Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 10th, 2016

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I can do the math. That's 20%, $9 million out of $45 million.

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

I guess, given your background there....

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Yes. I might not know all the numbers, but given the numbers, I can figure out percentages.

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

I am going back to my first question. Do we have any services that we're providing to refugees such as a long-term plan to help them integrate into Canadian society or help them find employment? In my riding, there are many services available that have been underfunded previously. I am thinking of services to try to integrate them, to try to find them employment within the community, to show the Syrians where pockets of other Syrians live so that they can integrate with them and then could find employment through the people they've been meeting in their neighbourhood.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

As we've said, we've made good progress on housing. The next big question, apart from language, is jobs. I'm going on a cross-country tour next week to Halifax, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver to talk to business associations. Many have stepped forward expressing enthusiasm to hire Syrian refugees. I know of many industries that are crying out for such people to work for them.

For the longer term, once you get the refugees over to Canada and there's no longer a question of getting them from A to B but of settling them for the long term, it's no longer by any means purely a federal issue. The provinces are heavily involved, as are the settlement organizations, the private sector. It is very much a joint, national effort on that front, and we are working on it.

The other thing I should say, since you mentioned the long run, is that we are putting a lot of effort into monitoring and studying the effects, the successes and the failures, of the Syrian refugee program, not just for one or two years but for 10 years and for 20 years. We are providing funding to academic researchers through SSHRC, and we are developing a framework so that we can evaluate the percentage who have work, the percentage who are on social assistance, and all of these things, so that we can monitor the progress over time.

That doesn't really answer your question about how we're going to do it, but I'm telling you that I am doing it through speaking out to business communities. Many other players on the ground are also active.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Ms. Saroya, you have five minutes, please.

[Anita Biguzs]

Mr. Chair, could I make a correction to my answer on income support under the resettlement assistance program?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Please do.

[Anita Biguzs]

It's actually not $9 million. I got my numbers reversed. I just wanted to correct the record. In fact it's an amount of $34 million approximately for income support under the resettlement assistance program.

I wanted to clarify that so that I don't mislead you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. Biguzs.

Mr. Saroya, you have five minutes.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Minister, first of all, thank you for taking care of the personnel situation yesterday. You intervened and got the job done.

Those delays are because we moved some of our workers from Toronto or somewhere else to the Syrian refugee side. Usually that sort of [Inaudible—Editor] comes in six months. It's nine months. The delay over delay is something to do with...?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Are you asking me about refugees from other countries?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

No. Was the delay in processing paperwork here in Toronto because we moved some of the manpower from Toronto or somewhere else to the other side?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

No. I think the question that was put by one of your colleagues yesterday had to do with that. What I can tell you is that, yes, resources were diverted in some respects. The question had been whether this has had a negative effect on spousal applications or entries. The answer is very clearly no, because for 2015 the target for how many spouses would be admitted to Canada was 45,000 to 48,000. The actual number admitted was 49,000. We actually admitted more than had been planned. If resources had been diverted, we might have had fewer than planned, but the fact that we exceeded the target is certainly good news for spousal unification, which is one of my top priorities.

Also the level planned for 2016, the number of spouses we intend to admit, has gone up from 45,000 to 48,000 to a target of 60,000. Far from detracting from our ability to process spouses, the numbers admitted have actually been higher than had been projected.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

You mentioned something else earlier, that the caregiver processing time will be shorter, but this is because we are taking fewer applications, allowing us to reduce the incoming stream of quotas. Is that why the time is shorter, because you're taking fewer applications?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

No. The previous government admitted a record high number of caregivers in 2015. This year we're admitting the second highest number of caregivers in at least a decade. Because of that high number let in during the last two years, the inventories have come down and so the outlook for a year from now is that processing times will be radically lower for caregivers. We've also put in additional funding to support our efforts to process caregivers faster.

Robert Orr, this is your area. Do you have anything to add to that?

[Robert Orr, Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you, Minister.

No, I think that covers it significantly. We're aiming at 22,000 admissions in the live-in caregiver program this year, and we estimate that, at that point, the inventory at the end of the year will be around 25,000. That's significantly reduced from where it's been over the last few years.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Regarding help for the Syrian refugees, you and I will be attending something together in Markham on April 1. I'm happy for that.

I would like to take something of a different angle regarding refugees. In Afghanistan, for example, it was estimated 200,000 Sikhs were living in Afghanistan 25 or 30 years ago. Now there are fewer than 10,000 remaining in the surrounding Kabul areas. Is there any way you can have the same sort of thing for the Sikh refugees? They could be privately sponsored and come in the same way the Syrian refugees are coming.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I'm not sure I've fully understood that question. Are you're talking about refugees from Afghanistan?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I am talking about Sikh refugees in Afghanistan. They're living in their houses. They're tied up in their houses. The women have to wear burkas to come out, against their own tradition.

Can they have the same sort of deal as the Syrian refugees are having?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Well, we welcome all refugees, but I would have to talk to you about that specific case.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Ehsassi, you have five minutes, please.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. I want to reiterate the sentiments shared by other members of this committee to thank you for the inspired leadership and the unparalleled energy you've shown since being appointed to your ministry.

I also want to thank you for once again having made yourself available to this committee. Canadians from coast to coast to coast know how incredibly demanding your schedule has been, so I'm grateful for that as well.

I was wondering whether it would be possible for me to address another program that is funded in the supplementary estimates, namely the transfer of funds to Global Affairs to be used for staff located at postings abroad. I was wondering to what extent that funding is associated with efforts to resettle the 25,000 Syrian refugees.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I thank you very much for all the nice things you've just said.

I think this is funding to support the missions overseas in the role of immigration with regard to those missions, but I would ask the deputy to comment on the specifics.

[Anita Biguzs]

We have had ongoing for many years a memorandum of understanding with Global Affairs for the support required for our immigration staff and missions abroad. Our department has the largest footprint, the largest number of employees in missions abroad, only after Global Affairs. Other departments also have employees abroad, but we clearly have a very large footprint of staff.

We provide funding to Global Affairs as the visa offices open. For example, in this case we opened visa offices in Guangzhou, China, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania—we expanded the office in Dar es Salaam—and also in Shanghai, China. It's for property growth, for the accommodation space required for office space for additional staff and for housing, and also for much of the work of workload distribution that we're doing and modernization and for the effort towards electronic travel authorization.

The funding goes both ways as well, because we will actually receive funds back. This is a net amount, because Global Affairs will also make an adjustment of their requirements, for example, where we close offices. We closed, for example, our office in Santo Domingo. The services are being provided out of Mexico City, for example, given that the number of applications in Santo Domingo was very small. As an efficiency measure, we also closed our office in Santiago, Chile.

There is, as I say, a sort of back and forth. The terms are all very clearly spelled out in a memorandum of understanding. Every year we make these kinds of adjustments to accommodate our staff overseas.