Official Languages Committee on March 28th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Mr. Généreux, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you for being with us, Minister.

You could potentially exercise a form of positive discrimination in francophone immigration under section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Is that correct?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I have a different philosophical view of section 1 of the charter. I would never want to seek out to use...

Referring to “positive discrimination”, do mean an act of the state that it's positively interfering, or something that has a positive consequence?

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I mean an intervention in response to our inability to reach our target in recent years. I was here in 2009, and the target was 4.4% at the time.

Do you think it would be possible to exercise a form of positive discrimination to ensure we reach the 4.4% target?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We need to make deliberate decisions that will help us increase the number of francophone newcomers. I don't think it will become a charter argument until we go so far as to violate another person's charter rights.

Doing something positive for one group doesn't necessarily equate to discrimination of another in my opinion.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

The problem is that we never reach the target. Even though we've included targets in statutes, they've never been met to date.

You've received a letter from some CEGEP students in regional Quebec who want to meet you. I very much hope you'll participate. CEGEP students from Reunion Island, for example, are required to undergo biometric tests before coming to Canada, but those tests aren't available on Reunion Island. Consequently, the students have to take an 11‑hour flight to Paris to undergo them. Imagine the cost associated with that.

Couldn't IRCC employees travel to Reunion Island with the equipment they need to conduct the tests?

I'm going to make a suggestion. I organize passport workshops in my riding. Could we offer those kinds of workshops to foreign students wanting to enrol in CEGEPs? The process is extremely costly for those wishing to study in Quebec.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Certainly, with different locations around.... With less than 15 seconds, it's hard to answer.

These kinds of solutions are possible. What would be really helpful for me is for the committee to identify specific strategies. I have confidence we can hit the goal for next year. I really do. I think we might be able to outperform it—

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Minister.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

—and I look forward to other suggestions from the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

Thank you, Minister. I apologize for interrupting.

Mr. Iacono, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Minister, you've really kept your word. Hats off to you.

We sat together on the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities six years ago, and you were on my right. I was very impressed by your size, and you told me you were very impressed by my French. You added that you were going to learn French, and you did. I congratulate you because you've made considerable progress. It's quite difficult to speak French, and I know it takes a little more time. You're nevertheless able to get your message across.

Feel free to answer my questions in English, if that lets you say more.

Minister, according to the numbers that members of your department sent us today, 29,000 French-speaking permanent residents were admitted to Quebec in 2021.

Would you please tell us how the provinces, particularly Quebec, are included in the process of admitting francophone immigrants?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you for your comment. I still study French every week.

The situation is the same in Quebec as in other provinces. Canada and Quebec have entered into an agreement, the Canada–Québec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens, under which the province is responsible for providing language training to permanent residents to promote their immigration into Quebec.

Moreover, they're required to offer similar levels of service that are available elsewhere in the country.

In the rest of Canada, we work directly with settlement agencies, because it's an area of federal jurisdiction. But for a whole host of very good reasons, the circumstances are different for Quebec. We work with those settlement agencies. We fund them directly, rather than going through provincial governments.

At the end of the day, the quality of the services should be very similar in what is being offered. In Quebec, though, we do it under a separate agreement, where we transfer the money and Quebec makes decisions for the integration of newcomers in its province.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

How do you think you can do more to support Quebec in the admission process?

What else can be done to encourage and maintain high rates of francophone immigration to Quebec?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

In Quebec I would differentiate between temporary and permanent immigration streams. On permanent immigration streams, this is really something where Quebec will have to determine its own fate. Frankly, from my conversations with Minister Boulet, I think they would prefer to have that authority. They have the ability to essentially have their share of the Canadian population, plus 5%, to protect against the potential for immigration to erode their demographic weight over time.

On the temporary programs, I think there are measures that we're working on together to see if we can allow them to get access to people who can come here more quickly. Whether we are looking at people who are coming to work or whether we can continue to work to overcome some of the challenges that have been identified over international students who come from particular jurisdictions, those are the very precise kinds of things that we do have conversations about.

We're going to continue to work in partnership to allow them to meet their immigration goals. From Ottawa, I'm not going to tell them what those goals should be.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Minister, in 2020 and 2021, IRCC established a temporary resident to permanent resident pathway program for individuals who had obtained temporary resident status. By the time the program closed, 4,700 international francophone students who had recently graduated had filed applications.

Would you please tell us how many of those applications came from students residing in Quebec?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I'll have to get the specific number after the meeting. I can't remember it off the from of my mind, but perhaps we'll send that to the committee, if there's interest in the TR to PR program, after today's meeting.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Minister.

Mr. Chair, do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

You have 15 seconds left.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Then I'll stop here.

[The Chair, Liberal, René Arseneault]

All right.

Mr. Beaulieu, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

We've been talking about African countries, but there's one francophone country in America: Haiti. In my riding alone, there are 49 cases of people from Haiti seeking assistance, particularly for family reunification. Their cases have been stalled since 2017, 2018 for 2019.

Considering the extreme violence in Haiti, don't you think it would be a good idea to focus your efforts on that country and to allow the visa office to keep more regular hours?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

With regard to the hours of these offices, that has been a real challenge over the course of the pandemic, frankly.

Just to be clear, we have essentially three different categories of immigration in Canada—economic immigration, family reunification and humanitarian. It's really under the humanitarian stream that we look at the country conditions where a person is particularly vulnerable.

Sorry. You wanted to...?

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

Would it be possible to focus efforts on Haiti?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

There's an interpretation problem.

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

Perhaps I'll—