Thank you for inviting me.
Family class is motivated by many issues. This morning I'll be speaking exclusively to economics and related topics, which are my area of expertise.
The first thing is to think about context. The formal family class immigration stream is only one aspect of the broader issue of family reunification through immigration. For example, by design, “privately sponsored refugees” in practice is used to sponsor family members, so it's another stream, other than the formal family class, used for family reunification.
The one I'd like to focus on is another example, which is the use of adaptability points inside the federal skilled worker program. Expanding this avenue for family reunification might prove to be quite worthwhile and is something the committee should be considering. I know this goes against the axiom used in some governments of using one policy lever for one policy goal, but I think we've already breached that boundary, and I think it's worth thinking about considering pushing that a little further.
In terms of the economic evidence regarding family reunification, usually a committee such as yours is about evidence and opinion collection. Unfortunately, if you're interested in evidence-informed decision-making, you're going to have to invest in evidence generation, because the truth is that very little is known about economic issues related to family reunification.
I want to talk about three economic issues in particular, two of which the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act is particularly concerned about. The first is social assistance used by the family class, which of course the sponsors are responsible for to some extent, and the second is health care costs, which again the act is concerned about in disallowing people with certain types of health care needs.
Other issues are really important. For example, OAS and GIS liabilities associated with immigration are potentially quite important.
The truth is, we simply don't know how large or small these issues are, and if you're going to be making evidence-informed decisions, I think it's incumbent upon your committee to find out.
One of the things the federal government has been concerned about in terms of these types of costs is who pays. As I mentioned, social assistance costs, because of the benefits accruing to sponsoring families, are to a certain extent paid for by those families. The super visa allows—or requires, I guess—people who are sponsoring and the sponsor to pay their own health care costs, and it cuts them off from OAS and GIS liabilities.
One thing we might be thinking about is that if these are truly ethical and moral decisions about benefiting Canada through family reunification, we might not want to be imposing health care and social assistance costs upon provinces. The federal government may want to choose to reimburse provinces for health care and social assistance costs directly associated with the family reunification or the family class program. This is really an issue of asking who should be paying. Should it be the residents and taxpayers of particular provinces or should it be all Canadian taxpayers? I guess I'm advocating that in this case we should think about all Canadians paying.
A third issue is demographics. Immigration, as we all know, has a very modest effect on Canada's demographic structure. Nevertheless, it's used as a motivation despite its small impact. The parents and grandparents program needs to be considered from a demographic perspective. It goes against the motivation used by this government for other parts of its immigration policy, and we need to be considering immigration policy as a whole.
Finally, I turn to labour market outcomes. The outcomes of parents and grandparents are not particularly strong subsequent to arrival and, similarly, the spouses sponsored through the family class do not have outcomes as good, if you want, or as successful, as spouses coming through the skilled worker program. If we expand these programs, we need to be thinking very carefully about the provision of settlement services to these individuals. It's not clear at the moment that we are doing this appropriately or that we're thinking very carefully about the different needs of people settling from different immigration categories.
That's it. Thank you very much.