Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 17th, 2017

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Oliphant (Don Valley West, Lib.)), Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm going to call this meeting to order.

It feels like a long time since we've seen each other. This is meeting 76 of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, as we continue our study on immigration to Atlantic Canada, referred to us through motion 39 on November 2.

We thank our witnesses for joining us.

We have one group coming to us via video conference from Moncton, New Brunswick. Thank you for joining us.

We also have Shuo Huang, or Sherry Huang, who is joining us by telephone.

Is Ms. Huang there?

[Shuo, Sherry) Huang (Chief Executive Officer, Sunrise Group of Companies]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Great. Welcome.

I will remind the committee members that sometimes we forget when someone's on the telephone, so we should just remember in our questioning to also be sure to direct any questions to Ms. Huang.

Professor Akbari is here in person.

I think we'll start with Day and Ross Transportation company and Tisdale Trucking.

I'm not sure who would like to speak first, but you have seven minutes to share among you. We're looking forward to hearing from you.

[Vaughn Hatcher, National Manager, Owner Operator Recruiting, Day & Ross Freight, Day & Ross Transportation Group]

My name is Vaughn Hatcher. I'm the national recruiting manager for Day and Ross Transport. With me is Crystal DeLong, who is our recruiter for Atlantic Canada, and Dave Tisdale, who is a broker with Day and Ross Transportation as the owner of Dave Tisdale Trucking.

I would just like to do a quick introduction of Day and Ross. We're based in Hartland, New Brunswick, and we have been in business for 65 years. We have grown from one truck to a fleet of over 3,800 trucks. Part of the success of Day and Ross has been in the hiring of foreign workers or foreign drivers. Our industry is one of the largest employers in Atlantic Canada. We are in a growth industry that has good-paying jobs for drivers. We need to fill some positions with foreign workers. We've been one of the best-managed companies for, I believe, eight years straight running.

As I said, we're growing. We have at least an extra 2,000 loads a year that we will be needing to haul to the U.S. out of Atlantic Canada. We have some fantastic foreign workers who are with us right now. We are taking part in the Atlantic immigration pilot project through brokers like Dave, who has, I believe, the first driver to be hired through this program. Dave will be able to speak to the challenges he's faced with hiring foreign workers.

From a general standpoint, from talking to colleagues and from my experiences with this, our biggest challenges are the uncertainty of cost for our brokers to hire drivers and the amount of time it takes for a driver to go through the process to be accepted for the Atlantic immigration pilot project.

Another challenge we have is that I have some brokers who are based in Ontario who would like to place some jobs in New Brunswick, but they are being excluded from this pilot project because they haven't been in business in New Brunswick for two years. I would hope that you could change your mind on that or revisit it if a job is going to be placed in the Atlantic provinces and not moved after that point.

I'll now open the floor to either Dave or Crystal. Crystal has been my go-to person in Atlantic Canada, helping our brokers process the applications for the pilot project. She may be able to speak to some of the challenges she's had.

[Dave Tisdale, Owner, Tisdale Trucking Ltd.]

I'm Dave Tisdale. You will have to excuse my voice; I'm suffering with bronchitis.

I've been in business since 1984. I've hired foreign workers since 2006. I was in the program with LMIAs until that process started being more about money than it was about work in the Maritimes. My wife and I opted out. We're just a small business. We have six trucks, and we've been leased to Day and Ross since 1984.

Then this new pilot project was introduced, and it gave us a little lease on life again. We were deciding to reduce our fleet and go back to maybe two trucks, but we started on this pilot project. I do have one of the first people who went through the pilot project. I think I may still have the only person who went through. He was from here. Since I've done that, I've gotten another application for a guy in Wales. Crystal and I have been working together on him to give us some kind of actual cost, what it's going to be for us.

Thank you.

[Vaughn Hatcher]

Crystal, do you have anything to add?

[Crystal DeLong, Owner Operator Recruiter, Day & Ross Transportation Group]

The only thing I would add is about the confusion around the process itself. There seemed to be a lot of confusion around it when it first came out, but the multicultural association here in Woodstock, New Brunswick, has been a great asset to us.

That's all I want to add right now.

[Vaughn Hatcher]

Furthermore, when it comes to settlement agencies, there are five settlement agencies that were indicated that we have to use—out of Halifax, and I believe Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, or whatever. We have a local settlement agency here that works with people who are already in Canada. If we could use them, it would be so much easier than using one of the five approved settlement agencies. The one here is a multicultural association in New Brunswick. They know the area and the challenges people will have coming here, and it's good to work with that.

Another thing I'd like to bring up that I forgot to talk about is getting work permits. If there is a driver who is already in Canada who we'd like to hire, if they could get their work permit out of port of entry it would be so much faster than going through Alberta.

I guess that would be our opening statement. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Very good. That's very helpful for the committee, by the way, because you're able to bring a very practical experience to us. We have a lot of theoretical witnesses, and this is going to be very helpful. I think the questions and answers could be a very important part of our meeting tonight.

Ms. Huang, let's go to you next, for seven minutes.

[Shuo (Sherry) Huang]

My name is Sherry Huang. I am the CEO of a company called Sunrise Group.

We first established our company in Atlantic Canada, actually in Prince Edward Island. My husband and I moved to Prince Edward Island probably about 13 years ago, when there were hardly any immigrants on the island. We started our business 10 years ago. Now we have grown into seven companies and we are a group of companies. We have hired over 50 staff amongst all our companies.

We are involved in very diverse businesses. We have an educational institution, which we acquired from a local. The language school has been running for over 23 years. We train immigrants, and we also educate international students from all over the world. We have different academic and language programs. We also do teacher training there. It is a well-established company that we purchased from a local islander.

We are also in the business of consulting, helping build bridges between Canadian and Chinese businesses.

At the same time, we also look for very good investment opportunities, which we recognized in Cows ice cream. It's the best ice cream on the island. They have quite a few shops across Canada. We negotiated with the company, and we've become their exclusive franchisee to bring that brand name to China. Now we have quite a few stores running in China for this Canadian brand.

We also brought Anne of Green Gables to China. We published the Chinese version of the book. It was actually named one of the 50 most influential books in China.

We are also involved in investment in IT businesses.

What I am trying to demonstrate here is that we are a perfect example of what immigrants can bring to the Atlantic region. It's not only the economic development; there is culture, and there is job creation. Also, there are bridges we can build between Canada and the country the immigrant comes from. Those are all great benefits of immigrants moving to Atlantic Canada.

Immigrants are also employers. Among our seven companies we are involved in a lot of international business. We do require some staff with a multinational background. We ourselves experienced a lot of the recruiting challenges, trying to bring capable people from another country to come and work for our school or our company.

When the Atlantic pilot project first came out, I was invited to a round table discussion with the minister and everybody involved. It was quite an exciting opportunity. But now we just feel—I think I agree with what the other company just said—that the whole process is confusing in terms of where to go, the time of the process, and then the settlement agency. There's no clear path for where to start it, how to get a person in, and the evaluation criteria for someone to be a qualified candidate.

I understand that there is a lot of attention on this, and we appreciate it. There's such an opportunity to bring everybody together now to actually chat about it. The statement I was trying to make is that this will be a very great program to help Atlantic Canada and to help the businesses here. We are actually trying to fill some of the positions. We have been living in Atlantic Canada for over 10 years, and we love the area. We love the people here, but there are challenges here compared to the big cities. We do succeed in our challenges. This program could definitely help us if things are being sorted out.

This is my statement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

Professor Akbari, thank you for joining us from Halifax.

[Dr. Ather Akbari, Professor, Atlantic Research Group on Economics of Immigration, Aging and Diversity, Saint Mary's University, As an Individual]

Thank you for inviting me here.

I have prepared my presentation according to the document the committee sent to me. I am associated with the economics department at Saint Mary's University in Halifax and also with the Atlantic Research Group on Economics of Immigration, Aging and Diversity.

Fertility decline is a phenomenon that is known to all. It's common to all Canadian regions. It has led to slowing down population growth as well as aging in the population. However, Atlantic Canada has been affected by it more than other regions because of the added phenomenon of out-migration in the youth population.

Between 2007 and 2017, in the Canadian population of those aged 65 and above, their percentage rose from 13% to about 17%. In Atlantic Canada, their percentage rose from about 15% to 20%. So one in every five Atlantic Canadians is over 65. Of course, as you can see, I'm here as an example of that, with my grey hair. The population growth between 2011 and 2016 was 5% in Canada, while in Atlantic Canada it was only 1%.

There are some consequences of population decline and aging. I have mentioned those in the notes I have circulated. First of all, there is the economic-growth effect of population aging. An aging population can result in fewer participants in the labour force, thereby causing shortages of different types of labour demanded by employers in the region. We see examples of that in physician shortages and shortages at all skill levels—bricklayers, truck drivers, and other jobs. Population decline can also result in shrinking markets for goods and services, which in turn creates an adverse impact on incentives for business investment. This also has an impact on economic growth.

Population decline can lead to the creation of policies for restructuring the economy to provide the goods and services demanded by a growing elderly population, that is true. But such restructuring cannot have a long-lasting effect if the death rate continues to either exceed or remain close to the birth rate in the region.

An aging population can also create increased pressure on younger labour force participants to provide social programs for the elderly, such as higher contributions to the Canadian Pension Plan and higher taxes. Population decline also means a corresponding decline of some federal funds determined by population size, such as social and health care transfers.

Rural Atlantic Canada has been affected the most by the regional population decline, and this is of concern because most natural-resource-based industries in the region are located in rural areas. When population declines, the cost of public and private services does not adjust immediately, and there is a point below which base costs cannot go regardless of population size. As a result, the economic feasibility of providing such services becomes questionable. There are losses for hospitals as well as mail and banking services, and the consolidation of schools in rural Atlantic Canada has become increasingly common. Closure of public and private services further accelerates rural population decline as people move closer to metropolitan areas in search of those services.

Finally, regional population decline can also result in the weakening of political representation in the Canadian House of Commons. While provinces are seeing an increase in the number of seats in House of Commons because of an increase in their population size, other provinces seeing population growth decline are not changing the number of their representatives in the House of Commons, which means that the proportional representation in the House of Commons goes down.

I have some stats on Nova Scotia and what it will look like in 2026. In 2026 its population will be down 4.6% from 2004. The population of seniors will be up by 71%. Primary and secondary students will be down 31%, and the university-aged population will be down 30%. Because of this population decline, immigration is seen as one solution. Because of low child-bearing levels, without immigration a population decline is expected. Several economic and non-economic factors play their a role in immigrant retention. Does immigration cause economic growth, or is it the reverse? That's also something that is debatable.

In my presentation I have presented a chart that shows immigrant arrival rates in Canada and the provinces between 2000 and 2016. It shows, for example, that in the year 2000 Canada received more than eight persons per 1,000 residents. In 2016 Canada received about 7.5.

In all provinces, we know that on a per capita basis, there was a decline, except in the province of Alberta, and.... Excuse me, there was an increase, except in some provinces, in the smaller provinces, on a percentage basis, more immigrants came in because of the deliberate attempts in these provinces to attract more immigrants.

While smaller provinces are receiving more immigrants than before, immigrant retention remains an issue in Atlantic Canada. Regional retention is still the lowest in the country, but it has increased since the early 2000s, from about 40% to about 67%. We can attribute this increase to deliberate attempts at community levels and at provincial and municipal government levels. Stats also suggest that recent arrivals are more likely to stay.

Finally, I have a last section showing you how immigrants are doing in Atlantic Canada. I have seen this at all skills levels. It turns out that, overall, in Canada 20.4% of the labour force was comprised of immigrants in 2006. In 2016 this has increased to close to 25%. In Atlantic Canada, the percentage rose from 3.4% to about 5% between 2006 and 2016.

The hourly wage rate for immigrants in Canada, in 2006, was 1% below those Canadian-born; in 2016 it was 5% below those Canadian-born. In Atlantic Canada, immigrants tend to earn more than those Canadian-born. In 2006 they earned 21% more, but this gap shrank in 2016 to 5.6%. Still, they earn more than those Canadian-born.

In the case of recent immigrants, we find that the differential is larger. There are some reasons that can be given for the shrinking of the wage gap between those Canadian-born and immigrants. There was the slowing down of the economy over the period, when many large capital projects such as the Muskrat Falls project and oil projects in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia were nearing completion. The completion of those projects, and also in some governments the cutbacks in fiscal spending, caused some economic slowdown. Past evidence has suggested that during periods of downturn, immigrants are affected more than the Canadian-born.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I will need you to come to a conclusion.

[Dr. Ather Akbari]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

We'll start with Mr. Tabbara for a seven-minute round.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses.

My first question is for Day and Ross Transportation. Perhaps you can go through the steps of the hiring process with regard to new immigrants. Are you having any barriers? I'm basically getting to the fact that maybe some of the new immigrants that have come, maybe the Syrian immigrants, have had previous trucking experience overseas. How do they transition into that in Canada? Is it an easy process? Have you seen some success stories that we can work on to increase employment?

[Vaughn Hatcher]

We haven't been able to hire any Syrian refugee employees. Most of our foreign worker hiring has been coming from Europe or India. We haven't had the opportunity to hire any Syrian refugees. If one came to us, we would certainly have a look at trying to hire. One of the issues could be a language barrier. Most of the drivers we're hiring are for long-haul trucking going to the U.S., so that could be an issue with Syrian drivers.

The challenge we face in hiring some people is the language component of the Atlantic immigration pilot project, where someone would have to score a four to get in the program and a five to be able to apply for permanent residency. That is a bit of a challenge there.

Crystal, what have you seen as challenges that you've faced?

[Crystal DeLong]

The main thing with specifically the Syrian refugees has been the English language barrier. Usually they have to come with a translator to any career fairs or anything that I've been a part of. Obviously, if they're going across the border, we do need them to speak and understand English. That would be the number one thing, for me.

[Dave Tisdale]

With the pilot project they need to have a certain amount of English. They have to pass an English test to enter that pilot program.

There are different dynamics with different trucking companies. I'm contracted to Day and Ross. They don't really hire the drivers. I hire that driver. What I think you guys need to look at is that, okay, these guys don't have any trucks. They have a lot of trucks, but they're owner-operators. I have six trucks hired on for these guys. So I need a driver today. I go to the pilot project. I do all the steps. I have Crystal helping me doing that right now. But I don't need 10 drivers. I have 25 or 30 applications on my computer today of people wanting to come here. I only need one guy.

In my view, the Day and Ross company needs to be able to take those applications, get them cleared, get them through this pilot project, and say, “Okay, Mr. Tisdale, we have a driver if you need one.” A company that has their own 500 trucks can do that, but these guys can't. It puts them at a disadvantage and it puts me at a disadvantage, I think.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Akbari, you mentioned the stat for Nova Scotia in 2026. I don't know if you can pull that slide back up and just provide those stats. You said that there have been decreases in population, etc. What I wanted to get to is this. I think there are roughly 10 post-secondary institutions in Nova Scotia, universities and community colleges, etc. How do we harness a lot of the students who are there, keep them in Nova Scotia, and ensure that there are jobs available for them when they finish? You would think that in a province like that, with a high number of institutions, you would see an exponential growth of new graduates staying within the region. But what we've heard in the committee is that they're migrating out to the bigger cities within Canada.

[Dr. Ather Akbari]

Yes, retaining international students, as well as immigrants, has been a challenge for the region. Governments have introduced different programs to retain international students. The Nova Scotia government has a graduate stream in the PNP program. The government itself has adopted different initiatives to employ graduated students. But it does remain a challenge. Many graduate students are also encouraged to open their own business, and there is support for that, so they can become self-employed. Universities are also facilitating the employment of international students through their graduate recruitment offices. Those initiatives are having their results, but yes, it does remain a challenge for the region.

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

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

You have 13 seconds.

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

It's okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Go ahead, Mr. Maguire.