Evidence of meeting #2 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was system.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

James McNamee  Director, Immigration Strategies and Analysis, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Teny Dikranian  Senior Analyst, Passport Program Transition Office, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Caitlin Imrie  Director General, Passport Program Transition Office, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Maia Welbourne  Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON

All of them?

12:05 p.m.

Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

12:10 p.m.

Liberal

John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON

Okay.

12:10 p.m.

Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Maia Welbourne

The ones that are more frequently going to change, like the frequency of the draws or the number of individuals who would be invited to apply, will be just on CIC's website.

I think it's important, though, to come at this in a different way as well and to recognize that whatever criteria we use across the board have to be legally defensible. Because it's an automated system, they have to be able to be.... The decision about whether or not an individual who's interested in coming to Canada through the EOI system gets admitted to that EOI pool will be done by the automated machine based on information provided by the candidate. We have to make sure that whatever we do around those decisions is legally defensible, and that means those criteria we develop, especially around high human capital, have to be based on evidence.

12:10 p.m.

Liberal

John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON

Okay, but you haven't answered the question on whether the ministerial instructions, all of them, will be subject to public discussion and debate.

12:10 p.m.

Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Maia Welbourne

I don't believe it's our intention to, subject to further discussion. The MIs will be publicly available for comment.

12:10 p.m.

Liberal

John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON

Well, I guess it's up to this committee, for example, if it wishes to discuss them or have witnesses on this subject. The committee would be able to do so if it so desired.

12:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you, Mr. McCallum.

Mr. Weston.

12:10 p.m.

Conservative

John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As we have already said, on behalf of all Canadians, our government's priority is creating jobs and stimulating economic growth. I want to congratulate our witnesses for their role in implementing the program we're discussing today. It will go a long way towards improving Canada's situation. I also want to congratulate you for looking to the best practices of other countries. Canadians very much appreciate when we don't reinvent the wheel.

In my riding, I've seen new Canadians trained as doctors or engineers driving taxi cabs. That tells us there isn't necessarily compatibility between the demand for workers and the immigrants we're attracting.

How do you think the expression of interest program will bridge the gap between immigrants and the demand for workers?

12:10 p.m.

Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Maia Welbourne

Thanks for the question. Again, coming back to a fundamental goal, it's to increase the chances of success for new immigrants. We know that having a job offer in hand when immigrants arrive is an important indicator, a factor in their being able to establish economically quickly and successfully, both in the short and longer terms.

The idea is to open up in a very significant way the possibility for employers to play a role in selecting immigrants, again through creating a pool of EOI candidates, so prospective immigrants are then available potentially through the ESDC job bank and/or can market themselves so that they are making those connections with employers before they arrive in Canada. We think that's a really important part of ensuring their success.

12:10 p.m.

Conservative

John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC

Thank you, Ms. Welbourne.

Could you elaborate on the relationship between a confirmed job offer and the expression of interest program?

12:10 p.m.

Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Maia Welbourne

Pardon me?

12:10 p.m.

Conservative

John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC

Can you elaborate on the relationship between a confirmed job offer and the new expression-of-interest program?

12:10 p.m.

Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Maia Welbourne

To be clear, there's a lot of program and policy work that is still under way, and we are working very closely with colleagues at ESDC to keep in lockstep with the developments on their side related to things like the job bank, LMO requirements, and so on.

The idea is that we would be running, as I say, potentially three and possibly four programs through EOI: the federal skilled worker program, Canadian experience class, the federal skilled trades program, as well as the provincial nominee program, potentially.

I think it's important to realize the EOI in itself doesn't change the requirements or the parameters of those programs per se. Any requirements related to job offers being vetted through an LMO process or not would still apply. It's just the idea, too, through creating a pool of prospective immigrants who can then make themselves available, and employers can access their information through the job bank or other places, that we are trying to increase the number of job connections made prior to arrival.

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC

My colleague Mr. McCallum brought up unemployment. Obviously, we're trying to bring down Canada's unemployment rate.

How can we be sure that the new program won't take jobs away from people who are already Canadians?

12:15 p.m.

Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Maia Welbourne

Again, we're working very closely with ESDC to ensure that anything we do on the EOI side of things is consistent with the greater Government of Canada objective of ensuring that Canadian workers are not displaced—we're very mindful of that—but also recognizing that we do receive about 250,000 immigrants every year. Given that, and focusing on the economic stream in particular, how can we ensure that those individuals who will be coming to Canada in any case have greater chances of success?

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

John Weston Conservative West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC

In my riding, what business leaders are perhaps most in need of is people with the training to do the work that needs doing in Canada.

Again, I want to congratulate you. I think this has a lot of potential. I hope that

we can live up to that great potential.

Thank you very much.

12:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you.

We're on to the five-minute rounds.

Ms. Sitsabaiesan.

12:15 p.m.

NDP

Rathika Sitsabaiesan NDP Scarborough—Rouge River, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for joining us today. I'll try to go through my questions quickly.

Is this a way to strengthen the provincial nominee program? From my understanding it seems the provinces are getting more say in what's happening. It seems there's a transference of more of the immigration system on to the provinces rather than the federal level. Is this what's happening here? I want to understand it better.

12:15 p.m.

Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Maia Welbourne

No, I don't think that's the case. I guess there are a number of elements to the response.

We're in discussions with provinces and territories about their use of EOI. One possibility is they may wish to choose to run part or all of their provincial nominee programs through the EOI system. That's something we're in discussions about. Again, coming back to the levels plan which always provides the frame for the numbers of immigrants coming under the various streams, that will be the frame that will continue to exist and will set the ranges and the targets. EOI in a way simply provides another means for provinces and territories to potentially identify possible nominees.

12:15 p.m.

NDP

Rathika Sitsabaiesan NDP Scarborough—Rouge River, ON

Okay.

I'm always thinking of keeping families together. Will the families of those individuals who are selected through the EOI program be permitted to come to Canada with the applicant and have their applications processed simultaneously and come to Canada with the EOI applicant, or will they have to go through the traditional sponsorship program after the fact, after the EOI applicant is in Canada and receives a PR and only then can sponsor their family?

12:15 p.m.

Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Maia Welbourne

The same processes will apply as currently apply. Principal applicants and their accompanying family members will be processed as one, sort of at once. This wouldn't change that at all. It doesn't affect that approach.

12:20 p.m.

NDP

Rathika Sitsabaiesan NDP Scarborough—Rouge River, ON

Okay, fantastic.

Will the implementation of the EOI system lead to increases in wait times for permanent residency applicants? In other words, will CIC be hiring new resources to process the expression-of-interest applicants, the à la modes, the invitation-to-apply people, and the subsequent complete immigration application, or will existing resources be used? That is my question. Is it existing resources? In your introduction I didn't hear of any new money being allocated to CIC for this. If existing resources are to be used, which we already know can't handle the load of the applications that are submitted to Canada through the existing programs, such as federal skilled workers, the living caregiver, humanitarian and compassionate grounds, family reunification, family-class sponsorships, whatever it might be, then naturally we know that wait times to process all these applications will increase as well. If EOI is created to make it faster, it's really going to be stuck in the backlog.

There's a lot in there, I know. The rest of my time is yours.

12:20 p.m.

Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Maia Welbourne

We're still working on the question of costs. That is subject to ongoing review and discussion, and subject to approval, so I can't provide details of costs at this time.

On the question of processing times, clearly, one of the goals is to ensure fast processing for those candidates running through the EOI process.

12:20 p.m.

NDP

Rathika Sitsabaiesan NDP Scarborough—Rouge River, ON

We're going to ensure fast processing of these new hand-selected people, but we haven't talked about new resources being put in. As of now, existing resources are already backlogged and can't process the applications. These resources are going to be set aside for these hand-selected EOI applicants and they will be processed faster.

This EOI system is being implemented without talking about how it's going to be sourced, how it's going to be resourced, how it's going to be financed. Is that what's happening?