I'm going to continue in the same vein as my colleague, since the question I wanted to ask first concerned the open permit and the closed permit.
Ms. Depatie-Pelletier, I must admit to you that I found your presentation very interesting, because, in it, I heard a point of view that I have never heard before. And I've been interested in immigration for a long time.
Would it be possible—if you can't do so immediately, perhaps you could do it at another time—to let us know how many persons, in the past year or past five years, have obtained what you call open permits, compared to those who have obtained closed permits, and in what employment categories?
I find this extremely interesting. We in Canada have always boasted, at least in the past 40 years, that we have an immigration policy that supposedly did not take into account country of origin, religion, and so on, whereas we know very well that's not entirely the case.
The example you give shows precisely that that is not entirely the case, and I'd like to take a closer look at that aspect.
Furthermore, with regard to temporary workers, I'm pleased that my colleague Andrew Telegdi gave that figure. We're trying to tell the public that the government considers immigration figures as overall figures. All right, we can very well do that, but it is important to see, in that overall figure, how many individuals are entitled to stay in Canada, and thus who are really immigrants, and how many are here for a limited period of time, either because they haven't yet been accepted as refugees, or because they are different types of temporary workers. We really have to make the distinction.
Canada's policy, the aim of which is to go and quickly select qualified workers in a very specific way, wouldn't be bad if it were accompanied by a number of actions.
First, when these people arrive in Canada, is there really a job for them and are they entitled to get that job? Often there are jobs, but Company X doesn't let them get them. The connection with what happens once they have crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific is important.
Second, it seems that this is a policy that looks at Canada's demographic and economic future through glasses that only show the short term. I believe that the best immigration policy Canada has had was the one under which we let people come into the country with their families within a short period of time. I'm thinking of the old waves of immigration that came from Italy, Greece and so on in the 1950s and 1960s. Those people, because they were already with their families, were able to settle immediately, and their children went to school. All that made these people Canadians.
Third, I know that it isn't very popular to say this, but, last year, I organized an evening event in Ottawa to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the first arrival of domestic workers from the Caribbean, that is to say from Barbados and Jamaica. You can say bad things about that program, but you can say good things about it as well. The program helped show Canadians that the presence of people of colour in Canada perhaps wasn't a bad thing, that those people were like everyone else, that those women had the right to settle and to bring in their families and so on.
So that opened the immigration doors to what we now call people of colour. There are positive aspects to that kind of program.
I would like to hear your comments.