Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Jan. 30th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Ms. Rempel.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

It does matter. To Mr. Tilson's point, we have very few sitting weeks before the date that we are required to refer the estimates back to the House. I think there is legitimate concern among committee members that we might not get both ministers, especially when it's not clear under what purview either minister would be spending the estimates right now.

I think it would be fair to have two different panels.

It's not clear to me with what's happening on Monday. You are setting this calendar for the meetings with the ministers, or...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Just so that everyone knows, generally how this works is that the clerk and I review the work that you have approved to do and the work that we have to do from the House. We come up with a calendar of what is happening in the next two, three, four, or five meetings and we let you know.

I was proposing to do that on Monday, once the clerk and I have had time to look at where she's at in scheduling the witnesses you've requested and the request you've had for a meeting with respect to supplementary estimates (B).

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Do you foresee any reason why both ministers couldn't appear for separate meetings well before the date that we have to refer the supplementary estimates back to the House?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I haven't had any conversation with either minister or with either minister's office, so I don't know their availability yet. The clerk has just alerted the ministers' offices...the departmental contacts that we are requesting them. That's where we're at right now.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

So then what's happening on Monday? If we don't have their availability, how are you setting the meeting date?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm hoping to have it by Monday. That's why I'm meeting the clerk on Monday, to give time to get those dates.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

But the minister's office hasn't responded to you yet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Hopefully by Monday; that's....

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

But do you anticipate that we would actually have the ministers this time for the supplementary estimates before those are referred back to the House?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

We have never requested that ministers appear before this committee and they have not appeared.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

But both of them....

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

They've delayed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

We cannot compel a minister, or two or three or seven, to come to this committee. We can request that they do and invite them, and that's what we will do. We've never been declined. I have been on this committee in the past when ministers did decline to appear, but that has not happened since I've been the chair.

We have Mr. Whalen next.

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

With respect to the idea of having the ministers appear separately, I think some of the points raised by Mr. Tilson and Ms. Rempel actually point to a reason to have them both here at the same time. Any confusion regarding their authorities can be resolved at the table with both of them here.

However, with respect to the departmental officials, I do agree with Mr. Tilson that quite a number of departments are implicated. I would be happy to extend the meeting on the day that both ministers come by an extra hour, two hours, three hours—as long as Mr. Tilson wants to sit here. I'll stay with him to meet with departmental officials on any topic Mr. Tilson would like to discuss.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I would sooner not get into a discussion now about the schedule. I would like to do that once I have a proposal for you. Then you can look at the merits of what we're doing. You can overturn it. You can approve it. You can do what you want with it.

I'd like to have something that I can actually present to you, having heard Mr. Tilson's concern. Then you are very free to accept it or reject it.

Ms. Rempel.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I would just like to refute Mr. Whalen's point. I would surmise that if the ministers decided not to have separate meetings, it would be because they would rather get the pain of having to look at their large, unallocated budget expenses of paying for hotel rooms for people illegally crossing the border over with in an hour than actually diving into why they decided to do this.

So I would see no reason why two ministers with purportedly separate portfolios would not be available to account for spending over $100 million of unallocated funds, in a deficit budget year, before this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you.

I will proceed with this discussion in mind, and I will present a proposal to you on Monday.

Is it okay to proceed with our witnesses?

Mr. Manicom, thank you for your patience.

[David Manicom, Assistant Deputy Minister, Settlement and Integration, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is David Manicom and I am the Assistant Deputy Minister for Settlement and Integration at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

I am joined by Corinne Prince, the Director General for Settlement and Immigration Policy, and by Laura Di Paolo, the Director General for the Settlement network.

We hope that our testimony will be helpful to your study.

Immigrants from every corner of the world have made significant contributions to all spheres of Canadian life, and they continue to make influential contributions to science, business, and technology.

Through new perspectives and diverse insights, immigrants also help to drive our country's intellectual and artistic capital. Many of our immigrants also bring with them an entrepreneurial spirit, creating jobs and becoming important drivers of innovation and investment.

Immigration benefits Canada's economic and demographic growth, our innovation and prosperity and our efforts at nation building. With Canada's aging population and growing labour force needs, I think we can all agree, Mr. Chair, that immigration will be vital to the continued growth and success of our country's economy and society. This statement is also supported by research.

Statistics Canada reports that the lion's share of national employment gains, 66% of gains between 2016 and 2017, was directly accounted for by immigrants.

And the most recent labour force survey for December 2018 shows that immigrants' employment rates are broadly in line with the national average.

The unemployment rate for core working-age immigrants stood at 5.7% in 2018.

This is the lowest unemployment rate for this group since at least 2006. This bodes very well for the future of immigration in Canada and suggests that our settlement program is doing a good job of helping newcomers to integrate. This is key, because ensuring that immigration remains advantageous to Canada in the future means that all newcomers are integrated and supported so they may contribute to various aspects of Canadian life.

Settlement services are a key to newcomer success, and investing in that success will be key to our nation's future prosperity and inclusiveness.

By the end of fiscal year 2019-2020, this will represent a 32% increase in settlement funding since 2015-2016.

In 2018-2019, our department has funded over 500 organizations and provided services to approximately 460,000 clients. Of these clients, more than 100,000 accessed language training services, reflecting the critical importance of English and French language skills for successful settlement in Canada.

Looking ahead, the ongoing success of our settlement programming will continue to depend critically upon our partnerships, which go well beyond the Government of Canada. This year we developed a shared national vision on settlement and integration with our partners, including the provinces, territories and stakeholders. That shared vision is that the successful settlement and integration of newcomers benefits Canada by building a more inclusive, diverse and productive nation. This is achieved through a shared effort that helps all reach their economic and social potential.

As you know, improving the delivery of settlement services is one of the commitments identified in Minister Hussen's mandate letter and is a priority that our department is intently focused on.

Our goal is to offer services that will best meet immigrants' needs and produce the best settlement outcomes possible. Our outcomes-based programming will be informed by our research, analysis, evaluation findings and the results of our new pilot projects.

To assess the effectiveness of our services, the department conducted a formal evaluation of the program, completed in May 2017. This incorporated a wide range of perspectives, including program clients, stakeholders and program officials, and comprised the largest-scale survey of newcomers ever conducted to that point, with almost 15,000 respondents. Overall, the evaluation found that our program has been effective at meeting a growing demand for settlement services. A clear majority of clients—96%—reported positive outcomes, such as improving their language ability finding employment, participating in their communities, and so forth.

We also conducted separate evaluations of the pre-arrival services and immigration to francophone minority communities.

The evaluations made several recommendations to improve our settlement program. The department has developed an action plan that is addressing those gaps. This plan will guide future program improvements, and inform the next calls for proposals with service providers, which will launch next month.

To date, improvements to our settlement program have included streamlining our pre-arrival settlement services for newcomers who are still abroad.

A number of projects are also under way to experiment with and assess potential new service delivery improvement projects. This year we will devote $32 million toward a dedicated funding stream for service delivery improvements and innovations.

One of the first of such innovative pilots is employing newcomers in stable, good-paying hotel jobs. This pilot will connect as many as 1,300 unemployed or unemployed newcomers with jobs in the hotel industry while they strengthen their language skills in the workplace.

Our program evaluation shows that combining employment and language training is effective and ultimately improves settlement and integration.

As such, the department is exploring more of these types of projects that combine workplace experience with language training and other supports. The Atlantic immigration program pilot is another example of this type of innovation.

IRCC is also launching other innovative settlement programs to target more vulnerable populations, such as refugees and women. We launched a pilot project this past December to support visible minority newcomer women in gaining access to and advancing in the labour market. Through this project, we aim to support the employment of visible minority newcomer women by increasing existing services, establishing new partnerships and testing the effectiveness of different combinations of employment services.

In addition, we are looking at improving the services that we offer to French-speaking newcomers who settle in francophone and Acadian communities outside of Quebec.

As announced in Budget 2018, and included in the official languages action plan, the department will invest more than $40 million over the next five years on a francophone integration pathway.

We are also looking at improving our settlement services for refugees, which have been especially important for Syrian refugees. This spring, IRCC will issue a major report on the 52,000 Syrian refugees who have arrived in Canada. We have already compiled much data from various sources. Most notably, 57% of Syrian refugees reported that they were employed, a marked increase since our 2016 rapid evaluation findings and, I think we can say, exceeding our expectations. What a wonderful collective effort from Canadians and these newcomers.

Once our report is complete, we expect the overall findings to the positive. More importantly, this will also help guide future improvements to our settlement services for refugees.

The call for proposals process that we will launch next month also will place an increased focus on key areas, including the integration of vulnerable populations, such as youth, refugees and LGBTQ2+, a greater focus on mental health supports and further enhancing our services for francophone newcomers.

The department recognizes that we must continue to assess what is working and what must be improved, and to continuously adapt our settlement programs to the changing needs of newcomers.

Going forward, with true co-planning with the provinces and territories and close co-operation with our partners and stakeholders, we can create a clearer picture of what newcomers need and determine how to collectively meet those needs. Our aim is to maximize the social and economic contributions of all immigrants to Canada, regardless of how they arrive.

As one of our service providers said today at a meeting I was at, it's about building a better Canada one newcomer at a time. With that in mind, Mr. Chair, we look forward to the findings of the committee's study.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for the work you do on behalf of all Canadians every day as officials in the public service.

Mr. Tabbara, you have the first round for seven minutes.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the officials for joining us today.

In your statement, you mentioned improving language ability and finding employment. I have here an article from The Globe and Mail. I'll read out part of it. It is about how around the world sometimes we get some anti-immigrant sentiment about newcomers, as they might not be finding employment that fast, but as you've outlined in the numbers here, we've seen a lot of Syrians finding employment and surpassing expectations.

The quote reads:

It may come as [no] surprise that Canada's list of the wealthiest individuals includes many immigrants who started businesses in Canada. Corporations such as Magna International, BlackBerry, Saputo, Larco and Shopify, to name a few, were started by immigrants to Canada and are now among the largest employers and generators of wealth in this country.

BlackBerry is part of the Waterloo region.

I wanted to share that article, as it really shows and highlights how our country has been built on immigrants, and not just with the small mom-and-pop shops. These are very large corporations that have employed hundreds and thousands across our country. With a lot of the investments we are making, are you seeing a lot of these success stories across our country?

[David Manicom]

People in our business work with over 500 service providers and 400,000 clients a year, so we hear a lot of success stories every day. I would just add, by way of comment on your remarks, sir, that statistics show that newcomers to Canada create jobs and become entrepreneurs at a higher rate than native-born Canadians do. That's something we certainly want to encourage. We've set up a number of programs specifically for newcomer entrepreneurs to link them with mentors in the community, to give in-class training to help them work through the expertise in how to create companies in Canada. This is something we will be looking to expand as a priority of Minister Hussen in the call for proposals that will be launched next month. That call for proposals will fund our programming envelope for the next three to five years and involve $3 billion to $4 billion. So entrepreneurship is certainly one of our key focuses.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

In terms of the settlement services, are investments we're making to the settlement services comparable to those of the United States and some European countries, and do we see the same successes? Or is Canada unique in how the federal government is working with federal services, investing in newcomers, investing in their success? Are there any comparables to other states?

[David Manicom]

No one does it quite like Canada. We have some comparator countries who have somewhat similar programming. Australia does a lot of investment in settlement, newcomer and integration, but primarily for refugees. A lot of other countries invest a lot of money at different levels of government. Certainly in Germany municipalities are very major investors in newcomer inclusion. I think the model through which we work closely in co-planning with the provinces using community-based service providers through grants and contributions funding arrangements creates a network embedded in our towns and cities that is somewhat unique. I don't think our network of service providers, which leverage many hundreds of thousands of volunteer dollars, for example, volunteers, could be replicated by government if we had to start from scratch. I think we've inherited a wonderful network of community-embedded expertise, which is a great contributor to our success story.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

You also mentioned in your statement another program that you've put in place quite recently to support visible minorities, newcomers and women. Can you elaborate on that? Was this a group that was not as successful in integration and maybe finding employment, and is this why we've put in a certain program to help these groups?