Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 21st, 2013

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Manicom, I'm new to this committee so you can imagine what kind of a learning curve I've had here; the immigration file is above and beyond. You've been very helpful in my learning curve. I'll tell you why. First of all, when I started to study the file—and I knew this before but I started to study it in more depth—I realized that six or seven years ago we had almost a million people in a backlog, people wanting to get into this country. Now I understand it's down in the neighbourhood of somewhere around 600,000. I wondered how in hell this was accomplished. What a dramatic turnaround. Then you said—I think I have this quite accurately—that since 2006 ambitious rounds of improvements and innovation had taken place in immigration. I think that was in your opening comments. Can you tell me what those improvements and innovations were to take that backlog almost down 50%. What have you done?

[David Manicom]

There were two primary tools. One was the elimination of old applications in the federal skilled worker program, which, of course, is very unfortunate for the particular affected individuals but was a decision that the government took to situate the program going forward so that it could provide fast and efficient processing.

The other thing the government did, starting three or four years ago, was to manage intake into the programs. Rather than have an open-ended approach and, if you will, continue to sell tickets on full airplanes, the government began to manage through a cap system the number of applications received in some of our programs. We have not applied such caps to some programs, such as the most immediate family reunifications of spouses and minor children. It has involved some targeted programs where we've imposed those caps so that when someone applies we start processing it.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

There are a couple of specific areas where I'm really impressed with how well the immigration department under the current government has increased total family immigration, from 145,000 under the former government to where it's now up to 166,000. These are the average annual admissions. What do you contribute to that? How come we've increased that by something like 15%? How are you managing to do so much more?

[David Manicom]

As I'm not sure I can share your figure there, sir, I'm looking at--

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Total family immigration has gone from 145,000 to more 166,000. This is your average over the last six years.

[David Manicom]

I believe the average is around 60,000, sir.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

You say 60,000. That's not the number I have.

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

Those are your [Inaudible--Editor] numbers, which are often wrong.

[David Manicom]

Looking at slide 11, we can see that the family class in 2012 brings in around 64,000 individuals.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Okay, what was it in past years?

[David Manicom]

There has been an increase in the last couple of years, last year and this year, because of the accumulated backlog in the parent and grandparent portion of the family class. The government significantly increased the planning range for that program. While new applications so that we could work through the existing inventory, the government also significantly increased the space available for parents and grandparents last year and this year, leading to an increase.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Okay. Now, hopefully, these figures are accurate. The backlog in the skilled workers program went from 487,000 under the previous government to currently 335,000. Is that right?

[David Manicom]

No, the current backlog in the federal skilled worker program, sir, is in the order of scale of 65,000 or 70,000.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Is that's all it is?

[David Manicom]

Yes. Again, we could provide the committee with the exact figure, but it's that order of scale.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Currently, that's all it is.

Okay, what about the reduced processing time for the skilled workers applications? How long does that take? I understood it used to be five years and now it's under a year.

[David Manicom]

It's about a year for the most recently received applications, that is, applications that weren't part of the old inventory. The numbers on the table here combine all applications and the ones being finalized in 2012, and some of them are parts of the old inventory. So going forward in that program, we will see a significant continuing decline because we've almost eliminated that inventory, as I've said. Practically now it's a working inventory; there's really no wait backlog. Going forward we will see processing times for that whole group of about 12 months or so.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Or less.

Thank you very much.

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

Thank you, Mr. Lauzon.

Ms. Ayala, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have questions about two topics that I care enormously about: refugees and workers selected to immigrate to Canada.

With respect to refugees, I just want to give Syrians as an example. The government reported that Canada was going to host 1,300 Syrian refugees, but that Ottawa would only commit to taking care of 200 of them. The others would have to be taken care of by a group of individuals or corporations that would be responsible for their integration. Those sponsors are from the private sector. But it doesn't say how long those sponsors have to meet the refugees' needs. It seems to me that it used to be for two years.

Now, on page 5 of the document, the paragraph titled “Resettlement from Outside Canada” indicates that “Private sponsors are groups or corporations that have signed an agreement with Canada's Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. In this agreement, they promise…” and so on. But how long are they committed? There's no answer; it isn't clear.

The second part of my question has to do with integrating and hosting immigrants. When people apply on their own, it's because they are already independent. However, people who come to Canada as refugees have experienced fairly violent situations in their country of origin. So they are in a state of shock and everything that entails.

Budget 2013 cuts funding to community agencies that host refugees. Hosting these refugees involves the government, the province, but there are the community agencies as well. Has the department provided anything in the budget to help these agencies that host immigrants? Often these agencies are the ones that go and find French or English courses for newcomers and help them find a school for their children. They also seek psychological help for those who need it.

The problem is that these organizations are no longer receiving assistance. What measures is the Department of Citizenship and Immigration going to take in that respect? Then I'll come back to my question about workers.

[David Manicom]

I'm not sure I fully understood your first question. Unfortunately, we don't have an expert on settlement programs with us today.

The budgetary envelope for settlement programs for this fiscal year is about $900 million. We have specialized programs in all regions of Canada to meet the needs of immigrants, particularly to integrate refugees. We also have special psychological programs for people who have been tortured and so on. There is a whole range of programs. If the committee would like, we can set up an information session on hosting programs. There are a lot of them, and about $900 million has been allocated for those programs.

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

Okay, but what proportion of that money is for community agencies, which are the first ones to host these refugees? If these amounts end up in large institutions and…

[David Manicom]

Almost the whole amount.

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

That isn't what we're seeing in our ridings. These agencies are scraping by and have no money. Their budgets were cut, and they don't even have enough money to pay their employees the minimum wage of $10 an hour. I would like some more information about that.

How long do private sector businesses acting as sponsors have to commit to refugees? There is a category of private sponsors for hosting refugees. It isn't specified in the document.

Madam Chair, how much time do I have left?

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

You have 50 seconds.