Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 15th, 2018

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

We have other—

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

—to transfer best practices

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

That sounds like a lot of buzz words. We have a lot of—

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

No, it's not. It's real.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

We have a lot of other categories for people to enter the country, including a humanitarian stream, so how many people—

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

No, I'm talking about skills.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Skills should be applied to jobs in an economic stream, so how many people, through the express entry stream, do you expect to find a job when they enter Canada, given that you have lowered the points from 600 to 50?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

The issue you're asking me about is impossible to answer, because people are not—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

It should be very possible to answer, I would argue.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

No, it's not. I'm trying to answer the question. If you don't want me to answer the question, you can continue speaking, but I can answer the question if you want me to.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

The question I asked, though, was, how many people do you expect to have a job when they enter Canada through the express entry program, now that you have reduced the points?

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Many of them.

The problem is that the express entry system is based on a number of factors. It's not just the job offer. If that were the case, then we would call it the job offer program.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

The express entry system, though, arguably and ostensibly, is under the economic stream to bring people to address, as you so illustriously quoted, “labour shortages linked to our aging population”, so just to be clear—

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

It's labour and skills shortages. I didn't just talk about labour.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

—you can't tell us how many people you expect to have a job when they enter Canada through the express entry program after you've reduced the points from 600 to 50.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Once again, the reason we have reduced the points for the job offer was that we felt the job offer was disproportionately being rewarded over the other valuable things we want from the prospective—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I would argue that a job offer is fairly important.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

If I can finish, I'll explain.

We want prospective applicants to not just have a job offer but to also have the desirable educational background—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

But not a job.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

No, that's not the case. It's not exclusive. The two are not mutually exclusive, because that's how you are—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

But reducing it from 600 to 50 is fairly exclusive, one would argue.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

No. What it means is that we are taking into account the other things that people bring to the table, not just a job offer.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Like a job....

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Yes, like a job, but also like a—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

How do we address the labour shortage, as you've outlined, if we aren't bringing people in to get a job?