We will try to be as brief as we can, recognizing the time constraints of the committee this morning.
Let me thank the committee for allowing us to present before you on behalf of the 3.2 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress, essentially coast to coast. But more important, we will submit a comprehensive brief to the committee. I'm sorry we didn't get it done on time, given the shortness of the request to present before the committee.
I will outline some of the key points we want to make, and hopefully that will generate some questions from the committee members.
The government argues that the proposed changes are designed to make our immigration system more flexible and responsive to Canada's labour market needs. However, the process the government is using to advance their planned changes and proposed amendments represents a significant change in Canada's immigration system. It raises serious concern about the fairness, transparency, and public accountability.
Immigration reform must not simply be about addressing labour market needs. Immigration is fundamentally about the welcoming, supporting, benefiting, and integrating of newcomers into Canada. Immigrants are more than a component of an economic agenda. Immigration reform requires thoughtful policy attention and building an inclusive, vibrant, and diverse society.
Significant changes in Canada's demographic profile are well under way. We have an aging population and a declining fertility rate. The country is largely dependent on immigrants for both population and labour market growth. Unfortunately our immigration system is also overloaded with applicants on the waiting list, and many have been waiting for years.
There are serious challenges that require broad public engagement and thoughtful and effective policy solutions. Embedding major immigration reform inside a budget bill is playing electoral politics with people's futures and is both a wrong-headed and unsound approach to transparency and policy development. We urge the committee to sever the immigration amendments from Bill C-50 and undertake a set of comprehensive national public hearings.
Let me outline some very quick points.
We think embedding the reform in the budget bill is wrong.
There has been a failure to conduct meaningful and inclusive consultations prior to the development of the initiative.
Arbitrary powers granted to the minister fail the transparency and accountability test this government has promised.
New process is not the best way to deal with the backlog. The process of simply asking applicants who have been in the queue for years if they still wish to have their application processed demonstrates that other ways exist to cut down the line. Competing systems are unlikely to lead to a streamlined process.
The inappropriate use of ads to sell the initiative after the fact and before the amendments become law is problematic.
To view immigrants as an economic unit and skew the role of employers to determining citizenship is wrong-headed.
Unclear process steps exist in how labour market needs or priority occupations will be determined and how many assessment and selection processes will operate. We're likely to see a rise in applicants in the temporary foreign worker category or CIC numbers. It is not a balanced immigration system.
And last but not least, the funding allocation for competing systems may not be adequate.
I'd like to make one last point here, and this is a fundamentally important point for us. Immigration is about building more than just the well-being of employers' interests. Immigration policy is fundamentally about building our communities, workplaces, and society in a thoughtful, inclusive, accountable, and democratic manner. The proposed amendments come in the context of and contribute to a disturbing shift towards the use of immigration primarily to meet Canadian employers' needs without regard for the broader Canadian interests. This includes the problematic increase in reliance on temporary foreign workers. Canada needs to consider immigrants as full participants in society, not simply as temporary or disposable units to fill current available jobs.
Thank you so much.