Yes.
Evidence of meeting #146 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 quebec.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #146 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 quebec.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Marwan Tabbara Liberal Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
I just want to try to get the committee back to—
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
We'll hold that point of order for a minute.
I have ruled, but I will accept a challenge from anyone on either side on my ruling.
Am I to infer that you are challenging the ruling that I have made with respect to this meeting, which is Standing Order 108(2)? We are continuing the study as a new meeting. If you want to challenge that, I am very happy to be challenged.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
Thank you very much for allowing me to do that. I challenge your ruling.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Okay.
Having been challenged, that takes precedence.
I'm assuming you want a recorded vote.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
3:55 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
No, it's just on a point of order with respect to that, on the challenging of the chair vote, Mr. Chair. I'm going to have to abstain from it because, regrettably, I was not here on Monday, so I don't know all the details of the proceedings on Monday. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to vote, so I am going to abstain.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Okay, we're going to do the recorded vote. Once that has happened, we can continue the meeting.
(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 5; nays 2)
Thank you. My ruling is sustained.
We are now going to continue with our meeting, as we have given notice for.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Yes, Mr. Maguire, go ahead if it's on a new point, but I won't entertain something that continues on the same point.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
It was just a question really. I got that your ruling was because you did not have quorum. How many people are needed, then, for quorum? Is it five?
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
A requirement is five members of Parliament for quorum, but I do not count.
A majority is required. There are 10 members on the committee, so five.... Six really are required, and I don't count.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
I wasn't sure of that, but I know that the three of us, the Conservatives and the NDP, were here. However, even though everybody knew we were getting back together at 7:30 p.m., none of the Liberals showed up, so I see what happened.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
The member would be advised to remember that commenting on the attendance or non-attendance of any member in any committee or in the House is not appropriate.
We are now going to continue with our witnesses.
We will begin by hearing our guests from the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec, who will be testifying via videoconference.
Mr. Gagnon, Ms. Megyery and Mr. Cournoyer, you have the floor for seven minutes.
3:55 p.m.
Kathy Megyery Vice-President, Strategy and Economic Affairs, Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec
Good afternoon.
My name is Kathy Megyery. I am joined by Alexandre Gagnon and Michel Cournoyer.
The Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec, or FCCQ, was founded in 1909. It is at one and the same time a federation of boards of trade and a provincial board of trade. Thanks to its vast network of close to 130 boards of trade and its 1,100 member enterprises, the FCCQ represents over 50,000 enterprises that are active in all sectors of the economy throughout Quebec.
Firstly, the FCCQ has for many years been in favour of increasing the level of immigration in Canada. Canada’s demographic context—and this is even truer in Quebec—forces us to count increasingly on strong and well-integrated immigration.
Our population is aging and will be leaving the workforce in droves over the next few years. In Quebec alone, 30% of workers will be reaching retirement age over the next 10 years. This situation is worrying in light of the fact that in the third quarter of 2018, there were more than 118,000 vacant positions in Quebec. That fact forces us to innovate and change the way we do things, and immigration has to be part of that solution.
Since Quebec makes the selections where permanent economic immigration is concerned, we will not discuss this in our brief speaking time, although we are quite open to any questions you may have on the topic. We will thus speak specifically about temporary immigration.
On June 20, 2014, the federal government overhauled the Temporary Foreign Workers Program. The new provisions aimed to severely limit the use of temporary foreign workers, and they were effective. In Canada, the number of temporary foreign workers, aside from those working in agriculture and as family caregivers, went from 800,000 in 2013 to only 29,000 in 2017. As the need for new workers keeps increasing significantly, employers are very concerned by this trend. In Quebec, there are approximately 7,500 temporary foreign workers and close to 120,000 vacant positions. Those figures speak for themselves.
Current labour requirements are not limited to skilled labour. Given the lack of candidates, many employers in the manufacturing and service sectors must hire temporary foreign workers to fill their vacant positions.
Despite certain changes made in the wake of the report tabled by this committee, the program does not make it easy to fill vacant positions. Consequently, we recommend that substantial changes be made to the program.
The administrative burden placed on applicants is demanding and costly. We recommend that costs be largely reimbursed when an application is denied. We also ask that there be a more rational process put in place to examine applications, so as to avoid rejections due to minor points and administrative errors. Application processing times should be greatly reduced and more predictable.
The Global Talent Stream should be broadened, since it makes it possible to meet the needs of certain specific sectors. Let me reiterate that we need to shorten processing times, particularly as concerns labour market impact studies.
The acknowledgment of local shortages of low-wage workers is currently too restrictive. The reference regions sometimes cover vast geographical areas, and it is unrealistic to expect that someone will travel over 50 kilometres to take a low-wage job.
Of course, we have many other recommendations, notably as to the use of the National Occupational Classification, inspection methods, and the necessary broadening of the list of occupations so that semi-specialized or low-skill occupations can be processed more simply.
However, we do want to draw your attention to the urgent need to abolish the limit on the rate of temporary foreign workers within an organization at a time when labour requirements are at an all-time high and will remain so.
Thank you.
4 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Thank you very much, Ms. Megyery.
We’re going to continue with Ms. Burchfield from the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
Thank you.
February 27th, 2019 / 4 p.m.
Marcy Burchfield Vice-President, Economic Blueprint Institute, Toronto Region Board of Trade
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
On behalf of the Board of Trade, thank you for inviting me to appear before this committee.
The Board of Trade, with its 13,500 members, represents the Toronto region's business community. The board is one of the largest chambers of commerce in North America.
In addition to our influential policy work and podium events, we have an active trade services arm, called World Trade Centre Toronto. It offers programs in trade acceleration and market activation to small and medium-sized businesses to grow internationally.
We are currently designing a scale-up program for small and medium-sized enterprises to enable them to grow to their fullest potential domestically, as well as internationally.
High-gross businesses provide a significant contribution to the Canadian economy. Recently, the board launched the Economic Blueprint Institute, which I lead. The EBI is charged with creating a research and evidence base to inform a rolling, five-year forward plan that will galvanize regional economic development and strategic infrastructure investments in Canada's innovation corridor, a geography that extends from Waterloo and Guelph to the greater Toronto and Hamilton area.
Through its work, the EBI will be addressing some of the same workforce questions that this committee is considering. We know that this committee is focused on migration from the labour supply side. A key component of the board's work involves the talent file. We, at the board, have been looking at talent by considering the demand side, and in particular the skills gap, which can be an impediment to maintaining the region's competitiveness.
We often hear about a skills gap and a skills mismatch from virtually all our members and across all sectors. Today I will take the committee through the skills gaps in the trades by highlighting findings from the board's recent labour market study and the latest BuildForce Canada study. Finally, I will pivot to some trends to keep an eye on, which will impact all occupations.
A little over two years ago, the board published a widely cited report, “Building Infrastructure, Building Talent”. It concluded that there would be 147,000 job openings in the construction and trade sectors in the Toronto region over the next 15 years, to 2031, which the report referred to as “a generation of jobs”. These are well-paid jobs.
The most in-demand category is the construction labourer, requiring minimum skills training but whose median wage is nearly double the minimum wage. Other in-demand categories include higher-skilled and more senior occupations such as carpenters, electricians and construction managers.
There are two reasons for the gap. The first is the sheer number of major infrastructure projects in the region, ranging from the refurbishment of the $11-billion Darlington nuclear plant to the construction of the $5.3-billion Eglinton light rail line.
The second reason is the changing demographics, as my colleagues in Quebec have noted, including an aging population. As the population continues to age and construction workers retire, there are fewer young people to replace them, and some of those young people are less keen to join the sector than their parents were a generation ago.
The bottom line is that the continued build-out of major infrastructure projects to support the incredible growth in the Toronto region will leave gaps in all skill levels in the trades, which need to be filled, whether by people from across Canada or from outside Canada. As our president, Jan De Silva, has suggested in the introduction to our study, “To build tomorrow's infrastructure, we must build a pipeline of talent today.”
Those trends are echoed by the recently released reports on the future of construction and maintenance over the next decade by BuildForce Canada, covering all of Canada.
Though the demand outlook varies province to province, with the demand ebbing in some parts of the country, high demand is expected to continue in Ontario and surge in British Columbia. Even with some slowdown, the industry will need to recruit, train and employ an estimated 300,000 new workers in Canada over the next 10 years, particularly given the expected 260,000 retirements.
In terms of the solution to the shortfall, BuildForce Canada looks to traditionally under-represented groups such as women, indigenous Canadians and new Canadians, particularly since immigrants account for only 18% of the country's construction labour force.
I will turn briefly now to another trend that the board, and specifically the Economic Blueprint Institute, will be tracking, one that should be of interest to this committee.
In recent years, researchers have focused on the skills needed to address the dramatic shift that is occurring in the global economy. Globalization and technological innovation are the two main drivers of economic restructuring. Both have an impact on the global supply chains of firms. Many have characterized the shift as one from a manufacturing to a knowledge and service economy, but that is only part of the picture.
Recent research suggests a more nuanced story, one where the impact of digitalization and automation is more widespread and impacting all occupations and all skill levels. The results can be disruptive to a regional economy, as evidenced by the loss of more than 130,000 manufacturing jobs in the Toronto region in the past decade. But it's not all doom and gloom.
Just as there have been losses, there have also been job gains. ln fact, more than 100,000 knowledge-intensive jobs were added to the region in that same decade. However, within the knowledge and service economy, there will be job losses due to automation. This is the reality of today's emerging new economy. A 2017 study by the Brookings Institution in the United States shows that digitalization impacted nearly 90% of the U.S. workforce between 2002 and 2016.
lncreasingly, today's jobs require a substantial digital knowledge. lndeed, a very recent study by the Canadian think tank Brookfield lnstitute found that nearly 200,000 technology jobs were created across Canada between 2006 and 2016, totalling nearly one million workers. The report illustrates how tech workers are pervasive across all industries and all occupations.
The work program of the Economic Blueprint lnstitute is designed to help us better understand the historic, current and future assessments of population, industry and occupation dynamics, and more importantly, the economic drivers of change. Ultimately, we hope the work of the board and EBI will enable the competitiveness and prosperity of the region and of Canada.
On behalf of the Toronto Region Board of Trade, I'd like to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to contribute to the work of this committee.
4:10 p.m.
Marc Audet President and Chief Executif Officer, AURAY Sourcing International Inc.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
Our presentation will be in French and English.
My name is Marc Audet, and I am the President and CEO of AURAY Sourcing & AURAY Capital, both subsidiaries of Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton, a major accounting firm in Quebec and a member of Grant Thornton International, one of the world's leading audit firms. Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton Canada serves over 100,000 business clients throughout Canada.
I am here with my colleague Phil Mooney, Vice-President at AURAY Sourcing, to talk about the labour shortage and actions we recommend to simplify the recruitment of temporary foreign workers.
To support our presentation, we have given you a more detailed brief, as well as some slides to illustrate some of our points.
During the last year, in a context of labour shortages, most companies with which we do business have had great difficulty finding workers, either to expand their businesses or even to survive. Our firm, AURAY Sourcing, was created to provide employers with reliable support combined with expertise in immigration and international recruitment, and to help them hire temporary foreign workers.
As you know, Canada has reached its lowest unemployment rate in 43 years, and for the first time, a large number of employers have difficulty in hiring both skilled and unskilled workers, and this is occurring in every Canadian province. For Quebec employers, this is something new, while for companies in Ontario and western Canada, it is a case of "here we go again!" Unlike previously, Quebec is no longer considered a source of available workers; it is also looking for workers.
The labour shortage is therefore the number one concern for most Canadian businesses. A recent survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business confirmed that the labour shortage had caused a loss of sales for 40% of respondents, and that 42% had had to cancel their investment plans. Yet recruiting temporary foreign workers continues to be a process burdened by international competition, long delays and inconsistent decisions.
Even with the best expertise, the entire hiring process can take eight months or more, which is too long for most employers and makes proper planning almost impossible. Some companies are even forced to move their production outside of Canada and others may go bankrupt because of this situation and the long processing times.
The Labour Market Impact Assessment process, or LMIA, was set up to protect Canadian jobs, but now this procedure is costing Canadian jobs because of delays. The situation is the same for the work permit process.
We would thus like to propose four measures, three of which would significantly reduce the time required to bring in temporary foreign workers; one is about access to permanent residency.
I will now invite my colleague, Phil, to introduce to you our specific recommendations.
Thank you.
4:10 p.m.
Philip Mooney Vice-President, AURAY Sourcing International Inc.
Thank you, Marc.
We have some very specific and detailed recommendations, and some general ones.
First, we ask that Quebec employers be exempted from having to provide workers' names until their LMIAs have been adjudicated, as is done in all other provinces. In Quebec, employers are required to provide the name of the temporary foreign worker with the LMIA application, even though the LMIA has nothing to do with the worker, because they must file for a selection certificate from Quebec immigration at the same time.
This means that they can't apply for the LMIA unless they already have identified and recruited the worker. They can't recruit in parallel; they have to do it sequentially. Because of the total time involved, which, as Marc said, can be in excess of eight months, and the very competitive nature now of the international recruiting industry, many skilled workers, such as welders, machinists or IT workers, choose another offer while waiting. As a result, employers lose the worker, the time they took to find the worker and the $1,000 they paid to ESDC. They cannot substitute other candidates.
Our second recommendation is to amend the LMIA process for most occupations to focus only on the compliance program, not the job approval process. Under the law, LMIAs are required to ensure that Canadian jobs are protected. We're not suggesting that the law be changed, even though some would like to see LMIAs completely eliminated. Indeed, thanks to its rigorous compliance program, the LMIA is a great tool to protect vulnerable workers from unscrupulous employers who are trying to reduce costs by underpaying foreign workers. We don't want to lose that tool.
The ESDC apparently already agrees that there's a labour shortage, because many occupations in demand are now exempt from meeting the advertising standards, which are onerous and take at least one month. Why, then, should the employer have to complete another 10 pages of unnecessary information and wait to have everything reviewed by an officer, who can then reject the form if a simple mistake is made on it? While the labour shortage continues, why should an approved company have to justify hiring more temporary foreign workers in order to grow the business? Why should employers in the same industry and the same geography, sometimes on the same street, each have to justify their own needs? They should only be required to enrol in the compliance program.
There is precedent for this simplification. The forerunner to the LMIA, the labour market opinion process, was changed to meet the needs of employers in western Canada when processing times were reaching up to a year. The emergency LMO and the accelerated LMO processes streamlined the system so that industries could bring in urgently needed workers much faster.
Our recommendation is a short-term fix that could be implemented immediately and inexpensively, while in the mid-term, ESDC could work to set up partnerships with local community economic groups, similar to what they've done with the global skills strategy, to issue exemptions from having to prove labour shortages for certain employers, those in need, enabling those firms to use the simplified process. The partners might even take on some of the administrative burdens in times of heavy or urgent demand.
Our third recommendation concerns the processing for work permits at IRCC visa posts. Under the global talent stream, IRCC processes work permit applications within 14 days, whereas current processing times at visa posts range from two weeks to 39 weeks. We recommend that work permits from all LMIA-approved applicants also be processed within the 14-day standard.
Already, some visa posts meet a 14-day standard. The problem is not the process. The problem is the decision-making at each of the visa posts. The reason why a few visa posts are at 39 weeks needs to be understood. By issuing revised instructions to immigration officers, directing them to review applications only for security and health concerns, and, for high-skilled applications, checking the applicant's ability to perform the work, the process would be greatly shortened.
We also suggest that IRCC set up a task force including immigration practitioners and department managers to streamline the process as much as possible, identifying where roadblocks are and eliminating them.
Finally, for a longer-term solution, we recommend using a different method to evaluate language abilities that would allow temporary foreign workers a path to permanent residence, recognizing that working in Canada for years is proof that they are successfully settled. This would provide a long-term solution to the skills shortages we are now experiencing.
Having arranged employment in Canada is the most important factor in determining if an immigrant can become successfully settled, and yet many temporary foreign workers are prohibited from transitioning to permanent residence because of the current method used to evaluate language skills.
French or English language skills are important to successful settlement, as we all know, but we question the appropriateness of the tests that are now used to qualify skilled workers. For example, the current language tests, namely IELTS and CELPIP, are not the best way to determine if welders who have lived in Canada with their families for three years can successfully settle here. They already have.
The current language standard gives permanent residence to a 29-year-old Ph.D. holder in an obscure occupation, even without any prospect of ever getting a job in that field in Canada, yet denies a 29-year-old master technician who earns $150,000 a year and who has worked in Canada for three years, simply because he has difficulty writing an essay in English.
Prior to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, language skills were evaluated by an officer during interviews, but that practice was discontinued at the time because the decisions were inconsistent and interviews were time-consuming. Initially, language tests were optional. Soon, however, they became mandatory for most skilled worker applications. However, the levels that skilled workers had to reach were arbitrarily set by the department without any consideration other than uniformity and mitigation of possible legal action from individuals claiming that the system was unfair.
While we recognize that the ability to communicate in French or English is important to settling in Canada, what we propose is that the level and particular skill be adjusted to better determine integration ability and especially to take into account the time spent working in Canada. This would not replace language testing but would add more appropriate levels to it.
Thank you for your attention. We look forward to answering any questions you may have.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
Thank you very much. You can thank the federation of chambers. They used less time, so you got more, so you know how you got that extra time.
We're going to do our questioning now, beginning with Mr. Sarai for seven minutes.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Randeep Sarai Liberal Surrey Centre, BC
Thank you, Chair. I'll share some of my time with Mr. Ayoub.
Some of you are from Quebec, and he may want to ask some questions.
First of all, it seems like a good problem to have. It's like when you say it's a first world problem. It's a better economic problem to have—when the infrastructure projects are moving forward, the economy is on full steam and there's relatively little unemployment—than it would be if we had a shortage of jobs. Usually countries worry when it's the opposite.
Maybe I can ask you this, Ms. Burchfield. Are we considered to be at full employment right now, and therefore is there opportunity loss right now by not having enough workers? Is that something you would think is—
4:20 p.m.
Vice-President, Economic Blueprint Institute, Toronto Region Board of Trade
I think we're at one of our lowest unemployment rates, as are the United States and others, for sure. In the board's report, which specifically looks at the skills gap in the trades as related to infrastructure investment, one of the concerns is that going forward, in the next 15 years, there will be a lot more in the way of retirements, and that's where we really need to ramp up the pipeline of talent to think about the future.