeholders and the provinces as well, and of course people who are, if you want to put it this way, victims of the system as it exists today. We're some point away yet from actually proposing specifics on that agency.

With respect to the Immigration and Refugee Board and the current process for refugee determination, I think there are a number of problems there. I think one of the problems is the fact that if you get a negative ruling at any stage in the process, it's now standard procedure to appeal to the Federal Court. Eighty percent of the Federal Court's business now has to do with immigration, and I think about 80% of the applications are turned down. But it buys time. I don't think I'm telling people here anything that will surprise them when I say that this is a tried and true strategy of lawyers who are attempting to slow down the process so that at some point they will be able to file a humanitarian and compassionate appeal. Based on the amount of time that someone has been in the country or the fact that they've had children here with somebody they've married here or whatever, this will get them a better chance to stay in the country.

The issue to me isn't whether or not we should allow people to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds or whether we should be fair to people. Of course we should. My concern is that we have this very convoluted system that people are, in some cases, misusing, and that's why I think when we talk about changes, we need to talk about changes overall so that we don't have that type of thing happening.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You have about a minute and a half left, so we will move along now to Barry Devolin and start back on this side again.

We'll get to you in a few minutes, Bill. I know you're anxious.

Okay, Barry.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to return first to the issue of targets and then I want to shift gears and talk about the future. I want to spend a couple of minutes on the past and then talk about the future.

We've been presented with the numbers from 1994 to 2005, but I've seen the numbers from before then. My recollection is that the number of immigrants coming into Canada, being admitted to Canada, was significantly higher during the eighties and the nineties. You referenced the fact that in the 1993 campaign the Liberal Party, in their red book, said their goal was 1%. I think for most people in the early nineties 1% was attainable because that was the number that was on target for Canada to hit in the mid-nineties. Yet when I look at the numbers presented, what I see is that actually with the change in government in 1993, the number of immigrants coming into Canada dramatically dropped. It dramatically dropped in the early nineties, and for the twelve years presented here, the average is only 222,000 per year over that 12-year period. One percent would have been about 320,000 or 330,000. So that promise that was made in 1993...not only did they not get close to it, but they actually eroded the number. And then there were targets established for eight years from 1998 to 2005. For only three of the eight years did the government manage to get within the range of the target.

I asked this question to the Auditor General when she was here recently, and I said I honestly don't see the relevance of this. I see it as a phony discussion that the previous government talked about the importance of this target when (a) they never came close to hitting it in terms of the 1% and (b) even when they set year-to-year targets, they weren't even close. Is this not just a phony discussion we're having?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I think the 1% number was very much a political number, and some people still labour under the illusion that we're hitting it, nearing it, or something.

But setting that aside for a moment, I think it's important to have some targets. The targets should take into account a number of factors, such as the department's ability to gear up and process the applications, the country's labour market needs, and the ability of settlement agencies and provinces to put the infrastructure in place to help people.

Of course, the only way you can determine that is to sit down and talk with these groups, which is what we're starting to do. I think if you do that, then you can have an immigration system that's a bit more orderly.

But saying that, I think it's obvious we have labour market challenges today. While immigration is not the complete answer, it may be part of an answer to our demographic challenges. We need to take these things into account, which is one of the reasons why, for instance, we encourage younger newcomers to come to Canada, because obviously older people don't necessarily solve the demographic challenge. In fact, they make it worse, looking at it from that perspective.

But I would also hasten to add that I think it's true that everyone who comes here makes their contribution in their own way, whether it's addressing the workforce or helping with families, which is the reason grandparents and parents come here. So everyone makes their contribution.

But these are all the factors we have to take into account when we talk about where we want to go with the numbers.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

When you're talking about outcomes, one of the issues that was raised was that it takes 58 months to process a certain type of application. I don't know what a reasonable number is, but I do know that 58 is beyond any range of being reasonable.

I'd like to stop talking about 250,000 a year and start talking about what I believe are other more relevant numbers, like 58 months. Are you working on strategies to create acceptable time limits and actually hitting them?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Outcomes are really important, and obviously 58 months is unacceptable. So we are working on some ideas with respect to this. As I think I said the last time I was here, I would love to hear any suggestions this committee has with respect to this, because it's not just a question of putting more money in and processing the applications. We landed 262,000 people this last year, but had 300,000 applications. So the backlog gets longer.

We have to figure out how to deal with more applications coming all the time. Frankly, that is the big challenge.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Would you permit the chair to ask a question?

Minister, could you comment a bit about security? Security is going to be very important, and it has been over the last short while. Is our security screening good, or could it be better? I guess anything can be better, but do you have any suggestions to make our security screening better, if it's not already adequate?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Our security screening is very good. We actually do screen every person who applies to come to this country, whether they come as a visitor, a permanent resident, or whatever.

The visa officers who do this screening are very well trained. They screen against risk profiles. When something of concern arises in an application, it is immediately referred to CSIS and the Canada Border Services Agency. About 10% of all the applications are referred to CSIS and the CBSA.

By the way, we also work very closely with the Americans—and I hasten to point that out because some American legislators have been critical of Canada lately with respect to this. But the truth is that many of them have praised us as well for how closely we've worked with them, and we continue to do that.

We also are continuing to improve our ability to do screening. There are a number of initiatives I mentioned in the past, such as biometrics, that help us find fraudulent documents. And there are some other things we're working on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay.

Madame Folco, please.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, Minister. This is the first time we've met. I'll be pleased to work with you.

I'd like to talk about three points. The first two are quite brief. The first concerns security. I agree with you that the department has excellent relations with the groups that ensure the country's security, particularly with regard to the review of files of people who want to immigrate to Canada. What I think poses a major problem is the period of time. It takes an enormous amount of time for the security forces to give their opinion on immigrant files. Moreover, on Monday, I intend to introduce a motion requesting that this committee be able to examine this question. I simply wanted to inform you of that.

Second, a little earlier, my colleague Mr. Wilson asked you a question about the cost of language training for new immigrants across Canada. Your answer, if I correctly understood, was that it now takes more time than it used to take to teach English and French because a lot of immigrants now come from countries where their linguistic roots do not resemble the Latin roots of our languages.

Did I correctly understand what you said?

Allow me to tell you, as a former linguist, that that has nothing to do with anything. Regardless of the roots of a language, Indo-European or whatever, it is just as easy for an individual to learn one language as another. The proof of that is that, a number of years ago in Quebec, when we took in the first Vietnamese immigrants, who were regularly called boat people, the first French classes in Quebec's French-language schools were inevitably full of the children of Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants who had come here without a word of English or French. It seems to me that's indisputable proof.

I'd like to get to my real question. It concerns another immigration problem. We've talked a lot about demographics. Now I'd like to talk about the demographics of one group in particular, the official language minority francophone communities across the country, in Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia, the Maritimes and so on.

Could you clarify for us what is happening with the agreement reached between the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and the Action Plan for Official Languages? What is happening with the settlement and immigration of official language minority immigrants? Will your government be complying with that agreement? If not, how do you intend to continue helping these people? I put a lot of emphasis on this agreement because we need immigrants across the country, even in communities that live outside the major cities, particularly the official language minority communities. These groups really need to add to their demographic and economic strength in order to survive in this country.

I'd like to have some answers, please.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you very much for your questions and for your comment regarding security. I look forward to your motion.

Just with respect to that, if I can say one word on it, in some cases when the issue is security the problem really isn't at our end. In some cases the problem is in working with officials in other countries who are unable to provide information we need to make a proper security determination. In some cases that is the issue.

Let me say, for instance, that typically security moves quite quickly. When it comes to temporary foreign workers, we can process 75% of the applications in two weeks' time, but the other 25% are typically held up for health and security reasons. Sometimes it just takes longer to get that information.

With respect to your comments regarding language, no one is questioning how well educated people are from some of the countries I referred to. That's not the issue. The issue is making sure they have language skills that allow them to operate in their vocation, so that they can use their skills and talents and do as well as native-born Canadians. That's where the challenge is, and that's why we're putting more money into enhanced language training—and into settlement services overall. We think this will help tremendously to make sure people get proper outcomes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Could you finish up your answer, Minister, because we have to stop at about six minutes.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

We have a program with respect to minority communities. We have a five-year strategic plan that we're proceeding with this month with respect to that, and initiatives will include the promotion and marketing of Canada in countries where French is spoken so that people will be able to come to Canada not just solely thinking about Quebec as a place to come, but also some of these other communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Minister.

Now it's down to Bill, and over to Rahim, I do believe.

Bill, please.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thanks, Chair.

Minister, I want to say that I'm pleased to see that the government has moved to reduce the right of landing fee, and I think that's a significant step. However, I'd put forward that if a $975 fee was wrong, a $490 fee is also wrong. It puts undue stress on people at a very difficult time in their lives when they're making the move to Canada. So I hope the government moves quickly on its timetable to reduce that further, and hopefully we'll be able to eliminate it altogether without much delay.

I wanted to ask you about another fee. Right now, the refugees who are determined outside of Canada don't have to pay for processing fees, but refugees who have their claims heard in Canada and are found to be refugees here in Canada do have to pay the processing fee. That fee of $550 is significant for many of them. It gets more significant when you have a family to deal with. I'm wondering if any consideration is being given to eliminating that fee, given the difficult circumstances of many refugee families who are determined here in Canada. We know, for instance, that they're often living in poverty here in Canada, and that this fee presents a significant barrier, especially when they're up against a short timeline to make their application for permanent residence.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you.

Yes, we talk about these things, and those discussions are ongoing. Obviously, we have to find ways to make sure that we ease the burden for people who come here. You're right, they come into a strange country and very often with pretty limited resources, so I understand that, and I think we have to find ways to make it easier for people. I think that's part, again, of a larger discussion that we may have to have about overall reform. There's no question that one of the best ways to help people is to make sure you don't, in effect, tax them to death the moment they step onto the shores of this country, when they have so many needs and not many resources. I'm glad to have your support for the reduction of the RPRF. Thank you.