Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 30th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We are now at about 25 minutes before four o'clock, so I think we will begin our meeting.

On behalf of our committee, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, I want to welcome a group here today, the German-Canadian Parliamentary Friendship Group of the German Bundestag.

Welcome to Canada, ladies and gentlemen. It's a real pleasure to have you here. We sincerely hope your stay here in Canada will be very productive and very enjoyable indeed.

I haven't had the pleasure of visiting Germany. I haven't been at your Parliament, but I do believe we have some people on our committee who have visited your Parliament. I think Mr. Telegdi has been there, and Mr. Wilson has been in Germany. It would be very interesting to have our committee visit Germany to see how you deal with immigration matters as well. Maybe today you might be able to let us know what the immigration challenges are in Germany. We have challenges of our own.

We recently finished a cross-Canada tour and talked about the Iraqi refugee problems that we have, and we're going to have the UNHCR here shortly after you leave. We heard 52 panels of people right across Canada, dealing with temporary foreign workers, dealing with the Iraqi refugee problems, and dealing as well with the immigration consultants.

Over the next four days we will initiate a study on Bill C-50, which is a bit of a controversial bill in our Parliament. It involves changes to the Immigration Act. There's some controversy among opposition members about that particular bill, so we'll be studying Bill C-50 for a few days. We also had the issue of lost Canadians, which we did a report on and submitted to Parliament.

We're a very busy committee. I think committee members would agree that we are very busy.

Perhaps I'll just go to you. I wouldn't even attempt to try to pronounce the names because I know I wouldn't be accurate. Perhaps I'll leave it to your leader, the head of the delegation, Mr. Klaus-Peter Flosbach, to introduce your members.

Thank you.

[Klaus-Peter Flosbach, Member, Head of Delegation, German-Canadian Parliamentary Friendship Group of the German Bundestag]

Mr. Chairman, we are pleased to be here, and I thank you on behalf of the German-Canadian Parliamentary Friendship Group.

We are a group of about 50 members of the German parliament, representing all five parties. We have a delegation here of six members--only five at the moment--from four different parties. We've had a wonderful three days in Ottawa with a lot of appointments and meetings.

We've met Minister Finley, Minister Baird, and Minister Bernier. We've talked about Afghanistan, about climate change, about a lot of other things, and we've talked about immigration and citizenship.

I think this is an important appointment, and it's the last appointment of our stay here in Ottawa. We will go to Montreal tomorrow morning.

Let me continue in my mother tongue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Any time you're ready, please feel free.

[Klaus-Peter Flosbach]

We are the German-Canadian parliamentary group, and our main topic is really to study the relationship between Germany and Canada. As individuals we are not experts in citizenship or immigration. We come from different parties and different committees. But something we also have come to realize during our stay here is that we are really close friends of Canada, though on some topics we may be of a different opinion.

Integration and immigration are important in Germany, but in a way that is different from how they are important in Canada. We do have a lot of immigrants who come to Germany through the open borders that we have had over the past 20-some years, ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the lowering of the Iron Curtain. They come to Germany from the east, from the former U.S.S.R.. There are former German citizens, and people who are bringing their families back together. We also have lots of immigrants from Turkey; and we must not forget the great movement of population coming in through the open borders of the European Union, which now has 27 member states.

We are most interested in learning from your experience on integration and immigration, as you have a very organized system of immigration with, as we heard, 250,000 immigrants per year. You also have some controversies on this issue, and we would really like to hear your different and sometimes opposed opinions on this issue.

Now I would like to have the members of my delegation introduce themselves.

[Norman Doyle, Conservative, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

[Klaus-Peter Flosbach]

My name is Mr. Klaus-Peter Flosbach. I am a member of the Christian Democratic Union. I am interested in finance issues and I am a member of the finance committee. For five years I have been a member of the Deutscher Bundestag.

[Jörg Rohde, Member, German-Canadian Parliamentary Friendship Group of the German Bundestag]

My name is Jörg Rohde. I have been a member for two and a half years. I am with the Liberal Party and I'm dealing with social affairs in Berlin. I am the speaker for my party for handicapped people.

[Volker Schneider, Member, German-Canadian Parliamentary Friendship Group of the German Bundestag]

I prefer to speak German.

My name is Volker Schneider. I am a member of the new left party. I am a member of the committee for education, research, and lifelong learning. One of my topics of interest is to study the way people from different countries with different qualifications can be integrated smoothly into the job market of another country. I am also a member of the committee on pensions and the committee on social affairs and also a member of the Council of Elders.

[Gero Storjohann, Member, German-Canadian Parliamentary Friendship Group of the German Bundestag]

My name is Gero Storjohann. I have been a member of Parliament since 2002. My party is the Christian Democratic Union. I am a member of the committee on traffic and town development and I am vice-chairman of the committee for petitions.

[Engelbert Wistuba, Member, German-Canadian Parliamentary Friendship Group of the German Bundestag]

My name is Engelbert Wistuba. I have been a member of the German Bundestag since 1998. My home state is Saxony-Anhalt. I am a member of the Social Democratic Party and I work in the committee on economics and technology and the committee on tourism.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Our committee has representatives, as I'm sure you're aware, from all political parties. On my right is the Conservative Party, which is the governing party. On my left are four members of the Liberal Party. Next to the Liberal members we have the Bloc members from Quebec. Normally we would have one member of the New Democratic Party, but they couldn't make it today.

We will go first to Mr. Telegdi.

As you speak, maybe you can introduce yourselves briefly and make any comments you wish to make. Seven minutes is fine for each speaker.

Go ahead.

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

Welcome. I'm really pleased you are here. I have had opportunities to visit Germany on a number of occasions. I came here as a Hungarian refugee in 1957 and we stayed in a refugee camp in Austria. The first word of German I learned was nicht verstehen. That's what everybody kept telling me when I tried to talk to them in Hungarian. I was very pleased to see that when the reunification of Germany happened, it happened through Hungary, when people from East Germany went through Hungary and got to the west and broke down the Berlin Wall. That truly led to the destruction of the Iron Curtain.

I live in Kitchener--Waterloo. Kitchener used to be known as Berlin. We have a high proportion of people who came from Germany. As you probably know, we have the second largest Oktoberfest outside of Munich, and if the people here cannot get to Germany, they can certainly come to Kitchener--Waterloo during Oktoberfest. So I invite my colleagues to do that. When the previous parliamentary committee did the tour, we had a reception at the Concordia Club.

Anyway, that's all nice and great.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

We should give some time for translation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We'll need a little bit of translation here, so maybe halfway through, Andrew, you could stop.

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

So they understand my Hungarian accent. That's good.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You might be able to stop at some point and come back again.

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

I have a question for you, because you have had experience with guest workers. It seems that our immigration policy in Canada is becoming more under the economic class; it's becoming pretty elitist. You have to have a university degree and you have to speak the language pretty well to come in as an economic class immigrant.

I'll give you an example--and this was done by the CBC. John A. Macdonald, our first Prime Minister, is an example of someone who would not get into Canada under today's system. Tommy Douglas would not get into our country today under this system. Adrienne Clarkson, who was our Governor General, would not have got into Canada. And probably the most popular person, Wayne Gretzky, would never have got here under this system. Some of the people from Germany--for example, Klaus Werner, the founder of ATS--would not get in today under our system; neither would Frank Stronach, who came here, nor Frank Hasenfratz, nor Mike Lazaridis, who is the inventor of the Blackberry.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

He's a Greek too.

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

That's right, he's Greek. He came from Istanbul, Turkey.

You have had experience with foreign or temporary workers or guest workers. My concern is that we have jobs that need to be done in Canada, and even if it's a labourer, should that person be a Canadian or should they be a temporary foreign worker? That's the question I would like to ask you, based on your experience with guest workers.

Does society in this country have a place for someone like a labourer to become a citizen?

[Jörg Rohde]

I will try to give an answer in the English language.

First of all, you have to define how to do the work, which is done on your own. So normally I would say Germany was less experienced than Canada in this area. We had a lot of guest workers, beginning in the sixties and seventies, and then Germany made a lot of mistakes, which we now have to cure in the current environment. So it's more on us to ask you how to integrate these people.

We have experience with unskilled workers and skilled workers. We have no legislation for coming into Germany at the moment, as you have for Canada, so I would say you have to give the answer on your own. That is very diplomatic, I hope. So we are keen on getting knowledge about how to integrate.

We have, as Klaus-Peter Flosbach mentioned, a lot of immigrants from former Russia who have less German skills. So they began to build their own villages within Germany and they do not integrate. We see this and we have to react somehow. We have looked at your school system and others. You spend about $1 billion for English skills and other courses to help your people who come here integrate. So if you only say, “Hey, there's work, and it has to be done,” then the person might go back.

This will somehow work, I'm sure. But normally you have a person who will come to Canada, and then the person says, “Hey, I have a nice wife or some kids and they have to come too. We feel comfortable here, we would like to stay.” And you have to give an answer later. So it's not easy to handle this.

My party in Germany--which is not in power at the moment--would ask for a rule to establish a process for people coming to Germany, so that the way to Germany is clear and transparent for everyone outside Germany. This is not clear, even for me, in Germany, but we have to deal with it. So we come to learn from you on this issue.

[Klaus-Peter Flosbach]

You have to consider that the European market is a market of 500 million people, and Europe has open borders, so people can travel wherever they want to. But social policy is still made on a national level, so this has a very big impact.

We have lots of people with low skills who are unemployed. Also, because of the new member countries in the east, a lot of the production capacity has moved to the eastern countries, where the wages are lower. So what we really need, and what we're trying to get, is a highly skilled, qualified workforce. But that's a lot more difficult to achieve.

Our first concern was not so much integration; it was really the job market. We invited people to come to Germany to work as guest workers. At that time we never thought, really, about integrating them. Germany didn't really consider itself a country for immigration at that time. So what happened was that a parallel society and parallel cities and towns came into existence because of these guest workers getting together.

Now integration is one of our main concerns. The reason we are here in Canada is to try to learn from you. Very soon we are also going to have a meeting with our state integration minister, who we are going, actually, to invite to come to Canada to talk to you and learn from you as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Does anyone in the Bloc have any questions?

Go ahead, Mr. St-Cyr.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I'll speak in French, so you'll have the translation in English and then back into German.

My name is Thierry St-Cyr and I am a member of the Bloc Québécois, like Mr. Robert Carrier. Since your arrival on Parliament Hill, you have probably heard talk about the Bloc Québécois, a party that runs candidates only in Quebec and that believes Quebec should be an independent country. In the meantime, we work with our colleagues here in Canada, in order to move things forward.

I am very pleased that you are here today. I must tell you that I like Germany very much, having been there several times, including to Berlin, Hamburg, Baden-Baden and, of course to Munich, which is rather my favourite. I must admit to you that I had the opportunity to go to the real Oktoberfest, in Munich, and that I really enjoyed it.

I wanted to talk a bit with you about models of integration that coexist and, in certain cases, one might say, are in opposition to each other in Canada. In fact, if you are going to be in Montreal tomorrow, you should speak to representatives of the ministère de l'Immigration et des Communautés culturelles du Québec. It might be interesting to see how the Quebecois model is different and go back home with two models in mind. You could certainly take what appears to be most interesting from them.

As far as integration is concerned, once we have chosen our immigrants—because Quebec chooses in own immigrants under an agreement it has with the Canadian government—how do we integrate those people into society? You spoke of this earlier.

Since the 1970s in Canada, there has been a model of Canadian multiculturalism that is enshrined in the Constitution, according to which several cultures coexist but do not necessarily mix with each other. People come here, and Canada is made up of all these cultures. For example, when we are gathering statistics and people are asked what their origin is, there is a very small majority of people who say they are of Canadian descent. Most say they are of Hungarian, Greek or Brazilian descent, among others.

In Quebec, we have a model we call interculturalism, that is to say we believe that there is a common culture into which each immigrant must integrate, that he must contribute to, but from which he must also adopt common values, traditions and a way of living. This is often a source of disagreement between Quebec and the rest of Canada, because we have two very different ways of seeing integration. Multiculturalism is several cultures coexisting in Canada, and interculturalism is a common culture in Quebec with contributions coming from citizens of various origins.

Have you heard about these different visions between the governments, and in Germany, which one would you be closest to?

[Volker Schneider]

[Witness speaks in German]

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay, thank you.