Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, committee members, not only for the work you're doing here today and your ongoing work, but also for the invitation to come here to speak a little bit about the issue before us and to exchange some ideas and remarks.
My remarks today will be brief, not so much because of the constraints imposed by the rules, but because, quite frankly, in our view we don't find this issue particularly complicated.
We support the changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act proposed in Bill C-50. We believe that the changes are necessary to fix a fundamental flaw in the current legislation and process that in our view undermines Canada's ability to meet its immigration objectives.
What are those objectives? We could talk a lot about being compassionate—and we are a compassionate country. We could talk about humanitarian desires, and these are certainly things that we want to fulfill. But these are not really objectives; they're characteristics.
Some people assert that our primary objective with immigration should be to bring into Canada a number of immigrants equal to approximately 1% of the population each year. We don't agree. I'm not debating the number here; I'm debating whether that should be our primary objective. In our view, immigration is primarily about people, not numbers. It's about assessing the needs of those people and trying to provide for them.
There's a lot of talk about how Canada needs immigration. And again, I don't propose to get into a debate about the validity of that statement itself; it's not the purpose of these hearings. What I would point out is that the very statement that Canada needs immigration is predicated on that belief that we all share, that Canada has needs and that our immigration policy should be meeting those needs.
One of those needs is to fill existing or emerging shortages in Canada's labour market with qualified workers and professionals. Right now, potential immigrants who apply to come to Canada as skilled workers provide information about their education, their work experience, their qualifications, etc., and their applications are assessed based on this and other information. And the application of a candidate is approved, if they have a sufficient number of points.
What's bizarre about all of this is that at no time is consideration given to the employability of the candidate based on the availability of jobs in Canada in his or her area of employment. Instead, he or she goes into the queue and waits, sometimes for years. The family's life is put on hold—sometimes for years. And when they finally get to Canada, if they haven't lost faith already because of the amount of time they've waited, and have gone to another country—which is happening in large numbers, by the way—there are no jobs for them in their area of employment.
We don't think that makes sense. We also don't think it makes sense that the skills and qualifications of successful candidates are not being used to prioritize the order in which successful applicants are processed after approval and are actually brought here to Canada. The result of all of this is that our labour market needs are never really filled.
I want to stress here, by the way, that we're not talking about family reunification. We're just talking about skilled workers; that's all we're talking about here.
In our view, the changes that are being proposed are the minimum necessary to make the skilled worker track fair and functional. They're sensible changes, without which we might as well get rid of this class altogether.
I want to address very briefly some of the objections that have been raised by people over the last little while regarding the fact that powers created by Bill C-50, as it pertains to immigration practices, will reside with the minister. I have to tell you that I'm really a little puzzled by the objections.
Some say that immigration issues shouldn't be politicized. Frankly, I'm not exactly sure what that means. If it means that we shouldn't have a vigorous public debate on the subject, then certainly we disagree. But public policy should ultimately be decided by the public, who have to live with the policy and pay for it as well.
Others are saying that the minister shouldn't have the ability to make the necessary adjustments to selection criteria to reflect changes in the economy or workforce.
Again, we don't share this view. It's difficult enough to get policy changes or adjustments done around this city, in the government, already, without having to add an extra burden of a legislative process every time we want to make small changes to policy that really should be regulatory changes.
I would argue that forcing any particular government--whether it's Conservative or Liberal or NDP or any other political persuasion--to always go through a legislative process doesn't enhance the accountability of the minister or the department. You guys are in a committee. You bring people here all the time to talk about these issues. It doesn't really make any difference whether you're changing things legislatively or not. It's really almost adding a whole new bureaucratic level to the whole process, which we object to in this area, because it's important to be able to respond fairly quickly to changes in economic circumstances and in the workforce.
I have just one other small observation, and then I'll finish. I want to also stress that although we're supportive of these changes, I think I share my colleague's view on the fact that there are really a lot of problems with our immigration system. I would argue that it's probably the most badly broken department in the federal government right now. We're badly in need of a comprehensive, coherent immigration policy. We really don't have that. If I were to go around the table and reverse roles, and I were to ask the question, I'd be willing to bet money right now that nobody here would be able to really say what our immigration policy is. You could point to various small facets of it, but you couldn't really say this is what our immigration policy is, because we really don't have one.
What we would say is that these are very good in the context that they're going to deal with, but I'd be remiss if I didn't take the opportunity to say that I think what we really need is a serious look and a serious examination of our whole immigration department, our process with the idea that we're going to come up with some sort of a coherent, comprehensive policy.
Thank you very much.
