Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2014

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

I'm not quite sure about this. I'm asking you how will it work between the old system and the new system, those who have applied before December 31 under the old system.... Will there be priorities, will there be quotas, what will be the mix of the new and the old in the first year of operation?

[Robert Orr, Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Set out in the levels plan there are provisions for all the various categories, who we will be looking at, and the numbers we'll be dealing with in each category. So yes, it's very much taken into consideration within the 2015 levels plan what the numbers will be, and that was tabled in Parliament at the end of October.

Yes, for those who are in the system already, their files will be completed, and at the same time we'll be able to consider the new operation—

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Will they have priority? If you look at the first year—

[Robert Orr]

No, they'll be processed on a parallel track. It's not that one is going to be displacing the other or trumping another—

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

So how long will it take for all of the old system's people to get through the system?

[Robert Orr]

We're well on track in reducing the backlogs. A good chunk of that will be done during the course of 2015. The vast majority of any backlogs in the federal skilled worker program will be sorted out during 2015. It will not be entirely complete, though, I don't think, during that time.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have 30 seconds.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

On the $9 million for professional and special services, can you explain, in your 20 seconds, what this is in more detail?

[Tony Matson, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

The $9 million over the years is for the development of the system. That's the majority of the funding requirement for professional services; it's for the IT system build itself.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Leung.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Let me follow up on the express entry. It's the government's intent to ensure that Canadians get first crack at all available jobs, and we certainly will cooperate with Employment and Social Development Canada to do so. Under the express entry, will an LMIA be required? If it is required, who will require it?

Let me be a little more specific as a corollary to that question. Let's suppose we have a foreign investing company in Canada that needs to have a specific skill, a trained person already in their area, whether it's in mining, banking, or the financial sector. How do we ensure that a Canadian gets that job, given that a lot of these foreign inter-company transfers require language skills that are outside of English and French?

[David Manicom]

That's a couple of questions put together. I'll try to separate them as best I can.

Under express entry, having an LMIA—which an employer can only obtain after having advertised for Canadians and demonstrated to the satisfaction of ESDC that they have made all reasonable efforts to hire a Canadian—is not necessary to get into the express entry pool, and it's not essential to be withdrawn from the pool. What it does is give the individual a very large number of bonus points, so that effectively they will rise to the top of the pool, or very near the top, and get an invitation to apply.

In any given draw, the federal government will be taking both: people with high human capital in general, the best of the brightest, but also those who have high human capital and the approved job offer. The LMIA process assures all of us that the employer first made every reasonable effort to hire a Canadian.

With regard to how a given foreign investing company acquires someone with a particular skill set, first and foremost, of course, we hope they acquire someone with the right skill set in the local labour market. If not, they have access to a number of different programs.

Inter-company transfers are primarily for managerial or highly specialized workers and are exempted from the LMIA process. The company would also have access to the LMIA process if they were unable to hire the skill set they needed in the local economy. We would certainly hope that in doing so they would be looking into the express entry pool to find the best person in there.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Am I correct in assuming that the LMIA would allow a particular skilled worker to rise above the rest of the general pool in the express entry?

[David Manicom]

It would, and therefore we have ensured that everyone in the pool is of high human capital, so that the LMIA affords the push to get that person, amongst all of these people with high human capital, an invitation to apply in any given week. What we don't know yet is what volume of employers will use the program; we hope a lot, so that a significant portion of each draw will have both high human capital and an arranged employment.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Across Canada, what strategies do you have to educate employers on this new entry, on this new system, in order to speed up and smooth out the learning curves and other wrinkles they will undoubtedly encounter?

[David Manicom]

There's a couple of things. As the deputy mentioned, we've had a very robust employer engagement strategy. Through the fall of 2014, for example, we've held in-person employer round tables in 30 different places, 20 different cities, with 2,500 employers, and we'll have a very aggressive advertising campaign as we move into the new year.

We've held webinars with umbrella groups, like the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Employee Relocation Council, and organizations like those, to get the word out as broadly as possible. We will also have a dedicated network of employer engagement people. Employers have often said in the past that they need to call and talk to somebody. We've heard them and we're putting that in place to assist employers in the use of express entry.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

What kind of program are we putting in place to smooth out the live-in caregiver program? I understand there are changes to that, too. What are we doing in that area?

[David Manicom]

Fundamentally, what we're doing is eliminating the live-in requirement. In spite of major reforms we had undertaken over a number of years, I think we all had residual concern that we had been fundamentally unable to completely remove the vulnerability of individuals when their access to permanent residence in Canada, and even their temporary status, was tied to where they slept, where they resided.

We've removed that requirement. We've enabled all of the persons currently in the program, at any stage, to be grandfathered under the previous program for access to permanent resident status, and we're establishing two new programs: one for home care for children and the other for care for those with higher medical needs. These are two new pilot programs already launched, already ready to go for caregiving occupations but with no live-in requirement.

Those are the steps we've taken to improve the old live-in caregiver program.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Is there still a requirement that they can only work for the first employer, the initial employer they come in to work for? Are they still tied to that employer, or is it an open market after they arrive?

[David Manicom]

No, it's not an open market. The permanent resident program simply requires them to have two years of work experience in a relevant occupation. It doesn't matter whether it's with one, two, or three employers.

The work permit under which they come to Canada is normally for a specific employer. However, they can switch employers if they are offered alternate employment.

We're hoping that outside of the live-in environment they will feel more free to respond to improper treatment by an employer, whether it be unpaid overtime or other types of unfortunate situations.

[Anita Biguzs]

Mr. Chair, if I may add to that, as part of the transition to the two new pathways, the 2015 immigration levels plan that was tabled in Parliament includes a target of 30,000 caregivers, in terms of our levels plan, to help us address the backlog of applications under the previous program. I think that will certainly help us to be able to reunite families very quickly.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Sandhu, we're into the five-minute rounds now.

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you for being here today. I'm going to go back to the main estimates. Since you are here, I might as well get a few answers.

Under this government, we have seen long lineups for family reunification. It's a constant issue in my community, especially when people are waiting for their parents. According to my math, it takes at least eight or nine years to get parents from another country to here.

Has there been an increase in funding to ensure that we speed up this parent and family reunification?

[Anita Biguzs]

I'll turn to my colleague, but initially I would tell you there has been a lot of effort that has gone into processing of family class and, certainly, parents and grandparents. In fact, we've managed to decrease processing times and we've reduced the inventory by 56% since December of 2011. As I said, our inventory is now down to about 73,000 persons. We are certainly making every effort to try to get the processing times down to an even lower level, but we have reduced them by, I think, almost two years. From where they were on average about seven years, I think we're down now to roughly five years.

Mr. Orr, would you like to add to that?

[Jasbir Sandhu, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Actually, that's okay.

We know that the government stopped taking family reunification applications because they have a limit now, because before you could do that, and that's another matter all together.

The other big issue that comes up in my constituency is spousal sponsorship. When a person goes out to another country and marries a partner, it is very difficult for them to wait 14 or 16 months. They're putting their lives on hold for that long period of time. I remember many years ago it used to take about three or four months.

Is there an increase budgeted for that area or what—