Monsieur le président and participants, thank you very much for inviting me.
My name is Daniel Perron. I'm part of HSBC Bank Canada and HSBC Trust. We're a leader in terms of the immigrant investor program at both the Quebec and the federal level. As such, we're part of one of the largest financial groups in the world, and we've been able to witness the explosive growth in terms of the high net worth individuals and ultra-high net worth individuals who basically make up most of the immigrant investor class.
It is that growth of this class, coupled with the high popularity of Canada, yet the stable number of immigrant investors being processed, that led to the high inventory that we are suffering right now.
We were very on board with the federal government decision to increase the amounts, to double the net worth requirements, and also to come in with the full application in terms of process. That was one way to curtail the number of applications being done.
However, because of that delay and because of the expectation from the market that the first thousand applications would be processed very fast, an unusually high demand was created upon the reopening of the Canadian program. Eventually, that led to the program's closure. We feel that was only temporary.
As such, we want to bring forward a few solutions to the investor class program. We feel that increasing the amount again would not be a solution, because if you look at the numbers, most countries' intake in terms of new immigrants--and that's at both the Quebec and federal levels--was stable. This was the case for all countries except China, which is the only country whose applications keep growing. We feel that if we increase the amount again, it will only increase the problem, and we'll see more and more Chinese applications being processed instead of applications from other countries, which may be something that we don't necessarily want to see in the program.
We feel that there are other criteria to be taken.... Just like my partner here said, for the immigrant program, we feel that further screening and other solutions would be better than just increasing the amount. Those solutions would be as follows.
First, we would reopen the program, the FIIP, so that the backlog being pushed over to the Quebec program would be stabilized. This backlog is also being pushed into the PNP. These investors are not going away; they're just being put into other programs.
In terms of the immigrant investor program and being processed, we feel that one of the best solutions, which was also mentioned by our friend Nigel here, is to see centres of excellence, two or three centres that would see specialists in the immigrant investor program, specialists who would know the program and who would take away these more demanding applications from different posts.
You would see experts doing the processing. In turn, they would charge the immigrants for the processing centres. Basically, it would be very easy to increase the amount of $25,000 to $30,000. The immigrants in that category would be very happy to pay that fee if it would give them a faster track in the process.
We think it's a very good solution in terms of resources, the financial and human resources, and also in terms of customer service to the immigrants who are applying and coming to Canada. We think this is a great solution.
We also think that in order to provide some further screening.... I don't know if any of you have opened an account at a bank recently, but it's a very demanding process, so we want to ask those investors to open a bank account early on in the process when they make a full application, not just a simplified application.
This would provide significant screening in terms of the banks looking at the customers and also getting rid of applications that either are not serious or where there has been a double application filed under both the Quebec and the federal programs, or under PNP in the federal program. You would get rid of a lot of those double-dip applications by asking those customers to put some money in a bank to provide some further screening. That amount could be somewhere around 5% of the $800,000 that is currently being asked for. We feel that would be a very good measure in that regard.
Also, we feel that if it was possible for the government to impose such a deposit on all applications that are in the current pipeline, then by asking for a deposit from those already in the system who want to be fast-tracked, you will see a lot of the backlog that you have, a lot of the false applications, being taken away from the system, clearing out the resources for the good customers who are waiting and are really motivated to come to Canada.
Also, there's something that would be harder to implement in terms of curtailment measures. That would be to create some regional caps in terms of regions or countries so that you would get a better balance in terms of who's coming to Canada.
Finally, I think that working on one side of the equation is good, but working on the other side is very good too. In terms of increasing the number of applicants under the investor class, many studies have shown that it's beneficial for the economies of both Quebec and Canada in terms of spending and in terms of creating business links with other countries. We think it would be beneficial if we could increase that category, especially if you were to charge those immigrant investors. That way, it's kind of at no cost to Canada. We think that's a win-win situation.
In conclusion, it was funny when I heard my two partners here saying that their conclusion was that we should create some kind of committee that would gather together the all stakeholders, so we all came out with the same conclusion, but without consulting ourselves. Basically, if we could find a way to create a committee on which you would have the facilitators in the program--the lawyers, some representative immigrant consultants, and members from the provinces--and to create a closed-door committee, really, where all options could be looked at. The options could be looked at and then the committee could say which is the best solution for the investor class, which one all the stakeholders would be happy with, and those recommendations could be made to the minister.
I think we could come up with something that would be a very thorough decision, not just a quick fix that basically creates other problems in terms of pushing the inventory from one pocket to the other. That would be my conclusion.