Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 13th, 2008

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

The point of order was that this member is indicating that he has evidence that establishes a certain point when that hasn't been established in this place, and apparently it's to another department and those questions should be put there and not here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

To that point of order.

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

Chair, with all due respect, I've asked the minister. I made her aware. I tabled it in the House. The ads are here, and I can certainly give them to the minister.

My question is to the minister: what is she going to do about it? Is she going to talk to her colleague, and, if so, will she follow up? Will she make a commitment to this committee to follow up and leave no stone unturned in order for us to get to the bottom of this?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I think she has already indicated that this information will come from Public Works, and she will make every effort to follow up on that.

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

Mr. Chair, what I'm hearing is that the minister wants to slide away on this. She absolutely doesn't want to make a commitment to follow this up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

In the meantime, Mr. St. Cyr.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have a number of questions for the minister. Several comments caught me off guard, but I will come straight to the point.

As a Bloc MP, you surely understand that I am very concerned about the potential impact of this legislation on Quebec and on the Canada-Quebec Accord. I believe someone stated to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights that the act would not affect people selected by Quebec. Yet, during our hearings, some witnesses told us that on the contrary, while this may not be the legislator's intent, there is nothing in the act to prevent instructions from applying to persons selected by the provinces. Mention was made at one briefing by your officials that instructions like these could be issued if one province attracted all of the applications for qualified workers in a given field.

Would you, or a future minister, have the authority under the act to issue instructions that could impact how the applications of persons selected by the Government of Quebec are processed?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

As I just said, the proposed amendments will not affect the Canada-Quebec Accord. I've discussed the changes with the department and with my officials and we all agree that they would have no impact. The Accord clearly sets out the responsibilities of the federal and provincial governments with respect to immigrations and the reforms proposed in Bill C-50 will not affect these responsibilities in any way.

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

I've looked at the bill and Part 6 contains two pages. Is there one specific clause in the bill stipulating that instructions for the processing of applications would not apply to Quebec applications?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

No, there is not, but there are no such provisions in the existing legislation either. Everything is covered in the Accord.

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

In short, you're saying that neither the existing legislation nor the bill affords any protection in this regard.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

The bill does not change anything.

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

I have often heard the same comment in Quebec. Once the selection certificate has been issued in Quebec, it is referred to the federal government so that health and safety concerns can be addressed. People complain that it already takes the federal government too long to respond. If the minister prioritizes a certain number of applications, would this not delay the processing of applications in Quebec or in another province that are not a priority? Overall, the resources have not changed. Nor has the number of cases handled. If some applications are deemed to be priorities, then others further down the list will take longer to process.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

We are prepared to make a promise to Quebec in so far as prioritizing its applications is concerned. Regardless of what happens, we will continue to keep our promises and to process each application fairly.

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

That doesn't quite answer my question, but I would like to talk about reducing wait times.

You mentioned wait times more than once in your presentation, and I don't quite see how issuing instructions will reduce wait times. If there are six persons in the queue and the last one in line is moved to the front of the line, there are still six people in line. How will this measure designed to prioritize applicants reduce the average wait time?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

We are going to do three things...

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Let us have a brief response, Minister. We're trying to stay on time here.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

We will have $109 million to assign more human resources to deal with this situation and we plan to make some administrative changes to speed up the process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Minister.

We'll go to Madam Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Minister, I noticed that actual spending in 2006 on the immigration program is $244.8 million, and in the main estimates in 2008, the immigration program spending is $164.86 million. That's a 32% drop.

Yet for the advertising program, $2.4 million has been put into the supplementary estimates. That's a lot of money for the advertising program. I think $1.1 million has already been spent on defending a bill that the House of Commons hasn't even passed...but that's neither here nor there.

I have listened carefully to all your interviews. You have said you do not want to process dead people, which we totally agree with. One way to not process dead people is to send a letter to all 925,000 people in the backlog and say, “If you don't respond in 60 days, obviously you don't want us to process your application any more.” Maybe a few of them are already dead; I don't know. But that's an easy way to deal with it. Why not do it that way?

Secondly, you have often said you want to get the doctors in, because we need doctors. I've heard that many times. I then looked up the temporary foreign workers program. This information comes from the employers. It specifies the kind of skilled labour they want. I have looked at the kinds of skills employers say they need most in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. In Alberta, it's code number 6242. It's not doctors; it's actually cooks. In 2007, the employers from Alberta have requested 3,343 cooks. Nowhere on this list is doctors.

I then looked at British Columbia and Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Some are asking for maybe 200 doctors, but certainly chefs and cooks are at the top of the list.

So are we doing all of this in Bill C-50, part 6, in order to bring more cooks into Canada, or maybe kitchen helpers? I see that Alberta has requested 6,976 food-counter attendants and kitchen helpers. Next on the list are babysitters, nannies, and parent helpers—5,000 of them. There is a request for 4,000 light-duty cleaners.

Are these the people you're going to put at the front of the list—they're obviously in demand—instead of some other folks? I'm just looking at the documentation in front of me. They are obviously the people we need.

Am I correct in that interpretation?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Not entirely.

One thing I've been saying—and you say you've been listening—is that we are going to set the categories for priorities only after consultation with all of the provinces and territories and with other government departments and industry. The priorities might include medical professionals, doctors, lab technicians, nurses. There is a wide range. We're even short of veterinarians in some parts of the country.

We recognize that there are different needs in different parts of the country. That's one of the reasons we have the provincial nominee program—if the needs are specific to one region, the provinces have the flexibility to deal with them.

We're looking for priorities. As you point out, doctors may be small in number, but some are still desperately needed in Canada. In having small numbers, we're not going to be worried about displacing others who are in the lineup, as was suggested earlier. We will still meet the needs of the country.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Nevertheless, British Columbia has requested 1,701 cooks. They need 7,900 babysitters, nannies, and parents' helpers; 3,000 farm workers and harvesting labourers. There is a high demand in the construction trades. I don't see doctors on this list....

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay, I would ask--

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Did I run out of time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

If you have a brief response, Minister, that's fine; if not, I'll go to Mr. Khan.