Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 2nd, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed to Mr. Allison for five minutes of questioning.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I may be splitting some of my time with Mr. Hallan.

Officials, thank you very much for being here and for answering our questions.

I want to go back to, Ms. Tapley, what Mr. Seeback was talking about: retention. I'm always fascinated by that. I don't know if you're going to share some of that data, but could you share some of it now—maybe your high-level understandings and keys? Did some provinces do better? The more rural you were, the more remote you were, does that make a difference? Was the retention there less? Anything you could share with us on that would be great.

[Catrina Tapley]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, we're happy to share things.

Yes, some provinces do better than others. When we start with the provincial nominee program, I think—if I may make a suggestion, Madam Chair—that it would be worth looking at what Manitoba has done under its provincial nominee program. Manitoba was, more or less, first off the mark on the provincial nominee program. It created some strong anchor communities. When the Alberta and Saskatchewan economies were going absolutely full bore and attracting Canadians from all over the country, Manitoba managed to keep its base, to keep good retention around newcomers who had come into the province. I think it's worth a look at some of the successes that Manitoba had and why it had those successes. That's part of what we've tried to pick up in other places.

I'll come back to Atlantic Canada. With the four Atlantic provinces, when we set up the program, retention was a real issue. I believe that in Prince Edward Island—and I'm happy to be corrected—the retention rate had dropped to as low as 30%, so seven out of 10 newcomers who were coming to P.E.I. were leaving the province. Nova Scotia, as I recall, was about the best. New Brunswick and Newfoundland were somewhere in the middle. None of it was great.

How could you set that up? What were the tricks to try to be able to do that? I have spoken to a bit of it.

I would say that the western provinces have had good success with the provincial nominee program and being able to distribute provincial nominee programs. However, all provinces struggle a little with the question of how we persuade immigrants to go further than Edmonton and Calgary. What are the other things we would want to look at?

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thanks.

I'm just hoping that as we expand the program...and I realize that southwestern Ontario is not exactly northern and remote, but certainly there are rural communities. I have to put in a plug for southwestern Ontario—outside the GTA, of course.

I'll turn it over to my colleague Mr. Hallan.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you, Dean.

First and foremost, I want to wholeheartedly thank each and every one of the officials for not just being here but also putting in all that work throughout this entire time. It's not been easy. This is just another wholehearted show of gratitude to each and every one of you.

My first question is about procurement. I know that going forward we have these numbers with regard to people we want to bring in. When it comes to modernizing, do the officials have any word on how far we are with procurement on this new system?

[Catrina Tapley]

We are so excited to have been given a big plug in budget 2021 to finish the work on our digital platform modernization. It's in three phases. We had secure funding for the first two phases, which are really about technical debt reduction on our system, which tends to break a lot, and better disaster recovery on our system.

The third phase is the big phase. The third phase is the transformation phase. That is the $800-and-some million in budget 2021. We need to go about the process now of securing those dollars through a Treasury Board process, but we also need to do the good front-end work on this system we're building. We need to build a modern immigration system going forward. It's not just about replacing the IT from the global case management system. It's about actually building a system that can transform our business, that can do better client service, that can do better integrity and that really lets us be quicker, faster and more competitive with what we're doing.

That is not going to turn on a dime. I anticipate that you'll see the long funding profile on that if you look at budget 2021. It's a five-year funding profile. We'll go through it carefully in phases. What we don't want to do is fall into the trap that others have fallen into on new IT builds. Those good lessons learned from systems like Phoenix are really important to us. To invest in change in transformation, to invest in the dialogue with clients, to invest in good conversations around this, it feels like a really important step that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Could you please wrap up, Deputy Minister?

Okay. Thank you.

We'll now proceed to Mr. Regan for his five-minute round of questioning.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Ms. Tapley, you said at one point that you wanted to come back to Atlantic Canada.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Well, that's a very popular sentiment across the country, as you can imagine. A lot of people are wanting to do that. As cases drop across the country, I hope that more and more people will be able to do that—and that we'll be able to go elsewhere, such as visit my in-laws in the Wiarton, Ontario, area.

On an earlier question to the minister on the temporary resident to permanent resident pathway, which of course is important in rural areas, it kind of gave the impression that resources are being diverted from perhaps one part of the department to that. Is that what's happening in that regard?

[Catrina Tapley]

Madam Chair, let me first ask the member if my mother put him up to that question.

We always move resources around in the department. Frankly, we want to be able to do that better and more seamlessly. Moving away from a paper-based system to a proper modern digital system lets us do that, so that we don't have pockets of people who don't have a ton to do versus people who are really overworked, and we're able to move those applications seamlessly.

Your question was around the TR to PR. We have moved some areas where people work in the department. For instance, on temporary resident visas, where individuals are not allowed to travel now for discretionary purposes, we have moved some work from that to focus on other lines of business, to focus on those who can travel. We have not done it at the expense of important lines of business, such as spousal or parents and grandparents. Those things are very important to us, that we're able to reduce those processing times and have better service in those areas.

I'm not sure I answered completely, Madam Chair. Sorry.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I think that gives me what I'm looking for.

By the way, I did not hear from your mother, although I'm sure she's looking forward to your visiting as soon as possible.

I would like to clarify the issue of integration support services in the country. The agencies that provide these services are very important. I am very familiar with the services that are provided in Halifax.

How are the costs of these services determined?

I'm under the impression that things work differently in Quebec than in the other provinces. I am thinking here of transfers and so on.

[Catrina Tapley]

You are right. The model in Quebec differs from that in the rest of Canada.

There is a very specific funding model in the Canada–Quebec accord. It relates to overall rates of government spending minus debt servicing. Then there's a formula for numbers of non-francophone immigrants who arrive in Quebec. That's the formula for Quebec.

For the rest of Canada, it is an appropriation model, as it is with other departments. The funding available for settlement services outside of Quebec has increased in recent years to keep up with the increases in the number of level spaces we have.

Ms. Imrie, I wonder if you have the amount for settlement services outside of Quebec.

[Caitlin Imrie, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Settlement and Integration, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

As to the amount for settlement services outside of Quebec, in 2021-22 the government will be investing over $876 million to support the needs of newcomers and refugees. This represents an increase of 5% in comparison with 2020-21.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

What about inside Quebec?

[Catrina Tapley]

For Quebec, as I recall off the top of my head, for the last year it was a little over $600 million.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

You have 30 seconds left.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I want to ask about how the modernization of the system is going. I'd like you to have five minutes to talk about that, but maybe you could do so for a few seconds.

[Catrina Tapley]

Our focus right now is on phases one and two of good technical debt reduction so that our system will be able to do some of the things we've done over the last year. Frankly, I think we've done more over the past year with our system than we thought we could, which is great news. We need better ground-to-cloud technology so that we can do digital applications and digital intake. Our focus has really been on that. Then we will get on to the great part.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed with Madame Normandin for two and half minutes.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

I'll come back to Mr. Regan's question. I'm thinking of a local organization whose representatives will be appearing before the committee. This organization, called L'Ancre, recruits people in Montreal, takes them on guided tours of my riding, invites them to stay and shows them the benefits of doing so. That is the approach that this organization uses to keep people in the regions.

If I understand correctly, these organizations are funded solely under the Canada-Quebec Accord and according to the number of immigrants to be francized.

Did I understand correctly?

[Catrina Tapley]

For settlement services in Quebec, the member is absolutely right: settlement services in Quebec are the responsibility of the Government of Quebec, and they are funded under the agreement from the Canada–Quebec accord. The funding formula under the Canada–Quebec accord for these services is related to the overall rate of spending of the Government of Canada minus debt service charges. There is a second part to the formula. There is additional compensation for the Province of Quebec related to the number of non-francophone immigrants who arrive in the province.

It's those two things together that make up the funding under the accord. The floor in that funding re-establishes itself every year, and we go forward from there.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much.

Services are another aspect of regionalization. I'm thinking of Service Canada points of service, for example, which are often not very accessible in the regions. I know that this is not the responsibility of IRCC, but is this a criterion that your department considers?

[Catrina Tapley]

This may not be exactly what we are talking about, but I will make a few comments all the same.

Services available to newcomers, whether in Quebec or in the rest of Canada, are really important. It's important that we look at this as a whole in terms of what government services are available to newcomers. That's why it's so important that we work closely with our provinces and territories in terms of who is providing what services to whom. A better coordination between those services and the work we've done with PTs on that is really important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Madam Tapley.

We will now proceed to Ms. Kwan for two and a half minutes.