[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, May 16, 1995
.1539 
[English]
The Chairman: I have been told my colleagues will be here later, so we'll start without them.
I'd like to thank Professor Swan for coming and giving us his critique of the book. We're looking at the general issue of the economic impact of Canadian immigration policy, so you don't have to restrict yourself to a critique of the book. At the end of the day we want to provide the government with some recommendations.
Professor Swan, I'll turn the floor over to you.
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Mr. Neil Swan (Individual Presentation): Thank you. I did understand that the committee is discussing immigration in general but with particular reference to the book Diminishing Returns, edited by Don DeVoretz. What I would like to do is give my opinion on the thesis in there, but I'll do it against the background of the work I've done in the past.
The committee may know that I was heavily involved in the report by the late Economic Council of Canada on immigration, and if you like, that's where I get the kind of background knowledge to speak to this topic.
Just to summarize, in advance, my own views on the book, I think DeVoretz is quite right that diminishing returns recently are very likely. On the other hand, I think the evidence presented for diminishing returns in the volume is fairly weak. I think the result's right, but as a typical academic or ex-academic I'm not totally convinced by the reasoning.
Further, I think diminishing returns matter for policy on the mix of immigration between different classes - independents versus family and so on - but decisions on the level of immigration probably should take hardly any cognizance of this diminishing returns phenomenon. I'd make a distinction between the mix and the level as far as policy goes.
If you'll indulge me a little while, I'll leave amplification of the first two points to the question period and just speak briefly to the last two, the relevance of the diminishing returns phenomenon for policy on the mix and level.
To do that, I'll talk about what should determine policy on the level and the mix in general terms. I'll give you what I think are a few relevant facts, and then with that background, I'll try to fit DeVoretz's findings into the picture. I'll take about 10 minutes, if that's okay.
The Chairman: Sure.
Mr. Swan: As far as what should determine immigration policy is concerned, my own view is that about eight factors, divided into three groups, matter.
The first three are the economic benefits to the host community; they matter. Those benefits are of three kinds: in enhanced real income for the members of the host community; in jobs; and in the net difference between the taxes that people here pay and the government benefits they receive.
Apart from those three economic factors, I think there are two social factors that matter a great deal. One is the ability to absorb immigrants without friction into the community. The other is the effect immigration has on making the community more heterogeneous, less homogeneous.
Then I think there's a set of ethical factors. I think in immigration policy one has to consider three ethical obligations. First, there are the economic benefits to the newcomers who would otherwise be much poorer, just as on the Statue of Liberty it says, bring me your poor, and all that. Second is the obligation to allow for reunification of families. Third is the international commitment to take refugees.
Policy on both the mix and the level has to rest on a balancing of all of these eight factors and these three groups: the economic, the social, and the ethical. I would point out that the diminishing returns phenomenon, even if correct, applies to only one of the eight factors. It applies to the third factor in the first group of economic elements. That's one reason for trying to keep in perspective how important the diminishing returns phenomenon is.
To add a few facts, on the economic gains to the hosts, the Economic Council found - and I think this analysis is still relevant because it's not very old - that the per capita income gains are fairly high per immigrant.
They work out to about $2,000 per immigrant per annum; that's a very rough ballpark estimate. They're probably also fairly high if you measure them per dollar spent in getting the immigrants here, as a kind of rate of return on that money investment.
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There are no estimates of what that rate of return is. They've never been made. But a back-of-the-envelope guestimate would be that the rate of return may be as high as 15%. It's probably not below 10%.
So money spent on immigrants is like an investment that yields maybe between 10% and 15% per annum on the money, which is not enormous, but certainly is not negligible, either.
Consistent with that, the total value of immigration is quite small compared with GNP, largely because it's a big country with a lot of people and the immigrant flow doesn't make that big a difference. So there is a high rate of return per immigrant, but there is a small total value of immigration in total.
The council also investigated where that economic gain comes from, what the source of the gain is. The main source is what economists call scale economies. Operating with a bigger domestic market leads to a number of efficiencies. That yielded about three-quarters of the gain that we found and that I've just cited the estimate of.
The rest of the economic gain on the income side was from the DeVoretz kind of thing, the balance between taxes contributed and obligations to spend money incurred. That accounted for about a quarter of this gain.
I'll come back to that and the relevance of it for assessing this, but those are just a couple of facts and quotes as we saw them.
On the social effects, the Economic Council found improving tolerance and acceptance of immigration, particularly if you were to avoid sharp increases from year to year in the level of immigration. Those were a bit dangerous, but otherwise there were improving tolerance and acceptance.
The council tried very hard to look at the value of heterogeneity, a more varied society in terms of ethnicity, colour, and so on. It was not able to find any quantitative measure of that. I feel that greater heterogeneity is valuable. I certainly think it's an important factor to consider in assessing the level of immigration. How you weigh it against the others has to be common sense, judgment, and so on.
The same goes for the third set of factors in evaluating immigration policy, the ethical ones.
It's fairly obvious that newcomers make a large economic gain when they come, although nobody's quantified that. There's clearly a great value to family reunification,and also to honouring our international obligations to refugees. I don't know how you quantify that and how you set it in the balance against the dollar gains on the economic side.
Where do DeVoretz's findings fit into what I would see as this broader picture of policy on immigration? The findings in the part of the book - much of the book is not about this - that DeVoretz draws the title from, the diminishing returns part.... That applies, as I mentioned, to the economic benefit set of factors, and it applies to what I would estimate as one-quarter of the economic benefits.
So what he's saying is that, for this one-quarter of the economic benefits, that quarter has been getting smaller through the last few years because of changes in immigration policy on the mix between independent, family class, and the like. It's clear that even if you have a decline in that quarter, that still leaves three-quarters intact and doesn't make a big difference to the total value from the economic side of immigration.
To be fair, he himself says as much in his introduction.
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It follows that any gain you get from adjusting policy to try to make this decline smaller or reverse it applies only to the economic factor and only to one-quarter of the economic factor, and will restore only a part of that quota. So what you're looking at are policy adjustments that have, in my view, a very small effect on the total picture of all the factors you should have in mind when you're looking at immigration policy.
My own opinion is that those other factors loom so large relative to this small economic one that you probably should take very little cognizance of this diminishing returns phenomenon in making any decision or any recommendations that you put forward on what should be done with the total level of immigration. Social factors, scale economies on the economic side, the ethical element connected with immigration, to my mind, should dominate the effect of this small element of diminishing returns.
That's what I wanted to say. As I said, if you want to ask me particular questions about the book, which I've tried to review for the Canadian Journal of Economics, I'll do the best I can to respond to those - I'm not sure if I could get into really fine detail on that, but I'll do the best I can - or any questions in that general area.
Thank you.
The Chairman: Thanks very much.
[Translation]
Mrs. Debien.
Mrs. Debien (Laval East): Good day, Mr. Swan, and welcome.
I believe, Mr. Swan, that you are very knowledgeable about matters related to immigration, as you have studied them over a long period. You know that, at this time, there are a certain number of changes being made to immigration policy. You think that bringing in different policies might cause serious or significant economic repercussions involving immigration?
[English]
Mr. Swan: What kind of policy differences do you have in mind? Did I understand you correctly? You have policy differences....
[Translation]
Mrs. Debien: Am I correct in thinking that you are an economist?
Mr. Swan: That's right.
Mrs. Debien: My question may not be directly related to today's topic, but rather to the agreement on immigration policy which the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration is studying.
We have heard many witnesses testify on a whole range of issues; they came to share their opinions with the committee, on an economic issue, among others: the department's decision to levy a new settlement fee on immigrants, which Mr. Martin announced in his most recent budget. Immigrants will now have to pay a settlement fee. What effect might such a fee have on the economic impact of our immigration policy?
Since the Department of Immigration is already largely self-sufficient due to the fees it collects, such as the application-processing fee, which is set at $500, or $100 per subsequent child or dependent, one wonders how this new fee, which was introduced by Mr. Martin's latest budget, will affect Canada's open-door policy with regard to immigration. Do you think it might have an important economic impact on the department?
[English]
Mr. Swan: I'm finding it very difficult to respond. You're asking me whether the new fees being charged would have an economic effect. That is the force of the question.
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I assume they would decrease immigration somewhat because things always fall back when a price is charged, but the net effect is probably beneficial economically. Is it not so, because you are now taxing the immigrants to come?
I feel I'm not....
[Translation]
Mrs. Debien: But how can there be an economic benefit when there will be fewer immigrants, and thus fewer people who will be paying the $975?
[English]
Mr. Swan: There would be fewer immigrants, but they would be paying.
[Translation]
Mrs. Debien: In any case, those who could afford to pay, the immigrant investors, will continue to be in a position to do so. So the policy will not change much. It will decrease the number of applicants, and, by the same token, also cause a decrease in government revenue, but it will not have any effect on the immigrant investor class who could afford to pay the 975$ in any case.
[English]
Mr. Swan: I guess you are saying the total number of immigrants will fall as a result of the charge, but if many immigrants pay a fee there will be some revenue. I'm sorry. I don't really understand what you're getting at.
[Translation]
Mrs. Debien: Perhaps this is a hypothetical question, and we may not have any statistics. Perhaps someone should have brought some statistics; that might have helped us.
[English]
Mr. Swan: Can anyone else throw a light on it, perhaps from the research?
The Chairman: Do you have a general offhand reaction as a Canadian citizen to the$975?
Mr. Swan: That I can answer.
As a Canadian citizen I don't like it very much. I think if I look at the ethical side of our obligations on immigration and at the family reunification side, this fee is not a good idea in the sense that I presume it will prevent some family reunification. It will make it more difficult for some refugees to come even though they're offered loans, but it will make it more difficult for some immigrants, particularly the poorer ones. On that side, for those elements, it's not a good idea. However, on the economic side, if we're very harshly economic then I think there will be a net increase in benefit to the Canadian taxpayer.
While you are quite correct that some immigrants will be deterred by the fee, the remaining immigrants will pay the fee so you will get extra revenue from them. You'll lose some gains from the immigrants who didn't come because each immigrant is worth something. It's difficult to say without a lot of careful calculation whether the net would be positive or negative. My instinct is that there would be an economic gain, but I think you have to set that off against the social and the humanitarian costs of doing this. There's a nice weaselly answer.
[Translation]
Mrs. Debien: Do you think this policy will also have an adverse effect on our reputation?
Mr. Swan: Yes, precisely.
[English]
Much more nicely put.
Mrs. Bakopanos (Saint-Denis): I'm sorry I missed your presentation, Mr. Swan, but you did prepare a written text for us. It's probably your opinion we want more than anything else.
You state that in the chapter on family classes in Diminishing Returns there were a lot of problems with the actual study that was done. What do you think of the sponsorship bond our government has introduced for the family class?
Mr. Swan: Well, there has been a lot of defaulting on the obligation to look after people who come and join the system, has there not?
Mrs. Bakopanos: I wouldn't say a lot.
Mr. Swan: Well, there has been enough to create public concern about it.
The Chairman: Was it 13%?
Mrs. Bakopanos: Yes. That's not a lot.
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Mr. Swan: No, but it's the usual story that the few bad apples get the press and the prominence.
I'd be in favour of immigration because I was an immigrant. I like the idea of international movement and so on, but if you want to make an immigration policy stick and persist in the long haul, you need public acceptability. I think from that angle the unpleasantness of forcing people to pay more to get their families together or commit to an obligation that's onerous in some way is a price I would think is worth paying in the present, rather mean climate of opinion, to keep public acceptance of immigration.
I think DeVoretz would also argue there's not only the question of the economic benefits to immigration, but the perception in the public's mind of those benefits. That's one of the reasons he stresses making sure your immigrants not only contribute but are perceived to be contributors to the public purse.
Mrs. Bakopanos: Instead of the $975 landing fee we impose, would you be in favour of perhaps newly arrived immigrants paying for their own language training or other settlement programs?
Mr. Swan: I think language training payment would have to vary a bit. For example, wives who don't have the chance to join the labour force and don't speak the language still need to learn to speak the language for the sake of their kids and absorbing and so on. So you would still want to continue some kind of subsidization and help for those people on both humanitarian and practical grounds of absorbing immigrants.
Mrs. Bakopanos: But even now they don't have priority in terms of language training, in Quebec in any case.
Mr. Swan: Well, you asked me for my general opinion.
Mrs. Bakopanos: I was just making the point that they're excluded now anyway. Those who are intended for the labour market have first priority in terms of language training.
Mr. Swan: Yes. Indeed, in the council report a couple of years ago we argued that they should cease to be excluded and be brought in. So I think you would have to pay for language training in those cases in which it doesn't make any sense to demand payment, but in cases in which language training is going to pay off for individuals in terms of jobs or better jobs, it's only fair to ask them to pay some of it back or even all of it back. Whether you should pay upfront or not is a bit harder to judge.
Mrs. Bakopanos: How can we strengthen the economic impact of the business immigration program? Do you have any suggestions along those lines?
Mr. Swan: I don't personally think the business immigration program has a big economic impact. There's an article in here, for example, that talks about jobs created, but they're gross jobs created. We found in much past research on regional development policy, for example, it's easy to create gross jobs to get a company to set up. What you don't know is which companies fail to set up as a result of the competition; whether the company would have been there anyway; or whether the competition for labour in the area caused by the subsidized company crowded out some other companies. It's a very difficult question.
Most of the research that has actually come to grips with the difficulties has found that the net number of jobs created by job creation programs is always far smaller than the gross number, and may in fact be zero. I think it would be zero. So the immigration investor program apparently creates some jobs, but you don't know whether those jobs would have been created by somebody else anyway or whether the competition crowded out somebody else who would have created jobs. So my own view is that it doesn't do very much.
Mrs. Bakopanos: But if we take the program Quebec has at the present time with $150,000 minimum investment, that money comes into the economy just the same. They have to prove they're going to set up some sort of business before they're even allowed into the country. So even if it's one job, it's one job more than would normally be there.
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Mr. Swan: I'm saying that most of the evidence shows it's not one job more; it just seems to be.
Economists would argue that if a business is worth setting up, it will get financing anyway. If it's not worth setting up you shouldn't be issuing tickets to Canada to get it set up.
Mrs. Bakopanos: I will differ with you, based on the fact that in my riding the only businesses that are being created right now are businesses of newly arrived immigrants, such as family-run grocery stores. What is keeping a lot of the economic activity in my riding alive is the fact that newly arrived immigrants are setting up a little grocery store, a little Vietnamese restaurant, or another small business. I can mention a lot of small businesses that may not employ a lot of people, but they employ the people themselves. They create their own employment.
I know the category of immigrant investor has been problematic from the very beginning, depending on which province you looked at. But the studies that have been done in Quebec have shown a very positive economic impact, at least the ones I've looked at in the years I've been involved with immigration in Quebec.
Taking all of that into account, do you think we should have immigration levels that are adjusted from year to year, based on good or bad economic times?
Mr. Swan: No, I think it's much better to have a longer-run policy that keeps the flow fairly smooth.
On the social side, if you slow down in bad times it implies you're going to speed up in good times. Research into the acceptance of visible minorities has shown that if there was a rapid inflow it stimulated prejudice. If the inflow was steady and people became used to it year after year, prejudice didn't arise and tolerance grew.
So if you yield to the temptation to cut back immigration in bad times and are forced to increase it rapidly in good times, you run the risk on the social side of generating racial friction or friction against visible minorities. So because of that social aspect, the council recommended - and I agree - that you should keep a pretty smooth flow.
The other reason for going with that was we couldn't find any evidence that immigration generated unemployment. We couldn't find evidence that it generated jobs, as you think it does, or that it destroyed jobs, as others think it does. We found that it was really quite neutral both ways. So while varying it with the cycle would be politically popular, it wouldn't have a lot of effect.
The Chairman: I was wondering if you had any comments about the current level and the future level.
Mr. Swan: Yes, I would still like to see the level kept fairly high.
The Chairman: What is it now?
Mr. Swan: It's about 200,000. I'd like to see it go back up to 250,000 a year, eventually.
The Chairman: Why?
Mr. Swan: It's partly because of the economic benefits, but partly on the grounds that I like the variety you get from a country that has a continuing flow of new immigrants to it. To me, it brings a kind of vitality and difference; that kind of factor. The economic gain is not that large, but the gain from making your society richer is worth having.
That's a very personal assessment of these economic versus social versus heterogeneity factors. I also like the ethical argument that there are plenty of people out there who need to come and the more you can bring in the better.
The Chairman: Why do you say 250,000? I think DeVoretz mentioned we would need 300,000 to increase our population by 1% a year.
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Mr. Swan: I don't think you can be that exact. I couldn't argue against DeVoretz if he says 300,000 and I say 250,000. I think if you get more than that, you have to do it rather carefully because you're changing the character of the society quite rapidly then.
You can look at such things as the proportion of visible minorities in the leading cities of Toronto and Vancouver -
The Chairman: And Montreal. That's a leading city as well.
Mr. Swan: - and Montreal. The proportion there is not nearly as high as people think it is, but perceptions matter a lot, and if you increase the flow a great deal you increase the rate of change of the society in those big cities quite quickly, and again you run into problems of absorption, problems of stimulating antagonism. So you have to be quite careful, I think, about that kind of thing. That's where I would get my limit of around 250,000, but it's a very touchy-feely kind of limit.
The Chairman: Right. DeVoretz is quite strong in his recommendation that we need to have 50% or perhaps even slightly more of our immigrants selected by Canada on an independent or economic basis. The remaining 45% could come over by family class or family reunification. I wondered how those numbers sit with you.
Mr. Swan: What is it now, it's about 45% instead of 50%? He's wanting to go up from 45% to 50%. or is it 40%?
The Chairman: Now it's kind of a 55:45 split.
Mr. Swan: Yes, it's about 45%. He wants to go 50:50, does he?
The Chairman: The 45% would be family class.
Mr. Swan: Yes. It's not a big change. There are the benefits that he talks about of slightly higher economic gains -
The Chairman: Sorry to cut you off, but there are some who would argue that maybe we should have two-thirds family class. At one time in the not-too-distant past, our only class was family reunification.
Mr. Swan: No. I would definitely like to keep a good chunk of independent class immigrants, if only for fairness among new applicants from overseas. If the only way you can get in is by being related to an existing person, that's very unfair to the remaining people overseas who might like to come. So that's one factor.
I guess the other factor that I agree with DeVoretz on is this perception problem. To keep immigration going, you need the general public to be accepting of it. I think they're more accepting of a wide spectrum of occupations and so on that you can get by the independent class, by selecting. You have no control over the family class. That's based on a right to come, not being able to pick occupations, and so on.
I'm talking about the immediate family. You're not including more distant family who are subject to almost the same rules as the independent class?
The Chairman: Right.
Mr. Swan: Is DeVoretz including those in the independent?
The Chairman: He would be.
Mr. Swan: Yes. I guess I'd agree with him then.
The Chairman: He would say independents would be anyone measured on points.
Mr. Swan: Yes, that's right. The distant family get what, about 10 to 15 points?
The Chairman: Five.
Mr. Swan: Five now, is it? So they have hardly any advantage.
The Chairman: I've just been passed a note from our research staff; I'm going to borrow one of their points and combine it with one of my own. Their indication is that your research for the Economic Council suggests that most of the economic benefits from immigration come from immigration's contributions to population growth. The department had pointed out to us that countries that have a steady stable population - in other words, no growth - such as European countries, are doing just as well if not better from a standing of living as measured through GDP. Let me ask you this: what's the foundation for the argument that we need a growing population to enhance our standing of living as measured through GDP?
Mr. Swan: It's not growth as such, it's a larger population. If you could somehow wave a wand and make the population 40 million instead of 30 million, there would be some economic gains from that. The simplest way I can explain it is to say that we think one of the reasons the U.S. has a higher per capita living standard than we do is that it has a larger domestic market, more efficient transportation, and as a result a more efficient manufacturing industry, because each producer can serve a larger market.
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If we had a larger domestic market you would get some gains of that kind. If you tried to measure them, as we did in the research, you'd get the results we got: a small benefit from extra immigrants because of that scale effect.
I doubt if that would apply in Europe because it already has a common market. Even each individual country has a very substantial market that's domestic: Germany, France, and Britain are already up at $50 million.
The Chairman: Does the efficiency come from the size of the market or the use of the infrastructure?
Mr. Swan: Both.
The Chairman: Presumably as we move into large trading blocks....
Mr. Swan: That again will decrease, yes.
The Chairman: So let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the trade barriers drop over the next 25 years to zero or close to zero. The only thing then that would result is efficient use of the infrastructure.
Mr. Swan: That's correct. There's a very nice article by Globerman in here about trade being a substitute for immigration and immigration being a substitute for trade. You're absolutely right that, to the extent that we get a better common market with the U.S., we need the domestic market size less and we need immigration, from that economic point of view, less. That's quite right.
The Chairman: So would your theme then be that, as we move into the 21st century, Canadians should stop wringing their hands over the economics of immigration and maybe just sit back and appreciate the richness of having a multicultural, diverse community, and kind of embrace each other and maybe move on to talk about more important things? Does that sum up the sense of what you're saying?
Mr. Swan: Well, you're saying it, but I certainly agree with it.
The Chairman: I'm trying to sum it up for the sense, trying to envision how we put this in a report.
Mr. Swan: I think that is a very good way to put it. Just as I think the diminishing returns are a small piece of the economics of immigration, I think the economics of immigration are a small piece of what matters about immigration. You're saying it in your own words. I guess economists always feel that the importance of economics is highly exaggerated.
The Chairman: Do they?
[Translation]
Mrs. Debien.
Mrs. Debien: This morning, Mr. Akbari told us that Canada had based its immigration policy mostly on attracting young immigrants and immigrant families. Could you tell us what you think about that? I believe it says as much in Diminishing Returns.
[English]
Mr. Swan: I draw a distinction between families and young people. If you could somehow get more young people amongst the immigrants, it would be an advantage in that we have a pension problem looming up in 20 or 30 years' time as the baby boomers start to retire. If you could get people who are younger than the present baby boomers, by the time the baby boomers reach retirement, those young people would still be in the workforce and could contribute towards those pensions. That would be the economic value of bringing in younger people.
Tell me a little more of what he said about the family. Is the family suggestion he's making linked to the younger people?
[Translation]
Mrs. Debien: Yes.
[English]
Mr. Swan: It is the same thing? So I guess there is an economic gain. My problem would be that I don't know you'd do it as a practical policy matter. Would you just give a lot of extra points for being between, say, 20 and 30? That's how you would do it?
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[Translation]
Mrs. Debien: We already give a quite a few, I think. The age criterion is worth quite a large number of points now, I believe.
[English]
Mr. Swan: Again, I go with the chairman; we have to keep those economic gains in perspective. But if you think the economic gains matter a lot, that would be a definite way to increase them.
Mrs. Bakopanos: I was reading some of your comments on David Green's paper. He stresses education and language rather than occupation, because we give a lot of points in Quebec, at least, where my experience is, for the profession someone has. Half the points in fact are -
Mr. Swan: David Green finds people don't in fact follow the occupations they come in with. Therefore, there's very little point to giving points for occupation.
Mrs. Bakopanos: It's very true; and we've even had other witnesses who have said much the same, that people don't necessarily.... They may come as doctors, but they don't end up practising medicine in Canada. They end up working in a hospital, perhaps, but not -
Mr. Swan: Yes, he doesn't get into why they fail to follow the occupations. If it were that, then it would be unfortunate that people are not able to use their training. We found some evidence that is the case. I think one of the other books half suggests that for women, too.
Mrs. Bakopanos: There's a lot of evidence to back that up, at least in Quebec, from other studies that have been done.
When we look at the point system and whether it is a valid way of assessing people, there's been a lot of discussion that we should be stressing other things in hard economic times - maybe not changing the levels but perhaps allowing more of a certain category of immigrants in. That would go along with what you were saying earlier. Why let the levels fluctuate? Perhaps we should be changing the category of immigrants we're allowing in, based of course on the needs of that particular time.
Mr. Swan: As long as you do have an independent class of some kind, you probably have to have a point system. Australia has one. The States did not. The two main immigrant countries, Canada and Australia, have had them. I guess it went in as a way of avoiding all kinds of bias in the selection process. It's fairer than anything else.
Mrs. Bakopanos: But perhaps we should re-evaluate that system.
Mr. Swan: What did you have in mind?
Mrs. Bakopanos: Just the overall points you and other people have raised in some of the papers. The perfect example is the occupation. People do not fill the occupations for which they've been trained in their own native countries.
Mr. Swan: Would you be evaluating how points were assessed or dropping the idea of points altogether?
Mrs. Bakopanos: That would be at least a two-hour discussion. I have my own personal opinion on that. I believe some adjustment should be made of the type of point system we have right now. What was acceptable - I don't even want to call it acceptable - what was realistic fifteen years ago is no longer realistic.
I come back to the same thing, occupation. Every study has proved that the majority of people, especially immigrant women, don't end up practising the profession for which they've been trained in their own country. So maybe they should be assessed with a different drill from the one used for assessing other sets of immigrants...or perhaps including other categories we do not right now include in our whole assessment of that potential immigrant.
But I don't have an answer.
Mr. Swan: I certainly think those are good ideas, and well worth pursuing.
The Chairman: If the minister were here now - and I take it you are familiar with the current policy, the ten-year plan -
Mr. Swan: Moderately.
The Chairman: Do you think he has it right, by and large, or is there something you might want us to pass on as a recommendation for change?
Mr. Swan: I guess I should be honest and say I am not familiar enough with it and close enough to it today to criticize the minister's plan.
The Chairman: Fair enough.
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I want to thank you very much for coming. I think your testimony has been very valuable and will add to our report something we otherwise wouldn't have had.
The meeting is adjourned.