Thank you, Chair.
Certainly I'd like to welcome all of you from the delegation here to Canada. I hope you enjoy your stay and visit. I know it's tiring, for sure. You've done a lot in a few days. I know what that can be like.
As the chair said, you've met with the minister, so if I say anything contrary to what she said, accept that as the fact and we'll work from there.
In our immigration system, as we now have it, we have a number of pillars. We have the economic class, the family reunification class, the refugee protection class, temporary foreign workers, and foreign students, who come into our country. And those are there as we work with....
But I can tell you that our backlog has now grown to 900,000-plus, so I'm not sure you want to learn that part of our system. We are looking at making modifications, improvements, and reform to that system, and that's the subject of a fair amount of debate.
We find that if newcomers can have a job, a roof over their head, and a family who can reunite with them who are also able to work, that will go a long way toward settlement and integration.
As a government, we have committed $1.4 billion, over five years, to help with settlement and integration, primarily in helping those coming to our country for the first time to understand a bit about the culture, how society works, and to help them with the English or French language. We have certain classes that are offered to them. There are over 400 different organizations that work with us in providing those services, and those are funded across the country. One of the issues that come up, of course, is national standards, because we obviously have differences between provinces.
We have found that with some who have come here without a specific job but who have a qualification, there are some concerns about whether their credentials will be recognized. We've taken some steps to have a Foreign Credentials Referral Office that helps to refer these individuals to the appropriate agency—and there are over 400 of them as well—to have their credentials assessed.
We've introduced a program called the provincial nominee program, which allows the provinces to nominate the people they need for their economy. We allow them to nominate these people, and we simply look at the security and health aspect. We find that when the province brings them in, they're likely to integrate into the community and to stay there.
We've also found that the temporary foreign workers, or the guest workers as you call them, have looked for a pathway to become permanent residents. We have said that makes some sense from the point of view that they're already here, they have experienced some of our culture, and they have integrated in one fashion or another. We're looking at pathways to make them permanent residents.
We have something called the Canadian experience class that we're experimenting with. We're saying that for certain skilled workers and foreign students, we'll provide a pathway for them to become permanent residents from within Canada.
I'll just finish with a brief note. I was wondering if you had any comments about finding a pathway for temporary foreign workers, and if you had any questions.
I can say that a lot of people express concerns about our system being complex, that it may be difficult for newcomers to comprehend fully, and that the wait time to get in is far too long, which has been a general complaint. We are trying to address that.