Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 28th, 2019

[Stephen Johnson]

I'm sorry, we're smiling because we collaborate on the national occupational classification. ESDC does a lot of the research and we work with StatsCan to publish it. I may, then, take this question on board.

The skill levels are about the typical education and training required. As to how we assess it, we actually go out and talk to unions and employers and we look at job postings to see what people say they need when they hire. We use that information to determine for these jobs whether they typically—sometimes they do not—require a university degree or would typically require up to two years of a college or apprenticeship training; or would they more likely involve just short-term, on-the-job training?

Really, it's the evidence, the facts of what typical employers who employ those occupations require by way of education and training for entry-level positions.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I get it. You're looking at all those elements. In my own mind, however, I go to see my dentist, and the dentist's assistant does a superb job. It seems to me that they require pretty extensive training, yet would not be ranked as highly skilled as a medical assistant. Is that right?

Was your collection of this information ever meant to be used for immigration purposes?

[Stephen Johnson]

I think it was meant to be used for the full range of all labour market information, for all purposes. I would say yes, or that it wasn't exclusively not designed for that.

What's important is that when we put this forward, we're not intending to assign any notion of the skill or the value of a job. I think often it's implied that if yours is on the high-skill list, that means we value it more. That's not what is intended. It's really around the training and education typically required to get in. We often hear some of these issues around here.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Related to this, I see that in the projections there are all sorts of jobs or positions required ranked high-skill.

The flip side of it, what I see on the ground from people whom I would deem to be fairly high-skilled—for example, a specialized chef for a particular restaurant with a particular cuisine—is that often employers complain to me bitterly because they can't find anybody with the specialized skill to work in their restaurant. They can't expand; they sometimes can barely sustain themselves, because their existing chef is retiring and they can't really train anybody, so they need to hire from somewhere.

Well, they cannot. Under our current system, it's very difficult for them. Chefs are deemed not to be high-skill. That's one aspect of it: how we deal with those kinds of situations in which there's a clear need in the labour market, but our current situation does not allow for it?

Second, related to that: with all these high-skill positions, I would also think that caregivers who come to this country, who take care of my children or my loved ones, are the most important people in my life—outside of my children, I would argue—but they are deemed to be low-skilled.

With that low-skill designation come ramifications for immigration purposes. Right now, our immigration pathway is not looking to bring in people with so-called low skills; yet they are some of the most important people in our society.

By the way, these high-skilled workers need these caregivers, especially in light of the fact that we don't have a national child care strategy. If we don't have one, even if these workers come they can't work, because they have nobody to take care of their children.

Can you shed some light for us to get a better grasp of how immigration policy needs to be adjusted to reflect the actual needs in the community in a better way? Is there anything from your departments that can provide us with evidence and statistics we can utilize?

[Stephen Johnson]

As an example, I believe a chef is what we would call a skill level B, for those A, B, C or D, meaning that it's a technical job. Skilled trades usually call for a college diploma, training or apprenticeship. If you ask me, from a NOC perspective, I would not necessarily say that is a low-skill trade. I would say that's a profession for which you typically require up to two years of formal technical training.

Likewise, again on the caregiver, when we say skill, the definition of skill is where we get caught up here, I think. The definition of skill is the typical education or training required.

Maybe there's something here about how that's communicated and explained, in terms of what we mean by skills, because right now it's focused around education and training.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I wonder whether or not then—

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I need you to end there.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Sorry. I'm just wondering about assessment tools then, if there could be consideration on a different assessment tool that would actually shed better light on this for the purposes of immigration, because I think that's what is required.

I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I think we're going to be coming back to some of that question.

Go ahead, Mr. Sarai.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

I'm going to take over from where Ms. Kwan left off. I have similar constituents who have similar concerns. I will get to my other questions after.

Regarding a cook or a chef, in a conventional sense, you might think of somebody taking a two-year diploma and coming over here to study. A conventional cook or chef in an Indian or a Chinese-Canadian restaurant probably started cooking at eight years old, learned from their parents or worked with their parents, and is probably one of the best cooks ever.

I have asked the restaurants in my riding in Surrey about this. They have hired cooks and chefs with two-year diplomas from those countries, but they don't work with them. In India or China, if you're a cook with a two-year diploma, you have people working for you. You don't touch the food yourself. You say do that, do that, do that. They don't work in a small, 15- or 20-seat restaurant.

I think there needs to be an adjustment of categories; we can't put both together. That's more of a statement. It's causing a lot of issues where the growth of those restaurants is being hindered.

If you go in my riding on a Friday or Saturday night, you can't get a seat in any of these ethnic restaurants. They are packed. They will have 50 to 80 people outside the doors on a Friday or Saturday night, so I think we need to look at that.

The second issue I have is that you issue an LMIA to a company that shows there's a labour shortage. In my example, I will give you a carpenter who has a door factory in my riding. He sources and then finds a carpenter to come. This may be Immigration, but it means you are communicating with Immigration. They will say the company that he works for has no website. We don't see any website of this carpentry company in India. We didn't see any pictures.

Typically in India, if you're a carpenter, you don't have a web page and you don't have a Facebook page. You're the local carpenter. You make doors. You may do beautiful hand carvings and you may be the best.

How do they prove that? What I'm seeing is that those individuals are getting rejected, but they are the exact type of worker they actually need. They have gone and, in some cases, visited those shops or those places and said that's the exact guy they want.

I think you need to coordinate with StatsCan and Immigration to figure out where there's a shortage and exactly what type, tailored to the jobs that are in demand in those regions. Obviously, I can speak for my region of Surrey.

Do you communicate with Immigration, in that respect?

[Stephen Johnson]

I have colleagues that communicate with Immigration and colleagues whom I understand the committee may consider whether they need to invite or reinvite to talk to some of those concerns.

Through the Job Bank, if employers don't see skills or job titles they like, they can provide us with feedback. Interestingly, we received over 120,000 suggestions and the two areas that stood out were IT requirements, like certain softwares, and specialty cooks.

We are seeing that. We are hearing back from employers who use it that they want to be much more precise, in terms of the nature of the chefs that they are looking for.

I certainly have heard some of that feedback myself from employers.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

I will follow up with this. The requirements to bring them in as temporary foreign workers—the English language and others—are sometimes lower than when we want them to be permanent residents. Again, that's where communication between the departments is needed. Hypothetically, somebody comes in as a carpenter, works here, does the two years.... Or a farm labourer does two years, maybe extends it to three or four years, and now wants to be a permanent resident. Our answer is that their English isn't up to speed, whereas they were good enough to work here for four years. They had all the skills. I look back to my own mother. My mother has a grade 8 education. She worked in a hospital as a cook. She went from assistant cook to cook. She now translates for people. She learned the language skills on the job. She probably still couldn't pass an IELTS to do the same job.

I think we need to revisit that in a more practical manner. If people are able to do the job here, then they should be able to get permanent residency based on the same level of IELTS and requirements that they need to come here. I ask if you could communicate with the counterparts. Obviously we do our ministerial or government parts, but I think the departments need to do that, so that we are comparing apples and apples and not apples and oranges.

Do I have more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I would give you another couple of minutes if you wanted it, because you're pretty good today.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

This question is maybe for StatsCan. If we don't bring more immigrant workers to Canada in the next 10 years, what could happen to our labour force? Have you looked ahead? How does that affect our retired people in Canada, our industries and our labour force?

[Vincent Dale]

We have projected the labour force using a range of scenarios. Under every scenario we look at, the labour force, which is the proportion of the population that's working or looking for work, is going to decrease. It's true that's driven by fertility decreases and the aging of the baby boomers. At all levels of immigration we looked at, the labour force decreases.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

In layman's terms, we have a labour problem and we need immigrants.

[Vincent Dale]

I just want to emphasize and go back to that question that was asked before. We do not project labour demand. We're projecting the supply, looking 10 or 20 years out. We're not projecting the demand. We're just making an observation that the number of people working or looking for work is going to decrease as a proportion of the population.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Do you predict demand in your office, Mr. Johnson, or does anyone up there?

How nimble can you be to accommodate those? LMIAs in my riding are taking up to nine or 10 months now. Say it's a trucking or logistics company, and growth is huge due to a lot of free trade agreements going on around the world. They get 10 LMIAs to get 10 new drivers. The 10 come. They win another contract, and they want more. They have to wait nine months to get another 10 drivers.

We heard this in testimony yesterday. How can we make it so that those who are already approved, when they get more demand, can immediately add more workers?

[Stephen Johnson]

In terms of the processing of the LMIAs and the applications, I'll pass that on to my colleagues. I'm really not in a position of expertise to speak to that.

Gilles, did you want to speak to the forecasting of labour demand?

[Gilles Bérubé, Director, Labour Market and Skills Research Division, Department of Employment and Social Development]

We do have projections of labour demand. Before updating the projections of labour demand, we have projections of economic growth for Canada. Those projections are developed with The Conference Board of Canada. Incidentally, the Conference Board has published a study recently that relates to your question about the economic impacts if immigration were to stop in Canada. I think it was released recently.

The projections that the Conference—

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

We could request that it to be brought into evidence as well.

Thank you for mentioning it.

[Gilles Bérubé]

The economic projection that is developed by The Conference Board of Canada has two main components: domestic production and foreign production, or domestic demand and foreign demand. Foreign demand will depend on expected growth in foreign countries, exchange rates and things like that. With respect to domestic demand in Canada, that will depend to an extent also on the labour force projections that enter into the economic forecast.

Labour force growth in Canada will drive consumer expenditure in Canada, which is the largest component of total demand. From that economic projection, or projection for demand for goods and services, the Conference Board derives a projection of demand by industrial sector. From there, we derive projections by occupation. The long-term trends that we are looking at in our projections are mostly related to what is happening at the occupational level in terms of job supply, or job seekers and job openings by occupation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm afraid I need to end there.

Mr. Whalen, if you have a question you want them to give us data on, we could ask for them to submit it, if there is something specific.

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

Actually, I think Mr. Bérubé answered the question.

I just want him to confirm that “Canada 2040: No Immigration Versus More Immigration” is the name of the study.

[Gilles Bérubé]

That's it exactly. Yes.