Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 1st, 2022

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Okay.

Even with the Yaoundé office, it will still be impossible to process enough visa applications.

[Yves-Gérard Méhou-Loko]

As I was mentioning a little earlier, we're not certain that the Yaoundé office provides this service at the moment. But even if it did, it wouldn't be enough. We will have to increase processing capacity substantially.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

For francophone African students, did you find the refusal rate abnormally high?

[Yves-Gérard Méhou-Loko]

There appears to have been some progress, but the refusal rate is 34%, which is very high unfortunately. So yes, that's worrisome for us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting but the time is up.

We will now end this panel with Ms. Kwan.

Ms. Kwan, you will have two and a half minutes for your round of questioning.

Please begin.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to go to Mr. Dupuis, if I may, on that previous question, because the status of a lot of francophones who are here may be running out or they are undocumented. What do you think the government should do? Should they be regularizing those individuals?

[Alain Dupuis]

I think so.

During the COVID‑19 pandemic, a temporary program was introduced, called the the Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident Pathway. Thousands of applications were submitted under this program. The problem was that not enough of the applications could be processed for it to have an impact during the pandemic. We'll be watching for its impact this year and next year.

We feel that the idea of a permanent pathway for francophone temporary residents to become permanent residents should be explored, in addition to much faster pathways for students who receive Canadian credentials.

But there's a problem here. Students are asked to come and study here, but they have to prove that they will return to their country. For Canada's francophonie, this way of proceeding runs completely counter to the federal government's policy on francophone immigration.

We are therefore in favour of these rapid pathways to permanent residency.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you for that.

The other piece is that, with other studies, IRCC has admitted there's discrimination and racism within IRCC. We are seeing deplorable numbers for francophone African students, for example.

Specifically related to systemic issues, what do you think the government should do to ensure that we meet the targets?

[Yves-Gérard Méhou-Loko]

Your question is extremely important, Ms. Kwan.

The problem of discrimination and racism is unfortunately real. It has to be dealt with as quickly as possible to ensure that applications are received and that processing is entirely impartial, fair and equitable, with a view to promoting immigration.

It's the first signal sent to a visa applicant. If at the outset the processing of an application is biased, one can only then imagine how things will go with respect to becoming integrated into and included in Canadian society.

That's why it will be important to have totally decompartmentalized procedures to promote much more equitable mechanisms. At the moment, the government needs to do more to make these procedures more equitable, particularly at IRCC.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

With that, this panel has come to an end.

On behalf of the members of this committee, I want to thank all the witnesses for appearing before the committee.

We will suspend the meeting for a few minutes so we can get the witnesses for the second panel set up.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I call the meeting to order. Welcome back to the meeting.

For our second panel, we are joined by Saint-Phard Désir, executive director of the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership. We are also joined by Laura Schemitsch, immigration and refugee lawyer, representing Race and Company LLP. Our third witness for today is Beth Potter, president and chief executive officer, from the Tourism Industry Association of Canada.

All the witnesses will have five minutes for their opening remarks.

We will start with Mr. Désir, representing Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership.

The floor is yours. You can please begin, and you will have five minutes. Thank you.

[Saint-Phard Désir, Executive Director, Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership]

Good afternoon, members.

My name is Saint-Phard Désir. I'm the executive director of the Economic and Social Council of Ottawa-Carleton, ESCOC, and a member of the Ottawa Local immigration Partnership, OLIP.

I'd like to point out that I'm not necessarily speaking on behalf of of OLIP. I would also like to have submitted a document to the committee, but I unfortunately didn't have enough time to write it.

I'm here to report to you that many of our clients have told us about how long it was taking for their applications to be processed. In addition, eastern Ontario employers, in Hawkesbury and Vankleek Hill, told us they were unable to fill all the positions they had available because of processing delays.

We therefore think that it would be a good idea two reduce the time it takes to process applications. The COVID‑19 pandemic caused some delays in file processing. The pandemic is now behind us, and we hope that a few more people will be hired to process things. Quite a few employees also appear to have left their jobs during the pandemic and have not returned.

We work with francophone minority communities, and believe that it's extremely important for them to attract immigrants who can speak French, in order to increase the number of francophones in these regions. It would be very helpful to us if application processing times could be reduced as soon as possible, all the more so as a growing number of people are submitting applications to come to Canada.

Another important factor is the students themselves, in particular francophone students from sub-Saharan Africa, who are also having trouble getting their applications processed within a reasonable period. Our hope is that the Department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada receives all the support it needs to hire more people to properly process francophone applications.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed to Ms. Laura Schemitsch, immigration and refugee lawyer, representing Race and Company LLP.

Ms. Schemitsch, you will have five minutes for your opening remarks. You can please begin.

[Laura Schemitsch, Immigration and Refugee Lawyer, Race and Company LLP]

Thank you to the committee for inviting me to speak today on these important issues, namely immigration application backlogs and processing times in Canada. My name is Laura Schemitsch and I'm an immigration and refugee lawyer with Race and Company LLP. In my practice, I primarily serve clients throughout the sea-to-sky corridor in British Columbia and outside of Canada.

I was called to the bar in 2020, so the majority of my experience as a practising lawyer has involved navigating the immigration backlog, impacted in large part by the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is in Canada's best interests for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to continue to tackle the backlog and to achieve greater transparency and functioning in order to reunite families, bring skilled immigrants and workers to fill growing job vacancies due to our aging population, promote economic recovery and revive Canada's immigration system and reputation in accordance with the legislated objectives of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

At the beginning of 2022, the backlog was estimated at approximately 1.8 million applications, including those for citizenship, permanent residence and temporary residence. As the backlog grew, I recognized growing frustration, anxiety and even despair in current clients and prospective clients regarding increased and frequently unknown processing times. While Canada and the world faced unprecedented uncertainty throughout the early stages of the pandemic, essentially grinding Canada's immigration system to a halt, by 2022 patience from applicants and representatives regarding solutions to the growing backlog was wearing thin.

It was clear to me that the integrity of Canada's immigration system was being jeopardized by the backlog, particularly in light of a lack of transparency and the inability to obtain application status updates through web form requests. Along with other advocates, I aimed to draw more attention to the issue and joined in calls for greater transparency on the backlog and efforts to reduce it. In order to maintain Canada's international reputation as a top choice for foreign nationals who want to come to this country temporarily and/or permanently, it is critical that the government respond with demonstrated actions.

On June 25, 2022, Prime Minister Trudeau announced the creation of a ministerial task force to help reduce application backlogs and improve customer service. One welcome result of this task force is that IRCC started to publish monthly data to help inform Canadians and prospective Canadians on the status of the backlog and forecast what the backlog is expected to look like in the coming months.

Another positive development this year was the resumption of express entry draws in July. Express entry all-program draws were paused for 18 months from December 2020 until July 2022 due to the backlog. Express entry is crucial to Canada's immigration system as one of the main pathways that skilled immigrants use to immigrate to Canada, and its proper functioning is critical to upholding Canada's international reputation as an attractive destination for skilled immigrants and their families.

According to the most recent data released by IRCC on September 30, 2022, there are currently 2.6 million applications in IRCC's application inventories. Of these applications, 1.11 million fall within service standards, and 1.49 million applications are in backlog or exceeding service standards. The majority of the applications in backlog are for temporary residence, followed by those for permanent residence and citizenship.

Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Sean Fraser has indicated that Canada will strengthen its immigration system, reduce application backlogs and improve client experience by modernizing the system. IRCC announced that, starting on September 23, 2022, the department would be transitioning to 100% digital applications for most permanent residency programs.

While advocates are open to IRCC's modernization efforts and want to work with IRCC to improve the current status quo through fair and efficient procedures, confidence in modernization efforts is jeopardized by frequent portal glitches and technical issues, which are widely reported by immigration lawyers. IRCC's website indicates that technical issues can be addressed by submitting a web form. However, since the pandemic, web form requests typically result in extremely delayed generic responses.

In order to truly modernize the system and restore confidence in the department, IRCC could look into implementing live technical support, particularly in this period of transition. This could benefit IRCC because the department could more quickly and easily become aware of glitches and work to fix them, which is important in the long term, while also ensuring that applicants and their representatives can submit important applications efficiently in the short term.

It is clear from the numbers that backlog reduction efforts must continue in order for Canada to maximize the social, cultural and economic benefits of immigration, a stated objective of the IRPA.

I remain optimistic that the government is prioritizing this objective through its efforts to reduce the backlog in consultation with advocates who use these systems daily in order to serve current and future temporary and permanent residents and citizens of Canada.

Thank you again for inviting me to speak today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed to Ms. Beth Potter, president and chief executive officer, from the Tourism Industry Association of Canada.

Ms. Potter, the floor is yours. You can begin, please.

[Beth Potter, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tourism Industry Association of Canada]

Madam Chair and members of the committee, I'd like to thank you for having invited me today.

My name is Beth Potter, and I'm the president and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada.

I acknowledge that we are gathered here today on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin nation.

TIAC is the national advocate for tourism in Canada. On behalf of thousands of tourism businesses, we promote policies, programs and other initiatives that foster the sector's growth.

Tourism matters. It enables socio-economic development, job creation and poverty reduction. This drives prosperity and provides unique opportunities to women, minorities and young people. The benefits spread far beyond direct GDP impact and employment. The indirect gains extend through the entire travel ecosystem and supply chains to other sectors.

Tourism businesses incurred significant debt to get through the pandemic. Despite some improvement over the summer period, they continue to struggle financially. They face barriers to attracting investment. Disruptions in supply chains, inflation at a 40-year high and rising interest rates are now also impacting their businesses.

The shortage of labour in virtually all tourism sectors has long been identified as a substantial barrier to industry growth. While the dearth in supply of workers predates the pandemic, COVID vastly compounded the problem. Today our businesses have considerably bigger challenges attracting and retaining the necessary workforce to fully run their operations.

In our recent submission to Minister Boissonnault for a new federal tourism growth strategy, we outlined four key priority pillars to help tourism recover from COVID and achieve its full potential.

Among those pillars was the need to develop a comprehensive strategy specifically to attract and retain a sustainable tourism workforce. We identified labour as a key priority because the recovery and growth of tourism largely hinges on addressing the significant labour shortages that exist. The most recent estimates suggest that the sector has some 230,000 vacant positions. To meet growth forecasts as travel resumes, we will need to employ more than 900,000 more people in the next eight years.

Among our recommendations was the need to launch targeted recruitment campaigns and a specific indigenous workforce strategy. We also recommended increasing the number of high school programs, modernizing post-secondary programs and launching comprehensive national tourism job-ready programs, as well as investing in skills development.

As measures that we believe could be actioned in the short term, we recommended prioritizing tourism and creating efficiencies with the temporary foreign worker program, adjusting policies within existing federal and provincial immigration streams to increase the number of workers assigned to tourism and increasing opportunities for international students. Longer term, we recommended working towards creating a dedicated tourism and hospitality immigration stream with a pathway to permanent residency, as well as for governments to invest in affordable housing in close proximity to major destinations.

With that background, I now turn my focus specifically to the topic of the committee's study: application backlogs and processing times for all immigration streams at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. To do this, I share the following: While I understand the fundamentals on how and why such a massive backlog could accumulate and why there are now significant processing delays, I cannot help but voice my disappointment.

IRCC provides regular updates on its website. A couple of days ago, it noted 2.6 million as the total number of applications in all of its inventories. Of those, 1.1 million were considered within service standards, so 1.5 million applications are considered in backlog. I am particularly concerned about the impact this situation is having on our tourism sector and on our drive to build forward from the pandemic.

As the sector that was the first hit and the hardest hit, we fought hard just to survive through COVID. As I have already said, we continue to struggle financially. Just when things seem to have been improving over the summer and have begun normalizing somewhat after more than two years of hardship, it is deeply discouraging, on top of it all, to now have to contend with these issues related to immigration and processing delays.

I have heard from many of our members, businesses across the country, about their difficulty getting their temporary foreign worker applications approved and permits issued. I have also heard of many cases in which foreign business travellers could not get their visas in time to attend important business events here in Canada.

This all hinders the tourism sector's ability to reach its full potential and compounds the reputational damage our sector has already suffered because of lockdowns, restrictions or other border vaccine and masking requirements over the last 30 months.

It is critically important to our sector that we not only deal with these backlogs quickly—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Potter. Your time is up. You will get an opportunity once we move to our question round.

We will begin our first round with Mr. Maguire.

Mr. Maguire, you will have six minutes for your round of questioning. You can begin.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today, as well.

To start off, I would like to table the following motion with the committee:

That the committee write to the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer to request a costing update to the November 2018 report on irregular migration across Canada’s southern border.

My office will send the text in both official languages to the clerk, so it can be distributed to the committee. Thank you.

As I said, I want to thank the witnesses for being here.

I want to ask you, Ms. Potter.... I have had a number of people in the tourism industry, of course, call me and a number of my colleagues in all parties. The Liberals have finally lifted the remaining border restrictions and dropped the ArriveCAN app. The international tourists are starting to come back to Canada.

Have any of your stakeholders raised concerns about the timeliness of approval for travel visas, for those countries with travel visa requirements ? You referred to it. Could you expand on that?

[Beth Potter]

Absolutely. Thank you for the question.

Through the chair, I will say that the processing time and backlog on travel visas have had an impact. We have heard from travellers trying to attend business events and meetings, but it has also been a bit of a challenge for some of the tour operators to get international groups into Canada.

This is money we're leaving on the table, as far as the tourism industry is concerned. It just adds to the hardship of businesses within the industry.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you.

You used the term “disappointment” over the 1.5 million outside of the regular 1.1 million that are still okay in the backlog.

Across the whole tourism sector—whether it's hotels, hunting and fishing lodges, airlines, shops, restaurants or airports, particularly—is there one industry or sector that you think is having a greater labour shortage than others?

[Beth Potter]

Thank you again for the question.

Certainly, we are seeing that the hotel sector and the hospitality sector, so restaurants, are seeing the largest number of shortages across the way.

Regarding the hotel sector, one anecdote you may have heard yourself, within your own riding, is that hotels are full. They are not full. They are operating at a reduced capacity, because they don't have the staff to service the clients. You will see, across the country, in almost every riding, that restaurants are not operating on full hours. They are closed certain days. They are only operating dinner service and not operating lunch service. This is compounding the financial rebuild of the industry.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you.

Could you expand on your interactions with the duty-free shops along our border?

[Beth Potter]

The duty-free stores certainly saw a huge impact, because the border was closed for almost two years, and people going across.... They are a one-way business. If you're leaving Canada, you can go and shop there. They certainly did see a huge impact. It was a big hit for a lot of businesses in border towns, from one end of the country to the other.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I'm wondering what specific immigration streams your stakeholders use.

Are there specific recommendations you have received from them, regarding how IRCC could provide more predictability for employers and their workers? Could you expand on the number of streams you have and on any suggestions they might have?

[Beth Potter]

Absolutely, and thank you for that.

There are three areas we would like to focus on.

One is the temporary foreign worker program. We could expand the tourism NOC codes eligible for that and remove the LMIA requirements, application fee and having to wait on the 30-day job posting requirement, especially in this particular environment. Those would be specific recommendations we would make to that.

Within the provincial nominee program, we would like to see increased targets that would allow key regions in the sectors to work with the provinces to expand the in-demand skills stream to their provincial nominee program.

On express entry, agri-food was about to launch as a pilot program. We would like to see a similar pilot program launched for the tourism industry that would focus on bringing individuals into those positions.