Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 29th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Welcome to meeting number 45 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Today we will be considering the supplementary estimates (B), 2022-23.

On behalf of the committee, I would like to welcome the Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, and also the officials.

From IRCC, we are joined by Christiane Fox, deputy minister; Marian Campbell Jarvis, senior assistant deputy minister, strategic and program policy; Hughes St-Pierre, chief financial officer and assistant deputy minister, finance, security and administration; Daniel Mills, senior assistant deputy minister, operations; and Catherine Scott, assistant deputy minister, settlement and integration.

Welcome, Minister. Thank you for joining us today. You will have five minutes for your opening remarks. Then we will go into rounds of questions.

You can please begin.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Minister of Immigration]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair and esteemed colleagues.

I'd like to start by acknowledging that we are meeting today on the traditional and unceded territories of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

I'm pleased to be joined here today by several officials from IRCC. Thank you for introducing them, Madam Chair.

I'm here to talk about the supplementary estimates (B), as well as the annual report and levels plan that was tabled on November 1. I'm happy to take questions on both of these matters today.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss our government's plan for immigration to support the economy and our humanitarian commitments.

Canada is a destination of choice for those seeking to start a new life. We are a democracy that values freedom and human rights, with good job opportunities, strong communities and a high quality of life.

We need more people to fill job vacancies, create new businesses, tackle our demographic challenges and contribute to our health care and social security systems.

That is why our government has committed $1.6 billion to support processing and settlement of newcomers and implementation of our 2022‑2025 immigration levels plan.

This ambitious plan will see immigration levels increase to 465,000 new permanent residents in 2023 and grow to 500,000 by 2025. Bringing more people to Canada helps fill job vacancies in the short term and fill skills gaps in the long term. At the same time, we help our communities grow.

We must, however, look at immigration not only through an economic lens but a humanitarian one as well. Our plan supports our commitment to do our part to support some of the world's most vulnerable people.

In this regard, I am proud to report that we have now resettled more than 25,300 Afghan refugees and are more than halfway towards our goal of resettling at least 40,000. Of course, we're going to continue our support for Ukrainians who have found safe haven in Canada from the unprovoked war of aggression launched by Russia and the Putin regime.

To continue our commitment in 2022 and beyond, in supplementary estimates (B) we are seeking significant investments to support these newcomers as they permanently or temporarily transition to Canada and access language programs, schools, work opportunities, housing and health care.

By putting resources towards strengthening our immigration system we are improving processing capacity and adding technologies to reduce backlogs created by the pandemic, and to ultimately deliver a more effective immigration system in the years ahead.

Through significant investments, we've been modernizing our systems and expanding our workforce so we can help to reduce wait times, address the backlogs and return to service standards. As of October 31, we have transitioned to 100% digital intake for most permanent resident lines of business. We've implemented online tools for clients to access updates on their applications and are expanding them further next year.

To process more files, reduce wait times and reduce the inventory of applications, IRCC will have added up to 1,250 additional staff by the end of this fall.

These measures are going to help IRCC address unique challenges, including the backlogs that stem from the pandemic and back-to-back humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine.

And it will help us come out on the other side of these challenges with a stronger, more responsive system to support immigration in the years ahead. We are already seeing some of the results of these enhancements.

While 2021 was a record year for immigration, 2022 is on track to surpass it for permanent residency admissions, with over 431,000 expected newcomers this year. This includes 105,000 sponsored family members, nearly 85,000 refugees, including protected persons, and those admitted on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

We get countless stories, Madam Chair, of how newcomers have come to Canada and made it a better place. Dr. Malhotra, born in India, has delivered over 10,000 babies in Saskatchewan—many in first nations communities—earning her the name “Angel of the North”. Constable Mubiru of the RCMP is helping to build bridges between law enforcement and the African Nova Scotian community in my home province.

Let's not forget the Serbian and Iranian immigrants in British Columbia who are working to feed the homeless.

Immigrants—and those of us descendent of immigrants—have helped to make Canada a better country.

Once again, thank you for inviting me here today. I am now happy to take your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Minister, for your opening remarks.

We will now start our rounds of questioning with Mr. Kmiec.

Mr. Kmiec, you will have six minutes. Please begin.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's too bad my voice is almost gone. Everyone is going to have to put up with it.

Minister, you were supposed to come here for an hour.

I wonder whether the minister would be willing to stay for the full hour, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Yes, we started at 3:50, and we will end this panel at 4:50.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Look, I'm not going to shortchange you on time.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Thank you very much for that.

You're asking for $1.2 billion in the supplementary estimates (B). The backlog is 2.4 million. It's almost the longest it's ever been. It's a little bit shorter than it was in August. It was 1.8 million right before the pandemic. This department has received more staff—almost 3,000 more staff since 2016—and almost doubled its budget since 2016, and the backlog has only increased.

Why should we give you another dollar? Why will it make any difference?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We're starting to see the investments we've received so far pay off in significant ways. If you're interested in a fulsome answer, I can explain to you where the backlogs came from.

Long story short, since the end of July, we've seen a reduction in excess of 300,000 cases. This is the result of investments that we've made to add resources through additional staff, relaxing administrative requirements that have reduced the capacity on our department so we can focus on processing more cases, and adopting more technology.

We're seeing an enormous increase in productivity. Despite the fact that there are significantly more applications coming in, we are still outpacing that intake with greater output and have seen a reduction in the number of cases in the inventory in excess of 300,000.

These investments that we're seeking today through the supplementary estimates process will further improve the ability to continue to chip away at those cases. We're on track for major success.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Minister, there was an Order Paper question response submitted to my colleague from Edmonton Manning that showed your department is meeting its service standards only 46% of the time. In fact, in the programs that are the most important to the economy, like federal skilled worker program and the skilled trades program, it's only 16% of the time. There's another program, the one that takes temporary residents, with temporary permits, and then transitions them to permanent residency. The numbers are equally abysmal.

You're telling me that everything is going really well, but your own department's numbers, updated as of September of this year, are not getting any better. You're in the very low double digits for processing applications on time.

Why should I believe anything you say?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

First of all, you didn't need to put in an Order Paper question to find that out. I asked our department to publish all of that information on the Internet so we can have the public continue to hold us to account. I think transparency is really important.

One thing I would point out about the way you presented the data is that you're looking backwards in terms of how many applications have been processed as of the approvals that have come in today. What's important is that this reflects a really challenging set of circumstances that continued to exist during the pandemic when peoples' travel and our processing capacity, frankly, had been severely diminished.

If you look at the anticipated projections for people who file an application today, things are dramatically improved. I'm not going to sit here and tell you they're perfect. We still need to improve, but by the end of the year, we expect study permits to be back on track. Near the very beginning of next year—

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

What does “back on track” for study permits mean?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It means a 60-day processing time for 80% of the cases.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Back in 2015, it took 31 days to do it.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

The service standard that we're trying to reach to enjoy the same standard we had prepandemic for study permits, work—

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I said 2015, not prepandemic, Minister.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Look, we expect to be back to the 2019 level of service standard that we enjoyed—and that we broadcast online—early in the new year for work permits, and by the end of this year for study permits. TRVs will spill into next year. For permanent residency, we're already back on track for family reunification and for express entry: 12 months for family reunification and six months for express entry. We're moving in the right direction.

The job is not done, and I'm not here to tell you that it is. We need to continue to make the investments necessary to improve this.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Chair, when I'm looking at the numbers, temporary resident visas took 13 days to process back in 2015. These are IRCC's numbers. Now it's up to 72 days as of April 2022. Study permits took 31 days, and now it's 88 days. Work permits took 42 days, and now it's 62.

I'm just wondering whether things are getting better and all of these investments are working. Since 2016, we've been pouring more and more resources into this department. With more people, more money, the backlog has increased.

It's not the pandemic, Minister. The backlog, prepandemic, was 1.8 million. It's over two million. Perhaps it is a little bit better in the last few months, but this is a lot of resources that we poured into this department. The numbers that I quoted to you go back all the way to 2015, and everything has gotten worse since then.

Why should the people who are waiting to come into the country to study here or to work here, or who are desperately trying to bring in that key worker to get their business started, believe you?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

One of the key differences you've left out in your analysis, Mr. Kmiec, is the fact that there are significantly more people coming to Canada.

Look at the massive increase in the number of people applying for study permits each year. We're now pushing in excess of half a million. We've seen a 30% increase this year over the record the year before, and that was a 30% increase over the record previously. When it comes to permanent residency, the year before we formed government there were about 240,000 new permanent residents admitted, and now we're coming up on 500,000 by 2025. So the number of cases in the system has certainly grown.

What we're trying to do is get back to a level where people can predictably know how long it's going to take for their applications to be processed. Very soon we're going to be there across our different lines of business as a result of the investments we have made and hopefully—if the committee adopts these supplementary estimates (B)—the investments we will continue to make.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. Kmiec.

We will now proceed to Ms. Kayabaga.

Ms. Kayabaga, you will have six minutes. You can please begin.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to start by thanking the minister for coming to this committee again. He has come on a number of occasions. I think he's the minister who shows up in committee the most. Hopefully, that's a good record to have.

Minister, you have spoken often about your commitment to bring more newcomers to Canada permanently and how that's a key factor in addressing our country's economy and our country's labour shortages. That said, what do you think can be done to leverage the skills of those who are already here on a temporary status and ensure that they, too, are able to contribute to our economy?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Ms. Kayabaga, for the question. This is extremely important.

My view is that Canada needs more people for economic and demographic reasons. A lot of people, I think, see the 500,000 we intend to welcome as permanent residents in a couple of years as a really big number. But it's really important, to the point of your question, to recognize that a lot of people are already here and they're going to transition to permanent residency.

There are a number of different elements to the strategy to continue to welcome as permanent residents people who are already here. Last year, searching my memory, about 157,000 new permanent residents were already international students. The kinds of things we do to facilitate their transition to permanent residency include the extension of post-graduate work permits and the automatic extension for those who are facing potentially soon-to-be-expired post-graduate work permits.

We want to continue to open up the NOC codes for different occupations. We recently had an announcement that will enable 16 new professions to quality under the express entry system. We have a new tool we're going to deploy this coming year that will allow us to more nimbly target people in key shortages, including in sectors that have workers who are here temporarily to prevent them from leaving and making it worse.

There are other opportunities I want to explore that were outlined in the response we tabled to our colleague Randeep Sarai's private member's motion, motion 44, which include examining whether we should be doing targeted draws for people who are already here and continuing to look at the point system to see how it's going to satisfy people who have Canadian work experience.

There's not one silver bullet, but recognizing that people are using our temporary pathways as a stepping stone to permanent residency, and planning accordingly, is something we must do. Next on the list is to make good on my mandate letter commitments the Prime Minister has given to me to create a pathway to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers and international students.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

I appreciate the answer, Minister. I think it would be important to continue to work together on this.

You have tabled ambitious level targets and have provided a very good rationale as to why Canada needs higher immigration volumes, both immediately and into the future. I would like to know what the plan is on delivering these targets and whether we know the impact of increasing the volume of applications as more people than ever want to come to Canada, as well as the ongoing impact of the pandemic and the other factors you have to factor in, such as backlogs for example, as you increase it.

We know we have an aggressive strategy to address the backlogs, but can you speak to what we're doing in this area?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

When it comes to processing capacity for permanent residents, this is not something that has me concerned about our ability to deliver. This is not something that is a major problem that we need to overcome. We're already back to the service standard for permanent residency applications for family reunification and, as of this July, we are back to the service standard for the economic class through the federal express entry system as well. This is because we put a plan in place through the immigration levels plan each year that is accompanied by the appropriate resources to make sure that we can continue to grow our processing capacity to match the number of people whom we expect to welcome as new permanent residents.

We still need to do more work to more quickly process people who are coming through temporary streams. You mentioned some of the pandemic-related challenges. To put this into perspective, there were a couple of things that happened that put extra pressure on the system. The first is that a lot of our offices shut down as a result of local public health measures all over the world. The second is that we made a decision, when the border was closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within Canadian communities, to welcome people as permanent residents who were already here as temporary residents, including through the TR to PR program that existed during the pandemic.

We kept accepting applications at that point in time for people who couldn't travel at that point in time, and this created a couple of years' worth of applications in the system at a time when our processing capacity had been reduced. Layer on top of that the response to Afghanistan and then Ukraine, and the fact that Canada became the world's top destination for people who wanted to move somewhere else in the world, and we have a lot happening right now in our department.

However, by putting the resources into the system to hire 1,250 new people this fall—we're at about 1,100 right now—and by relaxing some of the administrative requirements on the process, including relaxed medical examinations, moving to a digital space and leveraging new technology, including advanced analytics, we have significantly grown our processing capacity. I have all the faith in the world that we're going to be back to a serviceable and reliable processing standard time next year.

You have one minute left, so I will stop my answer there and focus on what you want to talk about.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Going off your last comment on Canada being a destination of choice for a lot of people, we have a proud tradition of refugee resettlement. We have been a leader on a global scale for that.

Can you talk about how we are working to fill in major labour gaps in our labour market, the fact that so many people globally are displaced and are in need of resettlement, and what we're doing in that area, please?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

In the 30 seconds or so that I have left, I will say that we are not just a leader; we are the leader when it comes to resettling refugees. We have resettled more people in Canada than any other country in the world in each of the last three years, and more than one-third of the global total in each of the last two years.

To your specific question, recognizing that people who come as refugees have a lot more than they are carrying in their suitcase is really important. We have developed the economic mobility pathways pilot, which welcomes people as economic migrants who happen to be displaced. For anybody who might be tuned in today, look this program up. It provides an extraordinary opportunity, including for employers in my own community back in rural Nova Scotia, to tap into talented people who are displaced and fill key gaps in the labour force. It's something that I want to scale up. It's something from which I want to share lessons with other countries around the world in our capacity as the chair this year of the global task force on refugee labour mobility with the United Nations.