I would simply advise the government and the minister to take the changes she wants to consider on immigration and put them in a process that's transparent, and to have meaningful consultation across the country.
Canadians as a whole, regardless of what part of the country they're from, and especially those families and individuals who have been waiting in the queue for quite some time to have their application dealt with to get their families here, are very frustrated. I think that's a real issue.
If you're going to advance changes to the immigration system, recognizing that we, as a country, are also competing for immigrants from around the world, we need to be very thoughtful about how we go about that. No immigration policy should simply be driven by employers' demands. It should be driven by the desire of the country as to what kinds of individuals we want to bring to our country and how we are going to integrate them in building this country. That's fundamentally what the immigration policy should be about.
I think this policy shift is trying to accomplish how quickly we can respond to the employers' demands. And employers' demands, as you know, change with the speed of lightning. Today it's a need for widget makers, and tomorrow it's a need for windmill makers. We can't build a country that way if we adopt that approach to immigration.
I would simply argue that the minister should seriously heed the concerns raised by others who have come before the committee to withdraw these amendments in the budget bill and put them out separately for us to have meaningful discussion.
We, as a congress, represent three million members. A large percentage of our members are immigrants. Many of them have helped build this country and want to continue to do that. We want to help shape the policy of the country. But it should not be skewed in the direction for employers to determine, and this is exactly what this policy does.