Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 19th, 2018

[Christopher Meyers]

The Canada-Quebec accord is a formula-based calculation. The information—

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Sorry, I know we don't have very much time.

Based on the budget that came out, in supplementary estimates (C) we're going to be missing about $112 million for Quebec, or it's going to be taken from somewhere else. Are we going to see that in supplementary estimates (A)?

[Christopher Meyers]

You'll see that in the main estimates.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

It will be in the main estimates as a reduction to the rest of the country's settlement services?

[Christopher Meyers]

No, it's a separate stream of funding, so it's not a reduction to other settlement services. It's a stand-alone program that's formula-based.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

We have time for about three minutes from Mr. Tilson, if you'd like it, just leaving enough time for the committee to express its will on the supplementary estimates and the interim estimates.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you.

Vote 7c of the supplementary estimates (C) writes off $397,000 and change in debts under the immigration loans program. Where does this come from?

[Christopher Meyers]

The amounts in question are outstanding loans that are already on the balance sheet of the government. These are amounts that have progressed through a certain number of collection processes and for which the department would not view it to be administratively efficient or financially beneficial to proceed with any further collections on those amounts.

What we have to do, under the law, is to present in an appropriation act the amounts of money for which we would want to seek a formal approval of writeoff. That's what you see here.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Last year's supplementary estimates (C) requested a writeoff of $2 million. Why the big difference?

[Christopher Meyers]

The writeoff process sometimes accumulates balances, and at certain intervals we come to seek that writeoff. It's a bit of an administrative process whereby those steps need to be undertaken first, at which point we come to the committee to seek formal approval.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

With respect to Syria, Mr. Chairman, how many people who arrived as part of the government's Syrian refugee initiative are still looking for work?

[David Manicom]

We'll never know the exact answer to that question, because in Canada, refugees aren't required to report to anyone when they get employment. We will eventually have pretty hard data through StatCan linkages of the percentages of Syrian refugees who are in employment in any given year.

Some surveying done most recently in British Columbia has shown that the number of Syrian refugees in year two who were in employment had more or less doubled from those who were employed in year one, up to about 43%. We see signs of good progress. The precise number, given the nature of our society, we will never have because it will continually change.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Will that apply to permanent housing as well? How many are still looking for permanent housing?

[David Manicom]

All of the refugees were moved into permanent housing. Again, we don't track people on an individual basis afterwards, but all individuals were moved from their settlement arrival facilities into permanent housing. There's no backlog or leftover of individuals who were not moved into permanent housing.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

How many are still waiting to get into language training?

[David Manicom]

I couldn't provide you an exact number because again language wait lists continually change. People move on and off them. We have a pretty focused strategy to reduce the volume of people on wait lists for more than 60 days. The numbers are dropping. We can provide exact numbers to the committee of the total number of individuals who have been on language wait lists for a certain period of time. I don't have them in front of me.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Please send those to the clerk.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

That's very good.

Thank you very much. You're free to leave, but I would like to not have the committee move until we deal with the voting on this.

We have two sets of votes, one on supplementary estimates (C), and one on interim estimates. The first has three votes, and I can do the three of them together, if that's the committee's will?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

All right.

DEPARTMENT OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

Vote 1c—Operating expenditures..........13,643,958

Vote 7c—Debt write-off—immigration loans..........397,019

Vote 10c—Grants and contributions..........123,120,000

(Votes 1c, 7c, and 10c agreed to)

Shall I report the supplementary estimates (C) 2017-18 to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

With respect to the interim estimates, votes 1, 5, and 10; could I do these together as well?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I've got three that I'll lump together because they're Citizenship and Immigration.

DEPARTMENT OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........193,132,007

Vote 5—Capital expenditures..........3,946,911

Vote 10—The grants listed in any of the estimates for the fiscal year..........449,016,800

(Votes 1, 5, and 10 agreed to)

IMMIGRATION AND REFUGEE BOARD

Vote 1—Program expenditures..........29,737,499

(Vote 1 agreed to)

Shall I report the interim estimates 2018-19 to the House?