Debates of Oct. 31st, 2023

Opposition Motion—Immigration Threshold and Integration Capacity

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on the issue around providing supports to the provinces and territories to support newcomers, it is absolutely critical; there is no question.

Even, during the time with the Liberals, there was much fanfare with the Syrian refugee initiative. I met families who were not able to get language training. We can take, for example, a husband and wife team; they had to choose which of the family members would be able to enrol in language training, because there were not enough spots.

The issue around the lack of resettlement services is not from this moment in time; it has existed for a very long time, and that is wrong. The NDP has called on the government to properly support newcomers when they come to Canada. Therefore, from Quebec's perspective, I would be very interested to know this: What kinds of resources are necessary for Quebec to be successful in supporting newcomers, especially on language training?

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, only the Quebec government can answer that question. However, let us consider the facts. Quebec has never invested as much in French language training as it is investing now. It is important to weigh the supply of services against the demand for services. A balance exists between the two. We need to consider both sides of the equation responsibly. Part of the equation comes under the responsibility of the federal government, considering the huge flow of interprovincial migration, including people who start out living in other provinces and then move to Quebec. That part is federal. Here, I think we should look at federal issues.

If the other parties are unwilling to live in a federation that respects jurisdictions, the solution is quite simple: national independence for Quebec.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Minister of Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to share information with members about the Government of Canada's immigration levels and how we are supporting Quebec with respect to immigration specifically. I am sure that all members, including those from the Bloc Québécois, know our immigration levels are tabled in the House on November 1 of each year. That is tomorrow. We will respect the government's deadline.

I can assure the House that we will hold in-depth consultations about 2024-26 immigration levels, as we do every year.

We remain determined to meet the needs of every province and territory, as well as those of employers and communities across the country. The federal government consults its provincial and territorial counterparts to set immigration levels and determine appropriate allocations for the provincial nominee program, for example.

Canada's immigration plan is based on input from employers and communities, as well as feedback from the provinces and territories. It is informed by data in order to better understand the labour shortages that still plague Canada today.

Under the Canada–Québec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens, Quebec has rights and responsibilities with respect to the number of immigrants Quebec takes in and how they are selected, welcomed and integrated. We therefore work closely with Quebec on everything related to immigration. As a result, Canada sets the annual number of immigrants for the country by taking into account the number of immigrants Quebec wants to welcome. Under the agreement, Quebec is solely responsible for selecting immigrants in the economic and humanitarian streams. It is also responsible for applying the federal selection criteria for family reunification.

While the motion before the House calls on the government to specifically consult the provinces, territories and Quebec, our government has done much more than that in its consultations. This year, we conducted extensive consultations on immigration thresholds across the country, as we do every year. We gathered feedback from every province and territory on their needs and priorities for programs such as the provincial nominee program.

These conversations with our provincial and territorial counterparts are not a one-time thing, but rather an ongoing dialogue that takes place year-round. This dialogue takes place between officials at various levels, and particularly between politicians. It takes place through planned consultations, including with ministers, to hear directly from all the parties concerned about their immigration challenges, needs and potential improvements.

I would like to point out that as part of planning this year's immigration thresholds, I reached out to various provincial and territorial partners, including Minister Fréchette in Quebec. I also met with representatives from The Refugee Centre to discuss how to better support refugees and asylum seekers once they arrive in Canada. As well, I met with the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada to ensure that we are strengthening francophone communities outside Quebec through immigration. I know how important that is to you, Mr. Speaker.

We consult with Quebec, as we do with all provinces and territories, when we introduce new programs and policies. In fact, some of the measures we are putting in place stem from Quebec's desire to see certain provisions applied. For example, the public policy allowing certain work permit holders to study without a study permit originated from Quebec's initial desire to enable foreign workers to come here to improve their skills while attending school. Last year, at Quebec's request, we established the international mobility program plus, or IMP+, which allows individuals outside Canada who have been selected by Quebec under a permanent residency program to obtain an open work permit.

Finally, it was because we consult Quebec, and at its express request, that we harmonized the conditions surrounding access to post-graduate work permits in certain programs which already existed in the rest of Canada. The 1991 Canada-Quebec agreement, which as been in place for as long as the Bloc Québécois has existed, provides mechanisms for regular consultations between Quebec and Canada. Our officials meet regularly at the highest levels to discuss the common objectives we share with Quebec.

We also ask partner organizations, including the hundreds of settlement organizations across the country, to tell us about their challenges, both globally and locally.

We receive their reports on the communities they serve and support in rural and urban communities, as well as on newcomers entering the labour market, seeking recognition of their foreign credentials, and learning and seeking services in French and English across the country.

We are kept abreast of how newcomers are integrating, and what programs and services are working best in the various communities. We meet with representatives of many municipalities throughout the year to seek their advice or to respond to their challenges and concerns. In fact, this year in particular, we held even more in-depth consultations, because the levels and the mix of classes we will be welcoming were also taken into account in our strategic review of the future of immigration to Canada.

We also held extensive consultations on the future of immigration in Canada and on the programs and services systems needed to support all our provinces, territories and municipalities. A major part of these consultations focused on how we can support employers in all sectors, particularly in housing, health care and technology, which have been identified as priorities by the provinces, territories and municipalities.

In addition to soliciting input from across the country, we organized in-depth sessions with experts, including one in Montreal, on key issues such as housing, rural immigration, skill desirability and social cohesion. Many of these sessions were led by ministers, parliamentary secretaries and deputy ministers.

We also gathered input from Canadians of every region, including newcomers who have used our services, through the online consultations entitled “An Immigration System for Canada's Future”. We heard from almost 17,500 people, over 2,000 organizations and more than 2,100 former clients about what they expect from immigration for the future of our country. We met with indigenous representatives, business leaders, young Canadians and opinion makers to gather a wide range of comments and understand their perspectives.

We found that, in general, Canadians understand the value of immigration and the way it helps us secure our future. They understand that newcomers make valuable contributions and that diversity makes our communities stronger. We also heard about the challenges that communities and newcomers are facing.

We have heard from the provinces, territories and employers about the ongoing need for skilled workers. They have also reminded us of the urgent need for tradespeople to help build more housing, and the need for health care workers in our hospitals and long-term care facilities, a need that we are all too familiar with, especially since the pandemic.

Without immigrants, Canada's and Quebec's economies would have had a tough time meeting the unique challenges of the past two and a half years. Indeed, many of our temporary and permanent residents work in key sectors such as health care, transportation, agriculture and manufacturing.

Permanent immigration is vital to Canada's long-term economic growth. It accounts for nearly 100% of our labour force growth, and by 2032, it is expected to account for 100% of our population growth.

Fifty years ago, when I was born, there were seven workers for every pensioner in Canada. Today, that number is closer to three, and it is expected to fall to two by 2035. If we do not change course by welcoming more newcomers to Canada, future conversations will not be about labour shortages. Instead, they will be about whether we can afford to keep schools and hospitals open.

The government is working with all of its partners to strike the right balance between providing the necessary support for our employers and our economy, meeting our humanitarian commitments—which all Canadians feel very strongly about—and ensuring that our immigration plans reflect the needs and priorities of each community. The government is also taking into account operational realities such as our service and processing standards, program complexity, evidence on immigrant outcomes and the costs of settlement and integration.

The immigration levels to be presented for 2024 will reflect the needs of Canadians in all regions of the country. They will take into account our humanitarian commitments, particularly with regard to Afghans and Ukrainians. These levels will support Canada's growth while moderating the impact on essential national systems such as housing and infrastructure.

We recognize that it is important to balance our humanitarian commitments with our economic and labour needs in order to provide newcomers with a clear path to success. While there is debate about the size of Canada's infrastructure deficit, everyone agrees that significant investment is needed to address it.

The fact is, immigration is not at the root of our housing problems. The housing crisis has been three decades in the making. All levels of government, along with the private sector, have to work together to solve the housing crisis. We are in the process of consulting and engaging with the provinces and territories because many aspects of these challenges are within their purview. The federal government's immigration policies will focus on measures to address housing and infrastructure challenges, among others.

Newcomers are part of the solution when it comes to increasing housing supply. That is why we are so focused on prioritizing workers who support the housing sector. Through our economic immigration pathways, we are targeting candidates who can help us fill labour shortages in the construction sector and help build more homes.

Without immigrants, it would have been very hard for Canada's economy and Quebec's to meet the challenges of recent years, as I said earlier. Many of the temporary and permanent residents here are working in key sectors such as health care, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing and, of course, housing construction.

One of these programs, the guardian angels program for health care workers, was created specifically with the help of Quebec leaders. It is vital that all governments commit to meeting the needs of the people we serve, whether in Quebec, Nunavut, Nova Scotia or British Columbia.

We are not trying to decide immigration levels in the coming decades, but to understand the direction where the needs of employers, industries, communities, provinces and territories are heading to ensure that we have the operational capacity and the modernized immigration system required to support those needs.

We heard from francophone communities outside Quebec and worked with them on the challenges inherent in shrinking populations of francophone minority communities. In the days to come, I will have more to say on this matter.

We worked in co-operation with the ministers of official languages to support implementation of the action plan for official languages, which includes strengthening strategic francophone and bilingual immigration through the francophone immigration strategy. In 2022, we reached the 4.4% target for francophone immigrants entering Canada outside Quebec. As we all know, that is not enough.

Not only did we achieve this target, but it was the first time that we had ever done so. Last year, we welcomed over 16,300 francophone newcomers outside Quebec, which is three times more than in 2018. That is the highest number of francophone immigrants admitted to Canada outside Quebec since we began collecting data in 2006. This increase coincides with the implementation of our immigration strategy at the end of 2018.

Canada has a long tradition of welcoming new immigrants. Canadians are justifiably proud of their immigrant heritage. Immigration is also what has made our country grow stronger and continue to move forward, not to mention forging strong bonds between people, diversifying our communities, and acting as an economic engine.

With the 2024‑26 immigration levels plan fundamentally focused on attracting skilled workers who will contribute to Canada's economy, we are more confident than ever that we can preserve our world-class immigration system, which is the envy of virtually every country in the world. We will cut wait times for applicants, promote family reunification, and continue to support the world's most vulnerable populations through one of the world's best refugee resettlement programs.

This year's plan is buttressed by a robust immigration system, and we are making great strides to improve it even further. Our focus remains on economic growth and immigration, as these are essential to short-term economic recovery and long-term prosperity. I will conclude my remarks and announce that we will be delighted to support the Bloc Québécois motion.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in my speech, I talked about how Quebec conducted real consultations with many stakeholders before announcing its immigration thresholds. It seems as though the federal government did exactly the opposite.

It started with the Century Initiative, where some people announced a goal of increasing immigration admissions to 500,000, and the government ran with it. When we asked whether those people had taken into account the impact this would have on housing, Dominc Barton said no.

However, the idea of bringing in 500,000 people was already well-established, and, as a result, just a month ago, Minister Fréchette said that she was “inviting the Canadian government to review its admission targets for the coming years based on the new statistics, because its numbers seem excessive and do not in any way take into account integration capacity.”

She would like the government to take that into account when it is setting its targets. That does not sound to me like there was any real consultation; rather, it sounds as though the federal government just informed the minister that we were going to keep the target at 500,000 people.

My question is simple. What is the government going to do if, after it holds real consultations, if it does, the minister still maintains that Canada does not have the integration capacity to welcome 500,000 people?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of speculation in the Bloc Québécois member's question.

She obviously was not paying attention to what I said about the consultation we held as part of the review of our strategic plan, which we will be announcing within the next few hours. I am a little disappointed because she knows full well that Quebec has been making most of the decisions within its jurisdiction since the Canada–Québec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens, which, as I said in my speech, has been around as long as the Bloc Québécois has, dating back to the early 1990s. I am sensing a bit of unwillingness to hear what I just said.

Clearly, there is always room for improvement in terms of communication and coordination, but that does not mean we always agree with Quebec. That is how relationships work. We each have a say. If she believes that we have not consulted properly, it is because she did not listen to my speech or because she is acting in bad faith.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we are debating this motion about wraparound services for immigrants and newcomers coming to Canada. The minister was just in Calgary. He would know that the Centre for Newcomers in Calgary and the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society have had their funding cut. They need another $3 million to provide the key on-the-ground services for newcomers coming to Canada. They have estimated about 8,000 Ukrainians have come to Calgary on a CUAET visa and they are helping to resettle about 6,000 Afghans.

The situation has gotten so bad that the Calgary Police Service is dropping off government-assisted refugees, the responsibility of the federal government, in the lobby of its downtown locations because they have nowhere to go and this is the last place they can find refuge.

Winter is coming. Many of the service providers have had to let go 65 staff members between these two agencies and thousands more are expected to need that type of frontline help.

Why is the minister not providing that critical support? Why is he not there? When he was in Calgary, why did do nothing about this, knowing there would be a shortfall for this important frontline service to be provided in Calgary?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would invite the member to speak to the organizations that I spoke to, because that was not the tenor of the conversations we had. We certainly had conversations about planning and ensuring we were more coordinated.

There is this false impression that the federal government is responsible for everyone who crosses the border. This is a shared jurisdiction. Immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers all enrich our country and will enrich the tax base of it. To sit there and say that suddenly the federal government is responsible for people who come to our country simply because they cross the border is an operation in bad faith. We transfer monies under the social transfer to provinces to ensure they do their job.

These issues are not limited to Calgary. In fact, I had some very productive conversations in Calgary. What Canadians and organizations are telling us is that we need to be more coordinated, whether it is at the municipal level or at the provincial level.

I need to note in this context that in the last few years, we have seen massive transfers of money from the Canadian government to provincial governments. It is also time that they step up and do their job for future Albertans and Canadians.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, earlier the former minister of immigration pointed his finger at international students struggling with Canada's housing crisis. I am glad to hear the current Minister of Immigration say that newcomers are not to be blamed for the housing crisis.

Canada needs to ensure that a proper housing plan to address the housing crisis includes international students. Will the minister take it up, ensure that his government provides leadership in this regard and partner with institutions, provinces and territories, with a one-third, one-third, one-third cost-sharing plan, to ensure international students, and students, for that matter, will have access to proper housing?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what I will not do is commit to the NDP funding formulas on the floor of the House of Commons.

I would note that in the member's home province some very good work has been done to clean up some of the designated learning institutions that have been responsible for creating false hope abroad with respect to international students. They have attracted people here on a false promise of hope, on a false premise. They do not need to spend $40,000 in fees to end up driving an Uber.

We need to work together with provinces to ensure they are doing their jobs in their jurisdictions and to rein in a lot of designated learning institutions, which they sanction, they back and they get the funds for directly, not the federal government, then ask us at times to rubber stamp applications from folks whose hopes have been entertained, sometimes falsely, about coming to this country.

International students are a huge credit to our country and the vast majority of them will contribute in their own countries when they return by being soft ambassadors for Canada or increase the productivity in Canada when they become permanent residents or, eventually, Canadian citizens. It is not a guaranteed pathway, but clearly there has been some fraud. An ecosystem has been created that has been very lucrative and people are taking advantage of that.

Last Friday, we instituted a model for the federal government to start doing its job a little better, and we expect provinces to do that as well. It depends on the province, but we have open arms with regard to working with them and get it done.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Mr. Speaker, francophone immigration is very important to British Columbia. The B.C. francophone federation does great work when it comes to helping francophones coming into British Columbia.

I have a francophone school in my constituency. The minister has mentioned that when it comes to francophone immigration, the government has achieved 4.4% outside of Quebec but that more work has to be done.

Could the minister elaborate on the additional steps he would take to ensure we have more francophone immigrants coming into British Columbia?

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would love to transfer myself from being a minister to a deputy minister in this context, but the devil is in the details and the logistics with which my department administers the program. We have not done a very good job in the past of increasing francophone immigration in our own sphere of jurisdiction. It has landed us a lot of rightful criticism about ensuring we are doing immigration in a proper way to reflect the bilingual nature of our country.

The 4.4% that we reached represented an increase of 450% in those numbers, but it is not enough. If we need to ensure and re-establish some level of parity with respect to our communities, we need to get up to a permanent number of about 6%, which would require increases of 6% to 8%, or perhaps even more, over the next years.

We need to put in place the mechanisms to ensure that this is permanent, including ensuring that we have funding, that provinces are providing funding and that we are putting in place structures that favour francophone speakers as they come to our country. This might include moving from a situation where francophone students could have a pathway to permanent residence, ensuring we are doing missions abroad and that we are tackling the challenges to get French teachers. This is a need that exists outside Quebec as much as it exists inside Quebec. It is work that we have not done, structured or well, in the past.

I look forward in the next year being able to show the House of Commons, our colleagues in government and Canadians that we can do this job and that we can put in place a system that favours and encourages francophone migration.

I cannot conclude my comments without talking about the importance of combatting systemic racism. We know that systemic racism has impacted our ability to recruit French talent in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in West Africa, and that needs to be fixed as well.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be joining this debate. I will be sharing my time with the member for Edmonton Mill Woods, my colleague from up north, the deputy leader of the Conservative Party.

I would be remiss if I did not start by addressing an issue that is top of mind for many of my constituents and for Canadians coast to coast. I want to remind everybody about the carbon tax flip-flop of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has effectively created two classes of Canadians. One class of Canadians gets a carbon tax exemption on their home heating, while another much larger group of Canadians, including constituents of mine, will get nothing. They are not in that class of individuals.

This gimmick the Prime Minister has come up with has resulted in 97% of Canadians being excluded from getting any type of relief on their taxes. Any relief should apply to all regions of Canada, not to one region of Canada only for electoral purposes. There is only one answer to this, which is that home heating should have all carbon taxes removed from it. Common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax entirely on all home heating, gas, groceries and on farmers who grow the food, people who ship the food and people who process the food. Everybody deserves the same tax break.

We are debating a motion from the Bloc today. If the Bloc will indulge me, I am going to go over the different parts of the immigration system. I want to indict the former immigration minister, who is now the housing minister, on his performance. Having now heard the current immigration minister, we are basically repeating the same mistakes of the past.

It has come to a point where many Canadians are emailing me, calling me and direct messaging me. There are more articles being written about people's confidence in the integrity of the immigration system and whether it delivers on the expectations of Canadians. I think that is the substance of the motion the Bloc has put forward. Are we achieving our goals through the immigration system?

Many members know I am an immigrant; I came to Canada in 1985. All my kids have been born in Calgary. I have lived in different parts of Canada at different times. When I look at our immigration system today, it is not the fulfilling the promise to immigrants who are landing here like it did decades ago. I have had exchanges with the immigration minister about the immigration system as it functions right now.

There was a summer cabinet retreat about housing. It was telling that when the immigration minister was confronted, because we were trying to hold him accountable for those numbers, he could not even answer the basic question of how many construction workers had been brought in this year so far and how many were brought in last year, the year before and the year before that. He made a ridiculous claim like he was not the minister of NOC codes.

The number one way of tracking immigrants who come to Canada is by occupations they are in. An entire database system at Statistics Canada tracks exactly that one important statistic. It tracks their occupation and then, as they get more seniority, it tracks what type of occupation classification. The minister of immigration even alluded to the fact that the Minister of Immigration was also responsible for jobs, because a lot of immigrants who come here want to work. They want to make a contribution to the country that has greeted them and become their new home. Not to have that number is a real indictment. The previous immigration minister, when he became the housing minister, expressed a great deal of regret.

I want to talk about international students first and then I will go to the federal skilled trades program. On international students, an almost record number of international students are going to Canadian institutions. Some of them are going to U15 or to U21 to get post-graduate degrees. We are not so much concerned about their experience in Canada, although it is much more difficult finding a place to live, with the cost of living as it is today. What they are told by their country of origin about how much funds they will need annually to get by when they come to Canada is very different.

Then there are a lot of plaza colleges that are not providing an opportunity. First, many international students who come to Canada have a desire to seek a post-graduate work permit to continue making a contribution in the workplace. Now we hear story upon story of people living under bridges. We hear stories about people struggling and having to go to food banks. Some are Canadians, but they are also international students. I do not think these international students expected they would need to go to a food bank when they came to Canada.

During the summer, the now former immigration minister, now the current housing minister, said that it was not his fault. He said that it was an uncapped program and therefore a limitless amount of applications could be accepted. The minister was not responsible for two and a half years. We have reached this point today because he did not pay attention to his file when he was the immigration minister.

Now we can get to the federal skilled trades program. The primary way to bring in construction workers should be through this program, which even the OECD has criticized for not meeting its expectations. The correct number, the last time I checked in September, was 80. That is how many construction workers it has brought to Canada.

There are other programs to bring construction workers in. The present housing minister has said that we need construction workers from elsewhere, that we need to train them in Canada and find people who want to retrain. There is a zoning problem. There is a construction problem. We know we have the least amount of construction permits being issued. We need construction workers, people working in residential construction, who want to build homes, and we are not bringing those people in. In fact, when we look at the numbers generated for construction workers by the previous immigration minister over seven years, it is the same as the number of retail supervisors brought in over two years. Where were the priorities of the previous immigration minister? What were his priorities with respect to the immigration system? What was he focused on? Why did he not pay attention to this?

The previous immigration minister saw the numbers coming in and said that it was not his job. That is literally what the he told me when I asked him a very specific question about two immigrant service centres in Calgary that provide frontline services to government-assisted refugees. Unlike what the minister said, that is his responsibility. There are resettlement dollars being provided by the federal government expressly for this purpose, and they cannot be downloaded to the provinces.

I think this is a commonality. Hopefully, the Bloc will agree with me that we cannot download that service onto a province and expect it to just make it happen. The minister said it was not his job and not his responsibility. After they met with the then minister of immigration they came to see me because they were shocked by the answer they got, so I did get feedback on how that meeting went.

I find it galling that the current immigration minister would say that it was not his problem, not his fault, and the previous immigration minister is saying, after looking at the numbers, that he now has regrets. He then floated out a bunch of ideas, leaving it up to his replacement to try to figure out what is going on. We know how bad it is.

I have a document. The header is “International Students: Repatriation for sudden deaths”. That is how bad it is. It has been circulated by the World Sikh Organization, whose members I met with many months ago. They provided me with this document from a crematory and funeral home in Brampton. It had to create it specifically for international students because that is how bad it has become. The number of suicides in that community has risen greatly. This is just one such document, which goes on in quite a bit of detail, to help these families have their loved ones returned to their country of origin. That is the immigration system these immigration ministers, or housing ministers, as it is hard to follow which title they prefer now, have left us with to date.

I will come back to the motion moved by the Bloc Québécois.

Today, the backlog in the immigration system has reached 2.2 million applications. In September 2022, we were informed that an online portal would help reduce the number of applications in the backlog. That number has not gone down. We were talking about 2.2 million applications in September of last year. This year we are talking about 2.2 million applications. Just before the pandemic, we were talking about 1.9 million applications. During the pandemic that number reached 2.9 million applications. The backlog has been in the millions for years. For years, people have been waiting for an answer, for a yes or no, from the government.

Many people who are waiting for an answer are already working or studying here, and they are trying to change their temporary status to a permanent status. These people are in a precarious situation. It is hard for someone to see how life in Canada will unfold when they are constantly told they have to wait one more year.

These people are asking their MP for help, and all of our offices are flooded with requests from people who are having problems with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. That department has more than doubled; the number of employees has increased by 144% compared to 2013, and more than 200 people there are in management positions.

I am pleased to have had the opportunity to deliver this speech. I will support the Bloc Québécois motion, and it would be my pleasure to answer my colleagues' questions.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke at length about the housing issue. One aspect he mentioned was people with construction skills who could help build housing. However, I would like to hear him talk about an underlying factor in housing construction, namely infrastructure.

If municipal infrastructure is inadequate, we cannot increase the number of available housing units. In our view, this is also part of the thought process on integration capacity. I would like my colleague to tell us about that aspect. Would it be enough to simply bring in new construction workers? Should we instead address the housing issue as a whole, including the question of municipal infrastructure?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's question about residential, commercial and, of course, industrial infrastructure. Do we have enough highways, hospitals and clinics to provide the services people will need?

The province of Alberta has the second-highest rate of interprovincial migration. Many people who come to Canada settle first in another province and then choose Alberta. Even with all the information the federal government collects, it is hard for me to believe that anyone could ask immigrants which city they think they will live in now and which city they think they will be living in one, two, three, four or five years from now. It would be hard for immigrants to answer such a question, because they do not know. They sometimes receive very little information before coming to Canada.

I will give a personal example. When my father came to Canada, he did not know that there was a francophone province where people spoke only French. Before he began working at the Sorel-Tracy shipyard, he did not know that he would be working in French.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we have been hearing a lot of comments in the public realm, even from the former minister of immigration, who is throwing newcomers under the bus and blaming them for the housing crisis, particularly as it relates to international students.

Is it not the case that Canada has a housing crisis because successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed Canadians? Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have cancelled programs: the co-op housing program, in the case of Conservatives, and the national affordable housing program, in the case of the Liberals. This has contributed to the housing crisis we face today.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the simple answer is no, that is not it.

Pre-2019, I did not have constituents coming to tell me that they were worried about being able to purchase a home or being able to pay rent. It was not a problem until the Liberal government, with its NDP allies, decided that it was a good idea to overspend $600 billion during the pandemic, $205 billion of which had nothing to do with addressing the pandemic losses to our economy, jobs, housing issues, and our health care systems across the provinces.

That overspending then led to a massive increase in the money supply. Does the House know who warned those two political parties not to do that? It was the member for Carleton. For two years, he kept warning that, if the government drastically increased the money supply without having new housing supply come on market, it would double the price of homes and rent. This was perfectly foreseeable, and they voted for it.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I have always cautioned some members not to throw stones in glass houses.

The member talks about processing times. When I was in opposition, and I am sure the member does not have the paper for this, the processing times for people getting married was three or four years, easy. Those were the types of calls I was getting. We could talk about sponsoring parents and grandparents. The Conservatives actually killed that program. They ended it. We can look at the numbers when it was going, and processing times before they ended it were eight or nine years.

My question to the member is not related to processing times but to the provincial government's role in identifying people who are coming to the provinces. Manitoba alone, through the provincial nominee program, which was a Jean Chrétien creation, provides more economic immigrants coming to the province than any other program.

Does the member not recognize that provinces also have a role to play when it comes to the type of immigrants coming to Canada?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my response will be about processing times. I actually do have a paper on that, and it is funny. The Auditor General's report found that, on average, privately sponsored refugees waited 30 months for a decision. Some of them waited two years before their file was even touched.

I have the 2015 numbers, so I would like to refresh the member's memory. In 2015, study permits took 31 days to process. They now take 88 days, as of just a few months ago. These are IRCC numbers. Work permits took 42 days in 2015. They now take 62 days to process. Temporary resident visas took 13 days to process back in 2015. Today, I have the number for April 2022, and it took 72 days. They have nothing to teach us on immigration processing times.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton Mill Woods, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will just take a minute to address something I have received a number of calls about in the last day or so, and it is this Prime Minister's carbon tax flip-flop. The Prime Minister has effectively created two classes of Canadians, one that—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We witnessed this yesterday and, once again, we are starting to see it today, where members of the Conservative Party will stand up and start off their speeches with dialogue on the price on pollution, the thing they actually supported back in the last election, and being critical of the government.

It is not relevant to the debate at hand. I get the feeling that we are going to see more and more of that throughout the day. Members should be cautioned regarding staying relevant to the debate at hand.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I will run a couple of cautions.

During questions and comments, members are to try to keep them as concise as possible because we have been running over time.

As well, we normally give a little allowance for that first minute of debate to make sure that members can talk about the things that are important to them in their constituencies.

The hon. member for Edmonton Mill Woods.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton Mill Woods, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I know that they do not want to discuss their flip-flop and how they are hurting Canadians right across the country.

The fact of the matter is that, with the Prime Minister's carbon tax flip-flop, he has effectively created two classes of Canadians, one that gets the carbon tax exemption on home heating they announced and the other massive group of Canadians who do not, such as my constituents in Alberta, where it is also cold. They will also need to heat their homes—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

The hon. member for Jonquière is rising on a point of order.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, unless my colleague can explain the connection between immigration and the carbon tax, I think he is totally off topic. If he is able to make that connection, I am ready to listen.

However, what I understand from his intervention is that he is trying to pollute an opposition day, which is being held in good faith, by giving a speech that suits his agenda. That is not how things work here. I would ask him to show a modicum of respect for his colleagues and talk about the issue we are discussing today.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I think it is important that all members have an opportunity to present their ideas at the beginning of their speech.

I will give a little caution that it may be time to get to the crux of the discussion we are having today.

The hon. member for Edmonton Mill Woods.