Thank you, Mr. Opitz.
In the past, we had this bizarre situation where Canada would welcome foreign students to come and pay high levels of tuition at our colleges and universities. They would get a Canadian education, they would improve or perfect their English or French language skills, they would have a degree that would be recognized by Canadian employers—which is typically not the case for skilled worker immigrants—and then we would say, “Great, you've got that Canadian education, you've got the language skills, now please leave the country, and if you'd like to immigrate here, get in the back of a seven-year-long queue.” It was just plain stupid.
That's why in 2008 we opened the new Canadian experience class, which allows foreign students—who have completed at least a two-year degree or diploma in Canada and who obtained at least one year of work experience using the open work permit suite we grant them—to apply for and obtain permanent residency from within Canada on a fast basis. Instead of going overseas and having to get in the back of the skilled worker queue and wait for six, seven, or eight years, we process these Canadian experience class applicants typically in a year or less.
As I say, these people are set for success. All of the research, not just by my ministry but by the think tanks who focus on immigration, tell us that the number one reason why employers don't hire immigrants to Canada, particularly in licensed professions, has to do with language proficiency. Language proficiency is an indicator of a whole suite of what we call soft social skills—understanding how to deal with Canadians in the work environment and so forth. These foreign students have obtained those soft social skills. They have high levels of official language proficiency. Most important, they have a degree that a Canadian employer will recognize on the face of it. That's why we opened up the program.
We were a bit disappointed at the beginning that it didn't have very high levels of take-up. Our first year we planned for I think 8,000 and we got 3,000 applicants or something. But this year, as you mentioned, we've just welcomed our 10,000th. This year we're planning for 7,000.
I should also mention that within the Canadian experience class we permit high-skilled temporary foreign workers who have completed two years of work in Canada on a work permit to also apply for that program. Again, it's the same kind of thing: they've got work experience, they've already got a job, they're in it, and they've improved their language skills. Why should we not welcome them as immigrants?
We did find, however, that the CEC was not working very well for foreign PhD students. The CEC is predicated on doing a diploma or a degree and then working for a year, whereas the PhD students are involved in a multi-year course of studies—four to eight years typically. But we want to keep them here, because their human capital is enormous. All of the data say that foreign students who obtain Canadian PhDs do extraordinarily well in the Canadian labour market. Their incomes are above the average income very quickly.
That's why we've opened up a special stream within the skilled worker program for up to 1,000 foreign PhD students who have done at least two years of their PhD studies in Canada.