Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a real pleasure to appear before the committee again.
Bonjour.
I place before you, my colleagues, my department's supplementary estimates for the current fiscal year, which I respectfully submit for the committee's consideration and approval.
I believe the majority of the items here are fairly routine in nature, so if I may, I will use my opening remarks to address some broader matters regarding citizenship and immigration. I will of course respond to any questions members may have.
Accountability is a priority for this government, Mr. Chairman.
Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to travel across this country and see firsthand how Citizenship and Immigration is contributing to the country.
At citizenship ceremonies I've seen the joy and determination in the faces of new citizens. In Manitoba I met with Karen refugees who've arrived over the past few months. I've met and talked with people at community agencies, who work with dedication and care to deliver support to newcomers. I've also seen how much more we could do to build this country, and why we must do more. Immigration has been a cornerstone of our prosperity for decades, and it will be even more critical in the future; in fact it's expected that immigration will account for all net growth in our labour force within ten years.
We need that labour force.
This summer in Whistler, British Columbia, business owners told me they were short 3,500 workers. They are worried that they won't have the people to run the ski lifts, work in the restaurants, or make beds this winter. Managers are already pitching in to clean hotel rooms.
But the problem is bigger than that. The B.C. Ministry of Economic Development says new infrastructure projects planned or under way are valued at $100 billion. In my home province of Alberta, the Canadian Energy Research Institute says $100 billion will be invested in the oil sands by 2020. There is a desperate need for workers to support these investments.
Our future success depends to a very large extent on our ability to address these challenges.
Certainly we need more people. As members are aware, I tabled our new immigration plan last week. We intend to accept between 240,000 and 265,000 immigrants in 2007, the highest planning range in 15 years. But our success is not measured in mere numbers; success in immigration is ensuring that those who come here are happy and stay here. In the 1980s, after a year in Canada, skilled worker immigrants were earning one-quarter more than the Canadian average. In 2003 their earnings were almost one-third less than their Canadian-born counterparts after one year. We need to look at what went wrong over the past decade and fix it.
Settlement funding for newcomers has been static since the mid-1990s, but the number of immigrants has been increasing steadily. We have to do more than say welcome to Canada, and good luck. Immigrants have to be supported with adequate resources. Settlement programs are exactly what you would expect—programs that help newcomers get settled here. Language and literacy training is key, but integration programs are just as important. Teaching newcomers how to register their children in school, how to find a doctor, and how to look for a job are all critical to welcoming newcomers and getting them off to a good start. Those are simple things to you and me, but essential services for newcomers.
That is why our government has committed an additional $307 million to settlement funding over the next two years to support our partners in the delivery of these important services.
We're also providing direct help to newcomers. We've cut the $975 permanent residence fee in half. Since that took effect, we've saved about $22 million for 46,000 people. We work hard to attract skilled workers and professionals. That's what a responsive immigration program does, and I will be pursuing measures to make the system even more responsive to both short- and long-term needs. For example, there are some 150,000 international students in Canada right now. They earn Canadian qualifications. Since we opened the off-campus job market to them in May, more than 7,000 have received work permits under this program. These are young, motivated people with Canadian qualifications and now, potentially, Canadian work experience, yet we send them home when their student visas expire. Many of these young people may wish to stay and accept jobs in Canada.
I want them to have that opportunity.
We need these well-educated highly skilled people. But I've also been told by employers, time and again, that this country was built with bricks and mortar, and of course we will be building that for some time yet. In other words, as they used to say, we also need people with hard hands. We rely on the temporary foreign worker program to meet this need, and there's no question it helps. We accept 100,000 temporary workers a year. We've opened new temporary foreign worker units in Vancouver and Calgary to work more closely with employers to meet their needs. We will do more. This fall, I will take steps to make the temporary foreign worker program more responsive to labour market needs, while looking at more fundamental changes to ensure it can meet Canada's needs in the years ahead.
At the same time, it is clear that we need many of these people on a more than temporary basis.
Temporary workers are getting Canadian work experience, learning our languages, and adapting to the Canadian way of life. They have all the ingredients for success, and just when they're getting settled here, we send them home. I've made no secret of my intention to look at ways to encourage successful students with work experience and temporary foreign workers to stay in Canada permanently. Let's give them the opportunity to call Canada home.
These changes will have an important impact. What's more, they will not compromise the integrity of the system, or the overarching need to play our part in protecting the security of Canada and its allies. Still, immigration alone will not solve Canada's labour and skill shortages. Nor will immigration alone secure our future prosperity. We need to make the best use of the human resources we already have, examining things such as training and education, workforce mobility and bringing under-represented groups into the workforce. My colleague, Minister Finley, is the lead on broader human resources issues, and I am working with her as she provides leadership on foreign credentials recognition.
There is no question that immigration can do more. We are doing more. We will do even more in the future.
We will increase our capacity to deliver the skills and people our economy needs by giving international students and foreign workers the chance to put what they've learned in Canada to work for Canada.
I would like to thank honourable members for their time.
I look forward to your questions and advice as we carry out our part of the job of building Canada.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
