Official Languages Committee on March 10th, 2015

[Ida Kamariza]

Yes, absolutely. This is going to make the imbalance worse, whereas francophone immigration had been put in place to redress the demographic imbalance. With regard to selection, we see that certain avenues are going to favour anglophone immigration. Temporary immigrants will become permanent immigrants. We don't have much confidence in that avenue either. We see nothing that will encourage francophone immigrants to settle here. The imbalance will be evident.

I'd like to change something I said regarding consultations. After the fact, in February, CIC began to hold pan-Canadian consultations to see how the Express Entry system could be adapted for francophone communities. On February 19, people from that department came to see us. I also spoke with my colleagues from the other provinces. The consultations highlight the challenges rather than the solutions. We don't quite know what they are going to produce.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Mr. Chisu has a short question.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

I would like to ask Madame Kamariza a question with regard to the second recommendation that you are making: conduct a comparative study of foreign training standards in the francophone and anglophone systems, which would look at the qualification chances that francophones now have under the current policy.

When you are looking at the qualifications of a profession, for example, to be a professional engineer or a medical doctor, that is under the jurisdiction of the provinces. Can you elaborate a little on that? What kind of study? This is a provincial responsibility that enables one to exercise a profession. I was the vice-president of Professional Engineers Ontario, so I know a little bit about how the professions are regulated in this country, which is a provincial responsibility.

Can you elaborate a little bit on this recommendation?

[Ida Kamariza]

In fact, training is a provincial jurisdiction, I know, but there is a lot of collaboration between the provinces, the territories and the federal government regarding immigration. That has been expressed quite clearly in everything I quoted up till now. As for the Express Entry system, I can quote a few words from the 2014 Economic Action Plan. It states that:

The Expression of Interest system would allow the Government of Canada, provinces and territories, and employers to actively target highly skilled immigrants [...]

As you can see, the provinces have a big role to play.

The plan then says:

In the future, the government will explore with provinces, territories and employers approaches to developing a pool of skilled workers who are ready to begin employment in Canada.

So we see that there are possibilities. The federal government, which has linguistic obligations to francophone minority communities, could work with the provinces in the context of these collaborations we were referring to, and try to see how to encourage francophone immigration. Of course, if the francophone communities were involved in that process, it would be even better.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

For example, with the engineering profession, the Province of Quebec made an agreement with France. There is no problem in recognizing the qualifications.

I'm just telling you that it is a provincial responsibility to establish and to be able to exercise a profession.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

We'll now go to Monsieur Nicholls briefly because we're running out of time.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Ms. Kamariza, I have some fairly simple questions.

How much money do you receive from the federal government? Does it meet all of your needs, given that you have a lot of services to deliver? Is it sufficient?

[Ida Kamariza]

Thank you for the question.

We are very thankful for the support we receive from the federal government, but there is room for improvement. As I said in my presentation, in light of the amounts we receive, we cannot offer the programs that are available in the majority community in francophone communities .

Moreover, when we submit requests to offer these programs in francophone communities, the numbers are used to turn down our submissions, and we are told that the numbers do not justify this. It is as though the francophone specificity was forgotten. Since these programs are not available in francophone communities, the immigrants go and get them where they are offered, in a language they do not always understand well. That is a slippery slope toward assimilation, because the immigrants go there and sometimes they stay there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Fine.

I thank our witnesses for their testimony.

Ms. St-Denis wants to table a notice of motion so that the committee can discuss it on Thursday.

[Lise St-Denis, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

We had tabled a notice of motion for Thursday. I won't table it again today. I am going to reword it and you will receive a different version.

This concerns the report of the committee Mr. Gravelle sat on just before the last general elections. There was a complete report from the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. I did not know this when I presented the motion. I just wanted to inform you that a report existed and that the government had never replied to it, because the elections came up and the report went unheeded. Nevertheless, it contains 21 recommendations .

I simply wanted to inform you that I will be tabling a motion in that regard on Thursday.

[The Chair, Conservative, Michael Chong]

Madame St-Denis has given us notice of a motion that we will discuss and vote on Thursday to receive the study and the testimony of the 2010 immigration study that this committee undertook. We can debate that and vote on it on Thursday.

Thank you for that notice of motion.

Thank you to our witnesses.

This meeting is adjourned.