Evidence of meeting #130 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was economic.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Would you also apply that principle to international students? There are a lot of international students who have studied here, have been educated here and have even gotten work experience here, yet they don't have a pathway to permanent residence. I mean those who want to stay, obviously.
What are your thoughts on that?
Barrister and Solicitor, Long Mangalji LLP, As an Individual
International students are clearly very desirable people to come to Canada. They're young. They have studied in Canada. They have work experience in Canada. And yet, many of them can't get through the express entry system because of things like age. When you're in your thirties, I'd say that every birthday is not a happy birthday, because every birthday your points are going to go down by five or six, up to 10 or 11 points.
There are also things like language exams. We have Ph.D. students who cannot get the level of language in order to immigrate. It seems a little ridiculous—not a little, a lot ridiculous in these kinds of cases.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you very much.
I'm now going to turn my question to Mr. Jeremic.
Global TV previously did a series of stories, and one in particular that was brought to my attention—in fact a number of them were brought to my attention—was about a mother who brought her little boy and her 11-year-old girl to Canada. The reason was that the 11-year-old girl was going to be faced with FGM in her country of origin.
When she came to Canada, she made an asylum claim application. The girl was accepted, and the mother and the boy were rejected, thereby making an orphan of this 11-year-old girl.
I'd like you to comment on that and on what Canada should do by way of policy change for cases like that in which we are actively breaking up families.
Barrister and Solicitor, Anchor Law, As an Individual
Thank you.
I had an almost identical case to the one you mentioned. The simplest thing to do would be to allow that individual—that child who has been accepted as a protected person—when they're applying for permanent residence, to include their parent on that application, whereby the parent would get permanent residence automatically on the basis of their child's application.
It works in the reverse. If a parent is accepted but for whatever reason a child is not, that child is that adult's dependant, so when the adult applies for permanent residence, the child gets it as well. But it doesn't work in the reverse: If the child is the protected person but the parent isn't, the parent is kind of out on their own. As you say, the logical conclusion is that the parent can be deported and we have an orphaned child who has every legal right to stay in Canada.
A simple change would be a change to the regulations that currently prevent children from including their parents in their PR applications. That's the most straightforward recommendation on that front.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you.
The UNHCR, in fact, commented on this. Their senior legal counsel said that Canada should have an obligation to ensure child refugees are afforded the right to family. The individual went on to say, “The importance of children to have their parents in their lives is so fundamental. It's recognized in international laws, it's recognized in domestic laws. And that's why UNHCR calls on all states to protect family.”
Would you agree with that statement?
Barrister and Solicitor, Anchor Law, As an Individual
I would agree with that statement. My understanding is that whenever anyone has gone to challenge this provision in court, the government has always settled. The DOJ has always settled.
The presumption in the immigration bar is that they don't want a precedent. The government doesn't want a precedent whereby a court would say that the current rules are a violation of those obligations. What happens is that you include the parent on the application anyway; it's refused, and then you file a judicial review application and the government says, “Okay, we'll settle this. We'll let them be processed together.”
As I said, the assumption in the bar is that they don't want a precedent. The reasons you've raised are probably why they don't want a precedent.
Ramez Ayoub Thérèse-De Blainville, Lib.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My question is going to be in French, so if you need the interpretation, please go ahead.
My first question is about Canada's immigration policies and its targets. Canada currently intends to receive 350,000 immigrants. How far can we go? We're told the target is 1% of the Canadian population, but will we have to put a cap on that number at some point?
Mr. Antunes, you've worked out forecasts on Canada's capacity to increase its population. We are talking about immigration, because I think it is the quickest way to increase population, but what is our ultimate objective for the coming years?
Deputy Chief Economist and Executive Director, The Conference Board of Canada
That is a good question, and that is one of the aspects we looked at.
You mustn't forget that most immigrants are not that young. They arrive in Canada when they are already 30 or 35. If Canada decided to increase its immigration targets substantially, this would not necessarily make the Canadian population younger, since the arrival of those immigrants would continue the aging trend. The dependency ratio I spoke about will not be totally improved, even if immigration targets are consistently increased.
We wanted to stay within reasonable parameters, but we did study scenarios involving higher targets. I wanted to say that the biggest challenge lies with how we receive those immigrants and ensure that they have a better future. Before we increase the targets too much, we need to begin really improving immigrants' success rate in joining the labour market.
Thérèse-De Blainville, Lib.
Can the Conference Board of Canada analyze the quality of the economic integration of immigrants, and of refugees, to determine to what extent they participate in and contribute to Canada's economic life?
Deputy Chief Economist and Executive Director, The Conference Board of Canada
In fact, we do have very good data on that. Our data indicate that an immigrant with refugee status will during the first year earn about 20% of the average Canadian salary, and that it will take him a long time, almost 20 years, to earn 50% to 60% of the average Canadian salary. We follow these things closely, and we have very good historical data on that.
The point we want to get across is that there are challenges of all kinds, the most important being to ensure better labour market integration before we even think of increasing immigration targets too much.
Deputy Chief Economist and Executive Director, The Conference Board of Canada
Yes, absolutely.
Thérèse-De Blainville, Lib.
We want to see better results, and that is why I wanted to make sure that you had that data, which seems to be the case. We have to be able to assess the overall quality of immigration and not its success at the individual level, and Canada must define the broad political directions needed to improve the lot of immigrants and its labour force.
What other solution could be considered to increase the Canadian population aside from immigration, which is in fact a simple, brief, one-time injection? As you were just saying, it does not make the population younger. Have you thought about the concept and costs of a policy to boost birth rates? Is there a connection between the two? We know that the current government has brought in a policy for young families and gives them non-taxable subsidies. Would a birth subsidy be another way of increasing the birth rate of Canadians born in Canada?
Deputy Chief Economist and Executive Director, The Conference Board of Canada
Public policy is another option. It all depends on your objective, whether it is economic growth or improving dependency ratios. We did not study both of those scenarios. I can, however, tell you that day cares and early childhood education have managed to increase the birth rate of the population in some cases, which proves that public policy can be successful. However, we have to remember that after birth, it takes 15 to 18 years before a young person joins the labour force.
Thérèse-De Blainville, Lib.
Quite so.
However, when it comes to immigration, it's important that people stay here permanently. Other witnesses said that some immigrants, and even refugees, see their stay as temporary because they eventually want to return to their own country. All of that has to be factored into a global perspective, which is that we want to make sure that we let in people who will stay as long as possible, since we invest in them.
You spoke about people's perceptions about immigration, and I understand that that is outside of your field of expertise. However, who should be responsible for influencing and changing those perceptions; is it politicians, the government, or economic councils, or business?
There is a shortage of jobs in Quebec but also elsewhere in Canada. In your opinion, what events would change things and allow us to convince the population of the job situation, and of the fact that we cannot meet our own needs?
Deputy Chief Economist and Executive Director, The Conference Board of Canada
The Conference Board and other private organizations have looked at that. Some of the research done by the Conference Board—and I don't mean to boast—has tried to bring some perspective to the debate. We have to react to the impact of immigration and other policies on people's lives. We also have to accept the evolution of the labour market and of technology. In the United States, people had the impression that it was free trade rather than automation that had caused job losses. So, we have to make sure that people are well informed.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
I have a question for Mr. Jeremic and Ms. Long. It has nothing to do with the statements you made, though.
About a year ago, this committee made a presentation and a report to the government on the state of the immigration consultant industry. We recommended that the government disband the regulatory body and put it under the control of the department. Nothing has happened since. This is the third time the committee has studied consultants, yet the horror stories about consultants continue, in my opinion.
As lawyers—and perhaps you are biased—is it still as bad as we think?
We'll start with Ms. Long.
Barrister and Solicitor, Long Mangalji LLP, As an Individual
Yes, the horror stories continue. Although you might think I'm biased, I think immigration law is one of the most complex areas of law, and it also has a very deep effect on a person and their family.
I am part of an analytics committee of immigration lawyers internationally, and we have asked our members about the policies regarding consultants in other areas of the world. Canada is one of very few countries that actually allow consultants to practice, and the results speak for themselves when we do.
Barrister and Solicitor, Anchor Law, As an Individual
I agree with my colleague.
From what I've seen when I've looked at work that consultants have done—on appeal, for example—it tends to reinforce the horror stories, as you say.
The problem is that consultants are limited in what they can do. They can put forward an application but they can't represent someone in court. The lack of training and the very narrow scope sometimes prevent them from seeing what can happen with an application down the road if there's a problem or if it needs to be appealed. Unfortunately, a lot of the things that determine what is going to happen down the road are things that are done at the very beginning. If you don't get it right at the beginning, you're really limiting how you can fix it later on.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Mr. Chairman, I've recently had a number of cases in my riding in which people who were going through the immigration system had poor representation at their hearings—particularly before the IRB—and these were lawyers.
What can be done to improve the representation by lawyers before the IRB? You may not agree, but in my observation as a member of Parliament who is talking to these people, the representation is terrible. I used to be a lawyer, so I can recognize some of this.
Mr. Jeremic, go ahead.
Barrister and Solicitor, Anchor Law, As an Individual
I don't necessarily disagree with that statement. I think there's a wide variety of representation that can be found. The problem, I think, is fundamental to the practice. A lot of these people are new to Canada. They don't necessarily know how to find lawyers. They rely on members of the community who may not be giving them the best advice.
I don't necessarily know how we can do this: equip people who are looking for legal representation to know what they're entitled to from a lawyer and what they can demand so that they know they're getting the best kind of representation.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
I'm afraid I need to end that there.
We'll count on you to help your profession.
Thank you.
We're going to suspend for a moment as we welcome out next witnesses.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
I will call us back to order.
The previous witnesses are certainly welcome to stay and listen, because the testimony will be really good.
Thank you very much for coming.
Ms. Go and Ms. Chien, thank you especially for getting here. I know you had flight difficulties, but you made it.