Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 28th, 2008

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

Yes, of course.

The number of positions is between 30 and 40; and there are always members of the Immigration and Refugee Board who are retiring. It is an ongoing process.

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

I wish to talk again about the Foreign Credentials Referrals Office, that was raised earlier. In light of the agreement concluded with Quebec with respect to immigration, are you collaborating with the Quebec government to apply a candidate selection system, or is the government transferring an equivalent amount of money that is part of Quebec's cash transfer.

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

No, not at all. We are helping people who wish to settle in any region of Canada, including Quebec and assisting them in having their skills evaluated before leaving their home countries. This may help Quebec identify skilled immigrants qualified for specific positions, just as it helps the rest of Canada. I've discussed this with the minister, and she agrees entirely with what we are doing.

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

Therefore, you are collaborating with the Government of Quebec in this respect.

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

Yes.

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

Very well. Thank you.

Do you take into account the fact that in Quebec, we place priority on the knowledge of French as a selection criterion? Do you understand that in Quebec, we accept Canadian citizens who speak French, do you take that into account?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Please give a brief response, Minister.

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

Under the act, English or French must be spoken, and it is up to the Government of Quebec to select people, just as you have described.

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

Therefore, the question is—

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I have to stop it there and go to Mr. Khan.

Mr. Khan, please.

[Wajid Khan, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the Liberal Party for supporting Bill C-50 in the finance committee. These are the only two parties that can really affect the lives of immigrants. Some critics of the ministry believe the solution is to throw more money at the department--throw more money at the backlog.

I would like you to please address this issue to be absolutely clear why this approach is not feasible--how the 2008 budget assists you in stopping the growth of the backlog and how the legislative changes and the budget allocated to you will help reduce the backlog. What are you doing with the resources and the estimates as a whole to improve Canada's immigration system?

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

That's a very broad question to answer in just five minutes, but I'll do my best.

We're taking a three-pronged approach to overhauling, improving, and modernizing the immigration system in Canada. The first is to manage the process, manage the system itself; the second is to make some administrative changes; the third is additional resources.

We've included $109 million in additional resources, because we need more people—everyone has a certain capacity. But money isn't enough to fix a fundamentally flawed system. That's why we're looking for these legislative changes, which left committee today and are being reported back to the House: the system, when it was designed, didn't recognize that not having a limit on the number of applications that come in during a year could swamp a system that has, as any system has, a finite capacity to process those applications.

When you get more applications than you can handle each and every year and you're obliged by law to process each and every one of those applications, you're going to end up with a backlog, unless you just keep throwing more and more money at it. That's not an adequate solution. Like other modern countries in the world, we want to say that we agree to take in what we can manage and manage what we take in. That's what we're proposing to do through the legislation.

As for tackling the backlog, that's where the $109 million is going to be directed primarily, so that we can whittle it down, because by law we have to process those applications under the old rules.

And finally, we're implementing significant administrative changes, so that not only are we going to do more, but each individual—and we're going to have more individuals put on the job—will be able to do more applications each day.

So we're doing things better, smarter, faster, and more of it.

[Wajid Khan, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Minister, very quickly, can you tell us what the impact of this would be on family reunification and on refugees?

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

First of all, there will be no impact on refugee class. That's handled entirely separately by the arm's-length Immigration and Refugee Board, and these reforms will have no impact.

We've already made family reunification a priority for this government by doing things better and smarter and reallocating resources, so that in many cases and classes we've actually improved the processing times by up to 40%. Our government is committed to families. We've demonstrated that time and time again through the universal child care benefit, the foreign adoption bill, etc. Those groups are in good hands, and we're going to take good care of them.

[Wajid Khan, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You have one minute and ten seconds left, if you wish to ask a question, or I can move on to the next.

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

I will take that, Mr. Chair.

You've indicated, Minister, that we have $109 million over five years budgeted for issues that you've just discussed. But in addition to that, ensuring that those who settle in our country are able to integrate better, I see that the main estimates show an increase of about $164 million directed towards settlement and integration.

Could you elaborate a little on that?

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

We believe that when newcomers come here they should have every opportunity to succeed. It's good for them, it's good for the country, and it's certainly good for their families.

One of the key parts of doing that is making sure they get a kind of orientation program, which we call “settlement programming”. It helps them learn about Canadian ways, how to look for a job, and make sure they have English language skills that are up to the job, quite literally.

We've invested $1.4 billion over five years in expanding settlement programming, which had been frozen for 10 years. Coincidentally, we saw immigrant success rates decline significantly during that 10-year period. We don't want that to happen. We're reversing the trend.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

For the information of committee members, we have our video portion back again.

So Mr. Bevilacqua, you can show your stuff.

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, Vaughan, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Komarnicki, and Mr. Khan. When you were expressing gratitude to us, I thought perhaps you were going to thank us for eliminating your $42 billion deficit, creating three million jobs, reducing the national debt, giving Canadians a tax cut of $100 billion--the largest tax cut in Canadian history--and reinvesting in research and development.

We really got the books in order and cleaned up the mess we were left with, with the hope that areas like immigration would receive the type of investment required to bring about positive change to the lives of immigrants and to recognize the important role that immigration plays within our country.

Madam Minister, thank you so much for your presentation. I'm sure that by now you know I disagree with your views on the backlog, on consultation, on ministerial powers, and on foreign credentials. We also disagree on the issue of not meeting your target. I think you're one of the first ministers in a long time who has actually not met her target. I fail to understand why we missed an opportunity to welcome 36,000 fewer landed immigrants than in previous years, and these are concerns.

Minister, leadership really comes down to the ability to paint the future, and a great leader is one who can in fact illustrate to an individual how he or she fits into that future. On an ongoing basis....

I don't think I need to elaborate on where our differences lie. I don't question your sincerity in the sense of trying to do the best, given what you have--I have no doubts about that--but essentially, as we look at the issue of immigration from a demographic point of view and as a quality-of-life, standard-of-living issue, how is your plan going to address the fact that immigrants are not as well off as and are having a harder time than immigrants who came in the postwar period?

These are the big issues. As we welcome people, it's not good enough only to welcome people into the country; they also have to be given a fair shot at success. The numbers, as I'm sure you know, indicate otherwise. As immigration minister, what is your plan around the cabinet table? What would you say to, for example, the Minister of Finance and other individuals who are in charge of the macroeconomic environment of the country to make sure that immigrants hold a very important place in Canadian society?

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

Our government is totally supportive of increasing immigration. We want them to succeed. Our whole thing is we want to get more here faster and we want them to succeed sooner. That's why, in our very first budget, we committed $1.3 billion, to which we've added $100 million for settlement funding so that they do have the opportunity to succeed, so that they do find out how to get a job, and so that they do have the level of English or French language that's needed for them to succeed.

We've also introduced the Foreign Credentials Referral Office, which will help immigrants before they even get here to identify any gaps between their professional skills and Canada's standards while they're waiting to come here. They'll then have the opportunity to upgrade or to qualify in a related field because that information is available through the FCRO.

This is a big improvement over a few years ago, when people often arrived without the points in the point system, thinking their credentials were recognized. They were then shocked, stunned, and amazed when they arrived to find out that, no, their credentials weren't recognized, because that's provincial. Then it would take them a couple of years after they landed to get up to speed and go back to school. We're trying to preempt that so that when they arrive here, they have a better chance of success.

Finally, through our reforms we're trying to ensure that we're bringing in people who have a better chance of success--those whose skills are in demand--so that they can get to work in their chosen field and succeed for themselves and their family.

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, Vaughan, ON]

If one really cares about allowing immigrants in, why would 36,000 fewer landed immigrants be allowed into the country in the past two years?

Second, what's taking so long with the IRB vacancies? What's holding you back from appointing individuals? You're going to actually set a record of a whopping 84,300 backlogged in that area. What's the problem? What's not working in your system?

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

When we issue visas, there is often not a time limit on when the individuals arrive. In fact, we did issue our target of 250,000 visas. Not all of those people chose to come here during that calendar year that was reported. The numbers you've been exposed to show the people who landed here. We can issue visas, but we have no control over whether or when these individuals choose to come.

But in terms of issuing visas, yes, we did meet our targets.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Bevilacqua, thank you.

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

As a point of clarification, the minister just made a statement that she has absolutely no control over when people come here. Isn't there—