Thank you. It's a pleasure and an honour to be here.
In the past year I've travelled across Canada speaking to about a thousand immigrants one on one, and I've heard stories and challenges from them first-hand. The fact is, immigrants are not succeeding to their abilities. Yet we're still a desirable country for immigrants, and that leads of course to the long waiting list that we're here to discuss today. As Minister Kenney rightly pointed out, the biggest contributor to the wait list is that we're getting more applications than we can process. The answer, according to me, is not to increase approvals, but to reduce applications by making the qualifications more stringent in some critical criteria. This will ensure we get the best, most appropriate immigrants, who will in turn settle in faster.
Before we adjust those criteria, we have to review and evaluate all applications prior to a year ago, and maybe even start afresh. The immigrants on the wait list now have been waiting for their visas for years, and many are now coming in their late fifties. It's hard enough for a Canadian at the age of 50 to get a job, so imagine what it's like for a newcomer with language and credential challenges.
I would never have suggested this from a humanitarian perspective, but in June last year the change in instructions meant 80% of the immigration quota per year was reserved for those in the backlog. This is great to reduce the backlog, but the problem is that the guy who applied when he was a 42-year-old banker back home is now a 56-year-old struggling in Mississauga. This is an actual example of a new immigrant who was a bank vice-president back home.
The people who get preference are those who fall into the 29 occupational categories to a maximum of 500 per category on a first-come, first-served basis, with a cap of 10,000. We are not getting any fresh applications outside of these 29 categories. A quick look at the occupations list shows that it is calling mostly for licensed professionals in health care and trades, or cooks and labourers. Where are the salespeople? Where are the HR people and other unlicensed professionals who have the soft skills and fewer credential barriers to success?
This list was created based on the research of Canada's labour needs, but it hasn't taken into account the licensing and credential barriers that immigrants face in many of the professions. For example, specialist physicians, dentists, psychologists, and electricians get their immigration to Canada approved based on their profession being on the list. My contention is that this list and other immigration requirements are setting up immigrants for failure.
We should now start taking new applications, but with a higher emphasis on age and language, and I'm going to talk about that. With that said, the first criterion that needs to be changed is the age requirement. Currently, the age requirement for maximum points to enter Canada ranges from 21 to 49, and that range I submit is too wide. We need to break that down, and the points for age should be broken down into blocks of 10. For example, applicants who are 21 to 31 will receive 10 points, 32 to 42 get eight points, and so on. Younger immigrants learn the language and the soft skills they need to succeed faster.
Second, let's increase the points for language and drop what's right now the basic and the moderate proficiency or no proficiency. Research reports coming in year after year talk about one thing: immigrants with low language skills are not making the cut. They're doomed to a lower subsistence level. As things stand today, if you have a PhD and the requisite work experience with moderate language skills in one official language, you can still get in, but that will not translate into employment. That's the reality. We're not helping these immigrants by letting them into Canada. They're not going to be a part of our economic growth. This will reduce the flood of applications immediately to only those who have the right tools to succeed. Those who do not meet the language requirements will not clog the queue.
Third, we need to ensure that immigrants are fully aware of the barriers they're going to face before they immigrate. They should know how long it's going to take: on average, five to ten years. And then they should know how many years it's going to take for them to be able to practise in their fields, specifically as far as doctors and engineers are concerned. As it stands now, immigrants applying under the skilled worker category, based on the occupation list, understand that if you're in one of these professions, you're wanted, needed, and you're going to have no problem finding work and succeeding. That's what the list is telling them, but that's not true, because there's a huge gap between the needs of the labour market and whether immigrants can fill these gaps, because licensing is a separate issue altogether.
We need to start looking at ways for applicants in licensed professions like health care and trades to start the process of having credentials recognized before they land. Before visas are granted, Canada should show they have contacted the appropriate licensing board in Canada, understood the process for re-licensing, and perhaps even started the process. In fact, even unlicensed professionals would do better if they knew about the barriers they were going to have when it comes to the famous “no Canadian experience”.
Even with excellent language skills, immigrants often don't have the soft skills that Canadian employers want in their staff. There needs to be a course on self-skill training, which immigrants lack, and of course one on corporate culture and working in Canada. An immigrant holding a certificate proving that he or she has understood the differences between doing business in Canada and doing business in their home country, before they are in Canada, would ease employers' hesitation in employing them.
These are hard decisions, but we need to do what's best for the future of Canada. Most importantly, we need skilled immigrants in Canada who can speak the language, hit the ground running, bring innovation, create jobs, and pay taxes.
Thank you.
