Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 3rd, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Good afternoon, everyone. I call this meeting to order.

Before I go any further, I would like to note that there are a few members being replaced today.

I would like to welcome Linda Lapointe, who is replacing Matt Jeneroux, as well as Mario Beaulieu, who is replacing Alexis Deschênes.

We also have Kyle Seeback joining us as part of the Conservative team.

I'd like to warmly welcome you as well.

Welcome to meeting number 36 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format.

I would now like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

As always, before speaking, kindly wait until I recognize you by name.

For those on Zoom, kindly click on the microphone icon to activate your mic, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. On Zoom, at the bottom of your screen, you can select the appropriate channel for interpretation—either English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

I would like to remind witnesses that committee members may ask questions in either French or English. If you will need interpretation, please take a moment now to prepare your earpiece and select the listening channel you need in advance in order to take full advantage of the time allotted for questions and answers.

Of course, kindly ensure that all your comments are addressed through the chair.

Members, please do not forget to raise your hand if you wish to speak. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best as we can. I will remind everyone to please not speak over each other, as it will be hard for our interpreters to translate and it makes their jobs difficult.

I will let everyone know when you have one minute left.

Thank you all for your co-operation.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on May 6, 2026, the committee is commencing its study of attracting and empowering global talent to strengthen Canada's economy.

I would now like to welcome the witnesses.

We have three witnesses today from two organizations.

From the Building Trades of Alberta, joining us by video conference, we have Terry Parker, executive director.

Welcome, Mr. Parker.

From the Council of Canadian Innovators, we have Laurent Carbonneau, vice-president, policy and advocacy, as well as Daniel Perry, director, federal affairs.

Welcome to everyone.

Up to five minutes will be given to the Building Trades of Alberta and the Council of Canadian Innovators for opening remarks, after which we'll proceed with rounds of questions.

Mr. Parker, I now invite you to begin your opening statement. Your five minutes begin right now.

[Terry Parker, Executive Director, Building Trades of Alberta]

Thank you very much for allowing me to speak today.

My name is Terry Parker. I'm the executive director of the Building Trades of Alberta.

We advocate for over 60,000 unionized skilled trades workers across the residential, commercial, industrial and maintenance sectors in Alberta. Our priority is having a strong, safe and sustainable construction industry in Alberta that provides quality careers for Canadian workers while addressing genuine labour needs. We support well-managed immigration as a complement, not a substitute, to investing in domestic workers.

Alberta is in a unique position due to the lack of work for young Albertans. With all the talk of perceived labour shortages, we don't see it in the building trades of Alberta. At points in the last few months, we've seen up to 40% unemployment among our unionized affiliates.

Do not get me wrong. We believe in diversity. We want to bring more young Canadians, more indigenous people, more women and more new Canadians into the trades, but what we're seeing out there currently is that a lot of abuse is happening with the temporary foreign worker program.

Temporary foreign workers are coming into the country, working in the agriculture sector or other sectors and then moving into the construction industry. We're also seeing undocumented workers coming into the country. That is creating wage suppression and making it very hard for our contractors to compete with the unscrupulous contractors who are doing this. We're seeing more safety risks and the displacement of Canadian workers—i.e., our members.

We don't disagree with having temporary foreign workers. At points, we actually utilize them through what we call our ACTIMS program, whereby we work with owners and our contractors to bring in temporary foreign workers at peak periods in order to help us and our contractors fulfill their obligations. However, as I said, we are seeing a number of abuses out there currently.

What we need to see that hasn't been happening is more labour-market opinions and surveys that go back to our contractors and our affiliated unions. They will give more information back to the federal government in order to stop a lot of the practices that are currently happening. We need more oversight by the federal government and the provincial government, more audits, and more monitoring of unscrupulous contractors.

I hope that helps. I'm open to any questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you so much, Mr. Parker.

We'll now turn to the Council of Canadian Innovators.

Mr. Perry, your five minutes begin now.

[Daniel Perry, Director, Federal Affairs, Council of Canadian Innovators]

Good afternoon, Chair and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today.

My name is Daniel Perry. I'm the director of federal affairs at the Council of Canadian Innovators. I am joined by my colleague Laurent Carbonneau, vice-president of policy and advocacy.

The Council of Canadian Innovators is Canada's 21st-century business council. We represent over 175 Canadian-headquartered, high-growth technology firms that are operating in sectors including artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, dual-use and defence.

The global race for highly skilled talent is fierce. For Canadian innovators, the challenge is simple: If they are unable to hire the right people, they cannot scale. This means that the jobs, companies and economic value that they are creating here in Canada are at risk of moving elsewhere.

Canada's immigration system must reflect this new reality. It needs to be fast, focused and agile, while also maintaining high standards and system integrity. Skilled immigration plays an important role for filling gaps and mismatched parts of our workforce. Seventy per cent of Canadian businesses in the tech sector have identified the shortage of skilled workers as a major barrier to their success. Bringing in specialized talent does not displace Canadians. Instead, it helps Canadian companies compete, grow and ultimately create more opportunity here in Canada.

Upscaling matters, but it cannot replace the challenges that we're currently seeing in the labour market. The people applying to come to Canada through the global talent stream and Canada's start-up visa are programmers, engineers, innovators and entrepreneurs. They are the people powering the 21st-century economy, and we need more of them in order for our economy to be successful.

CCI was a founding member of and is a current referral partner in the global talent stream. This program is one of the most practical tools allowing high-growth companies to access the specialized talent they need in order to succeed. Since the program's inception in 2017, over 32,000 highly skilled individuals have come to Canada to support these companies.

We might ask what this program means for Canadian innovators. One expert or one leader can shape whether a product makes it to market in time. It defines if they're able to win more customers and ultimately allows their team to grow here in Canada.

The global talent stream is a targeted and regulated program. It is used sparingly in comparison to other immigration channels. From 2017 to the first quarter of 2025, it represented just 2.6% of all positive labour market assessments.

As the government re-evaluates its immigration policies, the program should remain available for Canadian firms, with strong oversight. One area that does warrant closer scrutiny is how the program is being used by foreign multinationals. For instance, between 2017 and the first quarter of 2025, Amazon received nearly 1,500 positive global talent stream assessments. For context, this represents 22% of all global talent stream applications filed in British Columbia. The government should ensure that these requests are legitimate and that we do not have talent here in Canada that would be able to fill these openings.

At the same time, programs like the Canadian start-up visa are right in spirit but are effectively not capturing international entrepreneurs so they can come to Canada. As the government is considering the renewal of this program, it is important to understand what structural reform is needed in order to make it successful.

The Council of Canadian Innovators recommends a two-stage hybrid model where successful applications are first moved through temporary residency with a clear pathway to permanent residency if they meet measured business outcomes. This would move the program away from rigid upfront requirements and would allow IRCC to process applications faster and help prevent the significant backlog that has undermined the program to date.

Canada should also look at tax policy as part of its immigration strategy. Canada has a “missing” province of nearly 850,000 Canadians who live in the United States, many of whom are leaders in business, technology and industry. We should be competitive, and we should be just as ambitious as the United States when it comes to attracting the world's best and brightest minds, while also retaining our minds here in Canada. Canada should introduce a tax incentive that is modelled on America's qualified small business stock exemption. This tool helps incentivize entrepreneurs and brings capital into Canada.

Canada's immigration system and our talent have a strong foundation, but the challenge now is how we protect and sharpen the tools we have at our disposal to help Canadian firms that need highly skilled individuals to come to Canada so these companies can scale, compete and ultimately compete globally.

With that, I'd like to thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

You should become a politician, Mr. Perry. That was almost right on the dot of five minutes. Excellent job.

Thanks to both of you for the opening remarks.

Now we are going to move to our rounds of questions. We are going to begin with Mr. Seeback for six minutes.

Your time begins now.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thanks very much, Madam Chair.

Terry, it's great to see you again. I want to pick up on some of your comments about temporary foreign workers.

One thing I came across is that up until 2018, for the LMIA process, there was union consultation through the TFW process. The Liberal government cancelled it and removed that safeguard in 2018. I've asked both the immigration minister and the jobs minister if they think there have been negative consequences because of that and they didn't answer.

I'm going to put that question to you, but I'll also ask you if you think it should be reinstated. I've asked the ministers about that, but they didn't respond.

[Terry Parker]

First of all, it's great to see you again as well, Kyle.

Yes, I think it should be reinstated. I've been in this position for nine years in Alberta and 12 years in Saskatchewan, and I remember back in the day when our union affiliates used to be contacted—I wouldn't say on a weekly basis, but almost on a monthly basis—and asked questions on what the labour supply looked like and whether there was a need for temporary foreign workers in certain fields. Sometimes it would be needed. Other times, it wouldn't be needed. There are contractors that would rather bring in temporary foreign workers than utilize Canadians, and sometimes—I'm not saying always—they can be abused and mistreated or will not be paid the correct rates.

When we're being consulted, we can actually talk with the government and say, “There's an employer out there doing this”, or say that we need more ironworkers, pipefitters or electricians. We could also say that we don't need them, because we might have 2,000 electricians sitting on the board.

We have connections right across Canada with the building trades. We are connected throughout the country. If we have people working in Alberta, we can look to Saskatchewan, British Columbia or Nova Scotia. Over the last decade, we've brought in tens of thousands of people from across the country to help us on projects so that the Canadian economy is moving forward.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I did a bit of digging, and what I discovered was that in 2025, 127,000 Canadians with trade certificates were unemployed, but at the same time, 126,000 temporary foreign workers came into Canada in TEERs zero to three, which include the skilled trades. It seems to me that this is illustrative of the problem.

I've suggested that the government might want to conduct an investigation into that. Do you find that for those numbers, going with what your experience has been, this program is being abused by employers to get low-wage labour?

[Terry Parker]

Yes, I do.

I've been talking to some tradespeople in the last year. Some of them may have only worked eight to 12 weeks out of the year, which is unacceptable for, let's say, the pipefitters out there, who have given me that example. When we're bringing in temporary foreign workers, that should not be occurring. We should make sure that, first and foremost, Canadians are working, and then we can utilize in the trades young Canadians, new Canadians who have already come into the country and women.

There's so much opportunity. We need to grow our domestic pool of labour and help them first and foremost before we start looking to bring in temporary foreign workers to displace our membership or Canadians.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

The final part to this puzzle that I've discovered is the illegal work that's taking place on construction sites. In fact, my understanding is that for some construction projects in Alberta that are receiving federal tax dollars, there's illegal labour working on those projects. I wonder if you could comment on that. What do you think the government needs to do to prevent this from happening in the future?

[Terry Parker]

One thing we get is undocumented workers or TFWs who have moved over from the agriculture sector into the construction sector. They come into our office, sometimes in large groups of 20 or 30, because they feel more comfortable talking to us that way. They are working—not always, but sometimes—on government-funded projects. Sometimes they get paid in cash because one contractor will get the work and then subcontract it to another contractor. That subcontractor subcontracts it off again, and the general contractor doesn't even know who is on a site properly.

Then we're seeing fake documents—fake Red Seal tickets coming in and fake safety certificates appearing. Sometimes they are utilized by members who say they are on a job, and they're not on that job. Someone else has taken their identity, has posed as them and then has been paid in cash under the table to work on construction sites right across Alberta.

This is not just a one-off. We are seeing this with thousands of undocumented workers working in Edmonton and Calgary. This is just one example happening here in Alberta. It's happening right across the country where this illegal workforce is moving forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Mr. Seeback.

Thank you very much, Mr. Parker.

Now we have six minutes for Mr. Chang.

Your six minutes start now.

[Wade Chang, Liberal, Burnaby Central, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Let's come back to the study on global talent.

My questions are for Mr. Perry and Mr. Carbonneau.

What are the biggest barriers related to credential recognition, work authorization and talent mobility, and how can the federal government address them?

[Laurent Carbonneau, Vice-President, Policy and Advocacy, Council of Canadian Innovators]

I'll just speak to what we deal with more on a day-to-day basis.

Just to recap a little of what my colleague was saying, we represent 175 companies that are scaling—Canadian-headquartered technology companies. The way we tend to analyze this is that they face four principal barriers to scaling: access to talent, to capital, to customers and to the right marketplace frameworks.

When it comes to talent, we see immigration and skilled immigration as a really useful part of filling the gaps that otherwise occur. In reality, these are usually highly technical fields where the number of research personnel and engineering personnel is quite small by global standards.

To give a little sense of perspective, I always like this stat: The Chinese university system graduates six million people a year, which is, by Canadian, American or any other standards, really tremendous. That's not to say that everyone is hiring from China. It's just to say that the number of advanced engineering and research grads coming from outside of Canada is much higher than the number from inside of Canada.

The global talent stream is a system that a lot of our members use. That's worked quite well for them. They identify the talent they need, and they're able to, within a very short amount of time, in a trusted framework, bring those folks to Canada.

There are, of course, teething issues, as there always are with any program, but this is a program that we feel very strongly works for Canada and for the interests of growing and scaling Canadian companies here. As my colleague Daniel said, this isn't about displacing Canadian jobs; it's about scaling companies that are going to create more jobs in Canada for Canadians down the line. I just wanted to speak to the centrality and utility of that tool to fill this specific need.

On your specific questions about credentials recognition, I would say it's not an issue we've heard crop up a lot in this specific context, but I'd be very happy to check back with our membership to see if this is an issue that's occurred for them.

[Wade Chang, Liberal, Burnaby Central, BC]

My riding of Burnaby Central is home to BCIT and a thriving clean technology ecosystem. How can federal immigration policy better support emerging sectors like AI, clean technology and advanced manufacturing?

[Laurent Carbonneau]

That's a great question.

First of all, keeping programs like the global talent stream in operation is really essential. I'm not deaf. I'm listening to the conversation about the TFW program nationally, and of course, I have my personal views. think it would be a real tragedy if this particular program—the global talent stream—were a casualty of a broader backlash against the temporary foreign worker program, which I don't want to comment on more broadly than that.

Keep that channel open. In the grand scheme of things, it's quite a small component. As Daniel was saying, it's 2.6% overall. I think that translates to about 32,000 over the last 10-odd years. It's not a huge number, but these are all really critical folks at the end of the day. These folks are really enabling companies to take a leap to the next level and are going to unlock some kind of technological or industrial barrier for them, so we think that program is really critical.

Daniel mentioned two others. For the start-up visa program, we saw the rollout as quite troubled initially. There is a clear reason for that, which is that it was initially tied to permanent residency. You created what was essentially a very high reward for this program, and the amount of scrutiny that went into applications ensured that it was going to be a very slow process. It didn't really meet the standards of similar global programs, which meant that Canada wasn't really competitive.

What we've proposed is to keep that program, reform it a bit and ensure that it affords temporary status at first, with a pathway to permanent residency tied to outcomes. I think that would solve a lot of these issues, keep the backlog to a much more manageable level and volume of applications, and help attract more talent to Canada that is going to be building businesses in advanced industries.

[Wade Chang, Liberal, Burnaby Central, BC]

To what extent does Canada's commitment to diversity and to 2SLGBTQIA+ inclusion influence the decisions of highly skilled workers when they choose where to live, work or innovate?

[Laurent Carbonneau]

That's a great question. I don't know that I can speak to it incredibly precisely, but I will say that for a lot of our members, Canada is a place where folks want to come. It is an incentive for them to say, “We're a Canadian company operating in Canada.” It's a plus. To the extent that Canada has a great global brand, let's keep that up.

I certainly think there's a lot of work to do. This is Parliament, and we have a lot of work to do on lots of things to make sure that that's the case for our kids and grandkids, but that's an asset, and we see it that way.

[Wade Chang, Liberal, Burnaby Central, BC]

Canada competes globally for highly skilled talent. Where are we succeeding and where are we falling behind?

[Laurent Carbonneau]

That's a fantastic question.

We're doing quite well, and historically have done quite well, at attracting research talent, which is wonderful. To some extent, as I've described, through the global talent stream and other streams, it's about engineering and research talent. That's more commercial rather than research in the post-secondary system.

Where I think we have more difficulty is in keeping industrialists here. When you look at the stats around the number of grads from Canadian universities who leave to work in the U.S., in the Bay Area, it's quite high, especially those from top schools. It's a real brain-drain that Canada simply cannot afford over the long term.

People talk a lot about the U.S.-Canada productivity and GDP per capita gap. If you look at those stats in close detail, the vast majority of that gap is made up of the top 10% of the income distribution. That is to say that the U.S. economy in this new, intangible, data-driven economy we live in is being driven by a small number of companies that are generating huge economic returns for the country. Canada doesn't have enough of those, which is our job to solve to some extent and our job to help you solve.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Mr. Carbonneau and Mr. Chang. That was a great exchange.

Mr. Beaulieu, you now have the floor for six minutes.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, the Bloc Québécois would like to point out that credential recognition falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces and therefore Quebec. Thanks to the 1991 Canada-Quebec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens, Quebec exercises its full jurisdiction over the selection of economic immigrants. The federal role is limited to the final verification of eligibility and the granting of permanent residence.

I'll now turn to the Council of Canadian Innovators.

Have you seen situations where asylum seekers or refugees with technology or engineering qualifications remain underemployed because of delays related to credential recognition?

[Laurent Carbonneau]

Thank you for the question.

Honestly, I have never heard of such a case among our members.

I would be happy to go back and see if we have heard of any such cases among our membership, but it's not something I've heard of to this point.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Okay.

If Quebec, for example, had the power to grant permanent residence itself and conduct the final eligibility check, do you think that would allow for faster credential recognition and more effective integration of talent?

[Laurent Carbonneau]

Thank you for the question.

At the end of the day, our concern is always whether companies are getting the talent they need when they need it. As Daniel was saying, this is often an existential question for them. I'm open-minded about whatever system can make that happen, and I think we have lots of companies in Quebec that are very proud to be there and very proud to be based all over the province.

Is that the best tool to make sure that these companies are getting the talent they need when they need it? I'm very happy to have that conversation. I would say that I'm agnostic on the question, but I'm very happy to have that conversation at greater length.