Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 17th, 2011

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

No, you seem to be stuck on that point.

Here is another example of something the interpreter said.

He stated in French: “Mais peut-être que c'est correct parce que la journée que j'étais que j'ai quitté la prison, c'était la journée il y a un accident de une airplane.”

Here we have an interpreter who does not know the French word for airplane. That's a very serious problem to have at a hearing to determine whether or not a person is likely to face persecution.

I fail to see how your department can defend IRB decisions in Federal Court by arguing that this interpretation is completely acceptable.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

That's our time, monsieur. You'll have to wait for the next round. I'm sorry.

Ms. Davies, welcome to the immigration committee.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have up to seven minutes to ask some questions.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

Ms. Chow is not able to be here today, so I'm happy to be here.

Thank you to the minister for coming here today.

Certainly the announcements that you made have created quite a reaction and a lot of interest. I would say there's been a very big reaction to some of the numbers you've been putting forward, and certainly to the service cuts. So I have a number of questions.

I'd like to know what funding formula you used for the cuts in Ontario and how the decision was made concerning the cuts in Toronto—what funding formula was used to do them. I'd also like to know whether your department recommended those cuts or whether this was a political decision that was made.

And by contrast—because I think there is a huge impact in the community, and we're hearing this every day from immigrant-serving agencies and communities who are now struggling—one thing that's very troubling is how much is being spent on advertising in your department. I'd like to ask you how much money has been spent on advertising since you became the minister. My understanding is that there has been a dramatic increase in the advertising, while on the other hand we're facing very serious cuts in immigrant communities, particularly in Ontario and particularly in Toronto

If you could answer those questions, I'd appreciate it.

I also have other questions about some of the numbers around parents and grandparents. I'm sure you're familiar with Mr. Kurland, who is an immigration lawyer in Vancouver. Based on his access to information and the slashed rates for parents and grandparents, he estimates that for 140,000 applicants who are already in the queue, your new numbers could mean now that a parent could wait for 13 years for a visa to Canada, if they were to apply today. That's clearly unacceptable in terms of wait times.

Your government has said repeatedly that the backlog is going to be cleaned up, that we won't have these incredible wait times. And yet, based on access to information and people who are very knowledgeable about this issue, we're faced with dramatically different information. So I think there's a huge problem there.

Those are the questions I have, if you could respond.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Well, there's a lot there. I'll try my best.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

All right.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I may not recall every one of them.

The first question was what was the formula used to develop the new funding allocation for settlement services.

It's called the new settlement funding allocation formula. It was designed over the course of the past 18 months or so in consultation between our department and our provincial counterparts. The idea was to come up with a common national funding formula rather than arbitrarily set levels in each province.

The formula is based on the number of immigrants in each province and territory, giving additional weight for refugees, to account for their unique settlement needs. It includes a capacity-building amount for each jurisdiction, and it includes an amount set aside for the innovation fund. There's a lot more technical detail, and if you want, we can come back to it later.

All of that works out effectively to about $3,000 per immigrant funding, by 2012-13, in the nine provinces outside of Quebec. Quebec is a special case because of the Canada-Quebec immigration accord, of course. It was set aside as a separate case in 1992.

Was there any political involvement in these allocations?

No. Cabinet and I and the provincial ministers agreed on the funding formula, but then officials worked out exactly how it would be applied across the country. As I've indicated, it means an increase in funding in seven provinces and three territories, a decrease in Ontario, a nominal reduction in Nova Scotia, and a small reduction in British Columbia, because it has a smaller percentage of immigrants.

It's basically a reflection of the fact that immigrant settlement patterns have changed. Whereas 90% used to go to Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, now fewer than 75% are going to those three big cities, with the balance now going to essentially the Atlantic and prairie provinces. That's a good thing. We're getting better and more efficient distribution of newcomers across the country.

Help me. What was your next question?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

It was based on the amount of money that you're spending on advertising. But before you get to that, I would add further to your response.

These are massive cuts that have taken place. You're saying it is based on a formula. What kind of time is given to the department to implement these cuts?

There's no question that there's a dramatic impact in local communities. These are things that people actually feel in terms of services being withdrawn that they previously had. The demand is still there. To say that here is a big master plan that you're going to implement.... This has a real impact on people's lives.

I'd like to know what kind of transition and what kind of time is given so that there can be some sort of accommodation given to make sure that people aren't really suffering as a result of these cuts.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I would remind you, Ms. Davies, that in fact next year, after these funding changes have been made, we'll be investing $600 million in settlement services nationally, in contrast to the previous government's funding of $200 million five years ago. That's a 300% increase. Even in Ontario, the funding level was $111 million in 2005; next year it will be $346.5 million. That's an increase of 319% over five years. That is not a cut; it's actually a huge increase.

In some parts of Ontario, such as York Region, there will be an increase in settlement funding in that region of 43%. In seven of ten provinces there will be increases. Many new organizations are coming on-stream that never received funding before, but will now. So the depiction of this as some kind of, as you said, hacking and slashing is quite frankly inaccurate.

In terms of the department's timing, they've been working on this for well over a year. In fact, they launched requests for proposals based on the new funding formula allocations last May—or was it earlier in the year?—and received, I think, 750 submissions from Ontario alone. The officials looked at those submissions, made a qualitative assessment, and then contacted the settlement organizations in the fall, in October and November. Most organizations knew by November whether or not they were going to have a contribution agreement.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Davies, I'm sorry, you're going to have to wait for a future round for the other questions. We're well over our time.

Dr. Wong had some questions.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for coming before us to clarify some of the facts and myths.

Having worked among immigrants before I came to this office, I understand what settlement funding means and also, specifically, language training and skills training for immigrants. That was my former job.

I agree a hundred percent that the settlement money should follow the immigrants. Very often we say that people can't go to services because there's nothing around where they live. So with the changing patterns, I think we have some very interesting initiatives that will probably help. For example, with language—English language training or French language training—only 25% of the budget was spent in the past while. I notice there is a new initiative that will soon be evaluated, and that is the language training vouchers pilot initiative. So how is it performing? Does it meet some of the needs, especially for immigrant women?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you. Yes.

Dr. Wong is quite right that we.... Let me make a very frank admission here. When the government decided to triple settlement funding levels in 2006, we were trying to get a rough parity for settlement services across the country vis-à-vis Quebec, which had been going up on this automatic escalator since 1992. Other provinces under the previous government had received no increases for 13 years. So we decided there needed to be some greater equity across the country.

The huge influx of new money into the settlement sector was so much so fast that in many places they couldn't actually deliver the services, and there wasn't a sufficient increase in enrolment in things like LINC, “language instruction for newcomers to Canada”. Giving you one example, our estimate is that in 2005 there were about 48,000 people enrolled in LINC classes, and by 2008, after tripling funds for those classes, there were about 53,000 people enrolled in those classes, a 300% increase in funding and about a 15% increase in enrolment.

This explains why, for example, some funds that were budgeted for settlement services in Ontario since 2005 actually lapsed. We put out requests for proposals and we didn't actually get enough proposals that were eligible under the terms and conditions of the government to fund settlement services. Similarly, even this year British Columbia—your province—has ended up lapsing some of the funds that we sent it to invest in language services. All of these things are clear indicators that, if anything, we have overbudgeted. We have overbudgeted the federal budget for settlement services.

Now, I know that for some folks you could never spend enough. So they see this kind of right-sizing of the settlement budget as a cut, this recalibration across the country so everyone is getting their fair share, when in fact we're actually bringing the budget much more in line with the demonstrated needs.

Here we have this challenge: not enough people enrolling in the services we're providing. That concerns me. Only about 25% of eligible permanent residents enrol in the free language classes that we provide. There are a lot for reasons for that. Some people are working very hard. Some parents are at home taking care of family.

That's why we're trying to find more innovative ways to provide the free language services, to increase the uptake, and to help newcomers improve their language proficiency in English or French. That's why we launched two years ago the language training voucher pilot project. We sent out, I believe, 3,000 certificates worth a nominal value—not a monetary value—of up to 3,000 hours of language training to immigrants in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Alberta to test it. And we were very pleased with the results.

We released the preliminary results of the pilot project on vouchers a few months ago, and it showed that essentially the uptake on free language classes among those immigrants who received the vouchers in the mail was about twice as high as it was among the general population of immigrants. So what this is doing is saying to them directly, “Hey, you can get this free service.” And a lot of people took that voucher to a local service provider.

We're going to wait for the final study to come in. If the results are positive, I will ask the department to look at expanding it, for one reason in particular, and that is that we need to find some kind of mechanism to deal with the issue of secondary migration. A lot of immigrants arrive in parts of Canada and subsequently, according to the recent data we have, move to Alberta or British Columbia, but the dollars don't necessarily follow them. In theory at least, a voucher system will allow for the transferability of the money we've set aside for language services for particular immigrants, if they choose to move from one province to the next.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

For potential immigrants or newcomers who are applying overseas, what program do we have to prepare newcomers for their arrival in Canada even before they come over?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

That's a great question. There didn't used to be any pre-arrival orientation. I think many newcomers have told me that when they get here they're in a bit of a fog, because they get off the airplane, maybe it's 20 below, and some parts of the country are colder. They don't know where they're going to stay that first night, they're not sure how to get their kids enrolled in school, and they're certainly not familiar with how to apply for credential recognition.

That's why in 2006 our government created the foreign credential referral office, with a $30 million budget in our ministry, which has created pre-arrival orientation services focused on labour market integration and credential recognition for qualified permanent residents in India, China, the Philippines, through the innovation fund in Taiwan and South Korea, and now we've expanded it to the gulf states, Scandinavia, and Britain, with an office in London.

People get personalized counselling and a two-day free seminar on issues like how to apply to find a job in Canada, how to begin the process for applying for credential recognition, how to get the health card, the social insurance number, the kids enrolled in school, and find housing. So far, the results are very encouraging.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

There's a higher level of pre-arranged employment for those immigrants who've gone through that program than those who have not.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We'll stop on the word “encouraging”.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, two days ago in the House of Commons when I asked you about the secret family class quotas for 2011 for parents and grandparents from Ukraine, only 25 reunifications for a community of 1.2 million Ukrainian Canadians, you refused to address this heartless quota of only 25 and instead switched the channel by stating, “...we are now benefiting from more immigration of Ukrainians to Canada than was the case under the previous government”.

I have pulled off and printed a document from Citizenship and Immigration called “Facts and Figures - Immigration Overview”, by source country from 2000 and 2009. It clearly shows that under the previous government the average immigration from Ukraine was 2,998, and from 2006 to the present time it dropped to 2,056, a drop of 46%. You didn't address the issue of this quota of 25 for Ukraine. You misstated that immigration went up when in fact it went down from that source country.

Not only that, Minister, when we take a look at the 25 that have been targeted, the quota of 25 for Ukraine, last year there were 260 parental and grandparental family class reunifications. We're down to 25. Do you believe it's fair for parents and grandparents from Ukraine to have to wait over a decade to be reunified with their children, and will you consider changing that quota of 25?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

As usual, I don't accept the premise of many of those questions. There were a number of inaccuracies there, as usual, Mr. Chairman.

I referred Mr. Wrzesnewskyj back to my previous testimony on three or four occasions in this committee on the question of immigration from the Ukraine. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but certainly from 2005 to 2009 there was an increase in—

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

A point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

A point of order, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I have the table from Citizenship and Immigration. I'm happy to provide it to the minister, so he can check his own department's numbers.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj is having fun with numbers. He's taking averages from I don't know what.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

These are your department's numbers.