Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 16th, 2008

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

But because the point system is not changing, the fast-tracking is really for the highly skilled. It doesn't really deal with what I just heard from the hotel and tourism industry, where most of the time the chefs and the housekeepers—

[Gerry Mills]

It's not going to help at all.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

We're not going to help them at all. It really wouldn't help the economy here. They keep applying for the temporary foreign workers, which is not good for the workers and not necessarily good for the tourism industry. It just results in a glut.

It actually does connect with Bill C-50 in some ways, because it's connected with the temporary foreign workers program.

[Gerry Mills]

I've tempered my comments and kept away from Bill C-50--but I really wanted to.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

It is totally connected.

In your service industry, for the 12 agencies you represent, do you get any funding to support work with temporary foreign workers?

[Gerry Mills]

There are some little pieces that we get, that some of the agencies get from the provincial government, but certainly not from the federal government.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

It's not from the federal government. Do you do work to support some of the folks who may need--

[Gerry Mills]

We do, but only with funding that we receive from the provincial government. We're told very strictly that we're not allowed to provide services--

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Should that be changed, because these folks are here in Canada anyway?

[Gerry Mills]

Absolutely. As I said in my comments, they're here, they're working in the economy, they have kids in school, they're playing here. We need to provide some services, because if we don't, then it would be....We also want them to stay.

We want them to change that route and go into permanent resident status. We're losing time. All research says you need to have those upfront services to make people feel settled and integrated.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Good. Thank you, Ms. Chow.

Thank you, Ms. Mills.

Mr. Komarnicki.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Mills. Certainly what you mentioned is a provincial nominee program. That's not a temporary foreign worker program. That's more to settle people here, and lifting the cap on the provincial nominee program gives the provinces the opportunity to grow. Certainly, some provinces have chosen to take the temporary foreign workers and put them in that stream.

What I'm hearing from you is that you want the broadening of that to ensure there's a means or a path to permanent residence even for the temporary foreign workers. Is that correct?

[Gerry Mills]

Yes, I would for the short term. Long term, I think the organization would--

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

You'd like to see a direct path. Fair enough.

The other thing I hear is that you think a lot of the funding that's being provided should also include the temporary foreign worker side for language training and so on. As you well know, funding for settlement agencies like yours and others has been frozen for at least a decade or more, and we budgeted $1.3 billion over five years to distribute to settlement agencies.

I think if we're going to have a successful settlement and integration program, we need to have the infrastructure to make that happen to allow people to become who they can be within our communities. Would you agree with that?

[Gerry Mills]

Absolutely. I think that's the whole issue. We need to provide those services; otherwise, people are going to be marginalized. We see across the world, especially in Europe, the under-class nature of migrant worker programs, and I think we don't want that in Canada.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

We need to have a balance. What I hear from you is that the economic stream and growing the economy, family reunification, and refugee protection are the three pillars that we must balance and protect going forward in a balanced way.

But overall, the immigration system is too complex, too difficult, and too hard to understand for the average person. You'd like to see it streamlined so that the path would be relatively easy and you could bring the people you need at the right time and the right place.

[Gerry Mills]

It sounds a little simplistic, but I think it is too difficult right now. I think we need to find a better way. We've put people in these three silos, and if you don't fit within these three silos...well, then what we have right now is the temporary foreign worker stream, because people don't fit in here.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

We need to make them fit?

[Gerry Mills]

Right. Well, we need a system that suits the nation.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Right. It has to be responsive to the needs of the nation, and you need to be able to respond to the needs of the nation as it goes.

I know we've talked about the refugee protection side, and there are seven million to eight million refugees. I think Madam Raymonde Folco indicated that under our system as it is presently, you have applications for leave to appeal to the Federal Court, Federal Court actions, humanitarian and compassionate grounds, pre-removal risk assessment, a hearing, and eventually an appeal.

We probably need to somehow fix that system so we can get genuine refugees here in a lot easier fashion than we presently have. Certainly, that's another branch of the three prongs that we talked about.

But I do want to say this: any reference or vile statements relating to racism being built into the present or proposed legislation, in my view, is pure bunk and nonsense. We do have a charter of rights that deals with that, and there's no place for race, religion, or ethnicity.... The fact of the matter is, it's just pure nonsense, and we certainly won't accept that--

[Some hon. members]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Order.

I have to allow the parliamentary secretary the same latitude that I allowed other members.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I'll read from the National Post from March 14, 2008. It said:

But what we get from the Liberals are the same platitudes we have been hearing for generations: complaints of veiled racism, and phony appeals to the mass immigration of a bygone age...

Whatever the system is, it needs to be charter-compliant, and it must not be based on any of those factors. That's a simple fact of the matter, wouldn't you agree?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

You're removing appeals to the courts.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Yes, but the fact of the matter is, any immigration system that needs to be responsive, that meets the three needs you've talked about, needs to be charter-compliant, needs to be based on objectivity, and that's where it needs to go.

My sense is that what we need is a system that meets the economic needs of the country, that ensures people don't have to wait for four, five, or six years, that is adaptable to what our country needs. Wouldn't you agree with that?