Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration being here. He knows I feel passionate about the provincial nominee program, and we had a chance to talk about it a little bit earlier today. I did not quite realize it was coming up again this afternoon.
Having said that, I do want to take the opportunity to share with the minister a very strong passion for this particular program.
The Province of Manitoba was very quick to act. It was actually a former premier, Gary Filmon, who entered into an agreement quite quickly after Mr. Chrétien introduced the program, which really allowed Manitoba to get involved in a very serious fashion with the nominee program.
During the nineties, immigration numbers in Manitoba were around 3,500, and through the provincial nominee program, our immigration numbers exploded to the degree in which we were receiving 13,000 or 14,000. Without the provincial nominee program, that just would never have taken place. To that end, when I am speaking in my home community in Manitoba, I often talk about just how wonderful that particular program is.
That is where my passion comes, because I have seen the benefits of the provincial nominee program for my province, and as immigration critic, I do see great value for other provinces. I can appreciate the need to look at how different provinces ultimately utilize the program. I have recognized for many years that different provinces have different ways of processing nominees.
It does have an impact abroad. The Philippines was Manitoba's number one source of immigrants. Today it is our number one source of immigrants for Canada as a whole. It is not just the Philippines. One could look at India and other countries.
We are looking at different provinces and individual nominee programs, because there is so much variation. I do believe there will be a lot more pull from different provinces. Some provinces want to have a larger number. Ontario, for example, based on its population, is entitled to a much larger number of nominee certificates, and I acknowledge that up front.
Other provinces really want to further develop the program so that they could enrich their populations with the type of skilled workers they want to see brought into their province.
I am hoping we will see the benefits of the program overall. There is a need for Ottawa to have some sort of review of the program with the idea of how we can ensure there is more harmony among different provinces and more consistency within the development of the program, and a need to just plan it for the next number of years, believing we will have the nominee program for many years to come.
I would be very much interested in the parliamentary secretary's response to my statement.