Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be here with Deputy Minister Yeates, Assistant Deputy Minister Deschênes, and Assistant Deputy Minister Linklater. Madame Deschênes does operations and Mr. Linklater does policy. Our chief financial officer, Amipal Manchanda, who is fairly new in that position, is doing a great job.
[Translation]
I am pleased to be here today to present the main estimates for my department for fiscal year 2012-2013. I appreciate this opportunity to talk about our priorities for this upcoming fiscal year.
I want to thank the committee for your contributions to some of the things we've been able to accomplish over the past year. In particular, I want to take this opportunity to thank and commend members, once again, for your excellent report on the issue of immigration backlogs.
[English]
As you know, Chairman, a major focus for my department in the past year has been on reducing immigration backlogs. We want to modernize our system and make it more responsive to the needs of our economy. That's why we are asking for an additional $25 million to modernize the immigration system.
Another major focus this past year has been on improving the integrity of our immigration and refugee systems, which is why a large portion of our increase in main estimates funding—that is to say, $51.8 million—will go toward our biometrics screening project for temporary residents, which you know is before the House for statutory authorization in the form of .
We always need to be vigilant to ensure that the immigration system continues to function in our country's interest. As I stated at my last appearance, biometrics is a great example of ensuring our immigration system is as modern and up to date as possible. We also need to modernize our system in other ways, to ensure that immigration can respond to our labour market needs. We need to make sure that the skilled immigrants we choose are the ones most likely to succeed in our economy as soon as they arrive. All of this means that we need a fast immigration system—one that enables us to quickly select those who have the skills we need when in fact they are needed.
[Translation]
We are always looking to make improvements to the system so that it serves Canada better. Let me quickly review some of the progress we have made to date.
First of all, we have made progress with our provincial colleagues with respect to the Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications. We now have clear processes in place to assess credentials in eight regulated occupations, and by the end of this year, we plan to add six additional regulated occupations to that list.
We have greatly expanded the Provincial Nominee Programs, which have begun to better address labour shortages in regions across the country.
[English]
For example, through the Canadian experience class we've now granted more than 10,000 temporary foreign workers and foreign students permanent residency here in Canada. These are people who are already pre-integrated and set to succeed with work experience and/or degrees that will be recognized by Canadian employers.
While we have made much progress, the persistent problem of backlogs runs contrary to our country's interests. They aren't fair to applicants who wait in line for years before they can come to Canada, often putting their lives on hold, and they certainly don't work in the best interests of our economy.
Let me focus on one particular stream that was the subject of much of your recent study, and that is the parents and grandparents category. They can currently expect to wait up to seven years before being reunited with their families in Canada. At the end of September last year we had 168,000 people in the parents and grandparents category awaiting the processing of their applications. This means that wait times can only be shortened if we reduce the backlog.
As you know, in December we introduced phase one of our action plan for faster family reunification. It includes a temporary pause of 24 months on new applications; a significant increase in admissions through this program—a 60% increase to 25,000 admissions per year; and a period of consultation as we decide how best to retool the program so it's sustainable in the future. Unless the intake of parents and grandparents is managed before we lift the pause on applications, the backlog will have the potential to quickly balloon to an unmanageable size. So each year Canada will need to manage intake to ensure that inventories are consistent with prompt processing.
What does it mean if we decide as a country to admit, let's say, 15,000 parents and grandparents a year? We shouldn't be taking in more applications than that. In fact, we should be taking in fewer applications than that until the backlog is down to a manageable inventory.
As you know, we've been applying this tool of limiting new applications through the application of ministerial instructions quite successfully to the federal skilled worker program since 2009. As a result, the fast track in that program means that applicants are often being accepted in less than 12 months rather than seven or eight years, and we've managed to reduce that backlog very considerably.
[Translation]
As I indicated at my last appearance, we are currently examining a number of options to further reduce the backlog and which represents 400,000 applications in total. For example, we have launched a pilot project that will allow provinces to “mine the backlog”. In other words, it would allow provinces to review the backlog and nominate those applicants they think their economies need right now.
But we need to do more.
[English]
We want to move away from the current slow-moving passive system, where people from overseas simply put their applications in our system and arrive in Canada without jobs, often taking several years before they find success, even if they were so lucky. We need to have a nimble and proactive immigration system where Canadian employers are actively recruiting people in the international labour market from abroad—people who they are confident can come and work at their skill level upon arrival. Right now our slow-moving, rigid, and passive system is ridden with backlogs, and we need to move to one that's fast and nimble. We are on a path to transformational change, but much more work remains to be done.
[Translation]
Mr. Chair, I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I've detailed some of the ways we are working to make immigration more responsive to our economy, and ensure that it serves the interests of all Canadians.
In closing, I would say that it is very nice to see Ms. Turmel, our former Interim Leader of the Official Opposition, at this committee. It's very nice to see the member here.
:
Well, first, I think we need to underscore how our open and generous immigration programs have failed newcomers to too great an extent in the recent past. All of the economic data indicates that economic outcomes for immigrants have generally been on the decline in the past three decades. There are some exceptions to this that are the result of policy changes.
For example, federal skilled workers arriving under the points grid, which started in 2002, have seen better results, particularly those with pre-arranged jobs. Provincial nominees, who are coming in large numbers now, are doing significantly better on average in their first few years than skilled workers. We think that Canadian experience class immigrants, since we introduced that program in 2008, are doing quite well.
So there are some positive signs, but generally there is a consensus that unemployment rates are much higher for immigrants than for the overall population. It's about twice as high. Unemployment for immigrants with university degrees is nearly three times higher than among degree holders in the general population. We all know why. It's because many of the highly educated, foreign-trained professionals who we invite to Canada end up stuck in survival jobs and facing underemployment.
Just the other day in Vancouver I met a woman, a radiologist, who immigrated from Iran three years ago. She has been working multiple survival jobs. She is at the end of her tether. She said that, as much as she can't stand her country of origin, she's going to go back there now to find work so that she can feed her family here in Canada. That is a shame. We simply cannot continue, practically or morally, to invite people here to face unemployment or underemployment.
The vision is to move from a system that is rigid, passive, and slow-moving, which often underuses the human capital of the highly educated immigrants we receive, to a system that is fast, flexible, and proactive. By that, I mean increasingly empowering employers to look at the global labour market in order to identify those people who have the skills that are immediately relevant to our labour market, so that in principle they can get off the plane and go into—in the best-case scenario—a pre-arranged job, where they know the employer will recognize their skills. That's where we want to go.
We want to essentially apply some of the best features of the provincial nominee program, which is at its best an employer-driven labour market program, and also the best features of the skilled worker program. For example, we know that people who arrived in the skilled worker program with pre-arranged jobs are making on average $79,000 in income after three years, which is much higher than the average in the Canadian population.
The system we want to move towards, instead of being characterized by a seven- or eight-year wait time, will have applicants entering the country in months rather than years. It will have a much larger portion of immigrants coming with pre-arranged jobs. It will be assessing the relevance of their education and experience to the Canadian labour market, rather than the kind of arbitrary and rigid assessment that has been done in the past. So, do they have Canadian experience? We know that younger workers do better. People aspiring to work in the regulated professions, with higher levels of language proficiency, do much better. It's fair to say that not every university degree overseas is of equal relevance to the Canadian labour market, so we'll do more a qualitative assessment of their education.
I've been giving a number of speeches on this. I could easily take an hour answering your question, Mr. Optiz. But the overview is to move from this passive system to one that is much more proactive and much faster, taking into account the research and the data. We have recently done major benchmark studies on the federal skilled worker program and the provincial nominee program, and taken into account the experience of comparable countries, such as Australia and New Zealand.
:
That's actually a great question, and I spend a lot of time thinking about it.
I would invite the committee, maybe at some point in the future, to get into that whole issue of cultural and social integration. We've looked a lot here, at this committee, at programmatic issues like settlement services, but there are more difficult issues of social and cultural integration.
One way we've addressed these is to be very blunt with people. Frankly, we've dropped the political correctness of the past, which I think was informed by a kind of relativistic view of multiculturalism, that certain cultural practices could be justified by our openness to diversity. We've just said that that's passé.
Clearly, there are certain so-called cultural practices, as we say in the new citizenship study guide, “Discover Canada”, that are barbaric, that are condemned, that carry the full force of the law in Canada. I think it's important for the Canadian state to be explicit about that--explicit, to quote former Prime Minister Blair, about “the duty to integrate”, and that multiculturalism and our tradition of tolerance and diversity do not extend to all culturally based practices.
But ultimately, Mr. Weston, I think that the best pathway to cultural and social integration is successful economic integration. When we look at western Europe, the failure of integration of immigrant communities in those societies is in large measure because of the economic exclusion of newcomers, who are typically invited in as people with low levels of education, into low-skill jobs, with limited European language proficiency and therefore limited social mobility and limited educational opportunities for their children. Ghettoization followed and in some instances became breeding grounds for extremism and radicalization.
Thankfully, we have largely avoided that in Canada. By focusing on inviting typically more highly educated people with higher levels of language proficiency, who do better economically than in Europe, I think we can and should do better.
:
Thank you once again, Mr. Chairman.
I must emphasize that I would be pleased to reappear before the committee in the future, whenever you wish, to continue to answer your questions about the departmental budget. However, I believe your current invitation is for me to address the issue of your examination of immigration security in Canada.
We are grateful for your hard work, for your participation and for the comments you provide.
[English]
I'd like to begin my own remarks on this issue today by stepping back a bit, because I find that there is often a false dichotomy made in discussions on security in the immigration system.
To have a frank and fact-based discussion about this topic, it's important to first address a certain false notion. Simply put, some people believe that there is a zero-sum choice to be made between a secure immigration system with integrity and an open, generous immigration system that reflects our humanitarian tradition. Some would say that we need to choose one at the expense of the other. But I fundamentally disagree. In fact, security and open immigration are complementary, not contradictory, concepts.
By developing laws, policies, and practices that make our immigration system more secure, we ensure that we can maintain our generous approach to immigration, for which we are internationally known.
We often have candid and even passionate debate in Parliament and throughout the country about the future of our immigration system. But we are fortunately extraordinary, in that Canada is one of the only developed countries without any strongly organized or dominant voice of xenophobia or anti-immigrant sentiment in our politics. That's because there is a broad consensus of public support for immigration across the political system. But I believe that this support is conditional. I believe that the condition is that people must see that we have an immigration system characterized by the consistent application of fair rules.
[Translation]
It is particularly telling that opinion polls consistently show that newcomers are among the strongest advocates for rigorous standards and policies that strengthen the integrity and security of the immigration system.
We do not need to look very far to see what happens when integrity is undermined. It has happened in other western industrialized countries, where public support for the entire immigration system falls after widespread illegal migration and consequent abuse of public resources have gone unchecked.
[English]
The pro-immigration New York Times liberal columnist Thomas Friedman described that phenomenon in the United States this way. He said that when the system has integrity, it makes the population at large more secure about immigration and “able to think through this issue more calmly”. He said that “Porous borders empower...anti-immigrant demagogues...which dumbs down the whole debate”.
Mr. Chair, I think we can all agree that we never want Canada to get to that point. That's why strong enforcement of immigration security must remain a priority. It's why whenever we find exploitation and abuse of our system, we must move to close loopholes and make the system more secure.
[Translation]
The committee is aware of the many measures the government has introduced in recent months to strengthen the integrity of the immigration system, including our efforts to crack down on human trafficking, our anti-fraud initiatives, the introduction of biometrics legislation, and our plans related to the Canada-United States Action Plan for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness.
I will touch on each of these briefly.
[English]
One of the major loopholes we are in the process of closing is the one international human smugglers try to slip through. We have a legal and moral obligation to put an end to criminal human smuggling operations that threaten both Canada's security and the lives of desperate people around the world.
We believe that the human smuggling provisions contained in Bill C-31 will help us crack down on this heinous commerce and thereby help to make our immigration system more secure. The bill will impose stronger penalties on both smugglers and shipowners and dissuade them from trying to take advantage of our country.
The enhanced detention provisions in Bill C-31 are also intended to protect the security of our system. It's important to stress that these provisions, which are far less harsh than those in place in many other liberal democratic countries, protect the security of the system by giving our officials the time they need to establish the identity of anyone who comes to Canada as a designated irregular arrival—typically a smuggling operation.
Of course, all of those who arrive in Canada will maintain the right to file a claim for refugee protection and receive a full and fair hearing on the merits of their claim before the independent quasi-judicial IRB. But by creating barriers to quick permanent residency for smuggled refugees, our anti-human-smuggling measures will create disincentives for people who are thinking of committing to pay up to $50,000 to a criminal network to smuggle them into Canada.
[Translation]
Mr. Chair, another serious immigration security loophole we have been active in trying to close involves the high incidences of fraud that plague our system.
Fraud, in its many forms, poses arguably the greatest challenge to our security efforts.
We think it is important to be very proactive on this file. I have repeated on many occasions now that Canadian citizenship is precious, and it is not for sale.
We have made it a priority to guard against unscrupulous consultants who try to skirt the rules and help others to lie and cheat their way into becoming citizens.
We have begun to close this loophole through legislation and regulations that impose penalties on unauthorized immigration representatives. Individuals who are found guilty can be subject to fines of up to $100,000 or two years' imprisonment, or both.
I would like to thank all of the parties for their cooperation in adopting this bill, during the last Parliament, in order to create better regulations pertaining to consultants.
Moreover, as we just said, we have created public awareness campaigns to warn prospective immigrants against crooked consultants and residence fraud.
And we have begun the process to revoke the citizenships of more than 2,000 people who obtained them fraudulently. As a measure of how proactive we have been on this file, consider the fact that before we began our anti-fraud campaign, Canada had only revoked the citizenship of 69 people.
[English]
More recently, we have begun efforts to deter marriage fraud. Immigration to Canada should not be built upon deceit, as is the case of thousands of fraudsters who dupe Canadian citizens into marrying them as a way of obtaining citizenship. They too often abandon their Canadian spouses as soon as their scam is successful and they are admitted as permanent residents. And then they too often go on to divorce and sponsor new foreign spouses, which I call the revolving door of immigration marriage fraud.
To crack down on this activity, we recently announced measures to put a five-year ban on the ability of foreigners sponsored to Canada through the spousal program to divorce and sponsor others into Canada, which happens typically for commercial advantage—they get a fee for that.
Mr. Chairman, identity fraud also creates problems for the security of our system. That's why l have been very excited to promote our biometrics plan, which, as you know, is before Parliament and being discussed in our estimates today.
Under the existing system, visa applicants only need to provide initial written documents to support their applications. But biometrics--that is to say, digital photographs and fingerprints--will provide much greater certainty of the identity of the person and whether or not they represent a security threat, whether they've been deported from Canada as a failed asylum claimant, as an inadmissible criminal, or indeed whether they are on terrorist watch lists, for example.
This will greatly help our front-line visa and border officers to manage high volumes of immigration applications and the growing sophistication in documentary fraud.
I should mention in passing that just a couple of weeks ago in India some major arrests were made in a large operation specializing in document fraud. These efforts of cooperation overseas are paying some dividends.
As part of our perimeter action plan that Prime Minister Harper signed with President Obama last December, we will be establishing a common approach with the U.S. to recording and sharing the entry and exit information of travellers crossing our shared land borders. The Border Services Agency will be establishing the system, but CIC is also involved and will be developing policy changes.
Under the current system, many travellers entering Canada from the U.S. can confirm their identities by an oral declaration or through documents of lesser reliability. The new policy will simply require travellers to present a prescribed document when entering our country.
This universal requirement for secure documents from everyone who crosses the border will create a more secure border system and a more secure North America. It will facilitate the flow of legitimate travellers and reduce confusion at the border.
Under this system, CBSA will also collect and record the entry of travellers and share this information with the U.S., which will do the same with us. The data collected by one country will serve as the exit data for the other, so it will be a seamless system.
This will help verify whether temporary residents have exceeded the authorized period for their stay or whether permanent residents have met residency requirements. This will really help us to crack down on fraud in our citizenship program, for example.
As part of the perimeter action plan, we will be establishing a common Canada-U.S. approach to screening travellers before they reach our shores.
If you're referring primarily to our reforms to our dysfunctional asylum system, our refugee system, I would underscore that Prime Minister Harper's government is deepening and broadening Canada's humanitarian tradition of protection for refugees. We are increasing by 20% the number of resettled refugees who we accept as part of our immigration plan.
We already receive one out of every ten resettled refugees worldwide. We have 0.05% of the world's population, but we receive 10% of the world's resettled refugees, and we're actually increasing that number. When our increase is fully implemented, we will be receiving more resettled UN convention refugees per capita than any other country in the world.
We are contributing more than we ever have to the good work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which helps people in a protracted situation of displacement from their country. I think we're now, if I'm not mistaken, the fourth-largest donor to the work of UNHCR.
We are increasing by 20% our support for the integration of government-assisted refugees through the refugee assistance program, and let me say here that I think MPs know that one of the least popular government programs is income support for resettled refugees. You know those angry e-mails we get from a lot of our senior citizens in our audience, which are based often on a myth? We're actually increasing that program by 20% because it's been frozen for a decade and we want to help those often high-needs resettled convention refugees when they get here.
With respect to the asylum system, as a result of our reforms, clearly bona fide refugees in need of our protection will no longer have to wait for up to two years to get a hearing and certainty on their status in Canada. They will get that in a couple of months.
So the proverbial refugee from Iran who steps off the plane with the scars of torture fresh on his back will no longer be told to check back with us in two years, but will have protection and certainty and a permanent future in Canada in a matter of weeks. Also, for that refugee who goes to the IRB and for whatever reason has his initial claim rejected at the first instance, he or she will now, for the first time, have a full fact-based appeal at the new refugee appeal division, creating a new process for additional procedural fairness, if you will, for the vast majority of failed asylum claimants.
So I can stand up on the world stage and say, with absolute honesty, that our government is deepening Canada's tradition of protection for refugees, both asylum claimants and convention refugees around the world.