Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 13th, 2008

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

In what year was the points system established?

[Daniel Jean]

The new points system was established in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that went into effect in 2002.

[Joan Atkinson]

Yes, 2002.

[Daniel Jean]

But before that, there had been a points table for choosing immigrants for 15 or 20 years.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

To go back to my question, do you find that some kind of points system should be used to evaluate every immigration application anyway?

[Daniel Jean]

A points system is useful when you want to choose a person on the basis of human capital. When the time comes to try to forecast whether there is an immediate need for plumbers in Toronto or whether we need people to work in the oil fields in Alberta, the employer is not prepared to wait for immigration and the points system is not really useful. That is the time when the system that works better is to pick someone to come as a temporary worker and then perhaps let him change his status later to become a permanent resident. We followed Australia's lead when we put that reform in place a few years ago.

[Robert Carrier, Bloc, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Do you not think that there is some danger attached to prioritizing one kind of worker without worrying too much about the candidates' other values?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Are you finished, Mr. Jean?

[Daniel Jean]

No.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Go ahead. You have 10 seconds.

[Daniel Jean]

If economic conditions were bad tomorrow and we had less need for plumbers and carpenters, but we did still need professionals, the points table would be a good way to fill those needs. That is why it is important not to see immigration as one avenue or one channel. There are various channels and a number of avenues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay. We have 10 minutes left, so we'll give five to Mr. Telegdi--he's on the list--and we'll give the last five to Mr. Wilson. In the spirit of fairness, I would suggest....

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

Thank you very much.

I guess the objective way of looking at people coming in as immigrants to Canada began in 1967, and it ended up being copied by Australia, New Zealand, England. They're looking at it in Europe. I think they are doing it under the OECD. It's being done by the United States. They are looking at our objective system. That is the good thing about the point system--it's very transparent; people can see it.

We went off the rails. Australia and New Zealand went in another direction. They actually worked with the real world. If you needed a welder, they would be able to be brought in as welders. You would give points for a needed occupation, which we used to do as well. It's a model of building a country through immigration, versus having temporary foreign workers whom, when the economy goes bad, we can get rid of. One thing that is obvious in Canada is that we will always need people to do the jobs that have to be done at the lower end of the skill range.

The chair and I were in Halifax and we walked by a pub—we didn't go in. But this was in Halifax, and they were looking for a cook, a cook's helper, a server, a server's helper, and a dishwasher. Those jobs need to get done. It seems to make more sense to bring immigrants in to fill those jobs, versus bringing in temporary foreign workers. I'll tell you why.

When you take in temporary foreign workers.... Take a look at what's happening in Fort McMurray. A lot of single men are working in Fort McMurray. There's a high incidence of alcohol and drug abuse. This is all over the tar sands, where people are forced to live without their families, particularly the temporary foreign workers who don't have the capacity to fly back to Newfoundland or the Maritimes every couple of months. But that's the reality of what they're living in, and we know that's not very good.

So we want people who will come over and welcome the opportunity to work at some of those jobs that in many cases Canadians don't want to do. Of course, this means you can't get rid of them if the economy turns bad. But the fact is we will always need people working in that part of the economy.

If you look around the table.... Look at the parliamentary secretary. We brought in the men in the sheepskin coats because we had to have some job done that nobody else was going to do or had the capacity to do, and there they came.

I look at Maurizio Bevilacqua. When I went to work in construction, I worked with a lot of Italians and Portuguese, and guess what? Many of them didn't speak the language all that well, but they all were able to work, and they all worked hard and built a life for themselves.

I can look at Ms. Grewal. That's how this country was built.

So I think we have to respect that the point system has to reflect what we need. I think that's where we went off the rails, and I think that's where the Australians and New Zealanders have done better than we have.

Let's keep the openness and transparency of the point system, but make it responsive enough so that it will actually get the people we need into the country. That's where it went so terribly wrong.

I'm still at a loss, because we on the committee knew that this was going down the wrong path. We knew this was the wrong path to go down.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You have 30 seconds.

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

We had no input. I'm still wondering how it happened.

[Joan Atkinson]

I think I'd go back to some of the points that Daniel made earlier.

I'm not as familiar with the Australian system...or I've lost a lot of my recollection of the Australian system, but they do use temporary workers fairly extensively.

But immigration is not just about skilled workers. We have an immigration movement that is multi-faceted. The economic component is a significant component of the skilled worker component, but we also have a family class movement. We also have a refugee movement. We have people who arrive as refugee claimants who are also working in the labour market. So I think looking at it holistically, we need to consider that newcomers to Canada come through different avenues, and it's not only through the skilled worker movement that they enter the labour market.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Mr. Wilson, you'll be the last one.

[Blair Wilson, Independent, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Hindsight is 20/20. I think I'd prefer to take my time and look at the future. I think we all can agree where we are right now in Canada and what's best for Canada right now.

Where we are right now is that we have a ticking time bomb ready to explode, with the aging baby boomers ready to retire in the next 10 or 15 years. Close to one-third of our population is not going to be in the labour force in the next 10 or 15 years. We know that today.

We also know today that the Canadians we have right now aren't giving birth in high enough numbers to keep the population stable. So the only way our population can stay at the level it is today is through immigration, and if we want to go beyond that, if we want to grow our communities and grow our society, then we're going to have to increase the level of immigration even that much further.

So our choices, then, involve how we go about doing that, what is the most fair, open, transparent, and objective way of doing that. I think the point system satisfies that model. The new bill, on which I know you can't comment, goes in the complete opposite direction and puts the power into the hands of the minister to pick and choose exactly who's going to come into Canada. The point system has its problems. It's not perfect, but it's far superior to putting all the power into the hands of the minister to decide the fate and the future of Canada.

With that in mind, we have the other question we've got to answer. What type of Canada do we want? Do we want a Canada filled with temporary foreign workers, which is the way the Conservative Party and this minister are going, and with all due respect one of the ways you had suggested? Do we want temporary foreign workers or a Canada filled with full-time Canadian families? I think the fabric and the quality of life of Canada are enhanced immensely by going down the path of having families here.

You know, we can bring a foreign worker in to work at Fort McMurray or up at Whistler in one of the resorts for the 2010 Olympics, but that foreign worker, whoever he or she is, is alone. His or her family is back in some other country. I'm sure the productivity level, the satisfaction level, just the overall quality of life for the community as well as that individual, would be greatly enhanced if that person could bring his family here. Canada is in the unique position where we can choose the full-time Canadian immigrant over the temporary foreign worker.

We just had a discussion with the minister. There are 925,000 people on the waiting list. I could understand if we were a country like Norway, which has nobody on the waiting list, and the only way we could get people in were as temporary foreign workers. But we aren't. The minister has 900,000 potential full-time Canadians who want to come into Canada, who want to work. That should be the avenue we go to first, and I'm hopeful this committee will continue doing its good work and take a look at the point system, to reform the point system to allow the department to operate in such a way as to open up Canada's doors and let more Canadians in.

Is there a way we can modify the point system to allow more Canadians into Canada faster?

[Daniel Jean]

I think your question is a very good one, and I would start with a couple of premises. Whether you are talking to your departmental officials today or you are talking to experts around the world, they will tell you immigration alone is not a solution to population...or even just the labour force. It's one element of the response. We talk about the labour market. There are other elements, such as whether we can convince people to retire later, whether we can be more productive, all of these things.

I want to be very clear that I've never said the immigration movement should be solely made up of temporary workers adjusting status. That's not what I've said. Even for economic workers, we will continue to have a number of people who should come. There are options on how you want to do it.

What Ms. Atkinson said earlier about the previous point system is very important. The record of Canada and the government to predict and be able to match immigrants to the labour market is not a very good one. So it has not worked in the past, and why would it work?

Then there's the other issue linked to your inventory management problem--

[Blair Wilson, Independent, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Chair, I'm sorry to interrupt. What I would suggest is for the government to get out of the way of the capital markets and let the businesses decide who they need. Let the businesses come to the department and say they need 300 cooks and 200 chambermaids for Whistler. That's what they need. Then the department, through consultation with industry and the marketplace, could formulate policy on an ongoing evolving basis.

[Daniel Jean]

On the point you have made, that's what they're trying to do in the reform of the temporary foreign worker program.

The last point I would make is a very important one, which I think you should examine in your study. You have an inventory problem. You have too many applications for the public policy goals that have been set by the government. If you were to say tomorrow that plumbers can apply, and you get a million applications from plumbers, which plumbers are you going to choose if you're bringing in 250,000 or 300,000 immigrants a year?

So there are some policy issues that need to be examined.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you. In spite of your declaration that you knew very little about Bill C-50, you've provided some very good information for us.

Our meeting is adjourned until 3:30 tomorrow.