Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 13th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Committee, we'll get our meeting going. Some of our members are a little bit slow this morning. And of course some of our members are on two committees, so it's not always easy to get a full complement at our committee meetings, because some members have dual responsibilities.

I want to welcome our witnesses today. Our witnesses are from Vancouver, and they never got in until about one o'clock this morning, so they're still feeling the effects of the jet lag.

Hopefully you got some sleep, and you're ready to give us some important information today. We welcome you.

We're doing part 6 of Bill C-50.

Our witnesses are Mr. Tung Chan, chief executive officer of SUCCESS; Mr. Eric Szeto, who is with Voice of the Minority; and Mr. Aziz Khaki, from the Committee for Racial Justice. Welcome, and thank you for being here.

We generally give you the opportunity to make an opening statement of roughly seven to ten minutes. You can all make individual statements if you wish, and you can do it in any order you want to.

Whoever wishes to go first, please go ahead.

[Tung Chan, Chief Executive Officer, SUCCESS]

I would say “age before beauty”. Mr. Khaki is the most senior of us, so we'll defer to him.

[Aziz Khaki, President, Committee for Racial Justice]

I don't know in what way I am senior, but--

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You probably got more sleep last night.

You go ahead, sir, whenever you're ready.

[Aziz Khaki]

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson and members.

Once upon a time I used to be in Ottawa about ten days a month. Finally they got tired of me, so for the last five to six years I haven't been in Ottawa that much. But it's quite a pleasure to see nice warm weather here, coming from rainy Vancouver.

I'm the president of the Committee for Racial Justice. I'm also the vice-chair of the Muslim Canadian Federation, and I thought I should also mention that. I sit on a number of committees, but I won't go through that list.

Once again, thank you very much for inviting us here. I will start with my comments and then we can have the discussion.

Fifteen years ago the Committee for Racial Justice published a research paper entitled Control and Inadmissibility in Canadian Immigration Policy. It began with the following introduction, and I quote:

Traditionally, Canadian immigration policy has encompassed the dual function of admission and control, that is, its stated purpose has been to encourage the admission of immigrants while attempting to screen out those individuals who have been deemed undesirable.

Since the time of the Committee for Racial Justice report, changes to Canadian immigration legislation have progressively limited and restricted access to potential immigrants and refugees, with some exceptions. It appears that those individuals who have been deemed undesirable are an expanding group defined by the whims of a minister or a government-based decision with fundamental disrespect of the charter, on the whims of political expediency and agendas.

We maintain that changes proposed under Bill C-50, the budget implementation act, with respect to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act give rise to serious legitimate concerns and point to very troubling patterns. An ongoing erosion of access, transparency, and accountability is what we have seen. Without accountability or explanation or recourse, entire groups or populations may be deemed undesirable and excluded by the stroke of the minister's pen. The point system, when it was first introduced, removed considerations such as race or place of origin as consideration in the immigration process.

It would appear that Bill C-50 is an attempt to reaffirm arbitrary decision-making into the immigration system and to remove the predictability of the application process. Sneaking these controversial changes through the House of Commons via Bill C-50 is a backdoor-entry tactic. We are challenging the provisions of Bill C-50 concerning the reason of its implementation, its regulation, and the wider question of its relation to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Section 11 of IRPA, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, currently says that the official “shall” issue a visa if the applicant meets the requirements of the act. With the proposed changes, it will say that the official “may” issue a visa. Section 25 currently also says that the minister “shall” examine a humanitarian and compassionate application. Under the proposed changes the minister “shall” examine if the applicant is in Canada, but “may” examine the application if the applicant is outside Canada. So there's a change from “shall” examine to “may” examine if the applicant is outside Canada.

These proposed changes further limit access and undermine predictability and transparency in the decision-making process. There's a strong concern that some voices in Canada have been putting pressure on successive federal governments to stop recruiting immigrants from Africa or Muslim countries or other places in the global south.

Foreign workers have increased, while permanent residents have decreased. With poor working conditions, limited rights, abuse of their working ability, and the attitude of kicking them out when we are done with them, foreign workers are looked upon as disposable economic units. We have seen problems in Europe. European countries, to increase their prosperity, hired foreign workers. They want their cheap labour, but not the labourers.

With the introduction of immigration matters under Bill C-50, we would like to inquire what the intent of the government is. Is it to dismantle the Department of Immigration and make it operate under the Ministry of Finance as one of its functions?

The process of selection of immigrants should remain fair and transparent. The current status under Bill C-50 makes the minister and the government above and beyond accountability. There is a very clear erosion of our rights and liberties. When you look on human rights as favours you are granting someone, instead of as fundamental democratic freedoms, your intentions are underhanded.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That's my presentation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Khaki.

Either one of our other witnesses may go ahead and make opening statements, if you wish.

[Tung Chan]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs.

My name is Tung Chan, and I'm from Vancouver. I'm the CEO of SUCCESS.

By way of introduction, I want to say that SUCCESS has been around for 35 years. We currently employ 390 employees in 18 locations in the lower mainland of British Columbia. We provide settlement, employment, language training, and health care services to youth, adults, families, and seniors, and particularly to the community of new Canadians.

I want to thank you for inviting me to appear before you to talk about Bill C-50, in particular part 6 of Bill C-50. As an organization, we applaud the intention of the new legislation. We believe it is a good intention. We do need to speed up the processing of applications of immigrants whom we need. But we also would like to say that the legislation, particularly in its application, needs to ensure transparency.

Currently the wait time is far too long. We have been dealing with immigrants coming from offshore who say they have been waiting for way too long to come here, and that it makes it difficult for them to plan. Many of them, actually, before they came, when they applied, had a different set of economic and family situations than they have by the time they actually get approved to come. So it's important that whatever we do, whatever Parliament wants to pass, this be kept in mind.

As we heard earlier from Mr. Khaki, the most controversial point in the bill is clause 116, which replaces the word “shall” with the word “may”. We do, however, recognize that in order to achieve flexibility there is a need to have some discretionary powers. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to do anything if we simply stated everything. However, the point we want to make is that if we want to insert this kind of discretion and allow our offshore posts or the civil servants to exert that kind of discretion, then it is important that at the same time we put in place a very transparent, open, and clear reporting system so that when such discretion is being used, the public know, after the fact or before, how it will be used.

We understand that the minister, on an annual basis, gives a report to Parliament, so perhaps that would be a place where the reports should appear, in terms of when and how the discretionary power is used. Because as stated earlier by the previous witness, when people are allowed under the regulation to come in, but the bureaucrats may exercise the discretion and disallow people to come in, then any report from the department should contain that.

On a more general note, though, in terms of immigration we know that as a country we need immigrants. That's almost an established fact for most people; it is no longer an opinion. I've heard that assertion from different departments of the country, and we've heard it from different departments of the provinces.

The sad fact, though, is that the current points system causes a lot of false hope, particularly for the skilled-labour immigrants. So when you're done with studying this particular section, I would respectfully request that perhaps Parliament should look at totally reviewing the current points system as it applies to what is happening now. The points system has not only created false hope, but it's actually also creating a situation where we have a mismatch of the types of immigrants who will come in. When I say “type”, I refer to their economic background in terms of their skills.

We also note that as a country, the way we apply our immigration law is that we divide it into two basic doors. The one is economic and the other is humanitarian.

I'm glad to hear the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration say that this amendment applies only to the economic side. Nonetheless, on the other side, humanitarian and family reunion, I believe that we have to continue to make sure people can come in early, and that we should look at providing better information to people before they come and adequate assistance afterwards.

We've often seen in both the economic and humanitarian streams that people could have done a lot better had they been told in their home country what they could expect. It would be even better to provide them with orientation and integration training, telling them about the Canadian system, the Canadian culture, even the language. People can train and learn far better in a home environment than in a strange one.

We also need to look at improving coordination between the provincial governments and the federal government. I would suggest that the federal government and the provinces come together to form a national standard on immigrant settlement. I know that under our constitution immigrant settlement is within the realm of the provinces. However, that should not stop the federal government from imposing, or at least requesting, minimum standards in language training, employment training, and integration of services within the host communities.

As we become more and more a country of multicultural communities, it is not only the newcomers who have to adapt and change. I firmly believe that the host country also needs to adapt and change. Culture is not static. Culture is always dynamic, and that dynamic would be all the better if we could all learn from each other in creating a unique and inclusive Canadian culture—not just a one-culture or bicultural community, but a more multicultural one.

With respect to employment training, I believe that this bill is going to allow people in the economic classes to come in faster. But even more important, once they are here, we have to have a good program to integrate them economically into employment. Census data indicates that recent immigrants are doing far less well than Canadian-born citizens.

We could take a page from the Quebec government's book. Quebec has a very good program for integrating economic immigrants. They provide people with wage subsidies of up to $7,500 per person. They provide wage subsidies for supervisors of the companies—small and medium-sized enterprises—of up to $1,100. They also provide grants to those SMEs of up to $2,000, which allows them to adapt their workplaces, to find out how they can change and welcome the newcomers.

As I've said again and again, by the year 2011 the Canadian labour market net growth is going to have to come from new immigrants. It behooves us as a country to make sure that we have a good system to help to integrate those immigrants.

The other part of this is the foreign credential recognition program. The European Union is able to find ways to harmonize the 2,600 regulations that govern all the different professionals. If they can do that with so many countries, I'm sure Canada, if we have the political will, can find a way to resolve this issue.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Szeto.

[Eric Szeto, Organizer, Voice of the Minority]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will be straightforward as to what I would like to say.

The Minister of Immigration claims that she needs Bill C-50, the amendment to the Immigration Act, to reduce the backlog and give priority to the category of immigrant that Canada needs the most. Voice of the Minority, the group that I'm representing here today, supports this objective; however, we have serious concerns about the approach the government is taking with Bill C-50.

Bill C-50 will allow the minister to cherry-pick from applicants and simply discount others in a very unreasonable way by using the following provision in the bill: proposed paragraph 87.3(3)(b), which states that the minister may establish “an order, by category or otherwise, for the processing of applications or requests”.

And further, under proposed paragraph 87.3(3)(c), the minister may set “the number of applications or requests, by category or otherwise, to be processed in any year”.

And in proposed subsection 87.3(4), “If an application or request is not processed, it may be retained, returned or otherwise disposed of in accordance with the instructions of the Minister.”

As we can see from the above provisions, the minister can set the priority and order for processing by category and very possibly by individual. And the applications that were not processed will be “retained, returned or otherwise disposed of”, according to proposed subsection 87.3(4), as mentioned. This is very unfair and very undemocratic to the applicants who will be discounted, because it replaces a well-defined rules-based system with an unclear person-ruled system that has no recourse for the applicants. Also, discounting those who were not picked simply by retaining, returning, or otherwise disposing of their application is not a reasonable way to deal with the backlog problem.

Worst and most worrisome is the amendment to proposed subsection 11(1), which changes “shall” be granted an immigrant visa to “may” be granted an immigrant visa. This one single word change from “shall” to “may” gives the minister the authority to cherry-pick once again by refusing to issue visas to those who have already cleared the requirements. This provision would not contribute in any way to reducing the backlog, as efforts would have been used in processing their file. Shutting the door for them to come to Canada even after they have successfully passed the bar, without any recourse, is very unfair.

Minister Finley has been defending Bill C-50 for the last couple of months but has failed to deal with the above-mentioned concerns from the public. She is often evasive by refusing to deal with the specifics of the bill we are concerned about. She sometimes double-talks and is often misleading.

She repeatedly told the Chinese media that Bill C-50 would not cap the number of applications and would not affect the family reunification class, as family reunification is a priority of the government. However, on April 28, at the Standing Committee on Finance, she admitted that Bill C-50 is intended to cap and restrict immigrants, and that if at a future point in time we decide that family class is the priority, they will be fast-tracked just like any of the worker categories.

This leads us to believe that the family class application is not currently a government priority. Ladies and gentlemen, if one category of applicants is designated as a priority, others would be a lower priority. And it's impossible for them not to be negatively affected. It is common sense. And how could the minister just write off our concerns?

The minister claims opposition to the bill is misleading, as she will only set the order by category and has no intention of setting the order individually. If this is so, then why do they have “by category or otherwise” in proposed paragraph 87.3(3)(b)? Why is “or otherwise” needed, if the order she intends to set is only by category?

I also noted that she dropped the provision to dispose of the unprocessed applications in her explanation on how to deal with the backlogs at the committee. Is it because she realized how unfair it is to simply destroy one's application in order to deal with the backlog? Why does the minister insist on not allowing any amendments to Bill C-50?

The minister further commented that

There are millions, literally millions of people, in China and India alone, who qualify for admission to this country. That doesn't mean we can accept them all.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is particularly important that when we have more immigrants than we can accept in this country that we have a transparent, rule-based system that respects democracy and equality for all of them. How we select immigrants to our country will define who we are in the world. We will be telling the world that we are abandoning our cherished values if we adopt the immigration amendment of Bill C-50.

I truly believe there is no conflict between having a fair, equal, effective, transparent, and rules-based immigration system and addressing the need of skilled labour for the benefit of our economy. If we need more resources to streamline our system in order to deal with the huge problems in our hands, then we must do this. What we must not do is give the minister such arbitrary power, as it diminishes our core values of fairness, democracy, equality, and the rule of law, which have made Canada a great country.

We must amend Bill C-50 to rescind the above-mentioned provisions.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for allowing me to share our concerns with you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Mr. Szeto.

We will now go to questions, beginning with Mr. Telegdi.

Mr. Chan, what does SUCCESS stand for?

[Tung Chan]

Thank you. People always ask that question.

When we started 35 years ago, we were looking for an acronym and we decided to use SUCCESS. However, over the years it has moved into.... With signs like RBC, TD, or BNS, people don't ask what they mean any more. So I would simply say that SUCCESS is an organization that helps Canadians, particularly new Canadians. But at its origin, SUCCESS stood for Society of the United Chinese Community Enrichment Social Services. When we went to register, the registrar said we could not have the word “society” in front, so legally our name is United Chinese Community Enrichment Services Society.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

[Tung Chan]

Thank you for the question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Telegdi, go ahead, sir.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Some of the adjectives I heard used—“unfair”, “undemocratic”, “double-talk”, “misleading”, “undermining transparency”, “doing it through the back door”—are pretty good descriptions of the neocons who happen to be driving this bill.

In your statements you mentioned that you were glad that the minister said the changes were not going to apply to anybody but the economic class. Well, the reality is that they can apply to anybody.

Mr. Szeto, I share your concern. I saw the interview on television, where the minister talked about the Chinese and the people from India all qualifying. Good old-fashioned immigrant bashing is how I'm starting to perceive this, and it's done for electoral purposes.

You keep making reference to the minister. I wish it were that simple. I was here when we changed the Immigration Act back in 2002. I was on this committee. Essentially, what happened is that the bureaucracy misled the committee and misled government, and their duplicity only became apparent when the case of Laurentiu Dragan was taken to court, where the justice issued a mandamus thwarting the desires of the bureaucrats to use the new standard to apply to the backlog so they could disqualify applicants. Well, it didn't work.

In essence, I always thought that the driving purpose of the new point system was to do exactly that. They didn't succeed, but what they succeeded at was in creating a real crisis by having a point system that doesn't reflect what the economy needs. It is a problem, and as a result we have the rise in temporary foreign workers, which is the way to get around it, because they can't get them in under the point system, but these people are needed by the economy.

The question I have for you, and this really has been a concern of mine, is that, as you know, we apologized for the Chinese head tax, the Asian exclusion—and the government is going to be apologizing for the Komagata Maru—and the fact that the Chinese were brought in to build the railway, single men who couldn't bring their families. Now, with these temporary foreign workers, we're doing the same thing. I thought about the lessons of history and how important it was to recognize the mistakes of the past, so let's make sure we don't repeat them. I can see this temporary foreign worker class, where people can be exploited, as something that, if it's carried to its conclusion, we'll be apologizing for down the road in a 100 years' time.

My thing is that we need immigrants; that's what we need. We need immigrants who come here to build the country, and we should always have that as the first priority for immigration.

What's your thought about that, about the dangers of temporary foreign workers increasingly replacing immigrants?

[Eric Szeto]

Personally, I still believe we have a very good system in immigration policy. In my opinion, there's really no conflict in the system we have now, which is fair, transparent, and equal for everybody. It's a model; in fact, it's a model of immigration policy for other countries.

I'm not against any changes to the immigration policy. In fact we do need some skilled workers to address our labour shortage, which is critical to our economy. I'm just saying that there's no conflict between addressing the need of our economy and having a fair system.

What I'm going to say is that we can have a fair system. If there is some problem with the system, it doesn't mean that we have to throw away the system and change to a new one, drastically changing the principles of the existing system.

So let's say that these two goals—to have a fair system and to address our economy's needs—can go hand in hand.

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

That's exactly what I was saying, that we need to change the allocation of points.

[Eric Szeto]

Yes. What I mean is that we—

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

I wonder if you could give a chance to other folks to reply as well.

[Eric Szeto]

We don't need to abandon some of them and cherry-pick the others, but we can take care of them both by refining the system. The government could do something more to put more resources to upgrade the system.

Let me give you an example. Under the previous government it was a two-way highway with two lanes each way. After a few years, as more cars came in and wanted to use the freeway, it became a traffic jam. Now the government is saying it is going to put traffic police to dictate which cars can use the freeway and which ones cannot. The ones it picks, who can use the freeway, go straight ahead, but the ones who cannot use it, it tells them, “Okay, go ahead, because you are going to wait for a long time. If you don't want to wait, drop out and come back when the freeway is clear.”

Why doesn't the government build or expand to three lanes, or car-pool lanes, or speed-up lanes for those skilled workers? That way the other people waiting on the freeway can still move ahead and speed up a little bit. But if they use a car pool, and they move to the car-pool lane, the cars using the old freeway can still move ahead. That's what I want the government to do, in fact.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

That clears up the seven minutes.

I'm going to go with four seven-minute rounds, because we do have 28 minutes.

Mr. St-Cyr, if you want to share your time with Mr. Carrier, you're welcome to. But you go right ahead for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have only have two questions, but they are for you all. First, were you in any way consulted by the government during the development of this bill?

[Aziz Khaki]

Are you addressing all three?

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

Yes.

[Tung Chan]

Thank you for the question. My French is only comme ci comme ça.

If it's a straight definition, a consultation, particularly relating to this particular bill, the answer is no.

However, I have sat in many informal discussions with the Vancouver Board of Trade and with other forums where many of the business people, particularly in British Columbia, have voiced concern that there is a labour shortage. In order to fast-track the workers that are required to come in, there is a need to somehow find a way so that we can respond to the rapidly changing economy faster.