Evidence of meeting #45 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 39th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was changes.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Vice-President, Government Affairs, Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association
I'm not an immigration expert, clearly, so the only thing that I can do is lay out what the issues are for our industry. I don't disagree with the previous comments either, about the need for changes to the point system.
Obviously, we have a lot of lower-skilled occupations within our industry, and people are barred from being able to apply because of the point system. So we have serious problems with the point system.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
Ms. Reynolds, you said that you are not an expert in immigration. The members of your association run restaurants and have fundamental decisions to make, like making major renovations, buying competitors and who knows what else.
Do you not think that these intelligent people are going to take their time to think about things appropriately and will make sure not to make mistakes as they make major changes? Are they going to make their decisions in a hurry, without thinking about them a lot?
Executive Vice-President, Government Affairs, Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association
As I say, I don't think my members are experts on the system either. All they know is that they need labour and they want to get labour as quickly as they possibly can.
They want to see the system overhauled. They want to see the system modernized. I don't know if they would have the expertise to say whether these changes are appropriate or not.
Bloc
Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC
No problem. I was trying to get at the reasoning more than anything else. Ms. Pohlman could have answered as well.
My parents owned a business and were members of the CFIB. Business people generally take the time to think about and analyze the pros and cons in detail before making decisions. That is not the process that is being proposed here. Things are being done in a rush, with no consultation or thought. If it was a small detail, I would be okay with it, but we are in the process of passing the country's immigration policy in no more than a week and with no previous consultation. No business person would run his business in that way. I find it quite sad that the Government of Canada is doing so.
Those were my comments. I am going to leave a little time for my colleague, so that he can have his say.
Bloc
Robert Carrier Bloc Alfred-Pellan, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, and welcome to our committee. You said that there is a labour shortage. That is quite clear. Ms. Pohlman stresses the fact that the backlog must be reduced. There are about 900,000 applications on the waiting list. Yesterday, when the minister and her deputy minister appeared, it was clearly established that the number of applications that will be settled as a result of this bill will not increase.
The main objective of the bill is to establish a list of people whose applications are going to be considered as a priority. This is mainly what is causing such turmoil in the whole immigration system. It would be much better to rely on a good points system. A points system is important, because it evaluates not only a person's technical side, but also his value as a person who has to adapt to our country. This aspect will hardly be considered. Instead, we are going to find out whether he is a plumber or an electrician. If so, we will accept him. It almost comes down to making temporary workers into immigrants.
Rushing headlong towards this system is preventing us from building the nation we want. We are dealing with it as a labour problem, one that we are going to solve by accepting people as citizens without due consideration, and having to live with them for the rest of our lives.
What do you think?
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
I believe workers of any kind are what are needed today.
Again, going back to Monsieur St-Cyr's question, we believe there probably should have been more consultation prior to this and an understanding of what we're getting into. I do think that is something we're concerned about. However, our bigger point is that we need to deal with the fact that we have a labour shortage. We need to deal with the fact that the system the way it is set up now is making the wait times longer and longer. We need to deal with the fact that many of the people who are coming in are unhappy and they're not necessarily getting the jobs they thought they would be getting. Those are the things that need to be dealt with in the system.
Whether this is the right solution is not something I can really say with any kind of certainty because it's not clear. We haven't asked our members that question. We don't know if that's the case. We want to really emphasize the fact that something needs to be done. If we don't do something soon.... Our fear, of course, if nothing moves forward on this front, is how long it will take for something to happen going forward. I leave that to you to make that decision.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
Thank you.
I'm sorry, Mr. Carrier, I barely have time for two seven-minute questions. I have to go to Mr. Siksay.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Thank you, Chair.
It's nice to be back at the committee again. Two guest appearances in a couple of weeks is great.
I want to thank you all for your testimony. It's very helpful and important to have your perspective.
Mr. Garson, I was particularly pleased to see that you specifically addressed the legislation that's before us and was glad to see that the chamber has concerns about changing “shall” to “may” in the legislation. That's something of concern to a lot of people here and was a principle that was hard won in the past to ensure all applications were considered. I think your suggestions around full-consultation public processes are very helpful as well.
I think you noticed some concern, however, about your comments around the family class immigration. I wonder if you might say a bit more about that, and others could join in on this point too, because for a lot of us that's been a particularly successful point of the immigration program. I would think family class immigration has also brought in some of the unskilled-labour type of folks who are necessary right now. I would think that is important to certainly the restaurant and food services industry and maybe others as well, given the chart Ms. Pohlmann showed. Could you talk a bit more and maybe expand on that? I know it's going to come up eventually.
Vice-President, Policy Development Branch, British Columbia Chamber of Commerce
I do apologize if I gave the impression I was reducing the importance of family class. That certainly wasn't my intent.
First, for a successful immigration system, when you bring in new skilled workers, an absolutely critical component of the system is their ability to bring their families with them. If you do not have that open, then you will not get a situation where the skilled workers will come in.
Our concern with family class is twofold. Our concern is not the scale of family class as it stands alone; it's the scale of family class immigration as compared to skilled worker class, where these people are judged on the skills they bring to the economy and the contribution they will give.
As an example, and I did use it earlier, I came in through the family class system simply because—and I don't want to go into detail—at the time my partner and now my wife had already applied and had been successful. I chose to go through family class simply for the time it would save me, rather than go through the skilled worker process.
I think when you're looking at these areas, you're not getting a good handle on the people coming through and that is simply a situation of the timeframe. Our position is that family class has to be a core element, as does refugee class, as do our humanitarian and compassionate responsibilities. They all have to be elements of the immigration system. Our concern is that there is an imbalance right now that we do think has to be slightly adjusted. We think if you bring the processing times down for the skilled work class, that will go a long way to create that level of balance.
Certainly, from our point of view, we are not looking at the government changes. We certainly would be strongly concerned if this is what came out as the result of this process: having your wife, daughter, or parents refused at the border through the family class system.
Executive Vice-President, Government Affairs, Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association
The only thing I want to say is that we have a situation where people who are overqualified work in our industry. We have dentists, doctors, lawyers, and they're frustrated. They want to work in their chosen fields, where they were trained and educated. Yet we do have people who are very interested in coming to Canada to work in our industry. We want to make sure those who want to work in our industry are the ones who are working in our industry.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
There used to be the family business class. If you had a family business you could have family members come to work in that business. Has there been any discussion among your organizations about reinstating that class, seeing it come back? Would it be helpful to have that program be part of the process again?
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
I think we haven't actually had those discussions, but that said, a big concern of ours right now is succession of entrepreneurs. The fact is there's not only a shortage of labour, there's a shortage of entrepreneurs. Certainly, we do see immigration as one aspect that can be used to help make sure that smaller and medium-sized businesses or independently owned businesses are successfully passed on to a new generation.
So while I can't answer the question directly on whether the family business class should be reinstated, I think it's something that definitely needs to be incorporated into the overall immigration system.
Executive Vice-President, Government Affairs, Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association
I guess the other thing is we're an industry that's in every single community in this country, and it seems to me that there are some communities where it's difficult, where immigrants will not naturally gravitate to. But if they have family there, if they have close relationships with friends or whatever, they're more likely to go to those communities. It is a way to disperse immigrants throughout the country, so from that perspective I can see it as being positive.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Have any of your organizations done any work on how many undocumented workers are employed by your members? Has there been any study of that? Do you have any sense of how important that group of workers is to the businesses you represent?
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
No, we don't have any. We've never looked at that.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
I appreciate that it's difficult, because you're talking about employing somebody who doesn't legally have the right to work. But we do know it's a significant piece of the Canadian economy, and I just wondered if you had ever done any work on it.
On the whole question of employer-provided skills training, Canada seems to be lagging behind other countries, certainly European countries, certainly Japan. Do your members see any possibilities there, or have they reached their limit in terms of their ability to provide another service or deal with another aspect of the labour market? Is that something your members would have any interest in or see as a failing in our current employment situation in Canada?
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
I would actually argue that they are training. They're training more and more. Too often, though, only formal types of training are recognized when we look at the data. We know that in smaller companies informal training is as important, and in fact it's even more important, and can be just as effective in training people into positions.
In fact, when you look at one of the charts on the attempts to solve hiring difficulties, you'll see the fact that the majority are hiring people who are underqualified. They're then training them into those positions. More and more of them are investing in training. It's getting frustrating now, and I'm sure Joyce can argue this.
NDP
Bill Siksay NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Do you have any sense of what would help formalize that so that it's recognized? You say that people do it, and I recognize that's very true. Is there something that would help recognize that so that it's quantifiable and useful in this broader system, perhaps?
Vice-President, National Affairs, Canadian Federation of Independent Business
We're actually about to embark on our own survey that is going to try to do that. Because we do get frustrated with this image or this myth that small businesses don't train. In fact they do, and they do it in droves. What's really frustrating is that so many of them train people and put them into a position, and then those people get picked off by a larger company or by governments. That's happening more and more. Then they have to reinvest in training.
So we are trying to find ways now to quantify it better so that we can have that information more readily available.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Norman Doyle
Thank you, Mr. Siksay.
The final seven minutes go to Ms. Grewal.
Conservative
Nina Grewal Conservative Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome.
As a resident of B.C.'s lower mainland, I'm personally aware of our province's vibrant economy, but as you know, the demand for labour is great, especially as we prepare for the 2010 Olympic Games.
What role do you think immigrants could play in fulfilling our labour needs?