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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION
Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration
EVIDENCE
CONTENTS
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
| À | 1040 |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard (Chatham—Kent Essex, Lib.)) |
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Dr. Brian Crowley (President, Atlantic Institute of Market Studies) |
| À | 1050 |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard) |
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Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary—Nose Hill, Canadian Alliance) |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
| À | 1055 |
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Mrs. Diane Ablonczy |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
| Á | 1100 |
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Mrs. Diane Ablonczy |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
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Mrs. Diane Ablonczy |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard) |
| Á | 1105 |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
| Á | 1110 |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard) |
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Mr. Yvon Charbonneau (Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, Lib.) |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
| Á | 1115 |
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Mr. Yvon Charbonneau |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
| Á | 1120 |
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Mr. Yvon Charbonneau |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
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Mr. Yvon Charbonneau |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard) |
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Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (BQ) |
| Á | 1125 |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
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Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral |
| Á | 1130 |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
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Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard) |
| Á | 1135 |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard) |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
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Mrs. Diane Ablonczy |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard) |
| Á | 1140 |
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Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP) |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
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Mr. Peter Stoffer |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
| Á | 1145 |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard) |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
| Á | 1150 |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard) |
| Á | 1155 |
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Dr. Brian Crowley |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard) |
CANADA
Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration |
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l |
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l |
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EVIDENCE
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
À 
(1040)
[English]
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard (Chatham—Kent Essex, Lib.)): Ladies and gentlemen, I am going to call our committee back to order.
Our witness this morning is Mr. Brian Crowley. He has presented a brief to the committee. I would ask him, rather than reading the brief, to give us a capsule of his concerns and the issues in the brief. Then we will open it up to questions from the various members, which could well go in more depth into the issues.
So the floor is yours, and hopefully, you can keep those comments to five to ten minutes. Thank you.
Dr. Brian Crowley (President, Atlantic Institute of Market Studies): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and let me say to the committee how much I, my organization, and all of us here in Nova Scotia appreciate your taking the time to come here and speak to us about these important issues.
I'm the president of a public policy think tank based here in Halifax called the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. We're a totally privately funded think tank, we're not a government organization, and we are concerned primarily with public policy issues affecting Atlantic Canada, but also with national public policy issues, and that's why I'm here today. I'm going to speak, given the vocation of my institution, chiefly about the economic impact of immigration in Atlantic Canada and some of the policy and other measures I think need to be taken in order to encourage immigration that is appropriate for this region.
This region has been used to thinking of itself as a source of immigrants for other places, rather than as a destination for immigrants, and we've given far too little thought, in my view, to the value of attracting others to come here, yet we benefit from others when they do come here. There's a member of your committee who's a very respected member of Parliament for a nearby constituency who originally came from Holland, came through pier 21, went to British Columbia, to Yukon, and has now settled in Nova Scotia and made a marvellous contribution to our society. I think that's emblematic of the sort of thing we want to encourage. The benefits immigrants confer on the society they choose are such that we cannot possibly have too many of them, certainly not in Nova Scotia. In fact, our problem is precisely the opposite. In this century we have attracted far too few immigrants here in Atlantic Canada, and I think our development has been held back as a result.
Look, for instance, at something like the relationship between the nature of a province's population and its economic growth and plot on a map those provinces where the population is primarily born in the province. For instance, Newfoundland has the highest share of population actually born in the province. Those are also the provinces with the lowest economic growth. If you flip it around, the provinces with the highest share of population born elsewhere are also the places with highest economic growth. And when immigrants choose where to move, they go to places with lots of opportunity, places like Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver. They've proven irresistible magnets for immigrants.
But immigrants don't just take advantage of existing opportunities, they also help to create opportunities, and growing immigration is, in my view, a very strong sign of cultural and economic dynamism. We know, for instance, the offshore oil and gas industry here is going to attract a large number of immigrants from Texas, from the North Sea area, from Norway, from Scotland, from Alberta. In fact, I think one of the signs of Nova Scotia's future success will be when children in schools here say to each other, oh yes, my parents moved here from Alberta, which would be the exact reverse of what's gone on for at least three generations, with many school children in Alberta saying, yes, my parents moved here from Nova Scotia. I think we're going to be in a position to reverse that in the near future.
Many of those people will come to the region and stay, and in due course many people from this region will travel to other parts of the world, taking their knowledge to oil and gas industries elsewhere. But unless we change our ways, not nearly enough of the newcomers we need to welcome to our society, newcomers from the rest of Canada, as well as from other places in the world, will be from other countries. I don't know if you've heard from the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce here in Halifax, but according to the figures I saw from them most recently, immigration in Nova Scotia has dropped dramatically since the mid-1990s, whereas other provinces have been more aggressive in attracting newcomers. In 1999, for example, we attracted a mere 1,624 immigrants out of a total of 173,000 in Canada, less than 1%.
I certainly think we need to pursue this as a matter of urgency, in concert with Ottawa. Our province has been one of the last to seek an agreement with Ottawa on a provincial nominee program, for example, and I think it still lags in devoting attention to recruiting new immigrants, even compared to other provinces of similar size, such as Manitoba, which I happen to think is a model for small provinces to follow.
Before we talk about immigration any further, I think it's very important to speak to an argument we hear very much in this region, that immigration is all very well and good for places like Toronto and Vancouver and Montreal and Ottawa, but it's quite inappropriate for a region like Atlantic Canada that has a serious unemployment problem. Indeed, it is true to say, in my view, there has been a great deal of well-intentioned policy put in place here based on the notion that the primary public policy problem this region faces is unemployment. Nothing could be further from the truth today. Demographic trends are such that most of the industrialized world faces very significant labour shortages, today and in the future. That, and not unemployment, is the public policy challenge of the future.
Atlantic Canada has not been spared these trends. The last census showed that the depopulation of Atlantic Canada is occurring faster than most knowledgeable observers had predicted, something supplemented by an aging of the population with which we're all familiar. To cite some work done by some of the country's leading economic demographers from my institute, using the most conservative assumption, in less than a decade there will be 7,800 fewer workers in Newfoundland, 12,000 more in Nova Scotia, 3,000 fewer in New Brunswick, and roughly 3,000 more in Prince Edward Island. But in 20 years there will be 32,000 fewer workers in Newfoundland, 11,000 fewer in Nova Scotia, 35,000 fewer in New Brunswick, and little change in Prince Edward Island. Most industries, including the fishery, are forecasting significant challenges in finding workers in the near future, and a majority of employers today in Atlantic Canada regularly tell pollsters they have difficulties finding people with the proper skills who are willing to work at prevailing wages. This is throughout Atlantic Canada.
The region's labour shortage is real. It's driven by poorly designed social programs and a mismatch between the skills workers possess and those employers need. For this region to prosper, it must be possible to recruit workers who bring needed skills, who are in short supply, to this region, in addition to adopting a number of policy measures I've laid out in a recent paper I did for the TD forum on Canada's standard of living, which I can make available to this committee if you wish. I know this recommendation flies in the face of a political culture that still clings to the outmoded idea that unemployment is the most significant challenge this region faces. On the contrary, responding to labour shortages is now the chief problem we face in developing this region's economy.
While immigration can only be a modest part of the response to that problem, it is an important part. I'm deeply skeptical that we can bring in the immigrants we need through compulsion or through crude incentives. Rather, the key is to create a climate of opportunity that is attractive to immigrants, and there are many policies that could help to do that, which we can talk about perhaps during the question time. Governments in Atlantic Canada have not put the recruitment of immigrants high enough on their list of priorities. At a minimum, this requires negotiation of immigration agreements with Ottawa, to give provinces a greater role in immigrant recruitment and selection, but such agreements are not enough in themselves, because immigration is not--and this would be the heart of my message, I think, Mr. Chairman--chiefly a matter of jurisdiction, but a matter of people, and therefore a matter of the heart. It is not chiefly a matter of government.
Immigrants are people who uproot themselves from their homes in search of a better life or are forced from their homes and must make a new life for themselves against their wishes. That helps to explain why immigrants tend to congregate in specific cities. People don't move to places they've never heard of, so one of the most powerful attractions for immigrants is whether there are people like them in a new community and those people have sent back reports that people like them can prosper there. But prosperity, while important, is not the only thing that matters. While immigrants may have left their homes, they have not stopped being who they are. Integration into a new place is usually made easier by the existence of an established community from their home country in their new home.
I was discussing this just the other day with someone here in Halifax from Ghana who was now moving to Toronto after several years in Halifax. I asked him why, and he said something very simple and, I think, very poignant. He said, it's too lonely. He said he could make a living, he could cope with the snow, but he and his family couldn't cope with the fact no one knew what it meant to be a Ghanaian in Halifax. He wanted someone with ties to the old country, someone with experience here to help them deal with bureaucracy, someone to have them to their home to make them feel they belong. In Halifax Ghanaians number in the dozens, in Toronto they number in the thousands, and that makes a huge difference.
That's why we make a mistake when we think of immigration, in our typically Canadian way, as chiefly a matter of jurisdiction and intergovernmental relations. As long as we do that, we will fail to attract people to areas outside the major cities, because governments don't immigrate, people do. People come to make themselves better off, but need to find a supportive environment to lower the emotional costs of immigration. Being made to feel wanted and welcome is the strongest pro-immigration policy there is.
So in order for immigration to move outside the big centres, we need opportunity outside those centres. We need to move the communications network from existing immigrants to reach back into the home countries, to make smaller centres in this country known as places where new people can prosper. We need to foster immigrant communities and not merely individual immigrants. We don't need policies to try to force people to go where they do not want to be. We must give people strong reasons to want to be in places other than those to which they have traditionally gone. In a society that is attractive to so many because of the freedom it offers, which I think is one of the great attractions of Canada, we cannot welcome immigrants with a policy of unfreedom.
Nor can we pursue a local immigration policy of the kind described by the provincial minister responsible in Nova Scotia on the recent signature of the federal-provincial agreement. He said now it was going to be possible for rural communities in Nova Scotia to get their share of immigrants. This is an absurdity, Mr. Chairman. We are finally dismantling many of the counterproductive policies that kept unreasonably large populations in many rural communities in this region and kept them in severe underemployment and under-education. We are finally going through the shift of our rural populations to major urban centres, and no policy is going to stem that flow. Immigrants will not save rural communities, but they can make a modest, but important contribution to the major cities in this region. If we want to make smaller communities thrive, it will come from having them anchored by a vibrant, productive urban area that adds a lot of economic value and provides the kinds of professional and knowledge economy jobs that will attract immigrants and prove attractive to all young people.
I want to be clear that immigration will not solve the labour force problems we face in this region, but neither is it irrelevant. Most of the workers available to us will be people from this region who will move into the growing urban centres as we abandon some of the policies I described before. But there will be a vital leaven that only migration from the rest of Canada and immigration from the rest of the world will provide. In a world of labour shortages such as we face we will be in competition for those highly valuable immigrants with much of the rest of Canada and the industrialized world. Just to get a reasonable share of those immigrants will require us not just to negotiate the right intergovernmental agreement, but to recognize that first and foremost, immigrants need opportunity and will flee places that try to treat them as mere chess pieces to be moved where government officials want them to be. Then it will require that we, as a community, learn to cultivate our existing immigrant communities and make them willing and enthusiastic ambassadors to their home countries. And finally, it will require us to minster to the needs of the hearts of these new members of our community. If they feel they cannot belong and there can be no slaking of their thirst for at least a few people like themselves, no government policy will attract them or keep them here.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
À (1050)
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard): Thank you very much, Mr. Crowley.
Diane.
Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary—Nose Hill, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Crowley, for braving the ice and snow to give us your thoughts today. The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies is very well respected right across the country, as are you yourself, and your participation in a number of important initiatives across the broad spectrum of policy areas is well recognized. So we are pleased to have you here today.
The issue I would like to raise with you is opportunities for immigrants here in Atlantic Canada. When the new provincial nominee agreement was signed a few months ago here in Nova Scotia with the federal government, I spoke with officials here and was a little taken aback at the lack of any comprehension or plan as to what this agreement might actually achieve. I asked, for example, what labour force needs had been identified that would be filled by these provincial nominees. Well, they didn't know. What communities were particularly in need of immigrant labour and skills? Well, they weren't sure. And so it went. I don't say that to be critical, but to point out that if your strategy is going to succeed, there will need to be a lot of consultation and game planning by the affected people. So I would like you to discuss with the committee your views on those questions. What are the labour force opportunities here? How can we make sure immigrants are attracted to the places where they can bring the most benefit to the economy here?
Dr. Brian Crowley: Thank you very much for that question. I agree with you very strongly that the provincial government has not given adequate thought to the labour market needs of the province and how immigration fits into that.
I think I can say this as a Nova Scotian without being disloyal. My impression has been that the provincial government has been dragged into the immigration business rather against its will. I think the provincial government is still very much prey to the view I talked about in my paper, which is that the chief public policy problem in this region is unemployment. Immigrants somehow take jobs, and therefore we're not really in the business of encouraging new people to come here. What we want is to find jobs for the people who are already here. They've traditionally, I think, not wanted to be seen as particularly pro-immigration. I think this is starting to break down, in part because Halifax in particular is becoming a centre of opportunity, not just in Nova Scotia, but throughout the region, and this, as I mentioned in my remarks, is attracting immigrants. We now have a mosque out on the Hammonds Plains Road. We have a Sikh temple in Halifax. I could go through quite a long list of all the evidence that's accumulating that immigrants, for the first time in several generations, are starting to find Halifax attractive.
What are the opportunities? There's a whole range of things. Many of these newcomers are highly educated people. As you may know, Halifax has one of the highest, if not the highest, ratios of post-secondary institutions to population in the country. Many of these people are teaching in the universities and making a fantastic contribution to the economy, because they're bringing new skills that don't exist in the region yet and they're making those skills available through those institutions to people here. Obviously, there are a lot of people coming in from the oil and gas industry, and there's a tremendous need for expertise through a whole range of industrial needs there.
The fellow I happen to deal with when I need to go out to the airport runs a little limousine service. He's Lebanese. He's developed quite a fleet of cars, and he's got an exclusive contract to take all the people from one of the oil and gas companies back and forth to the airport. He says there's a whole community of Texans out near where Peter lives that he's ferrying back and forth all the time, because they're bringing, again, some of these vital skills to the economy.
Halifax is also a centre for ocean industries beyond the oil and gas industry. As you know, as the fishery is evolving, we're less and less focused on simply catching the fish, we're becoming a world centre for buying and trading fish, processing, and so on. This brings us into contact with people all over the world, and we need to have that kind of expertise available here.
So there's a whole range of areas in which immigrants are making a very important contribution, and I don't think the provincial government has really begun to explore them.
À (1055)
Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: In my discussions I certainly was given the message that the provincial government does very much want to move ahead in this area and just needs some more time to hold those discussions, and I'm sure your input and that of others will be welcome.
One huge problem new immigrants to Canada face, which we heard about yesterday again, is having their professional or trade credentials recognized here in Canada. From your networking and many contacts here in Nova Scotia, can you tell us whether there is any substantive move on the part of trades and professions to alleviate that situation and to have protocols in place that would allow foreign credentials to be recognized, so that we can put these good people to work as quickly as possible?
Dr. Brian Crowley: There are a few initiatives, and I'm thinking particularly of the medical field, another area where skilled personnel from other countries are making an important contribution. The brain repair unit at Dalhousie University, a world leader in brain repair work, is staffed in large part by people who have come to Halifax from other countries because of the opportunity that exists to do that work here. But these initiatives are far too few, and it's very clear that one of the great barriers to immigration is the inability of many immigrants to have their skills recognized in this country.
Many of the regulatory barriers we have put in place were designed precisely to keep new entrants out of various kinds of work. As we move away from an era of labour surplus, of unemployment, which certainly was the case, particularly in the seventies and the eighties, we've left that behind. I'm involved with the Global Commission on Aging, which is based in Washington. If you look at the figures for the world as a whole, the shrinkage of the labour force we are facing throughout the industrialized world is of quite startling proportions. So we should not continue to cling to many of these regulatory barriers to allowing people into various kinds of work on the ground that we want to protect the people who are already in those professions. I think this is old thinking that arose out of a different set of circumstances from the ones we find ourselves in today. We haven't brought our institutions up to date.
Á (1100)
Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Thank you very much.
You mentioned the need to give immigrants opportunities, and one thing that has troubled me is the evidence that immigrants are finding it harder and harder to succeed in Canada. As you probably know, the latest studies showed that the standard of living of immigrants is actually slipping, not increasing. This committee, about a year ago, travelled to Europe and to Asia to look at intake procedures, with a view to ensuring that we got our fair share--not more--of the skilled workers who wanted to emigrate to other places. I don't know whether you have yourself studied this issue, but I wonder if you could comment on the problem we have of ensuring not only that we get as many skilled workers, because I think we all agree with you that this will invigorate our economy and make us globally competitive, but also that we get workers who can and will succeed and have real success here in Canada socially, economically, and personally.
Dr. Brian Crowley: I won't claim to be an expert in this field. My impression from having read a lot of studies on immigration is that part of the explanation for the phenomenon you've described, that immigrants are, taken as a group, falling behind, rather than catching up, relative to the rest of the population, is the changing structure of immigration. As we all know, the share, for instance, of sponsored relatives and refugees in the total immigrant intake has increased significantly. I'm not criticizing that in any way, I'm quite supportive of those things, but one of the consequences is that we are no longer choosing individuals for the skills and abilities they bring to Canada. In many cases the individuals are choosing us for reasons that have nothing to do with the contributions they might be able to make to the economy. That's not a reason for us not to want them, I want to make that very clear, but we must understand that one of the consequences will be that if we're not choosing the total immigrant intake on the basis of their ability to contribute to the economy, immigrants, as a group, will probably slip a little behind.
Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Thank you.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard): Thank you.
Mr. Crowley, you raise a very important issue, one I think all of us are searching for some direction in. The most comfortable area of settlement is where immigrants go. That is the reason, as you have pointed out very clearly, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary are target locations for immigrants. They know where the area is, but they also know there are social support mechanisms, economic support mechanisms, opportunities to work within a culture familiar to them. We in the more rural, more isolated areas have a lot less opportunity to attract, and certainly, those safety nets are not there. Would you have a recommendation to either provincial or federal governments as to what, if any, role they can play, in a supportive way, to see that opportunities and programs do exist to foster movement towards Halifax, Fredericton, St. John's, other smaller communities that do and will require those skills in the future?
Á (1105)
Dr. Brian Crowley: In my view, this is the key question. Of course, it's not just Halifax and Fredericton, it's London, Ontario. London, Ontario, is a very vibrant industrial city, one of the wealthiest communities in Canada, but it don't get its share of immigrants either, and they are actually quite concerned about it. We have created a self-reinforcing set of circumstances here in Canada whereby immigrants are drawn to the communities we have mentioned for the reasons we have described.
It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, your language is quite right. The role governments can play is only a supportive role. I have talked a little about why I think compulsion is not the answer. I don't think the answer is the Government of Canada moving immigrants around like pieces on a chessboard and saying, if you want to come to Canada, you have to go to Longboat, Newfoundland. I just don't believe that's realistic, nor is it desirable. But if we take Halifax or Moncton or London, Ontario, as examples, it's not as if there are no immigrants in those communities. Certainly, here in Halifax there is a significant and growing number. There aren't enough of them.
The people you need to put your question to, Mr. Chairman, are not nice Irish Catholic boys whose families arrived in the 1820s, but this nice Irish Catholic boy's opinion is that what you really want to do is talk to the people who've recently arrived. I've been talking to the people at MISA, who I believe you met yesterday, the Metropolitan Immigrant Settlement Association, about the idea of creating here in Halifax not an immigration summit, but an immigrant summit, bringing together the people from the various immigrant communities here and saying to them, first of all, why are you here? Why did you come here? What brought you here? And what keeps you here? As I mentioned with my Ghanaian example, there are lots of people who come here and don't stay. I've known many people for whom that's true. They've tried to make a go of it here and failed, and they go on to Toronto or one of these other places. I think you'll find that many of the people in the immigrant communities in the larger centres had some other stopping-off place before they got there. So we need to know what it is that brings immigrants to these centres, what it is that keeps them, and what it is that drives away those who don't stay. I think that's the starting point. We need to listen to those immigrants, because they are the ones who've had the experience.
I talked quite a lot about immigration being a matter of the heart, not a matter of jurisdiction. That's why I said governments can only be supportive, rather than moving forces, here. I think not only do we need to find out from the immigrants themselves what brings them here and what keeps them here, we also need to engage the people who are already here, the non-immigrants, people like me, in a dialogue with the newcomers. If people here are convinced that we need to have newcomers, we need, as a community, to figure out what we need to do to make them welcome. Governments are wonderful institutions, they do many powerful and important things, but they don't speak to this. They speak to our pocketbook. What makes people stay in a place is primarily, in my view, the heart, and therefore can't be influenced by government, only by people, and we are not good at forming the kinds of relationships with immigrants that make them want to come and to stay. This may not be very useful for you, but I think it's true that we Nova Scotians and we Atlantic Canadians need to look inside to find out what it is about us that doesn't attract enough people and doesn't make them want to stay. We need to think about that.
Á (1110)
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard): Yvon.
[Translation]
Mr. Yvon Charbonneau (Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, Lib.): Following your lead, Mr. Chairman, I would like to focus in particular on the first paragraph on page 5 of the witness's submission.
You say that governments do not immigrate. We agree. You also say that it's important to realize immigrants have a tendency to settle in areas that are already home to immigrant communities. That statement is also correct. You maintain that immigrants must be welcomed into a positive environment. That's all well and good. However, the fact remains that the decision to immigrate is a personal one. You disagree with these policies, noting the following:
[English]
“We don't need policies that try to force people to go where they do not want to be.”
[Translation]
Can you give us an example of one such policy that has forced people to go where they don't want to go?
However, would you not agree that there is room for policies that encourage people? I say “encourage”, not “force”. We talk about encouraging people to settle in a region like Halifax. We talk about providing certain benefits or incentives for a two- or three-year period, that is the time it takes to build a small host community. You do not address this topic in your submission and you object to governments forcing people into doing certain things. That's just not the case. No one is forcing anyone to do anything. Shouldn't we be looking at policies that might act as an incentive? Maybe policies like this would result in the building of small core communities? Would you care to comment?
You are addressing a committee of the House of Commons. Through us you can convey messages to the government. That's the purpose of meetings like this. If you have no message for the government, then the meeting will be brief. However, if you do have a message for us to convey to the government, we will be happy to oblige.
Dr. Brian Crowley: All right then. First of all, on the issue of forcing immigrants to settle in certain locations, I mentioned that because this issue comes up regularly, and not only in the course of public discussions outside the government. In the past, I have attended meetings with federal government representatives during which discussions centred on whether policies should be introduced to force immigrants to settle in communities where there was a shortage of immigrants. For example, people wanting to immigrate to Canada would have to settle in St. John's, Newfoundland, rather than in Toronto. Over a ten-year period, immigrants would be forced to settle in a particular region of the country.
I didn't come up with this idea on my own. It's an idea that has been bandied about and I wanted to state clearly from the outset that in my opinion, this policy wouldn't work and should be discounted.
You were also wondering if potential immigrants should be offered incentives to settle in regions that they might not tend naturally to consider. The idea is not bad per se, but to provide incentives to people willing to settle in Halifax, without knowing why immigrants who voluntarily go there ultimately leave, is like putting the cart before the horse. We don't know enough about the reasons that motivate immigrants, or about why people move to other locations. I'm not just talking about people newly arrived in Canada, but about immigrants who, once in Canada, decide to relocate. Why, after landing in Halifax, do they ultimately make their way to Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver?
The point I was trying to make in my submission is that governments have a very important supporting role to play. If I gave the impression that I thought governments weren't relevant to the process or do not play a key role, then I apologize, because that wasn't my intention.
However, I did try to be very clear about the fact that immigration should not be first and foremost a government matter. The same goes for many other activities in our society. It's easier for government to prevent people from doing certain things than it is to help them. We mustn't lose sight of that fact.
Á (1115)
Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: That was an interesting explanation you provided, Dr. Crowley, because you say the reasons are unclear as to why immigrants come to, or move away from Halifax. However, an explanation lies in the story of the immigrant from Ghana. That person decided to move to Toronto because there isn't a community of people from Ghana in Halifax. If Halifax were home to a small Lebanese community, maybe more Lebanese would choose to come to this city. You've presented a very reasonable argument.
We need to stop this cycle somewhere and that's why I was proposing that we look at possible incentives to encourage people who want to come to Canada, but aren't quite sure about where they would like to settle and are open to the idea of going either to Halifax, Toronto or Vancouver. If, on looking at Immigration Canada's program, they discover that Halifax presents some particularly interesting opportunities for them over the next two, three or five years in terms of their children, their taxes, and so forth, maybe they'll decide to settle in Halifax. And, if one hundred people of like mind settle in Halifax over the next two or three years, then it's a start. That's why I suggested the whole incentives question be given further consideration. As I see it, it's one way for the government to resolve the problem without issuing orders or forcing people's hand. If a person is open to suggestions, perhaps that person could be directed to a region in need of economic assistance. I agree with your initial statement.
Dr. Brian Crowley: I'm not opposed to incentives, regardless of whether they're offered by the federal government or by provincial governments. However, I do feel that there are other equally important initiatives. For example, I'm strongly in favour of having the existing immigrant community serve as a communications network.
Á (1120)
Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: However, in some cases, no such community exists.
Dr. Brian Crowley: I was referring to the situation in Halifax. I was talking about using the small, existing immigrant community as a starting point. However, it's important to remember that these immigrants chose to come to Halifax, to settle and to remain in this community. That's the most important factor, to the extent that our goal is to give others the same experience. That's why I proposed a summit for immigrants from various communities across the country. The goal would be to forge a sense of belonging to a local immigrant community and to create a communications network stretching from Halifax, to use this as an example, all the way to the immigrants' country of origin. After all, immigrants are our best ambassadors. We have to find a way for them to convey to their country of origin the message that Halifax welcomed them warmly and that it would do the same for others like them. We need to find a way to recreate the environment that works so very well for immigrants in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: Thank you.
[English]
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard): Madeleine.
[Translation]
Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Crowley, your presentation impressed me in two respects. While you focused on the reality of the situation , at the same time, you presented the human side of things, not what we normally expect to see from an organization like yours. Personally, I enjoyed it very much.
As I was watching the news yesterday, I saw a report about an event held at the University of Moncton that had been organized by students from various parts of the world. The students I saw on television likely were from Africa. As I see it, if we want to understand the needs of different immigrant groups, it might be interesting to contact these young students at the University of Moncton, or foreign students elsewhere for that matter. Some day, they will return home, but they could play a role as ambassadors.
It's by no means an easy task to reverse the flow of immigrants from urban centres to the regions. Even if incentives were offered, the will would need to exist. The federal, provincial and municipal governments can always bring in measures, but if they are not viewed as being in the best interests of the local population, these measures are doomed to fail.
Everyone is well aware of the problems in the health field, particularly the shortage of doctors to service the regions. Doctors are offered a range of incentives to work in the regions for five years or seven years. Some have discovered that they enjoy practising medicine outside urban areas. One of the biggest mistakes immigrants make is to expect to work in their chosen field upon arriving in Canada. That just doesn't happen. They encounter considerable resistance from professional associations, in Quebec as well as elsewhere in Canada. What can be done to make the situation more accommodating for them?
If community leaders are not even mindful of the situation, what are we doing to inform them? I'm thinking about a professional association such as the Association of Professional Engineers, whose members are leaders in their respective communities and have a hand in development. In my view, if a person is doing work that he or she finds satisfying, integration then becomes a much easier process and that person will feel accepted. If, unfortunately, they are the only representatives from their country of origin, maybe then they can muster enough energy to plant the seeds for a new community.
Á (1125)
Dr. Brian Crowley: You've raised a number of very interesting points. I don't think I can address every single one, but I will touch on several of them.
First of all, you spoke of universities and of young foreign students who come to Canada, many to Moncton, Dalhousie and Mount Saint Vincent here in Halifax, from various countries in Africa, Europe and Asia. In my opinion, this is a potential source of immigrants that is not being properly tapped. Not only can the students serve as ambassadors when they return to their country of origin...I think we should be making more of an effort to keep at least some of these young people here in Canada.
I realize that this raises a number of other problems. Often, these youths come here to receive some training precisely so that they can return home and share Canadian know-how with others. I know that in the United States, the post-secondary education system is a component of the immigrant recruitment strategy in that it serves as a major port of entry into the country. Canada has failed to take advantage of this similar situation to the same extent and yet, Canadian universities enjoy an excellent reputation abroad. That's the first point I wanted to make.
Secondly, you talked about the importance of increasing people's awareness of the situation, from a social standpoint. I for one work toward this every day at my institute. Every day, I say to anyone willing to listen that the problem in our region is not unemployment, but a shortage of skilled workers. We are desperately in need of skilled workers, but the message isn't getting out, particularly to communities that tend to see themselves as under-developed or as areas with excessively high unemployment rates.
As far as the health care system is concerned, in addition to encountering some resistance from members of various professions and from professional organizations, whose mission is to protect the interests of existing, not prospective, members, everyone knows that Canada's health care system has been run for decades according to policies that I for one considered totally illogical. The policy advocated has been to exclude new doctors and nurses as much as possible, because hiring a new doctor means incurring some costs. The belief was that costs could be kept in check if fewer doctors were hired. Any economist can tell you that proponents of this policy are living in a dream world. Nevertheless, this was the policy that was embraced and it's difficult to alter long-standing mindsets.
Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: My assistant has just given me an idea. There's a reason why he's here with me. He's quite smart, you see.
Every province has a minimum wage scheme in place. In your opinion, would it be possible to introduce, along with the minimum wage scheme, a bonus system for people willing to move to a remote area or to a region? Would that be feasible? This could be part of an incentive scheme. I know that members of the business community are always furious when governments suddenly decide to increase the guaranteed minimum wage, because they're convinced this will bankrupt them. In my opinion, we need to weigh every possible option.
Á (1130)
Dr. Brian Crowley: This idea has merit, but, in my view, does not address the fundamental problem. In Nova Scotia, the problem is not the shortage of immigrants to fill minimum wage positions, even though there is a lack of workers to take these jobs. Minimum wage jobs do not require skilled workers.
One of the biggest obstacles to regional economic development is the failure to attract highly qualified professionals to this area. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver offer better salary prospects and opportunities for more comfortable, high-end housing. In Ottawa and Toronto, there are opportunities to rub shoulders with a larger number of peers and colleagues. This explains the problem we have attracting qualified workers to our region.
In order for the economy to run smoothly, we need all kinds of workers with a broad range of skills and experience. We don't have this here. Many people have limited training. In some cases, they don't have a high school diploma or they may even be illiterate. For instance, very few have a doctorate or advanced training in a professional field. This poses a major challenge for us.
Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: Thank you.
[English]
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard): Thank you. I'm just going to follow up on part of what Madeleine has been talking about. I think you made it very clear, and all of us would agree, that it is somewhat the responsibility of governments to foster and support means by which settlement patterns can enhance the whole country. Whether they can dictate or not dictate isn't really a question. We do have many immigrants applying to come to Canada, and the backlog is tremendous. We're competing with Australia, we're competing with the United States, we're competing with others for professional and technical people. It is estimated that within ten years Ontario will be short of 5,000 electricians. In all the areas we're looking at in Canada the technical and professional people shortage is going to become greater and greater. We all realize that.
However, when we look at points systems and the structure we have, there is room, in my belief anyway, for us to create a support mechanism for those who are applying to come to Canada to develop a culture that would possibly create the same environment as with workforces 50 years ago. I look in many areas of Canada at the kinds of agricultural production, the kinds of settlements that went on. The Italian community came and settled, for various reasons, in different sections of Canada. We saw Dutch and Belgians settle in other areas. We saw Mennonites move from one area to another. A lot of that was policy, it was opportunity, it was a mutual support. I believe there is direction for that to occur, and maybe you could give me comment on that. I'm not talking about forcing people to move in a direction, but about doing what we can to foster that growth in areas other than the large urban centres. Every person at this table knows those opportunities are there in the major urban centres, but we also are aware that the need has to be balanced with the opportunity and the social comfort. We have another need in the more rural, smaller community, and we must be aware of trying to at least foster some support to meet that need.
Á (1135)
Dr. Brian Crowley: Mr. Chairman, I couldn't be more supportive of the general direction you're sketching out there. The trick is to find a way to encourage people to come to Atlantic Canada, let's say, or some of the communities we've talked about. I believe you're from southwestern Ontario.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard): Yes.
Dr. Brian Crowley: I'm sure there are going to be significant labour shortages there, and I'm sure there are many communities that are wondering why they can't get their share of immigrants when Toronto is so successful in attracting them.
Let's take the point system. Let's imagine we started to say to people, if you're willing to say you're going to set up shop in any one of a number of communities, we'll give you extra points. In principle, I'm not opposed to that, but I've seen too many of these programs in the past and I know what will be the case. First, all the communities that fall out of the zones that get extra points will lobby to have the zones extended. It's just like unemployment insurance: you get regionally differentiated benefits, and people start to argue about where the border falls. Politically powerful places like Toronto are going to say, wait a minute, we need to keep the flow of immigrants coming, because we've got this shortage of electricians and so on. The Ontario Liberal caucus is going to have a big fight about it, and the rural members are going to say, no, we need to keep our preferences. And Toronto is going to say, well, we think immigration's been too good for us. We'll put in place a system that will look good at the beginning, and by the time we're done with it in five years time, the purpose will have been defeated. I've just seen it too many times. It's not because I'm against the principle, I just have never seen it put in place successfully.
Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: And what happens if someone decides not to stay in the place for five years or ten years? Do you send them back? This becomes a whole nightmare. Their kids are in school. They might have good reasons for moving.
Dr. Brian Crowley: I want to find ways to encourage people to spread themselves across the country, to become aware of the opportunities that exist in lots of other places. I'm very happy to consider a system that might find ways to reward people for wanting to come to places where there aren't enough immigrants. I'm not here with such a scheme, Mr. Chairman. I would be glad to look at such schemes if people want to come up with them, but I just have to say I'm a little skeptical that we can make them work.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard): Thank you.
Peter.
Á (1140)
Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NDP): Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Crowley, again, thank you very much for being part of the committee. Just for the committee's attention, every time there's a committee here, be it transport, finance, whatever, the AIMS representatives have always made themselves available, not only in their presentation, but also in the briefs, and I just want to thank AIMS for that. In the last transportation one we had they talked about an Atlantic Canada transportation corridor, which was brilliant and something we could look at very seriously.
I don't know if the committee's had the opportunity yet, but I would recommend a quick tour of Pier 21. Pier 21 from 1928 to 1971 brought 1.5 million immigrants into this country, and unfortunately, most of them left. There's a little vignette they have of people getting off the ship and on a train out. They're just gone.
Dr. Brian Crowley: The train was waiting at the door.
Mr. Peter Stoffer: Yes, just waiting to send them away. More or less, what we received here in Nova Scotia in those build-up periods was people in the agriculture and fishing industries, and all the industrial people left. They took their expertise and went to other parts of the country. I don't think we've really turned that around yet, but it is slowly turning around.
One of the things that really upset me is this. Immigrants also read the newspapers, they also listen to the media, and when our premier says we are a have-not province, you're going to resettle your family to another part of Canada, you're not going to go to the have-not province, you're not even going to consider it. If the premier who lives here says we're a have-not province, no immigrant wants to move his or her family here. They want opportunities, they want cultural diversity, they want to be a able to live in peace and freedom, they want to be able to have great recreational and cultural and educational facilities and know their families are looked after. I don't believe for a second we're a have-not province. I've always said we've got everything. So I'd like your comments in that regard.
Also, one of the things in Atlantic Canada I've noticed, not being from here--not with all people, and it is changing--is what is called a CFA attitude, “come from away”. If you're not part of the infrastructure in having your family from here.... Even as the member of Parliament for my area, I still get people in my riding saying, well, you're not really a Nova Scotian. Well, I guess I'm not really a Canadian, because I wasn't born here. Those attitudes are changing, but they're still there.
I look at the paper this morning and see a Mr. Reyat convicted of a crime, and I know what some people from my riding are going to say: why do you let immigrants like that in this country if they're are going to be criminals? It fosters that kind of ignorance towards what immigration actually brings to this country. There is still debate in this province that immigrants take jobs away, but the reality is that they provide jobs, and one of the greatest examples of that is a gentleman named Ken Rowe. He came from Britain, and with his business ideals and objectives, he has employed literally hundreds and hundreds of people in this province. He could have gone anywhere in the world, but he brought it here to this province. It's amazing what he has done. I'd like your comments on the fact that there are some great examples here.
You also said governments don't immigrate, people do. I think the only time governments immigrate is when there's a war and they become governments in exile in other areas.
One of the things I wanted to ask you about is the proposal for anational identity card. I know you probably haven't done an in-depth analysis of that yet, but it would be interesting to hear your comments on it.
Also, I think the immigration summit is a brilliant suggestion. I think it's great to bring people together, even government representatives from other countries, who are thinking of coming to Canada to see how we can make that happen. I think a lot of answers to our questions are in something like an immigration summit. I think that's a brilliant idea.
Dr. Brian Crowley: You've raised a number of points, and I may not be able to respond to them all, but let me make a couple of quick observations, and then we'll talk about the national identity card.
“Have-not provinces” is a term I don't use any more. If I have to, I talk about the less developed provinces, but I don't think of us as have-not provinces, I think it's a terrible self-image to have. I think it's absolutely right that if we portray ourselves in this way, the message that sends to immigrants is, why would you want to go to a have-not province when you can go to Alberta or Ontario or British Columbia? We really must change the way we think about ourselves and talk about ourselves.
If I may be so bold, I think there are some prejudices about this part of the world. The federal bureaucracy so often represents us around the world, and this whole language of haves and have-nots is actually a federal language. It's how the feds have categorized us so they can figure out who gets equalization and who gets regional economic development and all that sort of stuff. I've had many immigrants talk to me about this. They approach official Canadian government representatives outside the country and say, I'm thinking about emigrating, and I don't know much about Canada; I know Canada is a wealthy country, but where should I go? The message they're often given is, well, of course, most people go to Toronto and Vancouver and Montreal, and these are the places where there's the most opportunity etc. We're not only fighting the vicious circle in which immigrants don't come, so we can't attract them, they do go to Toronto, and so they'll all go to Toronto, but there is a degree to which, in my humble opinion, this is reinforced by the way in which the country is represented abroad.
Á (1145)
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard): Most of the committee members here have had the opportunity to travel abroad and listen to interviews, to talk to people who are there. I didn't find any of that in our missions. I found our officials to be very open. People know where Vancouver is, where Montreal is, where Toronto is. If you talk Canada, they know the major cities. Beyond that, they know very little about Canada, and I don't think they know the economic issues in Atlantic Canada, at least where I was, and other committee members seem to indicate the same thing. So I have a little difficulty with the perspective that federal people are encouraging different messages.
Dr. Brian Crowley: I would be glad to discover I was wrong, Mr. Chairman. We all operate on the basis of anecdote. I could give you lots of anecdotes from people who have had different experiences. I merely think it is something it's important to be sensitive to.
As I mentioned in my talk, people don't immigrate to places they've never heard of . If part of the problem is that everybody, when they think about Canada, thinks Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, and that's it, and we here in Canada are saying we have to do a better job about getting immigrants into other places, it's not the responsibility of immigrants to find out about all these places they've never heard, it's our responsibility to tell them. If I look at the way immigration is distributed across the country, what that's telling me is that we have not been successful at communicating that. There may be all kinds of reasons. I don't want to suggest that it is just central Canadian prejudice; that's a bad old Nova Scotia reflex, and I don't want to fall into that trap. But I wouldn't say we shouldn't think about how we, as Canadians, think about different parts of the country and whether that might be relevant.
The question was raised about the national identity card. Let me preface my remarks by saying I'm not an expert in the field, but I have lived in Canada, I have lived in the U.K. for five years, I have lived in Africa, I have spent a lot of time travelling around the world, and I have started to take a much greater interest in security issues, partly because my institute believes one of the greatest public policy challenges we face in Canada is managing our relationship with the United States and what the next stages are in that relationship. Clearly, the Americans are pushing us to become more security conscious. So I think that's the context within which this discussion takes place.
My immediate reaction to the idea of a national identity card is not a very favourable one. As always, I want to know what the problem is that's being solved. I could be wrong, and I'm certainly open to correction on this, but I am pretty doubtful that it's very hard for authorities to identify appropriately people who are legitimately in Canada. The number of pieces of identification we all have is large. If I haul out my wallet here, I have ten pieces of ID various governments have given me.
I am very concerned about the notion of there being a central piece of identification. No matter what firewalls we try to put around it, it will be just like the social insurance number, which supposedly is only going to be used for tax purposes, but everybody knows is asked for by just about every kind of agency you deal with, because it's a simple identifier. That number has become a very common identifier, which makes it possible, as we all know, to reach across various kinds of databases and assemble a whole lot of information, which I think Canadians have legitimate reasons to be concerned about. I would be very concerned about the potential of a national identification card to become, whatever the intentions of the people creating the card, a uniform identifier of Canadians that could be used for purposes that would undermine our privacy.
My experience, again, is that there is no piece of government documentation so good that it can't be forged. Therefore, if the purpose is to clearly separate people who are legitimately in Canada and have a legal status here from those who don't, I am personally skeptical that it will succeed, because the ability of people to forge documents, in my view, will always remain ahead of the ability of governments to make those documents secure. So I'm skeptical that it would solve the problem of identifying people who aren't supposed to be here. These are people who, by definition, don't play by the rules and are willing to put a lot of money into staying here, including into obtaining forged documents. And for people who are here legitimately and can already identify themselves adequately, I'm concerned that it creates a potential for danger to privacy I would be very worried about.
Á (1150)
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard): Thank you very much, Mr. Crowley. We certainly appreciate your coming and taking the time to share your views and your organization's views. There is no question that many of these issues are very complicated, and there are 50 opinions when you get 25 people together. But when all is said and done, the opinions of those across the country are most important to this committee, not so much from a partisan viewpoint. The nice part about working on this committee is that it is very much non-partisan and we try to deal on a broader plain, and I think we have been quite successful in doing that. So your input will be considered very carefully, and I think you've had a major impact with the majority of what you've put forward and given us good reason to think about some of the processes.
Thank you very much.
Á (1155)
Dr. Brian Crowley: Thank you so much for the invitaiton to be here. I really appreciate it. And thank you for listening and being so respectful. I've enjoyed the exchange.
Thank you.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Jerry Pickard): The meeting is adjourned.