Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 21st, 2013

[Paulina Ayala, NDP, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Fine.

I'm wondering about the new category of workers who are immigrating to Canada. In the Australian model, the employer sponsors these newcomers and the employees. Does Canada also have this kind of employer sponsorship? How long are newcomers required to work for employers who selected them?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Please make your answer very brief.

[David Manicom]

The expression of interest system aims to ensure that employers seeking employees know the applicants' background. If the employer can get a positive labour market opinion, the employer can add it to the immigrant's file to facilitate selection. Once accepted as a permanent resident, a person is not required to continue working for a specific employer. That's how it is for temporary workers, but not for permanent residents.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Thank you, Mr. Manicom.

Mr. Weston, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to thank our guests for being here and for showing such solid knowledge of these fairly complex statistics.

I would like us to look at three very important parts of the immigration program. First, there are the labour needs. Our minister told us two days ago that we must use immigration to meet our needs because there is a great shortage of workers here in Canada.

Second, Mr. Manicom said that integrating our immigrants was obviously very important.

Third, there's the decrease in backlogs. Unless I'm mistaken, the previous Liberal government reduced immigration by 32%, but in the past five years, we've increased it by 7%, which shows that this government is taking this file seriously, when it comes to labour needs.

You said that integration was a good thing and that it was obvious. However, for 13 years, the Liberal government froze settlement services. Here, we've seen an increase in settlement services.

There's also the backlog of skilled workers. We've seen a significant improvement. There were 487,000 people previously, but you just told us that the figure is now 65,000 people.

If these bold changes had not happened, what would have happened to the immigration program?

Mr. Manicom, could you respond?

[David Manicom]

It's a challenging question for a public servant to answer.

Specifically, I can respond that it is correct that the overall settlement funding envelope did increase very dramatically from about $200 million to $600 million between 2005 and 2006. That's not counting the settlement funds provided to Quebec, which bring the total up to about $900 million.

I could confirm that had we not taken steps to begin to manage application intake, the application backlogs, which were approaching a million individuals, would have continued to grow, and by this time would have been much higher than that. Those are factual answers I can provide.

I'd also note that the levels plans for the last six years have seen a focus on economic immigration and a focus on those parts of the labour market that are at most need. In managing intake in the federal skilled-worker program, for example, we also prioritized certain occupations that are in most demand in the economy at this time.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

You have one minute.

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

Perhaps I'm a little naive, because it may be difficult for all the parties to agree even when there are important things like the changes we're seeing. However, are you able to comment on the future? What can we do to reach a joint response from all parties to continue to make these kinds of beneficial changes?

[David Manicom]

Madam Chair, I'm not sure it is my role to propose policy initiatives that would obtain support across the political spectrum. That's a difficult question for a public servant to answer.

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

Thank you once again for the excellent service you provided.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

Thank you, Mr. Weston and Mr. Manicom.

Mr. Leung, you have the next five minutes.

The floor is yours.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Following Mr. Menegakis' line of questioning, it was said that in the old system we did not have a way to cap the intake and yet we have to manage the output, the application.

With the current EOI system, how does that effectively manage a cap on the intake?

[David Manicom]

The future EOI system?

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

In the future system, yes.

[David Manicom]

We foresee establishing an electronic pool of interested individuals who meet a set of defined criteria with regard to their human capital, language skills, work experience, education, and so forth. The number of persons in the pool is not the number of people you have to process; there's no obligation to process them. Government would extend invitations to apply to the priority individuals in the pool. For example, you could extend invitations to apply to those with the highest number of points against the federal skilled worker grid, for those who have employment offers in priority occupations and things like that. But you would only extend the number of invitations to apply that you had capacity to process. Effectively, you would create a situation where you could do just-in-time processing. You could issue x number of invitations to apply per month based on the levels plan and the processing capacity so that when the applications arrive at the department they are put into processing immediately.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Unlike the previous system where I believe there was a policy to process every application to its conclusion, either acceptance or rejection, we now have a way of capping the inflow such that we select the best candidate for immigration.

How does this apply across the board, for instance, through family unification and other categories like refugees and political asylum seekers? Would they also have to go in through the inventory?

[David Manicom]

No. That's not foreseen.

The expression of interest model is not yet in place. It will be another year and there will be lots of policy development and fine-tuning to do. But we foresee it as a tool for selecting the best of the best, if you will, in the economic categories. There has been no stated intention of government to use the expression of interest application management system in our family or humanitarian programs.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

If I can digress from our immigration system to multiculturalism, Canada has one of the most successful multicultural policies in the world. We encourage integration and the building of a diverse economy with diverse ethnicities from around the world.

Have we given any thought to how we will be able to leverage our diverse population so that they then are our best trade, cultural, and linguistic ambassadors to build Canada's trading links and Canada's goodwill around the world.

[David Manicom]

I'm afraid I don't have expertise on our multiculturalism program, so I can only give a very general answer to your question, sir.

All of the government's multiculturalism programs, and indeed our settlement programs and the significant increase in settlement funding of late, are designed to ensure that immigrants are fully participating members of Canadian society. Our multiculturalism programs are designed clearly to ensure that all Canadians benefit from the rich backgrounds of numerous cultures living harmoniously within Canada.

Certainly, the Department of Foreign Affairs, as part of its mandate works hard to take advantage of those people-to-people linkages through alumni networks and other diaspora-related programs in the countries abroad, so those people-to-people ties rebound to Canada's maximum benefit.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

In my experience of other multicultural societies around the world, there often tends to be this siloing effect of the various ethnic cultures. How do we effectively manage to prevent those siloing effects of the cultures building their own silos within our society?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe]

I'm sorry, Mr. Manicom, but we don't have time for an answer.

I'm sorry, Mr. Leung.

I'll now give the floor to Madam Sitsabaiesan for five minutes.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you again everybody.

I'm going to look at a recent review of the parent and grandparent program. The government released a backgrounder on its action plan for faster family reunification. The 2013 annual report states:

The Department explored ways to redesign the program to avoid future backlogs, while remaining sensitive to fiscal constraints, bearing in mind Canada’s generous public health-care system and other social benefits.

This was on page 11.

What is the expected impact of these changes on the health and social security of our immigrant seniors? And will anything be done to ensure that new Canadians are reunited with their elderly loved ones?

[David Manicom]

I don't think the changes being made to the sponsorship requirements of the parent and grandparent category would have a direct impact on the health of sponsored immigrants under that category, given that all permanent residents have full access to Canadian medical care and so forth. The changes in the proposed new regulations do increase the financial requirements for sponsorship. The regulations have been pre-published and have not yet seen final publication. So based on the pre-published regulations, that will ensure there is adequate financial support for persons sponsored under the category. And the pre-published regulations also propose an extension of the sponsorship period from 10 years to 20 years, again to ensure that elderly individuals coming to Canada and obtaining permanent resident status have that full support from their family members.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

And when we're talking about health, we're also looking at mental health, I'm assuming.

[David Manicom]

Again, immigrants under that category, like all permanent residents, have access to the gamut of Canadian programs.

I don't believe I answered your second question about ensuring family reunification.