Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 12th, 2015

[Wilma Vreeswijk]

I'll turn first to the design and how we do that and how we plan these things. Then it's always a little dangerous to get into the specifics of individual cases.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

That's why I didn't mention any names.

[Wilma Vreeswijk]

Perhaps my colleague Mr. Orr would like to respond to that—

[Catrina Tapley]

To come back to comments that Ms. Vreeswijk made earlier, we worked closely with employers and other interests as we established express entry, including having a technical working group on program design with employers, with some key universities, and with others, to make sure that as much as we possibly could we were going to get it right and avoid as many glitches as possible. That's in addition to two pretty extensive rounds of consultation, which we ran from one end of the country to the other with employers and with a number of groups. I can go on for a bit on that.

With respect to some of the problems you indicated, I'm going to turn it over to Bob, but I will say that we worked with the Government of Alberta to try to come to an agreement on how we could look at ameliorating some of this situation with respect to the cumulative duration rules. I'm happy to report that we do have an agreement in place with Alberta. We're looking at it, potentially, for other provinces as well, but this was in many cases a problem particular to Alberta as you have noted.

Bob.

[Robert Orr]

Thank you very much.

When we were designing this program, we certainly looked at a whole variety of different situations and scenarios, and we tried to anticipate as much as we could. One of the fascinations of working in the immigration program is that you can never anticipate everything that's going to come up. Obviously, we continue to work through individual circumstances as they arise. As Ms. Tapley indicated, the Alberta situation is one we are very much aware of, including the issue of cumulative duration, so we're trying to work through that. I can't comment on the particular case without all the information, but I would just say that we're very conscious of this issue and we are trying to work through ways to handle it.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Are you looking at the compassionate side? Some of these people have been given false hopes and are very jubilant when they get the ITA all of a sudden because they were so frustrated with the old program. But then they get in there and all these little barriers come in. Is there some way for us to look at some of these individuals and tell them that there is a compassionate side, and they're meeting all the criteria but the paperwork is going to take some time?

[Wilma Vreeswijk]

Certainly, as Mr. Orr indicated, we do run the scenarios. We really do try to ensure that we can anticipate as much as possible. In terms of all of our programs we are aware that they affect real people and their lives.

We are constrained by legislation and regulations in what we can and can't do, and we have to respect that. As Ms. Tapley outlined, we've just come up with an agreement with Alberta to help resolve some of these transitional issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Madame Blanchette-Lamothe.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to follow up on Mr. Eglinski's questions, which were very interesting.

Currently there is great concern in the farming community across Canada because of these specificities.

Ms. Tapley, you have concluded agreements with Alberta. You said you were trying to see whether it would be possible to enter into agreements with the other provinces. Could you tell us precisely what is being done in this regard?

I come from Quebec, where many farmers' groups are very concerned about the prospect of losing all their temporary workers at the same time.

Why have agreements with the other provinces not been concluded? What is being done right now to help the farming community across Canada?

[Catrina Tapley]

Thank you.

There is a special agreement between Canada and Quebec. Quebec is responsible for almost all elements of the immigration and settlement program, particularly with regard to temporary foreign workers in the agricultural sector.

Under the changes to the temporary foreign worker program, by and large, the seasonal agricultural worker program was unchanged. Some of the changes that the other member was referring to don't apply to the seasonal agricultural worker program, and we don't anticipate others. In the situation in Alberta there were a number of candidates in line for the provincial nominee program who the Alberta government felt confident they were going to nominate, but they had a bit of backlog in their provincial nominee program. We struck an agreement to work with the Government of Alberta on some of those candidates in their provincial nominee program that had been there with valid LMIAs before a certain period of time. It was quite a particular group of circumstances.

With respect to seasonal agricultural workers, they shouldn't be affected by the same issues that the other member was referring to.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Tapley.

I think that concludes our session with supplementary estimates, and I want to thank you, Ms. Vreeswijk and your colleagues, for visiting with us this morning and answering the questions from the members.

The witnesses are now excused. Thank you very much.

CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

Vote 1c—Operating expenditures..........$6,661,362

Vote 5c—The grants listed in the Estimates and contributions..........$21,378,333

(Votes 1c and 5c agreed to)

Shall the Chair report the same to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I will do so after the break.

The meeting is adjourned.