Good morning, Minister.
Minister, I have a number of questions I will ask and then you can take your sweet time answering them. Usually when I ask a question you seem to want to eat into my five minutes. Anyway, I'll take the opportunity to ask all the questions and then you can go for it.
Last week we had Ms. Fraser here, and she said:
We found that Citizenship and Immigration Canada has made a number of key decisions without first properly assessing their costs and benefit risks and potential impact on the programs and delivery mechanisms. For example, program changes in recent years have resulted in a significant shift in the types of workers being admitted permanently to Canada. We saw little evidence that this shift is part of any clear strategy to best meet Canada's labour needs. A strategic road map for the future, such as the national framework the department committed to develop in 2004, would help to provide a clear vision of what each program is expected to contribute to the economic objectives for immigration....Our chapter on selecting foreign workers notes that evaluations of the programs we audited are either outdated or have not been done at all.
In 2004, Minister, 113,442 skilled workers came in. In 2008 that shifted: the skilled workers went down to 103,736, and the temporary workers went up to 192,500.
I asked Ms. Fraser what she would think if she were auditing a public industry and she saw numbers like this. She answered:
I wouldn't be too impressed by the planning, the strategic vision, and the potential consequences of all of this, the fact that there is no analysis to justify the changes and the shifts that are occurring, and that no one seems to know whether this is the right thing to be doing.