Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 10th, 2022

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Bussières, go ahead, on the same question, please.

[Luc Bussières]

It's also hard for us to understand this type of discrepancy and to see this double standard. For us, this is unacceptable. I'll stop there.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Go ahead, Mr. Malette.

[Alain-Sébastien Malette]

I agree with my colleagues. I also think the SDS, which was a welcome addition for Morocco and Senegal, should definitely be looked at for other major African countries. We're talking about Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon. I definitely think this needs to be rethought.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Nigeria has been put on a fast-track stream, but there is a $30,000 requirement, not a $10,000 requirement, relative to other countries. Do you think that's right or should that be changed?

[Alain-Sébastien Malette]

I think that should be changed. Nigeria is going to be a very important country for a lot of universities. We're talking a lot about the French universities, but for the English universities this is going to be a critical market for the future.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

We will now proceed to Mr. Hallan.

Mr. Hallan, you will have five minutes for your round of questioning. Please proceed.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses.

Dual intent has been brought up a few times at this committee. I believe Mr. Malette brought this up, and I'd like to hear from each witness. The issue right now with dual intent is that most international students are being rejected by IRCC because IRCC is saying they won't return home. I'd like to hear from each one of the witnesses about what kind of review is needed or what they would recommend that needs to be changed within dual intent.

[Alain-Sébastien Malette]

Perhaps I can start with that.

These students are absolutely vital to us. These are highly qualified, super bright students, and they're essential to our communities and to our sustainability. I do think subjective criteria such as dual intent need to be rethought profoundly and looked at in the optics of our immigration policy for highly qualified people.

We have anecdotes of this all the time. I look at our office. We have super bright students in our office who are just finishing their engineering degree, and they get a job within a couple of months. I think this is an absolutely vital and essential element that we need to profoundly review.

[Yan Cimon]

I agree with my colleague.

When we look at this issue, we can see that foreign students, such as African students—since this is the topic of today's discussion—who come to study often have opportunities to settle here. They often have many opportunities.

For example, our area has a labour shortage and our unemployment rate is far below the provincial average. Businesses need this highly skilled workforce.

Above all, it's important to help these students come and study here, to access an education in Canada and to take advantage of economic opportunities. It's necessary to simplify, if not eliminate, this duality related to the dual intent criterion, which hurts Canada, its image and our recruitment efforts. It's costly in terms of resources for our government authorities.

[Luc Bussières]

I completely agree with what has just been said.

I just want to outline the situation in northern Ontario in terms of how this issue is viewed in our communities, such as Hearst, Kapuskasing, Timmins and so on.

Not too long ago, when we started taking in international students, people would ask me whether I thought that these students would stay. I would tell them that I didn't know, since we were just starting to work with them. As I said earlier, over time, we saw that almost all of them applied for a post‑graduation work permit and almost all of them obtained one. That's the best news for us. Consider the demographic decline and the labour shortage.

In any case, as I said, for Canada and for northern Ontario, the students whom we take in and who stay constitute an extremely significant added value. If they leave Canada and return home with their Canadian education, they'll be our best ambassadors for the country and for our area.

This benefits everyone. I don't see the point of maintaining this strange dual intent criterion, which I think is counterproductive in every way.

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

Thank you for those answers. I want to follow up on a question my colleague Mr. Seeback asked. He asked if you had followed up or brought this up with any government officials or with IRCC at all.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on who exactly you contacted, and if there was any reply at all? If there was some type of reply, what kind of reply was it? That's for each of the witnesses.

[Yan Cimon]

In terms of Université Laval, we're in contact with our local elected officials at all levels, including the federal, provincial and municipal levels. We also work with people in the departments. In addition, we work with economic organizations in our area.

To help us with this process, we created a regional higher education hub where 20 industry and higher education partners are brought together, including partners from the health care sector and the information technology sector, to try to find solutions.

[Luc Bussières]

At Hearst University, we didn't do much soliciting.

As I said, we've been in the sector mainly since 2018. We try to reach out to IRCC and get answers through our regulated consultants.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed to Ms. Kayabaga.

Ms. Kayabaga, you will have five minutes for your round of questioning. Please proceed.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today.

My questions will focus on immigration and ways to increase francophone immigration across Canada.

Mr. Bussières, I want to start by congratulating you on your great story.

You spoke about 2018 figures. It's now 2022. Do you have any idea what the situation will be in 2022?

You also told us that you must submit a very high volume of admissions offers to get enough students to enrol—you said 400 students. Do you think that this large volume of admission offers affects processing times?

[Luc Bussières]

Yes, it certainly has an impact. A small institution like ours receives about 1,000 applications a year. When we process the applications, we sometimes find that some files are incomplete. We then ask the people to complete them. Once the files are completed, the university offers the people admission, after which they can apply for their study permit. The university offers to provide them with the assistance of regulated Canadian immigration consultants, or RCICs. These consultants are allowed to help them directly. The university isn't allowed to do so.

The people then enter into the IRCC system and apply. There are deadlines, and the process unfolds.

To get 100 people to register, we must provide 400 to 500 offers of admission, after reviewing about 1,000 files. I can imagine how this could clog up the system at institutions such as Université Laval or the University of Ottawa, for example. That's why I was talking about the strong interest in studying in French in Canada, and certainly in English as well. This interest will continue.

The issue right now is that the high refusal rate brings the whole system into disrepute and makes it ineffective. It isn't lack of interest that makes it ineffective. There's a great deal of interest, which is the ironic part. As my colleague from Université Laval said earlier, a high refusal rate in a university like his can result in a loss of 1,000 enrolments a year, a loss that shouldn't have occurred. At our level, the loss is less significant. However, it's just as significant on a pro rata basis.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you for that answer.

In a way, it also answers my question about a high refusal rate creating a bottleneck on both sides. If other institutions had the same idea as you, it would have the same result. We all really want to increase francophone immigration to Canada, but you can understand that the increase contributes to the bottlenecks.

Can you give us any advice that might help to solve that problem? I would also then like to hear Mr. Malette's comments.

[Luc Bussières]

I feel that our efficiency would increase if the criteria were clearer. That would prevent people from entering the system without really knowing what is involved and without knowing the rules of the game.

We also have the dual intent issue. Today, we have not talked a lot about the reasons given for refusals. Sometimes, people share them with us. Sometimes it's dual intent and sometimes it's financial. Some decide to appeal and to submit a second application. What may happen then, when the reason for refusal was dual intent and the financial issue was not a problem in the first application, is that the financial issue is given as the reason in the second application and dual intent is no longer a problem. So there is such a perception of confusion, of inconsistency, that it causes problems in terms of the efficiency of the entire system.

We process a lot of files, but we could perhaps filter many of those files before they even enter the system, if people were more familiar with the rules.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Malette, if it is possible for you to comment in 30 seconds, I would like you to do so.

[Alain-Sébastien Malette]

My opinion is the same as our colleague's. I am also just as sensitive to the reality in the trenches.

Like all institutions, we receive so many applications from French-speaking Africa that we have to find a way to work together to remove the blockage and work collectively so that we can accept more applications. That is essential.

[Arielle Kayabaga, Liberal, London West, ON]

I have one last question for Mr. Cimon

Mr. Cimon, you stated that the majority of French-speaking students come from Africa. I was going to ask you about your plans to work with IRCC, but my time is up.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

The time is up. Thank you.

We will proceed to Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe for two and a half minutes, and then we will end our round of questioning with Ms. Kwan for two and a half minutes.

Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, please proceed.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Bussières, you just brought up the reasons for the refusals. They are sometimes difficult to understand.

I am going to try to cut to the chase, if I can put it like that. At a committee meeting last week, one witness—not to mention any names but it was Mr. Normand—came right out and told us that applications were refused because a course of study in French outside Quebec was not legitimate.

When I heard that, I fell off my chair. Maybe you did too.

Have you ever had to deal with cases like that?