Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 18th, 2011

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible--Editor].

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

So the majority of the backlog developed under the previous Liberal government.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Try not to bait the opposition too much, Mr. Menegakis, please.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Well, thank you very much, but I think it's important, Mr. Chair, for all to realize, and for Canadians to realize, where this backlog was created. We are dealing with this problem every single day in our offices.

My next question has to do with the federal skilled worker applicants. I wonder if you could comment on how the profile has changed since the action plan for faster immigration was implemented.

[Les Linklater]

I would say that with the human capital model that's been in place since 2002, we have seen considerable increases and improvements in the outcomes for federal skilled workers, whose performance had been declining prior to that.

We've actually completed an evaluation, which is on our website, of the federal skilled worker program. Actually, our backlogs were helpful in terms of the methodology for the evaluation. We were bringing in people at the same time into the same labour market conditions, people who had been selected both under the previous occupations-based grid and the human capital model.

The evaluation has proven that those who are selected for their higher levels of official language ability and higher levels of education, and especially those who are coming to a job lined up with an employer, tend to do exceedingly well. In fact, they exceed average earnings of their Canadian-born counterparts within three years.

So we would see that things have changed fairly dramatically. With the action plan and some of the changes that have been put in place more recently, such as mandatory third party language testing, we've seen improvements in terms of our ability to process more efficiently. Applicants no longer have the opportunity to provide us with a written submission, which does not really tell the visa officer how well the individual comprehends or is able to express themselves in English or French. With third-party language testing, we now get results around the four dimensions of reading, writing, comprehension, and expression.

This is done in a secure way. It allows us to have more confidence in the language ability of the individuals we're selecting. They're doing that before they actually apply as skilled workers, so the completed application is coming to us much more readily than was the case in the past.

My colleague alluded to the fact that this has helped improve the efficiency of processing. Ultimately it will improve their outcomes further as we have a better measure of their official language ability.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Opitz.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here today. I have worked for the minister as a staffer for two years, and I've been able to see at close quarters the dedication and commitment that the department applies to everything it does. I thank you for your hard work along that line.

Yes, Mr. Chair, I won't beat up on the opposition too much, but I know the claims have been that they wanted to clear the backlog. However, that has been opposed at every measure. In 2008, when this government introduced measures to put caps on the number of people who could apply through the federal skilled workers program, that was opposed vigorously.

Some time has now passed. That measure was necessary, and it appears to have been successful. What was the backlog when the measure was finally passed?

[Les Linklater]

Do you mean in the skilled worker category?

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Correct.

[Les Linklater]

It was about 641,000 skilled workers.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Has it decreased since that was introduced?

[Les Linklater]

For that cohort, for those who applied before February 2008, the number is now 314,000.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

So it has come down significantly.

What would you say would be the projected backlog and wait times if the measures had not been introduced?

[Les Linklater]

It's hard to say, but I would expect that for the skilled workers alone, over the course of three years we would likely see a backlog of about a million or more.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

In your opinion, have these measures been successful in achieving that goal in reducing the backlog?

[Les Linklater]

I think it's been very helpful to have an additional tool to be able to manage intake at the outset. As we find our feet as a department with subsequent iterations of ministerial instruction--so trying the occupational filter did help in the first instance, although we did receive more under MI-1 than we had anticipated--moving to MI-2 with the hard numerical caps further helped us with managing intake. And then refining the hard number for the numerical cap with MI-3 is going to allow us to churn through the MI-1 and return to the pre-C-50 backlog sooner than might have otherwise been the case.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Does the department have a sense of how many people such as skilled workers have abandoned their application and chosen to immigrate to another country because the backlog and wait times were too high?

[Les Linklater]

In terms of immigrating to other countries, no, we're not able to track that information with partners like Australia and New Zealand. We do know that when we implemented ministerial instructions we wrote to all the applicants who were in the backlog at the time and offered to refund their processing fees if they chose to withdraw their application and reapply under ministerial instructions. The take-up was very low, in the hundreds, out of the 640,000. Very few people actually took up the offer, I assume because they felt that with the obligation to process their application we would get to them at some point and that Canada offered them opportunities they wanted to exploit.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Given the strong interest in the federal investor program, the large sums of capital people are willing to invest, and the historic level of around 2,500 per year, why is the cap set at 700 under MI-3?

[Les Linklater]

That's a very good question.

I think it relates back to our inability previously to control intake, where we have now about 27,000 applications representing about 80,000 people under the investor category waiting to come forward to Canada. Again, we look at the levels plan and balancing the various priorities and imperatives among skilled workers, investors, provincially selected economic workers, and family-class refugees. Our recommendation was that we limit the intake of new applications to 700 to allow us, then, to draw down the backlog that had accumulated under the old program in the previous net worth and investment amounts.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Sitsabaiesan.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will go back to talk about the backlog and the numbers you provided earlier. We've seen that the backlog has grown to over one million. You're saying that skilled worker backlog and family-class backlog is actually decreasing, so where's the actual backlog coming from? Where is the increase that we're seeing coming from?

[Les Linklater]

To clarify, Mr. Chair, the number of backlog applications we had as of February 2008 has been cut on the skilled workers side to 314,000. To that number we have to add approximately 140,000 applicants who applied under MI-1 and then a number who've applied under MI-2 as well, who we're moving to process more quickly. On the family class for spouses, partners, and dependent children, there is a working inventory but no backlog. Those applications are placed into the processing immediately on receipt. I think we're doing about 75% within 12 months of receiving, and we're working to improve, as we mentioned at our last appearance.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Earlier, in answering Mr. Davies' questioning, you said there's a decrease in demand for family class--

[Les Linklater]

Right. And those numbers have been following year over year to a level--