Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I am pleased to be here today to present to the committee my department's Supplementary Estimates (C) for fiscal year 2010-2011.
I believe you know all of the senior officials who are here with me today.
Mr. Chairman, in 2010 Canada welcomed the highest number of immigrants in 57 years—281,000 permanent residents. We did so by focusing on economic immigrants who can work, invest, create wealth, and contribute to our prosperity.
Within the economic category, we will continue to balance admissions between federal skilled workers, who are now doing increasingly well financially according to some recent research we've done, and provincial nominees, who are helping to fill labour market gaps, while ensuring a better distribution of newcomers across Canada.
In the future we must select those immigrants who are most likely to succeed in the Canadian economy. To this end, today we are launching cross-country and online consultations on proposed changes to the federal skilled worker points system. We want advice from the public and indeed from you parliamentarians on how we can improve the points grid as a way of selecting those workers who will best integrate and contribute to our prosperity.
We also want to select those immigrants who are most likely to succeed in the Canadian economy. To this end, today we are launching cross-country and online consultations, seeking advice from the public—and indeed from parliamentarians—on proposed changes to the Federal Skilled Worker points system.
While we welcomed more economic immigrants last year, we also upheld our commitment to family reunification and to refugees. We will continue to do so in the future.
In 2011 we plan to receive even more newcomers through family reunification and more refugees than we did last year. I repeat, in 2011 we plan to receive more family class immigrants than we did in 2010. That's not a cut in family class, as some have inaccurately suggested; rather, it's an increase.
Within the family class we've opted to put wives, husbands, and children first. That reflects the priority of immigrants, of Canadians, and indeed of the Immigration Act. Therefore, we have slightly decreased the projected admissions range for parents and grandparents in order to allow for an increase in the number of spouses and children admitted this year. That means more dads, more moms, and more kids being reunited with their loved ones than in the past. That's, after all, the whole idea behind our policy of family reunification, which I believe is the most generous in the world among immigrant-receiving countries.
In the past few days there have been a number of myths and mistruths recklessly thrown around on the issue of family class immigration, so I'd like to give this committee the facts and some broader perspective on just how generous Canada's immigration policy is to families.
We've distributed to you, I believe, some charts and tables. This table that you have in front of you shows.... There are two primary categories of family class immigrants. One is called family class one. This is the highest priority under the Immigration Act. They are spouses and dependent children.