Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, committee members, for engaging on this important matter. It's very encouraging to see everyone talking about talent, how to attract the best talent and retain and develop it.
My name is Martin Basiri. I came to Canada from Iran in 2010 to study at the University of Waterloo for my master's in engineering. I loved it here, so I brought my brothers, Meti and Massi, here to also study as international students. A couple of years later, exactly seven years ago today, we started ApplyBoard, the largest online platform on planet Earth to help international students go to Canada, the United States, the U.K. and Australia.
ApplyBoard is one of the fastest-growing companies in Canada and in the world. So far, we have helped over 300,000 students from 130 countries. We have about 1,500 staff globally, with almost 1,000 of them here in Canada.
I would like to make a couple of very important remarks. As the CEO of a tech company and someone who has worked with tens of thousands of talented people who come to Canada and other countries, seeing the immigration policies of other countries, I think these remarks can bring another point of view to the committee.
As you know, right now in Canada and other western countries, the talent shortage is a very big problem. In Canada especially, we have over one million jobs open, but we don't have enough people for these jobs. A lot of companies' growth is capped because of the talent shortage. From coast to coast, you can go to any type of business, from the highest grade tech companies to grocery stores, and they will have a talent shortage. What's the solution for that?
I believe Canada has the best immigration system in the whole world. There are three to four programs that are very targeted to solve this talent shortage problem. One of them is visas: the study permit, the student visa, the work visa, the skilled worker permanent residency and the start-up visa. By the way, I got my permanent residency through a start-up visa and was able to stay here in Canada and, along with my brothers, build our company.
These programs, by policy, are the best in the whole world, but other countries are catching up, and they're trying to attract the best talent. These days talent can go to any country in the world. If you are the best developer, you can go to almost any country, from Singapore to the UAE, to France, Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K. and Sweden. It's no longer only countries like Canada or the United States that benefit from inbound immigration and attracting the best talent.
We need to continue to invest in our immigration, especially the systems and the policy, to make sure that it's the most seamless. If you are a top talent, if you are a top developer, if you are a good doctor or if you are a good nurse, you can literally go anywhere. Everywhere you go, they want you. We are in a global village right now, and you want to have the best and most seamless system.
Our immigration system right now, even though it has a very good policy, has a lot of things we need to continue to invest in. One of them is the predictability of time. If someone wants to come to Canada, and at the first moment, they are.... Basically, instead of waiting for months, they need to deal with two years of waiting. These people, even if they come to Canada, don't have the confidence that they can apply for their permanent residency after that, because they don't know how long it takes. They don't know how long it will take to bring their family, wife, husband or partner here. Speed and reliability in terms of predictability are very important.
The other thing is that we have a huge labour market. We have data. We know in real time exactly what job openings there are and which jobs are having a hard time being filled, though we don't steer our study permits and skilled workers in real time to these programs. We know, for example, what jobs they need filled in literally every single town in this country.
We need our skilled worker and study permits to be more aligned with the labour market, so that as we bring in the talent.... It's better for the students, because they can study what the market needs and find jobs, rather than come here, study something and be hit with the reality that they should have studied something else.
The second piece is government funding—