Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 24th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

I would request that members take their seats, please.

Before I officially welcome the minister to the committee, I will ask members to please refrain from crosstalk. That will make the interpreters' lives much easier and make my life easier as well. I know this because I sat at those desks for many, many years, on the opposition side as well as the government side. It's very important for the member to ask the question, and the minister then to answer, so that they can use that clip for their constituents. They have their constituents' views to be represented here.

With that said, welcome to meeting number 78 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Yes, Madam Kwan.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Before you get under way with the proceedings, I would like to put on notice the following motion:

That, in the context of the ninth report of the Auditor General of Canada to the Parliament of Canada, titled Processing Applications for Permanent Residence-Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee invite the Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship to appear before the committee for one hour and officials from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada to subsequently appear before the committee for one hour, for a total of two hours.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

For the first hour of today's meeting, we will be holding a briefing on the minister's priorities and objectives for IRCC.

I'm pleased to welcome the Honourable Marc Miller, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. He's joined by two officials from the department. We are very well familiar with the deputy minister, Ms. Fox. Also joining us is the senior assistant deputy minister of strategic policy, Ms. Baird.

Welcome, Minister and officials, to the committee.

You have five minutes to start.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Minister of Immigration]

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon. I really am pleased to appear before you to discuss my priorities and objectives as Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship.

Mr. Chair, I want to start by acknowledging that we are gathered here today on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

Canada's immigration system has been facing changing realities and growing pressures, even more so in recent years. Multiple humanitarian and public health crises, rising asylum claims and an increased interest in Canada all require a clear plan so that we can continue welcoming newcomers while addressing the backlog of applications.

We are also navigating domestic pressures, such as housing, infrastructure and labour shortages. Newcomers require a clear path so that they can contribute meaningfully to their communities and be part of the solution to these challenges.

Mr. Chair, one of my top priorities is international students. We're currently reviewing the international student program to strengthen its integrity, support universities and colleges, and protect students from unethical recruitment and unreliable consultants.

This study will ensure that the program continues to attract and retain the most brilliant students by helping them become permanent residents, and extending the benefits of immigration to all regions in Canada while helping us meet our francophone immigration targets.

It's essential to factor in the capacity of communities to host newcomers and to provide them with appropriate services and housing, while supporting those caught up in humanitarian crises.

While Canada's housing challenges require a whole-of-government approach, we need to align immigration with other planning while upholding our humanitarian commitments. We also recognize that newcomers with in-demand skills can be part of the solution to housing and other challenges.

Owing to the increase in refugee claims around the world, we are enhancing the capacity, integrity and efficiency of Canada's refugee determination system and investing in temporary housing assistance for refugee claimants.

We are also simplifying access to work permits, which enables refugee claimants to enter Canada's labour market more quickly and helps meet their needs while awaiting a decision on their claim.

It's likely that many of you have seen the Auditor General’s report on processing permanent residence applications. As of August 31, Canada welcomed 339,000 permanent residents—up from 310,000 during the same period in 2022. Our goal is to process 80% of all applications within service standards in order to welcome newcomers and reunite families faster. We continue to reduce backlogs through staffing and technological improvements.

We've made significant progress. Since September we’ve surpassed our standard for processing federal high-skilled worker applications received since July 2022. We’re approaching our standard processing time for provincial nominee applications received in express entry, and for processing spouses, partners and children applications.

As part of our modernization efforts IRCC is restructuring to improve day-to-day operations and integrity and expand expertise in asylum refugee resettlement, international affairs and humanitarian crises response.

We are establishing an international affairs and crisis response framework as a permanent structure to deal with these crises.

We are also making an effort to improve the overall client experience, which is essential to attract and retain the workers Canada needs if it is to compete globally.

We do continue to provide direct contact with clients, which is important, and funding announced in the past budget has helped us increase our client support centre's capacity, doubling access rates from 15% last year to 30% or more now. These are just some of the steps we're taking to ensure that Canada's immigration system is equally fast, agile and reliable, which I believe is critical to responding to changes in the immigration landscape. It's really critical to newcomers contributing to Canada’s long-term success.

I am at this point happy to take your questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you, Minister. Well done; it was four minutes and 30 seconds.

We will start with the first round of questions of six minutes. We will start with Mr. Kmiec.

Please go ahead.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Minister, back in August you were quoted as follows: “Canada ‘absolutely’ can’t build more houses without more immigrants, minister says”. In that article you were quoted as saying “The federal government is making housing more affordable and bringing in the skilled workers required to build more homes”.

I'm going to ask you this question. This year how many workers were brought into the federal skilled trades program?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Do you mean construction workers, or just workers generally?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I mean federal skilled trades in general.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

We could provide you with that number in due course.

What I can say is that if we want to build the houses that we ambitiously have set our targets for by 2030, we're going to need about 100,000 workers. Those cannot be—

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I'm sorry, Minister, the answer is 80 so far this year.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

We will provide you with the complete answer.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

It's 80. It's on your website. I checked it.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

If you want to testify you can.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

I said earlier that if there's a crosstalk I have to intervene and it's not going to look good.

Mr. Kmiec, I will give you the floor now. Go ahead.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Actually when you sit down and you begin to total the total amount of persons brought in through the federal skilled trades program it's something like 15,000 people. Then when you look at the number for retail sales and supervisors by NOC codes—which is how we classify people by job—it's 12,350. How is it possible that in the past two years you've brought as many retail supervisors as you did construction workers in the past seven years when you said it yourself that we need workers to build homes? I thought this was the priority.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

You've only named one program first and foremost. Second, I do concede that we've never been particularly great outside temporary foreign workers to match supply and demand. That's why we've made a number of innovative policy announcements in the last few months, notably in ensuring under our global express entry program that we are actually bringing in the workers whom we need and that industry is asking us to do. As I mentioned before, we need about 100,000 workers to build the homes that we want to build. They aren't in this country right now. It's work that we'll have to do in the very short term if we want to actually get this done.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Minister, how many workers then did you bring in under the federal skilled worker program?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

We can provide you a complete answer at a later date.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

This year so far it's 23,415. As you've just said, and Benjamin Tal from CIBC has also said, we are short 80,000 to 100,000 construction workers. Out of those from the federal skilled worker program, how many of them were NOC codes for construction?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

We can provide you that full answer at a later date.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Minister, you just said how important it was. The cabinet had a whole cabinet retreat just to talk about housing. It's been now three months since then. I would have thought the immigration department would have these numbers available for us at this committee since housing is the number one issue we all hear about.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

You seem to already have them now, Tom. I don't think you're asking me a question; you're making a statement. I'll gladly give you the time to make it. This is your time, but if you want complete answers, we're here to give you complete answers.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Minister, if you don't like being held accountable, you didn't have to come here.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

I'm not the minister of NOC codes. We can give you those numbers, if you need them, and we'll provide them to you, but if you're acting in bad faith, I can sit here and just listen to you all day. That's fine.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Let's get the numbers that I can't have, because there is a mix of numbers provided through the provinces to IRCC and, therefore, these numbers aren't available on your website. Again, you've had a few months to prepare. These are all NOC codes. I'm going to refer to them, because these are important jobs for construction workers. For example, NOC code 75110 is construction trades helpers and labourers. That's an occupation that's very much in demand. How many are there?