Thank you, Chair and members of the committee.
I am one of the few tech entrepreneurs in the immigration space, and I run the largest Canadian immigration data aggregation consumer platform. Furthermore, I'm a product of the express entry system, having gone through it myself in 2018. From my unique perspective, Canada's immigration system is under strain, not because immigration has lost its value, but because the system has increasingly lost its focus.
When express entry launched in 2015, its role was clear: It was an economic selection system built on ranking skilled candidates based on merit. For several years, it worked. It predictably selected the candidates most likely to integrate successfully. However, since then, it has begun to collapse. I want to focus on two interlinked issues driving this breakdown: the implementation of francophone immigration targets and the mismanagement of skilled immigration categories.
Let's begin with francophone immigration. The federal government set an 8.5% target for French-speaking permanent residents outside Quebec in 2025, which will rise to 10.5% by 2028. Supporting francophone minority communities is a valid objective. The problem is where this target is being applied. Because family, refugee and humanitarian streams do not assess language, they cannot be used to meet francophone targets. As a result, express entry carries the burden by default. This isn't made explicit, but it is the operational reality, and the impact is clear.
In 2025, a significant share of express entry invitations—42% of the total—was issued to the francophone draws. Most were candidates outside Canada, without Canadian work experience or education. At the same time, the Canadian experience class, the pathway designed for people already working in Canada, saw fewer and smaller draws. The disparity between the quality of the applicants was stark, with a 529 average CRS score for Canadian experience class versus 422 for francophone candidates. That is more than a 100-point difference. This outcome is driven by politically motivated targets, not applicant quality.
According to the IRCC's 2024 stakeholder consultation report, only 14.6% of respondents identified francophone immigration as a top priority, while a strong majority emphasized economic and labour market needs. Despite this, francophone targets dominated express entry in 2025.
What was the result? First, express entry is being distorted and often fails to prioritize candidates with the highest potential to successfully settle in Canada. Second, francophone newcomers are dispersed broadly across the country, often into regions without strong French-language employment opportunities or settlement infrastructure. A more appropriate mechanism already exists. It's called the francophone community immigration pilot, and it aligns language objectives with specific regions that have the capacity and demand to support francophone settlement. This is exactly where francophone immigration outside Quebec can be pursued effectively.
On the skilled category side, STEM has effectively collapsed. There have been no STEM-specific draws since April 2024, and 19 core STEM occupations, including software developers, engineers and data scientists, were removed from eligibility. Meanwhile, occupations such as insurance agents were added to it, despite being sales-oriented roles. The health care category saw fewer than a third of the francophone invitations in 2025, while suffering from incorrect skill prioritization within. The result is predictable. Canadian-educated graduates and skilled professionals, many already working here, are losing clear pathways to permanent residence. Canada is training talent and failing to retain it. These outcomes directly stem from policy choices that layer non-economic objectives onto economic selection tools.
The brief we submitted to this committee outlines a clear course correction. The first step is to separate linguistic and cultural objectives from express entry. The second is to rely on targeted programs to fulfill francophone immigration objectives. The third is to restore the Canadian experience class as a reliable immigration pathway. The fourth is to correctly structure and increase the priority of STEM and health care categories.
Canada needs an immigration system whereby each stream does what it was designed to do. If it is to remain functional, we must return to first principles—