Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 27th, 2026

[Joycna Kang]

I would agree. I think the desire to use that technology to make the management of caseloads more effective is understandable, but again, without oversight, it doesn't actually solve the problem.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Mr. Menegakis.

Thank you, Ms. Kang.

Now, we go to Ms. Zahid for five minutes.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre—Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you.

My question is for Madame Tchatat.

Canada is competing globally for French-speaking talent. In your experience, how effective are the current federal efforts to attract francophone immigrants, particularly from Africa and the Caribbean countries, and what impact have these efforts had on Ontario's economy?

[Léonie Tchatat]

Thank you.

I think that this is worth noting. Canada organizes many missions, but these missions often focus on French‑speaking Europe. It's quite difficult to see where things stand with the missions that focus on the African continent.

We know perfectly well that the Canada of the future will be represented by diversity and that this diversity will come from the African continent. We still don't focus much on missions in Africa. It remains difficult to promote them there.

I personally have taken part in missions. However, they were in Europe, particularly in countries such as France.

As I always say, francophone immigration is an added value for the Canadian economy. I think that, when Canada can attract many more French‑speaking African immigrants, it will see talented people coming in with the potential to contribute to the Canadian economy on a daily basis.

I think that we need to focus on missions in Africa. Yet we still see systemic barriers in this area. There are many challenges. Canada prioritizes white European immigration over African immigration.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre—Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you.

You have worked extensively on integration and economic development. Can you please speak to how well-supported francophone newcomers, especially those from racialized communities, contribute to entrepreneurship, workforce participation and local economic growth?

[Léonie Tchatat]

I'll give you a concrete example. We recently opened a transition home for African refugees. Since last June, we've taken in around 80 refugees. At least 60% of them have found jobs. They have already left the home and they're living in housing. Immigrants or refugees who come to this country want to work. They come with talent. They come here for a better life. Once they get here, they face systemic barriers and obstacles that prevent them from making real progress.

Let's look at the big picture and check the statistics. All francophone immigrants from Black or racialized communities who came here and who were given opportunities remain employed today. They're paying their share of taxes in Canada. Developing concrete policies and continuing to improve accessibility for these people will yield even more positive results.

I must point out that, as long as Canada fails to see Black or racialized francophone immigrants as an added value, there will always be a shortfall. Look at the next generation. Look at the young people finishing their studies. How many immigrants who have studied in this system face unemployment simply because they're Black or racialized francophones?

I think that an enormous amount of systemic work lies ahead and that we need to keep discussing this. Policies must be established early on in order to combat systemic racism.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre—Don Valley East, ON]

In your opening remarks, you mentioned tailored immigration models.

Can you expand as to what types of programs you have in mind, and when you say “tailored immigration models”, how can that be done?

[Léonie Tchatat]

Take, for example, our cultural competency programs, where we help immigrants understand the Canadian system.

I'm also talking about employer awareness. It's important to see how Black and racial minority immigrants provide added value. We need tailored investments. I must point out that refugees or immigrants from developing countries in Africa don't have the same immigration path as people from Europe.

We can't design programs that directly address them, because these people come with different cultures and values. We must support them by taking into account their cultural realities. We have many program models covering areas such as cultural competency, employer awareness and tailored training to help them integrate into the job market.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Ms. Tchatat and Ms. Zahid.

I would like to thank all the witnesses.

We're now going to suspend for five minutes so that the witnesses can leave and we can return with the second panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Welcome to panel two of today's session.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the new witnesses, in case you didn't hear them the first time around.

We have someone joining us on Zoom.

Mr. Routley, at the bottom of your screen, you can select the appropriate channel—English, French or floor—for interpretation.

For those in the room, you have an earpiece and you can select the desired channel. I'll do my best to let you know when you have one minute left. Kindly wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Now I'd like to formally welcome the witnesses for our second panel.

Via video conference, we have Mr. Routley, domestic policy coordinator, Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Here in the room, we have Dr. Yvonne Su, professor, York University; and from Lawyers for Secure Immigration, we have Mr. Richard Kurland, lawyer and policy analyst.

We give a warm welcome to all of you. You will have five minutes to give opening remarks, and then we will proceed with rounds of questions.

Mr. Routley, we will begin with you for five minutes, and that begins now.

[Sam Routley, Domestic Policy Coordinator, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to appear today. It's my pleasure to contribute to the study of Canada's immigration system.

My remarks today draw upon my research into Canadian political behaviour as well as Macdonald-Laurier Institute's own recent analysis of Canada's immigration system. I want to focus on how Canadians are responding to immigration challenges and what these shifts entail for the long-term sustainability of Canada's current immigration regime. My remarks build off of the recommendations that my colleague Peter Copeland has already provided to this committee.

As recently as 2022, 85% of Canadians believed that immigration had a positive impact on Canada's economy, while over two-thirds of respondents also rejected the claim that Canadian immigration levels were too high. As we are all well aware, this apparent consensus quickly unravelled. Today, well over half of Canadians believe that current levels strain public resources and pose integration challenges.

What has changed?

It should first be made clear that Canadians have not rejected immigration in principle. Rather, what has been uncovered is what in reality has always been a much more ambivalent attitude. Most Canadians do not embrace high rates of immigration or multiculturalism as intrinsically valuable goods in and of themselves. Instead, they are what academics Randy Besco and Erin Tolley call “conditional multiculturalists”. They are willing to support policies as long as they recognize them as being in their own and in Canada's best national interest, despite expressing some cultural reservations.

Going forward, the success of Canada's immigration regime therefore depends on the perception that the system is properly justified, publicly accountable, well managed and capable of delivering broadly shared benefits. This is something that it has increasingly struggled to demonstrate.

In recent years, rapid increases in intake levels, combined with a growing reliance on temporary migration pathways, limited alignment with housing and service capacity, and weak enforcement, have created a perception that the system is no longer operating in a coherent manner. Moreover, as MLI's own research has demonstrated, major policy changes have been introduced with minimal public transparency and limited parliamentary engagement.

An argument has been offered that current conditions reflect something of a cyclical adjustment. The relevant academic research is quite clear that periodic push-back to immigration will usually follow deteriorating economic conditions and an increase in intake numbers. Seen this way, public consensus, with some policy adjustments, may recover. If economic conditions improve and affordability pressures lessen, Canadians will adapt to higher intake levels.

This view is incorrect. The current moment reflects more deep-seated structural challenges that call for a more comprehensive reset. This is clear in two ways.

The first is a clear and ongoing decline in social trust throughout Canada. Short of being an intrinsic strength, diversity will undermine a community's cohesion unless it is matched by a binding set of norms, behaviours and shared civic purpose. Once lost, social trust is hard to regain.

The second is the emergence of more sorted and durable social divisions around immigration, defined around characteristics like income, education level and region. If not properly addressed, these divisions promise to become more inflamed and permanent.

These concerns point toward the need for a more coherent and comprehensive immigration and integration regime, firmly aligned with Canada's absorptive capacity.

Immigration levels and composition must be tied to housing, infrastructure and institutional capacity while system incentives are recalibrated to support long-term integration rather than short-term demand. This includes reducing reliance on temporary migration streams, strengthening enforcement and oversight, and ensuring that pathways to permanent residency and access to public benefits are meaningfully conditioned on integration outcomes, including labour market participation, progress toward self-sufficiency and adherence to shared civic norms.

More fundamentally, this points toward the need to re-anchor immigration policy in a clearer understanding of its economic and social purposes. Without such a realignment, public confidence will remain weakened and increasingly difficult to restore.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you so much, Mr. Routley.

Now, we have Professor Su for five minutes.

Your time begins now.

[Dr. Yvonne Su, Professor, York University, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for inviting me to appear today.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for inviting me to speak about this study.

My name is Dr. Yvonne Su. I am an associate professor at York University. I'm currently a visiting scientist at Harvard. I study asylum, migration and global governance, including how public narratives shape immigration policy.

I would like to make three points today. First, Canada's asylum system should be assessed with careful attention to legal standards and actual outcomes. Second, recent data on international students and asylum need to be interpreted within context. Third, current policy debates should be informed by Canada's longer history of exclusion.

The first point is that Canada's asylum system is neither automatic nor unrestricted. The right to apply for asylum is protected in Canadian and international law. However, claimants must still prove a well-founded fear of persecution, and many claims are indeed rejected. When the public and our policy-makers are only presented with numbers about applications, not decisions, their perceptions of the robustness of our system are rightly skewed.

For example, my analysis of IRB data on India—the main source country for asylum seekers—found that between 2021 and 2024, claims were more often rejected than accepted. The rejections are really important to highlight because they take the air out of the rhetoric that international students are applying for asylum as a secure back door to stay longer in Canada.

The second point is that the increase in claims by international students should be situated carefully. International students filed just over 20,000 asylum claims in 2024. When we look at the number alone, it looks large, but it amounts to only 2% of the almost one billion international students in Canada. That means more than 98% of international students in Canada did not apply for asylum. That is a small minority, not a massive abuse of the asylum—

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Professor Su, did you say one billion people applied for...?

[Dr. Yvonne Su]

I meant to say one million. I'm sorry about that.

The question remains: How can we prevent this?

My analysis of IRCC data found that the abuse was concentrated to a small number of places. Four colleges had more than 1,000 claims each. Three colleges had 100% of their international students claim asylum. Yes, it is shocking. This suggests that a central problem is not international students as a group, but that it is bad actors who profit from misinformation and exploitation.

My first recommendation is to penalize the bad actors. Immigration consultants and colleges are exploiting vulnerable students. They should face stronger penalties, meaningful enforcement and, where necessary, loss of designation or licence.

The second recommendation is to expedite asylum decisions for international students, which would take away any incentives for consultants or institutions to misuse the system.

Recommendation three is to better equip students by making sure they know what their options are before their study permits expire.

The third point is that I would encourage the committee to consider these debates in a historical perspective and ensure that our new caps and policies don't push us towards exclusion. I want to remind the committee of the Chinese exclusion act, which was enacted in 1923, just over 100 years ago, to effectively ban most Chinese immigration to Canada. This ban meant that Chinese people could not freely immigrate to Canada, and many families were unable to reunite here.

One of those migrants was my great-grandfather, Lou Yen. He came to Canada almost 150 years ago, but he was forced to return to China due to these exclusionary laws. My own family experienced the long shadow of exclusion through separation, constrained opportunities and the sense that belonging in Canada was always conditional. It would take my family five generations of effort for my two children, Jack and James Ujma-Su, to be born Canadians.

I mention this history because it reminds us that immigration policy is not just administrative. It also shapes who is seen as deserving, credible and welcomed.

Catherine Clement, my friend and an award-winning community historian, wrote the book The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act to tell the stories of those impacted by exclusion. I think this book needs to be in every school in Canada so that students can learn about these mistakes. I have brought some books for the committee members.

As the committee studies Canada's immigration system, the challenge is to respond to legitimate concerns with evidence, proportionality and historical awareness. Policies should target exploitation where it exists, while avoiding broad assumptions about entire groups. That approach could strengthen the system's integrity, while remaining consistent with Canada's legal obligations and democratic values.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Professor Su.

You mentioned that you have research you have conducted. It would helpful if you could submit that to the committee. I think it would be very helpful for your testimony.

Last but not least, we have Mr. Kurland.

You have five minutes, please.

[Richard Kurland, Lawyer and Policy Analyst, Lawyers for Secure Immigration]

Thank you.

Lawyers for Secure Immigration is an immigration advocacy organization composed of immigration lawyers and other members of the legal community. We want to see Canada continue to welcome newcomers from everywhere. We want people who will support and strengthen our Canadian democratic values and our Canadian way of life. The mission is to keep problems originating from outside Canada from entering Canada in the first place.

We can make changes, such as changes to study permit eligibility rules and to prefer the people who will be less motivated to engage in criminality on Canadian soil. We can do more to guard against theft of Canada's most sensitive world-class intellectual property. We can do more to prevent the ongoing efforts of foreign interests that are actively seeking the destabilization of Canadian society by promoting hatred based on race, colour, ancestry or religious belief.

We can create financial disincentives that will target the enablers in Canada: the employers who allow unauthorized work and the schools who allow unauthorized study. We can do more to follow the money and illuminate the complex international path of finance that has successfully brought problems from outside Canada inside Canada.

Also, because no immigration system in the world is airtight and perfect, for the people who find a way to get around our immigration safeguards, we need more effective and swift removal measures.

Here's the illustration of a typical immigration problem where security gets undervalued by government. CSIS is mandated by section 14 of the CSIS Act to provide advice and information “relating to security matters or criminal activities” to IRCC, but it is IRCC that determines who will be allowed to enter Canada temporarily to visit, work or study and who will be granted permanent residency or citizenship.

Here's the thing. The CSIS 2024 public report says, “CSIS has been actively engaged in screening foreign nationals with ties to Canada who are escaping the conflict” in Gaza. Also, “the public policy aimed to provide temporary resident status to 1,000 eligible applicants from Gaza” at the outset was “increased to 5,000 in August 2024”, with no corresponding increase to the CSIS security services. CSIS says that inhabitants of Gaza, a territory dominated and governed by terrorists, present a clear and present danger to Canada and our allies.

Processing times have skyrocketed. Canadian relatives have lived with the fear of losing family members to the conflict.

Lawyers for Secure Immigration have supported Gazan family reunification, which can be done only with robust security safeguards: security first and compassion second.

By not resourcing security and background checks adequately, the government has delayed and continues to delay family reunification from Gaza. Only 654 people arrived under the Gaza program as of January 31, 2025. We must never do something like that again. Canada knew at the time that Gaza was dominated by Hamas, so why didn’t Canada provide the necessary security resources? That's the hole in our fence.

Lawyers for Secure Immigration is a private sector organization that specifically advocates for security in the immigration system.

I am open to questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you so much, Mr. Kurland.

Thanks to all of the witnesses for their opening statements.

We now begin the first round of questions for six minutes, and we begin with Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for appearing before us today.

Mr. Kurland, I'd like to start with you.

One of the primary responsibilities of any government, of course, is to ensure the safety and security of its citizens and, indeed, of all the law-abiding people who live in our country. You have spoken about over 17,500 individuals who applied to come to Canada and had their foreign criminal convictions forgiven.

Do we know how many of them were convicted for violent crimes?

[Richard Kurland]

The data is the problem. Government has it; government doesn't share it. What is shared is usually a year or two out of date, making analysis practically impossible for advocates and folks who intend to criticize.

Historically, if you have that breakdown, violent crimes that include damage to the person as well as the property typically run at 20% to 25%.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Do we know from which countries most foreign criminal convictions are forgiven?

[Richard Kurland]

No—

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

You have no—

[Richard Kurland]

—and every country produces criminals, like it or not.