Mr. Speaker, we know the immigration system is broken and that it needs to be fixed. We also know we have a serious problem when 925,000 applicants are in the backlog. Unfortunately, the direction in which the government is heading is the wrong direction.
I first want to tell the House why there is a problem. During the immigration committee hearings, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business came before us and said that there was a complete mismatch of the people coming into the country and the kind of skills that we need. It said that at least 42% of our immigrants needed to be skilled in the technical category. However, when we look at the number of immigrants coming to Canada with skills in that category we see that only 19% of them were in that category.
If we look at professional and managerial occupations, it accounts for only 8% of the labour shortage and yet 74% of the immigrants coming into this country have that skill set. We are bringing in a lot of people whose skills are mismatched with what we need.
Instead of doing what the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is doing, we need to set up a system where we bring in the skills that Canada needs, rather than what is happening now.
Recently, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration said:
We said publicly it isn't our intention for the bill to negatively impact on family reunification but I can't categorically say it won't. What I can say is that I won't.
The minister is saying that if she remains the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration she will not do anything to harm family reunification. However, the bill in front of us would allow any minister to change the category so much that a lot of families will not be united in Canada.
We understand that we need to find people who come to Canada with the skills we need. We can look at the kind of system Australia has and the number of immigrants entering that country. Its work rate is 81%, which means that unemployment for immigrants has dropped. For the families entering the country, 69% of them have decent jobs.
In Canada, however, only 60% of our immigrants have the kind of jobs for which they have the skills and only 60% of them are employed. For families, it is only 39%, which means that we have a lot of unemployed immigrants in this country because they do not have the kind of skills this country needs.
How did Australia manage to increase the employability of its immigrants? It transferred the onshore processing of most of the applications and it changed its point system. It frequently updates tracking for occupations in demand and it gives points for immigrants who have families in Australia, which is divided into four main categories: skilled labour, family, business and humanitarian.
As a general rule, it only takes 6 to 18 months maximum for immigrants and their families to get into Australia. It has a processing centre called Adelaide Skilled Processing Centre that looks at the skills Australia needs and then it gives points accordingly.
In Canada, we have a human capital model that was brought in by the previous government in 2002. It points to immigrants according to the kind of education level they have, not necessarily the kind of skills that we need in Canada.
Australia has a very centralized processing system that looks at best practices around the world. It also has electronic filing. Last night I went on its website and looked at its immigration section. Its e-filing is incredible. If people want a visa, whether they are a visitor or skilled labour, they can file online. They can also check online what is happening with their applications, how long they must wait and what kind of documents they need.
We have no e-filing in Canada. Half the time, a lot of people who have been waiting to come into this country go to the office of a member of Parliament, so we all become immigration officers. We send faxes and e-mails to visa offices asking for status updates. It is like a make work situation, whereas Australia has an e-file system where people can go online and find out what is happening with their applications.
One can just imagine the resources, the efficiency and how effective it would be to have that kind of system. The former Liberal government, five or six years ago, agreed that we needed to move immigration filing online and wanted to contract a company to do so. However, that did not work.
The Conservative government, instead of investing in technology, best practices and in a skills centre to update skills, it has put it all in the hands of one person, the minister. The minister will make decisions, based on what criteria we do not know. How will it speed up the situation if the department does not have the infrastructure?
To make this worse, the immigration section of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration has had a reduction of 32% in its budget between 2008 and the coming year. How will everything be fast-tracked if we do not have the electronic capacity, a decent website and a skills centre to test what kind of skills we need in this country? We do not even have cost effective quality control in terms of caseloads.
On top of that, if a visitor's visa is being denied, there is no appeal process. People would need to go to their member of Parliament who would then need to go to the minister and ask the minister to please allow the person into the country to attend, let us say, a funeral. In Australia, within 28 days people can have an appeal tribunal so that all the decisions are based on law and fact rather than sometimes inconsistent applications of the law.
We have so much that is wrong in our immigration system. We can do a lot in terms of changing our point system, having the electronic capacity to streamline, work with the visa offices, train the staff better, give the right resources and give the right targets.
However, what the government is doing is it is centralizing the sweeping powers in one person's hands, making the minister above the law. Parliament would not have any say over how to reform our immigration department. That is really a shame because we can study the situation and improve on it. Instead, we are going in the wrong direction.