Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 15th, 2011

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Let me ask you directly, then, if you agree with the minister's balanced approach, where we use multiple tools in the toolbox to reach a balanced solution to the backlog.

My colleagues' approach from the other side of the floor, particularly the NDP's approach, is to double the immigration levels of our already historically high levels.

What would you--

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Chairman, is that not a policy question?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

It might be. I can go on.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I don't know....

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

These are individuals who have already announced their policy--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I can only say to both of you there is going to be lots of time to go at each other when we debate this report. I prefer that you do that then, and direct your questions to the witnesses.

Thank you, Mr. Davies.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

On the first part of my question, then, do you agree with a balanced approach to resolving the problem using multiple tools in the toolbox?

[Colin Busby]

Are you directing that to me?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Yes.

[Colin Busby]

Okay. I guess the short answer would have to be that by relying solely on one tool, whether it is the total immigration level or especially with the effects that we saw in the academic studies that we performed.... And we track data on all immigrant arrivals to Canada. So by looking historically at the results of what the largest policy change was with respect to immigration over the last 15 years, and that was the expansion of the economic class share within the total level of immigrants coming to Canada, without that increase taking place--where it has now gone up to 60% or 65% from what was once 40%--the types of earnings differentials between immigrants and the Canadian-born would have grown even bigger than what they were and what we saw.

I guess the short answer is yes, I'd like to see a mixture of tools and a long time horizon reasonably put on trying to get rid of this backlog. But you still need the resolve to get it done. So at the end of the day, I, like Mr. Noorani, believe that we can rely on a bolstered point system that more intelligently applies weights to skills we're looking for to prevent this type of situation from happening in the future.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

How is my time, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You're out of time. I'm sorry.

Mr. Kellway, of the NDP caucus.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

And to all of the witnesses this afternoon, thank you very much for coming and sharing your thoughts with us.

Mr. Busby, Minister Kenney came to our committee a number of weeks ago and provided us with a presentation on immigration levels and this issue of the backlog. Part of that presentation showed a graph of immigration levels over the last 17 years, with the Conservative government's average immigration levels exceeding those of the Liberal government's average immigration levels by over 30,000 per year.

I take it from your presentation that you would consider those levels let in by the Conservative government bad policy.

[Colin Busby]

I don't want to oversimplify the results that I presented earlier. What I'm trying to say is that the economic results of immigrants who come to Canada should be a very important factor in deciding how we run our immigration system—that means how many people we let in, what share of economic class, what share of family class, etc.

Increasing the overall number of immigrants will have consequences, perhaps, on the economic results of people who come to Canada. If we increase it to higher levels, at some point we'll have more and more marginal applicants getting into Canada who are going to struggle more in the labour market.

At the same time, reducing the economic class share and increasing the family class share will have similar results. I don't really want to take sides—one policy versus another—but what I'm trying to bring into the debate is some very important academic research on economic consequences, which is one of the major problems facing the immigration system today.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you very much for that.

I think the word that you used is quite appropriate—it's this issue of oversimplication. And I don't want to be targeting this at you, Mr. Busby, but we've had a number of witnesses at this committee coming from academic or research institutions who are talking about the research they've done.

Consistently--and interestingly, because most of these tend to be right-wing institutions—their concern has been about the level of wages for Canadians and the impact of immigration levels on that. Yet they tend to be looking at a single factor, and that is the level of immigration. I get that it matters in theory, but what is missing from this research—and perhaps you can comment on that—are all the other factors that seem to be far more profound on the level of wages in Canada than an addition of a few thousand folks at the immigrant level. I would look to issues like minimum wage levels in Canada and policies on that. I would look to trade policies and practices and the decline in manufacturing in Canada.

In your study, do you have any sense of how big the impact is for these immigrant levels on wages across this vast country and vast labour market?

[Colin Busby]

The one point of clarification I want to make is that the figures I presented earlier did not represent the result of the Canadian-born population's earnings. I was presenting the results of the immigrants' earnings upon arrival. So when I was talking about increasing the total number of immigrants impacting the earnings results of immigrants themselves, that's what I was referring to—not necessarily the impact on the Canadian-born population.

Now, the one caveat—and you hit upon it—is that in doing these types of studies, it has to be said that it's only representing the data we have access to, which is wage data. That is not a complete assessment of immigration policy, which needs to take into account the positive effect that family reunification has on individuals' well-being and on families' well-being.

The only trouble, as a lot of academics and institutes like mine will say, is that quantifying that is reasonably difficult, which is why I don't have any figures to present to you.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Well, I think that's the point; otherwise, these become highly theoretical matters, and quite remote from what I think many of us in our positions as MPs would call “reality on the ground”.

Coming from Toronto, you're probably aware of “priority neighbourhoods”. There's one of them in my riding in Toronto; I knocked on those doors, and it's a very high immigrant population. It's a very highly educated population and a very poor population. It's not unusual to knock on a door to find a medical doctor answering the door who has not had a job in this country for years. It's not unusual to find an engineer answering the door who can't find work even though there is a shortage of engineers in the power industry in Ontario. It's not unusual to find people with MAs and PhDs—and I could go on and on. It seems to me that something has gone wrong in the immigration system and around settlement services that has a far more profound effect on average income levels of immigrants in this country than that very marginal number all these academic researchers have been focusing on.

I'm wondering, in the context of your academic research, if you have focused on the impact of how we deal with immigrants—highly skilled immigrants—and settle them in this country and provide access to work for these folks when they get here. And how does that relate to the numbers you're talking about?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You know, this is happening repeatedly. We talk and ask questions, and then you leave ten seconds for the witness to answer a question. I'm bound to follow the clock, and it's unfair to colleagues on the committee when you do that.

I'm going to let him finish the answer, but in the future bear in mind that using up the time and asking a question in the final ten seconds is not useful. I say this to all members, because everybody's doing it. You're not the only one

Go ahead, Mr. Busby.

[Colin Busby]

The biggest problem we've seen with immigrants coming through the points systems and their performance in the labour market has to be the work experience factor. The points we give to work experience are quite large in the points system, yet experience in the labour market itself is discounted almost 100%. It's hard for a Canadian employer to assign much value to that foreign experience, and it's proving harder and harder.

One interesting aspect of Australia's points system is that they evaluate the foreign credentials and work experience prior to arrival. This way, immigrants have an understanding of how well they may or may not do in the job market, if they don't have a job to go to upon arrival. I think we could rework the way in which we evaluate work experience and the points that we apply within the points system.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Busby, I want to make a statement and then see how you would respond to it.

There is the idea of the optimum number of immigrants that Canada could absorb in any given year. The current government says they're looking at 250,000 to 260,000. Canada as a nation has grown, and so has our economy. Some of the most successful numbers of immigrants, in per capita terms, came during the nineties, not in the last year or two. I know that might shock a few people around here. It is because it's based on the percentage of the population. It's based on the mixture. If you bring in 200,000 from one category, that doesn't necessarily represent a healthy immigration policy. You have to have a good mixture--the right number of grandparents, parents, investor groups, economic class, and so forth.

Would you not agree with the importance of the mixture? If we get the mixture right, could it be argued that you could achieve 1% as a target, something we have passed previously and I think we could achieve again?

[Colin Busby]

That is a very difficult question: what should the overall appropriate level be? I remember the 1%. The only time I've ever come out against an economic study was in 1990, when the Economic Council of Canada suggested that we move to a 1% target of the population. I don't have an easy answer, but I would emphasize that getting the right mix is probably the most fundamentally important thing that we could do. In considering the labour market earnings of recently arrived immigrants, it's changing the mix that has the largest effect.

If the Canadian government were to expand the economic class share, as it did in the early 1990s, the labour market earnings gaps between newly arrived immigrants and those born in Canada would be much larger than it already is, and it's already quite bad. So I think that keeping the economic class share quite high, at that 60% level, should be an important part of the mixture going forward. Australia's system has about a 70% economic class share, but given our challenges with the backlog in the family and reunification class, I would prefer to keep the range that we're at right now and not deviate from it.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Noorani, you make reference to the importance of the points structure and prioritizing the points structure. Do you have something you could provide to the committee as an alternative points structure?

[Naeem (Nick) Noorani]

Thank you. That's a great question.

Let's talk about age. That's the biggest one. The fact is, we're getting immigrants who are coming in who are 50 years old. That's a problem. I feel bad. There is no chance of them ever reaching what they were back home. It's not going to work.

If you look at the age structure, the age currently between 21 years and 49 years is one set of points. That needs to be broken down into categories to ensure that someone who is younger and will have a greater economic impact on our country will get more points than someone who is 49 years of age, because if he gets the same number of points as the one who is 21 years, by the time he gets his immigration papers he's 55. That's one.

Number two, the language is a huge issue with which I have a big problem. We keep talking about the problem that immigrants aren't succeeding. Let's ask the question why. When you have immigrants who are over-age, when you have immigrants who do not have the ability to speak the language, how are they going to get the jobs when they don't have the soft skills? I've talked to immigrants who don't know what they're set up for, but their name is on the list.

I've read the reports from the last few committees. You had an immigration lawyer who talked about bringing in doctors, and I'm cringing there. Do these guys not know that they have a better chance of winning the LOTTO 6/49 than of ever becoming a doctor? This is a human issue. We are known as a compassionate country. This is what upsets me: we are bringing in people with the wrong results.

I could be a PhD, I could have ten years of experience, I could have the lowest level of language skills, and I'd meet the points requirement. Will I get a job? I hope I've answered the question.

Lastly, in my work with immigrants for the past 13 years, since the time I came to this country, I have figured out one thing: immigrants have a problem with soft skills. If you address the soft skills, if you explain to them what the soft skills are, it's going to help them work. They need the language skills, they need the soft skills.

I hope I've answered your question.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, sir.

Ms. James.