Debates of April 29th, 2013

Citizenship and Immigration

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for the story he tells of how his family got here. I agree with him that if we were to look on either side of the House, many of us have those stories.

I arrived in Canada in 1975 to the beautiful province of Quebec, when there was a shortage of English teachers in Quebec. They came to England and my husband and I both happened to be English teachers, so we came to Canada that way. When we came to Canada we fell in love with it and decided to make it our home. A home is where we can have our families with us. If we cannot have our families with us, we are just guests.

Recently, what I have heard more and more is about getting cheap labour in, brought in for two years to do the work, at less pay, then shipped out and another batch of temporary foreign workers brought in. Those are the conversations I have heard. We let them do the work and let them go away. That is not how we build a nation. That is not how we build our communities. That is not the Canada I love.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want my colleague to share her opinion on a rather important issue so that she can shed some light on the contradictions in the government's talking points.

On one hand, the government is saying that there are long wait times, that the immigration system is in critical need of reform and that new programs need to be created because the current system is not working. On the other hand, the government is cutting aid to immigrants and shutting down embassies like the office in Buffalo, for example. There are some real contradictions there.

The parliamentary secretary just said that the system needs to be reformed because wait times are too long. However, another parliamentary secretary will say that, unfortunately, we need to find cost savings and that the only option is to cut resources.

Could my colleague comment on these contradictions?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her question because I know that in Quebec, specifically in the Montreal area, they have experienced these contradictions that are having a real impact on communities. We have a government that keeps saying it is reducing backlogs and doing wonderful things in immigration, but it has actually closed more centres than any other government. It has also reduced, so that in many cases, for example, the files out of Buffalo, some of the boxes remained unopened. Some people's medicals ran out and they were left sitting in limbo not even knowing where their files were.

We hear that around the world the CIC centres are experiencing more and more pressure because of the workload. Here in Canada with the closures on Vancouver Island, it has meant that the Vancouver office is inundated. That is happening right across this country.

In northern Ontario, people now have to travel for days, hours and hours and by the way, it is days when we think about flights, yet the government keeps saying it is fixing things. I believe the government has no interest in fixing the problems in immigration. What it has an interest in is divisive politics and pitching communities against each other and making cosmetic moves in order to get hits in the media.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation]

Mr. Speaker, from what my colleague has said in the House today, what she is really saying is that the government has done such a fabulous job of managing the economy, that everyone wants to come to Canada. It is true. People around the world want to come to Canada because they see it as a country that is prospering under this government. We have done an amazing job managing the economy. What the member is also saying is that there should be free everything for everybody who wants to come into the country.

I wonder what part of due diligence the member sees as the responsibility of the government to ensure first of all, that we are able to manage our economy, to manage the services for Canadians who are here and yet still have the warm and open arms that we have to so many people who do come to Canada. We want to see families reunited. We are providing those services for people around the world to come to Canada, but there are proper processes that people need to go through. I wonder if the member could comment on due diligence that is the responsibility of the government to provide.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the government absolutely has the responsibility for due diligence and at no time have we said everyone should come here for free, let us open the doors and let everyone in. That is the kind of exaggeration that undermines the serious debate we are having here today.

We are talking about family reunification. Family reunification is an economic benefit. There is all kinds of evidence for that. This is a nation that has been built by immigrants. Our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents came to this country. What really upsets me is the idea that no matter what barriers we put up, what kind of doors we have shut, delete buttons we have hit, there is this delusional image that somehow we are doing some great things. That is what the government has. I want the government to meet some of the people I meet with, who tell me that this does not feel like their Canada any more. That is the voice of many new people who have arrived in this country.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to add my voice to that of the member for Newton—North Delta in saying that, contrary to some of the examples the parliamentary secretary brought up a moment ago, we are seeing repeatedly quite arbitrary, rapid decisions to deny family members the opportunity to come to Canada for weddings, for funerals, for key family events. It defies any logic.

These people in their applications asking for family members to visit have made it clear that family members have jobs in their home country, have other family and have no intention of staying in Canada. They merely want to come to Canada for a visit to see their relatives. I do not understand the heartlessness behind these decisions.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I agree, Mr. Speaker, it is heartless. As a member of Parliament sitting in one of the most august bodies in this country, I am heartbroken when I listen to my constituents' stories and the government tells us the number of temporary resident visas that are being denied. It is just not nice.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Before we resume debate it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Cape Breton—Canso, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada; the hon. member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, Employment Insurance; and the hon. member for Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, Food Safety.

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Vancouver Centre.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this issue today because there has been a huge increase in the number of people in my riding of Vancouver Centre seeking to make their way through this massive backlog and these terrible rules. There are now four times the number of people in my riding in this situation. People are coming from other ridings because representatives elsewhere do not want to meet with them, discuss the issues or help them. My riding is the catch-all, so I can personally talk about the number of people suffering as a result of some of these problems.

We have heard everyone in the House talk about visitor visas. Many people come here to visit their families, and they are usually parents or grandparents. They want to come in a hurry, because quite often they are coming to help with births. Perhaps their daughter is giving birth and they need to be there with her, or they are coming for a funeral or to be with someone who is critically ill and may or may not survive. In order for them to get here on time for some of these things, the process has to be quick.

Constituents come begging and pleading, asking what we can do to help them. Some people have finally been able to come long after the person has died or long after the birth of a child. For things like funerals, weddings, et cetera, there is a problem. All of us have families. Most of us belong to some kind of family group, and we know of the importance and relevance of these kinds of events in our lives.

Often when young couples come here, they are separated from their families and are in a strange new country. For daughters giving birth to a child or going through the last part of a pregnancy, having their mothers or grandmothers with them is extremely important. Families being able to get here in time helps young people psychologically. We know that the ability of people to survive illnesses or other kinds of events depends on being comfortable and knowing they have someone to support them. We know how important it is for young moms to have family present at the births of their babies, as they are scared and do not have a clue about what is happening and need both cultural and physical support to be there.

This is a problem. It is a problem that used to exist many years ago. Everyone knew that the backlog was increasing and that it was taking longer and longer to deal with visas, but quite often a minister would intervene when he or she noticed that people needed to come here quickly because of a death, a serious illness, the imminent birth of a child or something else that could not be postponed. The minister would often give that kind of ministerial okay. In many instances, the ability to get a visitor's visa was cleared up because we had ministers who had a hands-on approach and did not listen only to their own parties.

Everyone in the House knows that they have come to ministers before, and I am not speaking only of the last Liberal government but of the government of Prime Minister Mulroney before that. There was an ability to understand the human condition.

The current government is quick to intervene if it thinks there is a problem, but it jumps in feet first. It does not look at what the outcomes would be or the unintended consequences. It just jumps in and does a quick fix. We have seen that happen before.

With regard to the backlog, the minister issued his ministerial instructions, one, two and three, and it made everything worse. If we look, for instance, at the skilled worker program, there is a backlog because the minister intervened with some brilliant initiative, or one that was considered to be brilliant. There are now 140,000 more people in the backlog.

The answer, of course, to quickly fix a problem that was not well thought out in the first place is to then do a chop and get rid of it. The idea was to do a quick fix, a silver bullet.

However, the silver bullet only made matters worse. If there are 140,000 skilled workers in the backlog, what is the answer? The answer is to get rid of the backlog by telling people they cannot come—just eliminate it, make it disappear.

It reminds of playing peek-a-boo with little kids. They think that because they cannot see me, I cannot see them. They have the ability to pretend that something will go away if they do not notice it too much or if they pretend it is not there; it will automatically go away because the minister waves a magic wand.

This is the kind of thing we are seeing. It is not only in skilled worker programs that we are seeing backlogs. It is not happening only in the backlogs of getting, in a timely manner, visitor's visas to come for important family occasions. I am not talking about coming for a holiday, but about important family occasions, although a visitor's visa to come for a holiday, spend some time with family and spend some money in the country is a good thing. However, we have seen our tourism rates dropping remarkably because people cannot get here and spend money in the economy and do things. As a nation like Canada, we need to have tourists come in. That is another story, and we will not get into that one.

I wanted to talk about this quick fix that has caused some of the problems we are talking about today.

We have a minister who decides that he has all the answers, jumps on them and does not consult with anyone. When I say “consult”, I do not just mean consulting with the people he knows and with people who support his initiatives in the first place. Consulting broadly with Canadians is a time-honoured thing that immigration ministers used to do. They would actually go and sit down, shut up and listen to what people were telling them. They would listen to some creative ideas about resolving some of the problems we face with immigration backlogs and other problems such as foreign skilled workers, temporary foreign workers, et cetera. They would listen and try to make the situation better, because sometimes provinces and local communities on the ground had answers. People had ways of finding answers to some of the problems.

That does not happen anymore.

The minister knows what to do. The minister always knows what to do, but we have a problem with the minister who, to prevent a backlog, created an even bigger backlog, and then, to ensure it would go away, just said he did not want these people in the backlog anymore. In other words, if he put his hands over his eyes and said no, everything would disappear.

We have seen that time and again. We have seen it with the temporary foreign worker program. That program existed for a very long time, and it was there in order to do two things.

One was to find a worker when we could not find a Canadian with the skills, ability or knowledge to fill that job. That was when we got in a temporary foreign worker. Otherwise, it was for jobs that Canadians did not want to do, for whatever reasons.

As a result, there was a temporary foreign worker program that brought in people to fill these jobs, and they filled them, but those workers also had the ability to stay. It was found that after a while, the temporary foreign workers were coming here back and forth, either for seasonal programs in the agricultural sector or in other sectors. In Vancouver, for example, in the construction sector in 2010 when we were trying to develop a new system of rapid transit between our Vancouver airport into downtown, we had people coming from Costa Rica and other places because they were able to do the work. We did not even have the ability to use the machinery, and they were able to do so.

In other words, we need people to come. That is a good thing. Let us make that happen.

Let us make it happen on a level playing field, though. I heard the minister say today, in an answer in question period, that it would be 15% and no more. Fifteen per cent is a massive amount of money. However, we saw in Vancouver, during the building of our rapid transit for 2010, that people were being paid half the amount of other people, even though they had the same skills.

We have a government that turns a blind eye. It watches a program that has worked for a long time; then it decides it wants to find a better way to fill the skilled labour shortage because of the backlog and the fact that it had not done any of the work needed to get skilled workers to come into this country to work at the jobs they are trained to do. It was a massive loss of skilled workers that we could have had. We all know of the doctors driving taxis and the neurosurgeon who is using a backhoe somewhere, trying to help somebody do construction work.

The current minister is not looking at what other governments have done. It is interesting that governments have tended to build on good things that other governments have done. They built on them and created something new, but they did not demolish; the current government seeks to demolish anything that was put in place before it came to power.

The minister decided he wanted a lot of temporary workers. The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development met with businesses and said if they wanted to get people in, they could go up to 15% lower in the rate and they did not even have to give the government reasons, as they used to be required to do. People used to have to show that a Canadian could not fill the job. People used to have to show that they had sent out applications, that they had advertised a job and that either they could not find somebody with the skills or they could not find anybody who wanted to take the job. That was when the temporary foreign skilled workers came in.

What we have now is that the both the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and the Minister of Immigration intervened, and they created a mess. Now we have temporary foreign workers coming in because businesses can pay them less, and they are taking Canadian jobs that Canadians had the skills to do and wanted to do.

Just as we see the minister caused a problem with the backlog of 140,000 in the skilled worker program and then pretended that the only way to get rid of it was to cancel it with a pen on a piece of paper, now we have a government that created the problem with the temporary foreign workers. It made a huge mess of it, and when people began to scream and yell, it suddenly arrived like a knight in shining armour and pretended to fix the problem it had caused.

If I were not so despairing of some of the things that go on with the government, I would find it amusing, because it is so incompetent. It is such an example of profound incompetence, a sense of "I know what I am doing" and of omnipotence when the government goes ahead, causes a problem, and then, when the problem hits it in the face, pretends that it has just solved the problem by going back to what used to be.

We heard about the temporary foreign worker program, which is what it used to be based on. Who changed it? The Conservative government changed it. Now it is going back to what worked. It seems like such a waste of time. It is not just a waste of time, it is a waste of human resources and of people who try to come to this country. These people are bent on a hope that they can get a job and that if they come and work three years as a temporary foreign worker, they will learn the language, they will learn some skills and learn about how the workplace in Canada works. Then, they can apply to become an immigrant in this country. They can apply to become a landed immigrant and to be able to bring their families and to build a nation.

We only talk about workers. The government has taken the whole immigration program and turned it into a workforce only program. When we look at the grandparents and the parents who are now waiting two years before they can come to this country to be with their families, family reunification is a huge part of building a family and building a nation.

It used to be that we saw immigration, and even refugees, as people who came to this country looking for the kinds of things that we were proud that Canada had to offer, such as economic opportunity and the ability to escape some sort of aggression or discrimination in the home country. Canada even went above and beyond the United Nations' refugee rules and set up its own rules to bring in women who were at risk of discrimination in their own countries and to bring in people who were refugees that did not meet the usual categories, because we understood their need to come to this country and build a new life.

It is interesting. As many of us came to this country as immigrants, as soon as we came to Canada, we put our roots down, we began to have families, we began to bring our parents and grandparents and we began to build our extended families who were born here and which most of us enjoy. Immigrants need that extended family.

We decided to put down roots, and when we put down roots, what we do is suddenly have a stake in Canada. What is good for Canada is good for us and our families and what is good for us and our families is good for Canada. Suddenly, we start working together to build a better country and a better nation.

This is what immigration used to be about. We now see that it is not about that anymore. Uniting families is something that people do not seem to think about. It is as if the people on that side of the House are out of touch with reality. They are out of touch with real people and real Canadians and what they suffer.

With many immigrant families who come here, both of them are working. They are working two jobs and trying to make ends meet. They are trying to build something. We have seen how successful Canada has been with that.

By the second generation, we have seen immigrants suddenly become wealthy, putting a stake in our country, creating jobs, building our nation, strengthening it, integrating themselves into the economic, social, political and cultural life of our country, being creators, actors, writers, business people, strong families and building strong citizens within their families and those of their children.

We used to be proud of that. We were number one in the world in terms of how people came here and settled, and not only settled with the ability to say that they were in Canada and now they could be Canadians, but also being told that they should also remember where they came from, their language, culture and roots, that in fact that enriched our nation.

When I was minister for multiculturalism, in 1997 we had asked for a research paper to be done on how immigrants were benefiting the country and how immigrants where integrating. We found that in fact by encouraging immigrants to come and to maintain a sense of identity with where they came from, while at the same time becoming strong Canadians, obeying the laws and looking at the values of Canada, we suddenly had a massive advantage as a trading nation.

The Conference Board showed us this advantage in 1997. As a trading nation, we depend on trade for 45% of our gross domestic product. We were able to go to countries from which all of immigrants came, taking with them their understanding of the language, culture and marketplace. We had the ability to trade with other countries in a sensitive manner.

That is how Canada opened up to China. That is why we are doing so much trade with India. That is why we see people from other nations coming here and bringing the gift of that ability to increase our trade to us. Then Prime Minister Chrétien, as soon as that report came out, started his trade missions, bringing first and second-generation immigrants with him as he tried to lead trade with all the countries we had never traded with before.

Immigration was about that. This idea is gone. Immigrants are people we want to bring in to use them and discard them when we do not need them anymore. The idea of nation building is not as strong as it was. The idea of nation building is laughed at. It is seen as some sort of joke.

Young couples working hard would want their grandparents to come. They do not have the ability to get a national child care program going. They need to have their grandma or their mother looking after their kids at home, so they can work and contribute to the economy.

It is this kind of ability to understand how things link and integrate with each other to form a society, whether that society is economically productive or not. The government does not seem to get that.

What the government is doing is intervening, as it has done in looking at the backlog, creating an even worse backlog. It continues to create problems because of a lack of in-depth understanding, an inability to consult with people and find some answers from a broadbase of Canadians and not simply from its friends and colleagues who agree with it.

If we keep talking to ourselves all the time, creativity and innovation will never occur, solutions to problems that have been dogging us will not occur. The government does not seem to understand that. It continues to make its decisions from within. It continues to make decisions that make matters worse.

Then, when the problem explodes in everyone's face and the public suddenly realizes there is a problem, we suddenly see ministers scurrying about and going right back to the old ways in order to say that they have fixed it. It is a farce and it is a joke. It shows the incompetence of the government. Spin is great, having one-liners is great and sitting there and reading their answers in question period is great when it does not seem to get or understand the complexity of the situations we face.

The whole issue of backlogs and of temporary foreign workers is only one small example of how we have become a nation that many of us do not recognize anymore. I hear this every day, not only in my riding but across the country.

People who are Canadians and who have been Canadians, who are immigrants, new and old, are all saying that they do not recognize Canada anymore. They do not know who we are or what we are doing. They desperately want their old Canada back.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Cooperation]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague and her comments, but her facts are somewhat seen through rose-coloured lenses.

When this government was elected in 2006, we inherited a backlog of some 900,000 files from her government. She said that her government had fixed the problem.

I wonder if the member could tell the House what mechanisms her government used to construct a system that was supposed to be so well put together, because 900,000 files seems like an enormous number of files to let languish and not address. Could the member speak a little to how her government acquired 900,000 files with which it did not deal?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question is just another example of how the government does not understand the complexity of the issue.

Under Conservative and Liberal governments there have been backlogs. Backlogs are a problem and everyone has been trying to find ways to resolve them. Ministers travelled across the country and met with communities and a lot of experts on immigration. They tried to find ways to fix the problem.

What the hon. member does not know is that in 2004-05 the prime minister gave me the role of dealing with all the internationally trained workers who could not find work here. The minister of immigration at the time was beginning to develop policies on what he heard when he travelled across the country about ways to deal with the backlogs. This was beginning to happen but we lost the election and the Conservatives took over. They say that they are fixing the problem, but we have a bigger backlog. Not only that, people cannot get their parents and grandparents here to spend time with them and/or live here and help them out.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver Centre has an incredibly deep understanding of the issue and the ability to communicate it very effectively. Given her experience, we should be taking her advice.

I particularly agree with her notion that nation-building includes family reunification. Parents and grandparents are very much a part of the family unit. They are more than an emotional or sentimental part. They are an economic part of the family unit.

I wonder if the member could give the House her thoughts about the super visa. I get so many complaints about super visas, which is another bit of spin the government uses. They really are not available to many people because of the cost of the insurance that has to be purchased, thousands of dollars I understand, particularly with respect to older parents who want to visit for the two year super visa period. Could my friend from Vancouver Centre comment on that?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that was an important question. The concept of the super visa is an exclusionary concept. The super visa is for people who can afford to pay for it.

Many immigrants come to our country without much money. When I came here, I had a medical degree, but my husband and I came with $200 in our pockets. I happen to know that many of my patients and constituents came here with nothing. They work three jobs. They bus tables, wash dishes and work a day job. They will do anything to help themselves. How will these people find this money? The super visa only allows the kinds of visitors that the government wants to come here, the sort of screened people, the people that we want in our country.

We have become an exclusionary nation. We pick and choose who we want. Immigrants have to come from the right part of the world. They need to have money. They have to do what we want them to do. They have to build a new type of nation, a grand new vision that the Conservative government seems to have in mind. Stopping people who are poor or who do not have much money and cannot afford to pay for these visas is discriminatory. They cannot visit their families nor see their grandchildren grow. They cannot watch their families thrive.

That is all I can say. It is an exclusion. It is a discriminatory kind of thing.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, anyone who has visited Saanich—Gulf Islands will know that it is an extraordinarily beautiful riding, but it is not known for being particularly multicultural or ethnically diverse. Therefore, I find it astonishing that 85% to 90% of the constituency cases that I have relate to immigration matters because the system has become increasingly complex. As the member for Vancouver Centre just said, the system has become increasingly focused on picking and choosing people who are wanted for a commercial basis. We have abandoned family reunification.

I have one constituent whose wife, who came from Australia, had been waiting for quite a long time for her permanent residency. In fact, it was to the point where she was exactly nine months pregnant. Immigration Canada told her she had to get back to Australia. Medically, it was not safe for her to fly at that time.

We hear heart-wrenching, horrible cases all the time, even in my riding which is not particularly ethnically diverse. These cases take up most of my constituency staff's time.

It would be an inefficiency to make this system so extremely arbitrary and so extremely unfriendly to family reunification and to new Canadians who want to live here. I would ask my friend for her comments.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, Vancouver Centre has large new immigrant populations that have been coming from eastern Europe, from parts of Africa, from Latin America, and we see this. I have one staff member in my constituency office and that is all he does. We have watched the number of cases triple and quadruple since the government came to power and most notably within the last three years.

The stories really are heart-rending. Canada is becoming known as a country with no compassion. It used to be that we were a country of compassion. It has become a country in which people feel we are not fair, that we want to keep certain people out and we want to bring certain people in.

I do not think this will not bode well for us as we try to increase trade with certain countries that today are down, but tomorrow will be up. Even if we looked at it from a purely pragmatic and economic point of view, that ability to trade with other countries depends on how they view us.

Do they see us as that kind of gentler nation? Do they see us as that compassionate nation? Why do people want to come here? It was because of the reputation that Canada had as a place where people had opportunity, they could grow and they could be anything they wanted to be. They could bring their families and put down roots. They could be the prime minister, a minister or anything they wanted to be.

This Canada is fast losing that reputation. It is very sad. I came here because I believed in this country, and I am finding myself feeling extremely sad about what is happening.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to participate in the concurrence motion today. As a member of the citizenship and immigration committee, I was there day in and day out participating in the study on the issue of backlogs in our immigration system. It is a problem that started with the Liberal government and has not been dealt with sufficiently by our current Conservative government. The immigration backlog today stands at over one million applications and has increased by 250,000 applications since 2006.

Backlogs leave families in a state of uncertainty and in perpetual limbo. Working as the member of Parliament for Scarborough—Rouge River, I have spoken with many families who have been waiting years and years to have their parents and grandparents join them here in Canada. They have been waiting years for their families to be reunited.

Canada is a country built on immigration. Many of us in the room, including myself, have benefited from the policies that have encouraged families to come together to Canada. My father came first and then he sponsored my mother and my three sisters. We were able to be reunited as a family because of Canada's immigration policies.

The current backlog and inequalities in our immigration system shamefully leave people waiting too long to be reunited with their families. We need to invest in resources that would address the backlog and the inequities. We need to ensure that we are encouraging people to come to Canada, to be a part of their family, to help build our communities in Canada and help our economy grow, especially help the local economic development of our communities.

Canada needs immigration to help build and sustain our economy. However, what we are seeing is a dramatic increase in the number of temporary foreign workers, where workers come to Canada alone without their families, send their wages home and then leave Canada at the end of their contract. To these workers, we are saying they are good enough to come work here, but not good enough to come live here. Then the other situation is where we are seeing many permanent residents of Canada, the cream of the crop in their home countries, who have been invited to come to Canada as permanent residents. They are having difficulty finding work, probably because the government likes to fill the available jobs with temporary foreign workers. We are telling these people who have come to Canada on the permanent residency track that they are good enough to come live here, but not good enough to come work here.

There is a clear problem in the government's response and ideas of immigration. There is a clear split personality disorder happening here with the government. It has shifted its focus from prioritizing permanent resident applications to the temporary foreign worker program, meaning that the applicants in the family class have to actually compete for the very limited processing resources. We heard this from the Citizenship and Immigration Canada officials who came as witnesses in front of our committee.

This shift in the priorities is certainly not helping to reduce the backlog, but rather is helping to increase Canada's backlog. We need to address the inequalities that exist in the system and develop a creative, balanced and equitable approach to dealing with the backlog. This includes possibly raising the overall level of immigration so that we are accepting 1% of our population here in Canada.

In the report from the citizenship and immigration committee, we saw that there were over one million applications in the queue and wait times have reached patently unacceptable levels. On average, we are seeing that, for sponsors who are trying to have their parents reunited with them here in Canada, it could take between 10 and 13 years for a parent or grandparent to be united with their family. Sadly, for multiple cases in Scarborough, for families I have been trying to help, grandparents have passed on before they were able to even come here to meet their grandchildren. Sadly, our immigration system is failing so many Canadians who are just trying to have their families united.

It also means that employers who are seeking to attract skilled workers frequently have to wait between four and seven years. We know that with the changing trends in the labour market and the changing needs of the labour market, if an employer has to wait four to seven years for a worker to be able to fill a job vacancy, that employer is probably not even going to be in business by the time the employee it has sponsored is able to join it in the labour force.

We are seeing live-in caregivers seeking to reunite with their spouses and children wait an average of five years from the date that they complete their obligations under that program.

We heard about spousal applications. At committee we heard the minister and officials from CIC say that is the class of sponsorship that is given the highest priority. Its goal is, from beginning to end, 12 months of processing time. The sad reality is it is taking more than two years to process a spousal application, depending on the country. This situation presents a serious problem for the integrity of Canada's immigration system. Families remain separated. Employers are frustrated. Overall, it is the Canadian economy that continues to suffer.

I would like to talk about some of the changing labour force trends we are seeing in Canada. The statistics I am about to present are from a study done by Statistics Canada called “Projected Trends to 2031 for the Canadian Labour Force” by Laurent Martel, Éric Caron Malenfant, Jean-Dominique Morency, André Lebel, Alain Bélanger and Nicolas Bastien.

The authors have written that in 2010, Canada's labour force was 18.5 million persons. By 2031, it is projected to grow to reach between 20.5 million and 22.5 million people.

The total population aged 15 and over, that is of course the overall labour force participation rate, will fall. The authors say that their share of the labour force is projected to decrease. The participation rate will fall from 67% in 2010 to between 59.7% and 62.6% in 2031. These levels have not been observed since the 1970s.

Furthermore, the authors have said that there will be an increase in the number of labour force participants aged 55 and over. In 2001, approximately 10% of the labour force were aged 55 and over. By 2010, it grew to 17%. By 2021, it will grow to approximately 24%. One out of four people are going to be 55 and over. We know that with the changes to the qualification for old age security and guaranteed income supplement, many of our seniors who would have retired... At the time this report was prepared, that legislation had not come into effect, so the authors took labour force participation to age 65 rather than 67. The numbers will be changing and we will see even more than 24% of our labour force by 2021 being people who are aged 55 to 67.

Furthermore, by 2031, the authors project fewer than three people in the labour force for each person who is 65 and over and who is not in the labour force. These numbers will have to be adjusted for the new changes to the age of 67. That same ratio was close to 5:1 in 2010. These changes show there is going to be an increase in demand for the labour force to be filled. These vacancies in the labour force are not going to be filled by our children, but they can only be filled by immigration.

At committee, Statistics Canada mentioned that CIC projected that within five years, that is 60 months from the time that the report was written, immigration will be responsible for 100% of Canada's new labour market growth needs.

Therefore, the growth we see in the labour market will be filled 100% by higher immigration levels. For that, we need to see our immigration backlogs gone and the timely processing of our applications to maintain our integrity as a country that accepts immigrants and the fact that Canada is still a viable option for immigrants, both skilled and family class, who are coming here to build our country.

Canada has received more applications per year than the federal government chooses to admit to the country. This was told to us in committee by Citizenship and Immigration officials, and I will read a quote from the CIC officials, who said:

CIC strives to process applications in a timely manner, but it is an ongoing challenge for CIC to meet the IRPA objectives simultaneously. Every year, we receive many more applications than can be processed resulting in large backlogs in many categories, which in turn have led to long wait times for applicants.

Even CIC officials know that our applicants are waiting far too long.

The numbers presented to the committee reveal that even a modest increase in the annual number of visas issued would actually go a substantial distance toward successfully addressing the backlogs. Mr. Marc Audet, from Desjardins Trust Inc., provided the committee with statistical information from CIC that showed that, over the last five years, increasing the annual visas issued by 10% from current levels would completely arrest the growth of the backlog. Any increase above that would start to reverse the backlog. The minister and CIC know that, as this is witness testimony in committee.

However, the question is whether an increase in Canada's annual visas issued, or levels, is justified and desirable on economic and social grounds. The evidence is overwhelming that a gradual and prudent increase to annual levels would not only address the backlog, but is essential for our labour market trends. As I mentioned earlier, we need to address the changes in the labour market trends.

Once again, from the study I mentioned earlier, the proportion of foreign-born individuals in the Canadian labour force in 1991 was 18.5%; in 2006, it grew to 21.2%; and by 2031, it will grow to 33% if we maintain our current immigration levels. However, we know that current immigration levels are not sufficient to fill the labour market vacancies that will become available. Therefore, the authors of the study wrote, “Although sustained immigration...could neither prevent the overall participation rate from declining nor lessen the aging of the labour force, it could contribute to labour force growth while also filling various specific labour force needs.”

The experts who wrote this study also suggested that increasing immigration levels would actually help meet the labour force needs in Canada. They mentioned that the size and growth of the labour force over the next two decades are sensitive to two factors: immigration and fertility.

As we know, fertility rates in Canada are declining. The study showed that if Canada were to admit no immigrants over the next two decades, the labour force would actually begin to shrink by 2017. That is just a few short years away. The labour force would be reduced to 17.8 million by 2031 if we were to stop immigration, whereas if we maintained our current levels, we would see our labour force grow to, if I remember correctly, about 33 million by 2031, according to the authors of the study.

Once again, increasing immigration levels is a clear solution that was offered by many witnesses who came to our committee as well as experts in the field of statistics and labour market trends. Also, industry representatives at committee pointed to a significant present and future deficit in the labour supply.

The Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association testified that its members will have 142,000 job vacancies in 2025.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and many building trades affiliate labour unions have publicly stated that they are dependent upon temporary foreign workers because of a shortage of permanent-stream immigrants and skilled Canadians.

We need to stop investing in temporary foreign workers and actually invest in training Canadians to have the skills that are needed to fulfill the labour market needs and to, also, as we accept people to come to Canada, ensure that we are accepting people on a permanent track rather than as temporary foreign workers.

New Democrats have fought strongly against many of the unfair changes made to our immigration system this past year. We know that one solution the minister came up with to reduce the backlog was to hit delete. The minister approved the deletion of 280,000 applications that were in the permanent stream. This is absolutely unfair for the people who were waiting patiently. They were told to wait patiently. They were told to follow the rules. They were constantly told to wait and be patient, follow the rules, that in due time their application would be processed.

Instead, all applications before February 2007 were just deleted and the applicants were told they could have a refund if they wanted, but they needed to reapply if they were still interested in coming to Canada.

It is absolutely unfair to the people who put in an application on time, did their time. They waited throughout that long backlog, that long wait period, to come to Canada and now in my riding the family members of many of these people who are now deleted are writing to me, asking for fairness.

Where is the fairness in this program, in the changes to immigration that the current government and the current minister have put forward? I do not know where the fairness is.

I want to talk briefly about the importance of parents and grandparents. The backlog for parents and grandparents currently sits at about 150,000 applicants. Yet, rather than committing to look for a creative balanced solution to the backlog, the Conservatives have reverted to, of course, their usual strategy: cuts. They have imposed a moratorium on parent and grandparent class sponsorships. We are actually nervous that their temporary try on the moratorium of parent and grandparent class sponsorship might actually lead to permanent quotas, which would mean that too many young children in Canada, too many young Canadian children, are not going to have the benefit of knowing their grandparents.

I was lucky. I had the opportunity to meet my grandparents in Canada. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to meet all of my grandparents, as my paternal grandfather had passed away before he was able to come and visit us here in Canada. However, I had the great pleasure and luxury of knowing my maternal grandparents and my paternal grandmother who lived with us, who I learned from, who I was cultured by. They helped me understand who I am and my roots. My grandmother taught me to cook. Those simple things in life, but also the principles and values of a strong, united family, I learned these values from my grandparents.

Sadly, too many Canadian children are not going to have the luxury of knowing their grandparents if the government continues in its style of not allowing parent and grandparent sponsorships.

There is a family sponsorship case in the Scarborough—Rouge River riding that the MP office has been working on since December 2006, which has been stalled in the medical and background checks for what seems like an inordinate amount of time. The sponsor has been trying to bring his mother to Canada as he would like her to spend her remaining years with him and his children. She is very elderly and is now in need of support from her family at this late stage of her life.

Even though it has been seven years that I have been working with him to try to help expedite the process so that the grandchildren of this woman will be able to have that experience, we have still not been successful. He is bogged down in red tape.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my friend from the NDP talked about family reunification. It is quite remarkable, frankly, that she would talk about family reunification—which is something I agree with, incidentally—juxtaposed with the comments by the member for Willowdale, who said that the government would like to apply the just-in-time approach, turning immigrants into commodities, like parts that have to come from a parts manufacturer, and getting them to the car assembly line just in time to assemble the car. Commodifying immigrants is deadly wrong.

Going back to the point on family reunification, the member knows as well as I that parents and grandparents who come here are more than sentimental parts of a family, more than emotional parts. They are an economic part to a family unit as well, looking after grandchildren so their kids can go to work, or joining in the family business so the business can grow. That is what nation building is all about. I am sure the member's family were nation builders. My family were nation builders. Many immigrants in Guelph were.

Could she talk more about the value of family reunification and the need to take the freeze off family reunification?

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, he is right that commodifying humans is not okay. I come from a business background and just-in-time management might be suitable for widgets and parts, but it is not necessarily the best way forward for humans and not the smartest way of dealing with our immigration system.

Family reunification has been highlighted as a reason for Canada's success in attracting and retaining experienced and highly skilled applicants. It is even supposed to be a core principle of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and yet the Conservative government today wants workers to come to Canada, not families.

We know our grandparents are the ones raising our children. Many people in Scarborough—Rouge River speak to me about the importance of having their mother or father or parents, if they are alive, join them in Canada to help with child rearing. We know the government has refused the NDP's calls for a national child care strategy, which would ensure that both parents could go into the workforce, and yet it does not seem to like that idea either. It is the grandparents who are helping to raise our children. My grandmother helped raised me. She ensured that our local economy was stimulated by both parents working. With both parents working, of course, households have higher levels of income, which means they are stimulating the development of our local economies.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Minister of State (Transport)]

Mr. Speaker, we all have a lot of empathy for people who come from far away and choose Canada as their nation for their future and their children's future. That is because we have many blessings in Canada.

Historically, in the early part of the previous century and the century before that, people would have no way of contacting their relatives back home. Times have changed a lot. We find ourselves in the present situation where there are skill sets that Canada needs and the demand from people wanting to come to Canada far exceeds the capacity for Canada to absorb that many people.

The changes that the immigration minister has made really reflect the modern-day reality of immigration and allow Canada to select professions and immigrants who best match our workplace needs as a society, allowing for other things as well as family reunification. Surely the immigration system should be designed to create a stronger, better Canada, and that is exactly what the immigration minister has done.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my response to the comment from the Minister of State (Transport) is that all of us in Canada, except for aboriginal peoples, are immigrants. I may be first generation Canadian, she may be second generation, he may be third or seventh generation, but all of us in Canada, except for our aboriginal peoples, are immigrants or have the lineage of an immigrant.

In that respect, I agree with the minister in saying that the immigrants who came to Canada a century ago may have had difficulties communicating with their families abroad because the technologies were not available. However, if the minister is implying that, because Internet is now available and we can have Skype chats with family members abroad, juxtaposed, that should counter the need for immigration and for families to be truly united in a space, I truly do not know how to respond to that type of comment. There are so many parts of this world that are war-stricken or just do not have the capacity for broadband or do not have the capacity for a voice chat. There is a huge difference in the quality of life between reading a letter or having a phone conversation with somebody and being able to feel the embrace of a grandparent or parent.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her passionate speech, and I join with her to say that I, too, am an immigrant and proud to be Canadian.

I will talk about my particular case. When I came to Canada, I was a doctor by training, but I had to retake courses to obtain my equivalency. I had young children. Despite the many obstacles, I sponsored their grandmother. Had she not been able to come, I would not be here today.

All that to say that if we want those that we allow to become Canadians to make a contribution to this country, we also have to think about their relations—their parents, their wife or their partner. We know that family ties make nation building possible.

I also heard the comments by our colleague opposite. He said that we need to match immigration to the economy. According to the statistics, Canada is grappling with an aging population and a declining birth rate. One in five Canadians is over 60 and, according to forecasts, that number will be one in three by 2020. Furthermore, CIC estimates that in five years, or 60 months, new needs for skilled labour in Canada will be met entirely by immigration. How can the hon. member say that? Under this government, the immigration rate has fallen to a historic low of 0.7%.

Could my colleague comment on the economic contribution of immigrants when they are allowed to bring their family members to Canada?

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's passionate intervention and her contribution to Canada's economic growth and viability and the contributions her mother has made that allowed a strong woman to, as a doctor, pursue her foreign credential recognition here in Canada, which is an extremely difficult process, and participate in Canada as a practising physician. I applaud her for that.

To answer the member's question about the importance of economic class as well as family class immigrants into Canada, yes it is imperative that we do have economic class immigrants coming in. As I mentioned in my speech, within five years 100% of our labour force needs will be filled by immigration. To satisfy the changes in our labour market trends, we will need to see economic class immigrants accepted into this country. However, for those economic class immigrants who are allowed in to plant deep roots and make as meaningful as possible contributions to Canada's economic viability, growth and development, they need to have their family. That means their spouse, their children and, as in the case of my colleague, possibly the grandparents to help with the rearing of—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Kings—Hants.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise today to speak to the second report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration presented on Tuesday, March 6, 2012.

We, in our party, under the leadership of the member for Winnipeg North as immigration critic, have expressed significant concern about the way the government is approaching immigration issues. There seems to be a startling lack of vision as to the importance to Canada's economy and Canada's cultural mosiac of immigration in the past, immigration in the present and immigration in the future.

There seems to be a commodification of immigrants, almost as widgets, as the member for Guelph said in terms of some of the Conservatives referring to immigrants coming here for just-in-time delivery. They describe immigration as one would a manufacturing protocol. In many ways, it does not reflect the incredible importance of Canada's multicultural communities and the contributions they have made to our economy and to our country and regions as nation-builders.

It is very important, on all sides of the House and in all parties, that we demonstrate leadership on the immigration issue. Part of good, responsible politics is pedagogy whereby we actually go out and change people's minds.

There are some myths and some perceptions about immigration that I think the public may have sometimes that we have to challenge as members of Parliament and as thought leaders, not only in this Parliament but in our greater communities. One is that immigrants, when they come here, are always taking jobs from Canadians. I witnessed this even in the last election. I represent a rural and small town riding in Nova Scotia, in Hants Country in the Annapolis Valley.

One thing I think we need, not just in cities but in rural and small town Canada, is to attract and retain more new Canadians. When I was asked in the last election, sometimes at all-candidates meetings, about ideas to create growth and opportunity in Kings—Hants and in rural Nova Scotia, I often cited the potential of immigration. When I did, some people would ask if those people would not just come here and take jobs from them.

When I talked to people, I found that there was a broad perception that this was a zero-sum game. I did a little research on this. In fact, The Chronicle Herald, the provincial newspaper in Nova Scotia, did an online survey of its readership a couple of years ago. They asked if people would support programs to attract and retain more new Canadians to Nova Scotia. It was not a scientific poll; it was an online poll in the paper. Sixty-five percent of the respondents said that they would not support programs to attract and retain more new Canadians to Nova Scotia. I read some of the comments. The comments asked why we would help more new Canadians come here when we cannot keep our own young people employed and are losing them to other parts of the country. There are not enough jobs for them.

I challenge that misperception when I am dealing with people in my riding and elsewhere, because when I think of new Canadians who have come to Nova Scotia, I think of people who were not only successful in creating their own employment but in creating jobs for other Nova Scotians. I think of people of like Pete Luckett or Hanspeter Stutz or Doris Hagmann. I think of Joe Rafih or Basim Halef or Fred George or Wadih Fares. These are people who came to Nova Scotia with nothing.

Keep in mind what constitutes being an entrepreneur. One has to be a risk taker. One has to risk it all to succeed. The moment people leave their country and choose Canada as a new home, they are demonstrating what it takes to be entrepreneurs. They are risking it all.

It should be of little surprise to people that these are some of the greatest entrepreneurs we have in our province, in our region and in our country, because by the very decision to come here, they rolled the dice. They took that risk. They were entrepreneurs who took a chance and bet it all to come to Canada. They are the most special Canadians, in many ways.

My family has been in Canada, in Hants county, since the late 1700s. We have been blessed to be here for such a long time. I was lucky enough to be born in this magnificent country, in a beautiful part of Nova Scotia, and raised in a community like Cheverie, but I did not have to take any risk to have that privilege. We take it for granted. These people risked it all to come here.

Sometimes it is important for us to refocus this debate a little bit on the extraordinary people who choose to come to Canada. They are not commodities. They are not widgets. They are living, breathing, nation builders of the finest order. We need them to build businesses and opportunities for themselves, their families and our families.

We need them as natural bridges to some of the fastest-growing economies in the world. When we talk about trade, the reality is that we have growing trade deficits under the Conservative government. For a long time we have recognized multiculturalism as a very successful social policy in Canada, but far too often we do not recognize what a remarkable economic advantage multiculturalism gives us. In those human bridges to these fast-growing economies, there are opportunities for us, whether it is in research connections between our universities and colleges and their universities and colleges or whether it is in business and trade. We have to remind ourselves that we are part of a globalized economy and that our trade relationships and cultural ties are increasingly important.

We see multiculturalism increasingly in the face of this Parliament among my colleagues from all parties in this House. Think of how important it is to bring that into the debates that we have the perspectives representing our multicultural communities here in the House of Commons. That is important and represents progress.

It is important also to realize that we pressed the delete button on 300,000 files. The government may look at them as files, but these are not files; these are families. These are families with real hopes, aspirations and dreams of coming here and building a better Canada.

Part of the reason the temporary foreign workers program grew to be mismanaged, and in some cases perhaps abused or at least used for purposes that were contrary to the stated objectives of the program from its genesis, was because the government hit the delete button and eliminated a lot of applications for skilled workers and professionals who wanted to come to Canada.

From a public policy perspective, that is not the way to deal with an issue to that effect. If there is an issue, then let us put more resources into the processing of these applications. Instead, we know that the government is cutting programs and agencies. Based on a report by Kevin Page a few weeks ago, these cuts are affecting government front-line services, such as immigration.

At the finance committee recently, and in my motion, Motion No. 315, which passed in this House last June, mandating the House of Commons finance committee to study the issue of income inequality, we heard that one of the contributors to income inequality is the fact that there is little investment in settling new Canadians so that they get a good start. We know that is important. It is one of the contributors to growing levels of income and opportunity inequality in Canada. We need to make more investments with respect to immigrant settlement. However, we do not hear that as a priority of the government. All we hear about is cuts and a startling lack of vision.

The potential for these new Canadians to contribute significantly not only to the prosperity of their families but to the prosperity of all our families and communities would be exponentially increased with an even modest increase in investment in resettlement.

Also, I have noticed the government's movement with respect to language criteria and wanting new Canadians coming here to speak one of the two official languages. That may be popular with the general public, but I am not sure it is right or smart economically or socially. There are an awful lot of tremendously successful people who came to Canada who could not speak either of the official languages yet were great nation builders. There are people in this House of Commons whose parents came to Canada as immigrants and could not speak the language when they arrived. I have sat in caucus with members of Parliament who when they arrived in Canada could not speak one of the two official languages and ended up being members of Parliament and cabinet ministers.

Frank Stronach was an industrialist who arrived in Canada unable to speak either of Canada's official languages, yet he built a global business in Magna International, employing thousands of people and becoming a billionaire. He arrived in Canada with a trade. I think he was a machinist, but he had no capacity to speak either of Canada's official languages. Under these new rules, someone like Frank Stronach would not have made it. Think about that.

Therefore, it is important that we be a lot more open-minded about immigration and work to change people's mindsets to avoid some of the language I have heard in this debate when we are talking about immigrants. Let us move toward increased resources aimed at attracting, retaining and supporting new Canadians when they get to our country.

I want to speak a bit about my region of Atlantic Canada, specifically Nova Scotia and rural Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia, and in the Maritimes in general, we are dealing with both a population teetering on the brink of decline and an aging population. That is an economic and demographic time bomb, because as our population gets smaller and older, we will have fewer people actively in the workforce paying into the system. More people will be at an age and stage in life when they will be drawing from the system. Seniors contribute massively to our communities, but a lot of the senior citizens I talk with are equally concerned about this demographic trend.

Five years ago, the median age of the Nova Scotia population was 42 years of age. It is now 44 years of age. Five years ago, the percentage of the population age 65 and over was 15.1%. It is now 16.6%. Additionally, 3,000 fewer students are starting school each year in Nova Scotia.

These trends should scare the heck out of us in my province. A larger percentage of retirees and a smaller proportion of productive workers means lower productive output and higher demands for social services. Fewer young people working equals a declining tax base and it also reflects fewer creative minds and ultimately less innovation, less entrepreneurism, less research and development and less commercialization.

The reality is that the best way to tackle the demographic time bomb in our region is to attract more new Canadians to Atlantic Canada. The Nova Scotia government has recognized our demographic challenge and it has announced an intention to do more to attract new Canadians to Nova Scotia.

However, one of the challenges faced by provincial governments is the immigration cap imposed by the federal government. If the four Atlantic provinces worked together on a common immigration strategy, I believe they would have more clout in dealing with the Conservative government on this issue.

I believe we can learn from Manitoba's successful immigration model. Manitoba and Nova Scotia have similarly sized populations, but in the last ten years, Manitoba's population has grown by almost 9%, while Nova Scotia's population has only grown by a little over 1%. The key difference is immigration. Last year, Nova Scotia took in 15% of the total number of immigrants recruited by Manitoba. That is 2,400 in Nova Scotia versus 16,000 in Manitoba.

Manitoba has made immigration a priority across every department of government and in partnership with businesses, communities, volunteer organizations, schools and health care providers. As a result of immigration, Manitoba's population is growing and it is getting younger. Furthermore, Manitoba has been successful in attracting immigrants not just to Winnipeg but to small towns and communities across the province. We can learn from what they have done in Manitoba.

In Nova Scotia, we have some of the finest higher education institutions in the country, some world-class universities. We have hundreds of students from dozens of countries around the world studying in Nova Scotia. Imagine what would be possible if we could do more to encourage these bright and talented minds to live and work there after graduation, creating jobs and opportunities in Nova Scotia.

Our geographic position on the Atlantic Ocean is a natural advantage, and we should be aiming to become world class in all things ocean-related. Nova Scotia is home to 450 Ph.D.s in ocean-related disciplines. That is the third highest concentration in the world. The Bedford Institute of Oceanography has 700 scientists, engineers and technicians. Approximately 200 ocean technology companies now account for a third of our province's research and development. A lot of those people are coming from other countries.

When we think of the innovation companies as examples of success, whether it is Acadian Seaplants Ltd. or Ocean Nutrition, we need more new Canadians to help develop that industry and other industries. We need more new Canadians to help develop the growing grape and wine industry in Nova Scotia. The reality is that in 1997, there were 2 wineries in Nova Scotia and today there are almost 19. To put it into perspective, in 1997 there were 19 wineries in the Niagara region and today there are 130.

We need people to develop that industry, and one of the things that is interesting right now is that the hardest hit European economies include countries like Portugal, Italy, Spain and France, which have some of the highest concentrations of expertise in grapes and wine in the world. We should be having targeted immigration, like the Manitoba model, bringing the business community and the governments together at all levels. We should have a targeted immigration strategy on bringing that expertise and those people from those countries, some of which have a 40% to 50% youth unemployment rate. We should bring those people in and give them an opportunity to help us turbocharge our wine industry.

These are ideas we should be developing in the House, working across party lines in a constructive and positive way and speaking about immigration as a source not just of multicultural diversity but of economic opportunity for our country. That is the way this debate should be shaped. It should not be based on partisan differences and trying to pit people against one another, and particularly—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Questions and comments, the hon. Minister of State for Transport.