SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 243 - Oct/31/23

Mr. Sukh Dhaliwal (Surrey—Newton, Lib.)

Oct/31/23 11:08:24 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, francophone immigration is very important to British Columbia. The B.C. francophone federation does great work when it comes to helping francophones coming into British Columbia. I have a francophone school in my constituency. The minister has mentioned that when it comes to francophone immigration, the government has achieved 4.4% outside of Quebec but that more work has to be done. Could the minister elaborate on the additional steps he would take to ensure we have more francophone immigrants coming into British Columbia?

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Hon. Marc Miller

Oct/31/23 11:09:10 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would love to transfer myself from being a minister to a deputy minister in this context, but the devil is in the details and the logistics with which my department administers the program. We have not done a very good job in the past of increasing francophone immigration in our own sphere of jurisdiction. It has landed us a lot of rightful criticism about ensuring we are doing immigration in a proper way to reflect the bilingual nature of our country. The 4.4% that we reached represented an increase of 450% in those numbers, but it is not enough. If we need to ensure and re-establish some level of parity with respect to our communities, we need to get up to a permanent number of about 6%, which would require increases of 6% to 8%, or perhaps even more, over the next years. We need to put in place the mechanisms to ensure that this is permanent, including ensuring that we have funding, that provinces are providing funding and that we are putting in place structures that favour francophone speakers as they come to our country. This might include moving from a situation where francophone students could have a pathway to permanent residence, ensuring we are doing missions abroad and that we are tackling the challenges to get French teachers. This is a need that exists outside Quebec as much as it exists inside Quebec. It is work that we have not done, structured or well, in the past. I look forward in the next year being able to show the House of Commons, our colleagues in government and Canadians that we can do this job and that we can put in place a system that favours and encourages francophone migration. I cannot conclude my comments without talking about the importance of combatting systemic racism. We know that systemic racism has impacted our ability to recruit French talent in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in West Africa, and that needs to be fixed as well.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Oct/31/23 11:11:01 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be joining this debate. I will be sharing my time with the member for Edmonton Mill Woods, my colleague from up north, the deputy leader of the Conservative Party. I would be remiss if I did not start by addressing an issue that is top of mind for many of my constituents and for Canadians coast to coast. I want to remind everybody about the carbon tax flip-flop of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has effectively created two classes of Canadians. One class of Canadians gets a carbon tax exemption on their home heating, while another much larger group of Canadians, including constituents of mine, will get nothing. They are not in that class of individuals. This gimmick the Prime Minister has come up with has resulted in 97% of Canadians being excluded from getting any type of relief on their taxes. Any relief should apply to all regions of Canada, not to one region of Canada only for electoral purposes. There is only one answer to this, which is that home heating should have all carbon taxes removed from it. Common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax entirely on all home heating, gas, groceries and on farmers who grow the food, people who ship the food and people who process the food. Everybody deserves the same tax break. We are debating a motion from the Bloc today. If the Bloc will indulge me, I am going to go over the different parts of the immigration system. I want to indict the former immigration minister, who is now the housing minister, on his performance. Having now heard the current immigration minister, we are basically repeating the same mistakes of the past. It has come to a point where many Canadians are emailing me, calling me and direct messaging me. There are more articles being written about people's confidence in the integrity of the immigration system and whether it delivers on the expectations of Canadians. I think that is the substance of the motion the Bloc has put forward. Are we achieving our goals through the immigration system? Many members know I am an immigrant; I came to Canada in 1985. All my kids have been born in Calgary. I have lived in different parts of Canada at different times. When I look at our immigration system today, it is not the fulfilling the promise to immigrants who are landing here like it did decades ago. I have had exchanges with the immigration minister about the immigration system as it functions right now. There was a summer cabinet retreat about housing. It was telling that when the immigration minister was confronted, because we were trying to hold him accountable for those numbers, he could not even answer the basic question of how many construction workers had been brought in this year so far and how many were brought in last year, the year before and the year before that. He made a ridiculous claim like he was not the minister of NOC codes. The number one way of tracking immigrants who come to Canada is by occupations they are in. An entire database system at Statistics Canada tracks exactly that one important statistic. It tracks their occupation and then, as they get more seniority, it tracks what type of occupation classification. The minister of immigration even alluded to the fact that the Minister of Immigration was also responsible for jobs, because a lot of immigrants who come here want to work. They want to make a contribution to the country that has greeted them and become their new home. Not to have that number is a real indictment. The previous immigration minister, when he became the housing minister, expressed a great deal of regret. I want to talk about international students first and then I will go to the federal skilled trades program. On international students, an almost record number of international students are going to Canadian institutions. Some of them are going to U15 or to U21 to get post-graduate degrees. We are not so much concerned about their experience in Canada, although it is much more difficult finding a place to live, with the cost of living as it is today. What they are told by their country of origin about how much funds they will need annually to get by when they come to Canada is very different. Then there are a lot of plaza colleges that are not providing an opportunity. First, many international students who come to Canada have a desire to seek a post-graduate work permit to continue making a contribution in the workplace. Now we hear story upon story of people living under bridges. We hear stories about people struggling and having to go to food banks. Some are Canadians, but they are also international students. I do not think these international students expected they would need to go to a food bank when they came to Canada. During the summer, the now former immigration minister, now the current housing minister, said that it was not his fault. He said that it was an uncapped program and therefore a limitless amount of applications could be accepted. The minister was not responsible for two and a half years. We have reached this point today because he did not pay attention to his file when he was the immigration minister. Now we can get to the federal skilled trades program. The primary way to bring in construction workers should be through this program, which even the OECD has criticized for not meeting its expectations. The correct number, the last time I checked in September, was 80. That is how many construction workers it has brought to Canada. There are other programs to bring construction workers in. The present housing minister has said that we need construction workers from elsewhere, that we need to train them in Canada and find people who want to retrain. There is a zoning problem. There is a construction problem. We know we have the least amount of construction permits being issued. We need construction workers, people working in residential construction, who want to build homes, and we are not bringing those people in. In fact, when we look at the numbers generated for construction workers by the previous immigration minister over seven years, it is the same as the number of retail supervisors brought in over two years. Where were the priorities of the previous immigration minister? What were his priorities with respect to the immigration system? What was he focused on? Why did he not pay attention to this? The previous immigration minister saw the numbers coming in and said that it was not his job. That is literally what the he told me when I asked him a very specific question about two immigrant service centres in Calgary that provide frontline services to government-assisted refugees. Unlike what the minister said, that is his responsibility. There are resettlement dollars being provided by the federal government expressly for this purpose, and they cannot be downloaded to the provinces. I think this is a commonality. Hopefully, the Bloc will agree with me that we cannot download that service onto a province and expect it to just make it happen. The minister said it was not his job and not his responsibility. After they met with the then minister of immigration they came to see me because they were shocked by the answer they got, so I did get feedback on how that meeting went. I find it galling that the current immigration minister would say that it was not his problem, not his fault, and the previous immigration minister is saying, after looking at the numbers, that he now has regrets. He then floated out a bunch of ideas, leaving it up to his replacement to try to figure out what is going on. We know how bad it is. I have a document. The header is “International Students: Repatriation for sudden deaths”. That is how bad it is. It has been circulated by the World Sikh Organization, whose members I met with many months ago. They provided me with this document from a crematory and funeral home in Brampton. It had to create it specifically for international students because that is how bad it has become. The number of suicides in that community has risen greatly. This is just one such document, which goes on in quite a bit of detail, to help these families have their loved ones returned to their country of origin. That is the immigration system these immigration ministers, or housing ministers, as it is hard to follow which title they prefer now, have left us with to date. I will come back to the motion moved by the Bloc Québécois. Today, the backlog in the immigration system has reached 2.2 million applications. In September 2022, we were informed that an online portal would help reduce the number of applications in the backlog. That number has not gone down. We were talking about 2.2 million applications in September of last year. This year we are talking about 2.2 million applications. Just before the pandemic, we were talking about 1.9 million applications. During the pandemic that number reached 2.9 million applications. The backlog has been in the millions for years. For years, people have been waiting for an answer, for a yes or no, from the government. Many people who are waiting for an answer are already working or studying here, and they are trying to change their temporary status to a permanent status. These people are in a precarious situation. It is hard for someone to see how life in Canada will unfold when they are constantly told they have to wait one more year. These people are asking their MP for help, and all of our offices are flooded with requests from people who are having problems with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. That department has more than doubled; the number of employees has increased by 144% compared to 2013, and more than 200 people there are in management positions. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to deliver this speech. I will support the Bloc Québécois motion, and it would be my pleasure to answer my colleagues' questions.

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Ms. Christine Normandin (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Oct/31/23 11:21:18 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke at length about the housing issue. One aspect he mentioned was people with construction skills who could help build housing. However, I would like to hear him talk about an underlying factor in housing construction, namely infrastructure. If municipal infrastructure is inadequate, we cannot increase the number of available housing units. In our view, this is also part of the thought process on integration capacity. I would like my colleague to tell us about that aspect. Would it be enough to simply bring in new construction workers? Should we instead address the housing issue as a whole, including the question of municipal infrastructure?

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Oct/31/23 11:22:07 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's question about residential, commercial and, of course, industrial infrastructure. Do we have enough highways, hospitals and clinics to provide the services people will need? The province of Alberta has the second-highest rate of interprovincial migration. Many people who come to Canada settle first in another province and then choose Alberta. Even with all the information the federal government collects, it is hard for me to believe that anyone could ask immigrants which city they think they will live in now and which city they think they will be living in one, two, three, four or five years from now. It would be hard for immigrants to answer such a question, because they do not know. They sometimes receive very little information before coming to Canada. I will give a personal example. When my father came to Canada, he did not know that there was a francophone province where people spoke only French. Before he began working at the Sorel-Tracy shipyard, he did not know that he would be working in French.

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Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

Oct/31/23 11:23:27 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have been hearing a lot of comments in the public realm, even from the former minister of immigration, who is throwing newcomers under the bus and blaming them for the housing crisis, particularly as it relates to international students. Is it not the case that Canada has a housing crisis because successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed Canadians? Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have cancelled programs: the co-op housing program, in the case of Conservatives, and the national affordable housing program, in the case of the Liberals. This has contributed to the housing crisis we face today.

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Oct/31/23 11:24:16 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the simple answer is no, that is not it. Pre-2019, I did not have constituents coming to tell me that they were worried about being able to purchase a home or being able to pay rent. It was not a problem until the Liberal government, with its NDP allies, decided that it was a good idea to overspend $600 billion during the pandemic, $205 billion of which had nothing to do with addressing the pandemic losses to our economy, jobs, housing issues, and our health care systems across the provinces. That overspending then led to a massive increase in the money supply. Does the House know who warned those two political parties not to do that? It was the member for Carleton. For two years, he kept warning that, if the government drastically increased the money supply without having new housing supply come on market, it would double the price of homes and rent. This was perfectly foreseeable, and they voted for it.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Oct/31/23 11:25:15 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have always cautioned some members not to throw stones in glass houses. The member talks about processing times. When I was in opposition, and I am sure the member does not have the paper for this, the processing times for people getting married was three or four years, easy. Those were the types of calls I was getting. We could talk about sponsoring parents and grandparents. The Conservatives actually killed that program. They ended it. We can look at the numbers when it was going, and processing times before they ended it were eight or nine years. My question to the member is not related to processing times but to the provincial government's role in identifying people who are coming to the provinces. Manitoba alone, through the provincial nominee program, which was a Jean Chrétien creation, provides more economic immigrants coming to the province than any other program. Does the member not recognize that provinces also have a role to play when it comes to the type of immigrants coming to Canada?

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Mr. Tom Kmiec

Oct/31/23 11:26:17 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my response will be about processing times. I actually do have a paper on that, and it is funny. The Auditor General's report found that, on average, privately sponsored refugees waited 30 months for a decision. Some of them waited two years before their file was even touched. I have the 2015 numbers, so I would like to refresh the member's memory. In 2015, study permits took 31 days to process. They now take 88 days, as of just a few months ago. These are IRCC numbers. Work permits took 42 days in 2015. They now take 62 days to process. Temporary resident visas took 13 days to process back in 2015. Today, I have the number for April 2022, and it took 72 days. They have nothing to teach us on immigration processing times.

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Hon. Tim Uppal (Edmonton Mill Woods, CPC)

Oct/31/23 11:27:05 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will just take a minute to address something I have received a number of calls about in the last day or so, and it is this Prime Minister's carbon tax flip-flop. The Prime Minister has effectively created two classes of Canadians, one that—

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Oct/31/23 11:27:29 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We witnessed this yesterday and, once again, we are starting to see it today, where members of the Conservative Party will stand up and start off their speeches with dialogue on the price on pollution, the thing they actually supported back in the last election, and being critical of the government. It is not relevant to the debate at hand. I get the feeling that we are going to see more and more of that throughout the day. Members should be cautioned regarding staying relevant to the debate at hand.

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The Deputy Speaker

Oct/31/23 11:28:00 a.m.
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I will run a couple of cautions. During questions and comments, members are to try to keep them as concise as possible because we have been running over time. As well, we normally give a little allowance for that first minute of debate to make sure that members can talk about the things that are important to them in their constituencies. The hon. member for Edmonton Mill Woods.

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Hon. Tim Uppal

Oct/31/23 11:28:20 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I know that they do not want to discuss their flip-flop and how they are hurting Canadians right across the country. The fact of the matter is that, with the Prime Minister's carbon tax flip-flop, he has effectively created two classes of Canadians, one that gets the carbon tax exemption on home heating they announced and the other massive group of Canadians who do not, such as my constituents in Alberta, where it is also cold. They will also need to heat their homes—

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The Deputy Speaker

Oct/31/23 11:28:46 a.m.
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The hon. member for Jonquière is rising on a point of order.

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Mr. Mario Simard

Oct/31/23 11:28:49 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, unless my colleague can explain the connection between immigration and the carbon tax, I think he is totally off topic. If he is able to make that connection, I am ready to listen. However, what I understand from his intervention is that he is trying to pollute an opposition day, which is being held in good faith, by giving a speech that suits his agenda. That is not how things work here. I would ask him to show a modicum of respect for his colleagues and talk about the issue we are discussing today.

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The Deputy Speaker

Oct/31/23 11:29:21 a.m.
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I think it is important that all members have an opportunity to present their ideas at the beginning of their speech. I will give a little caution that it may be time to get to the crux of the discussion we are having today. The hon. member for Edmonton Mill Woods.

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Hon. Tim Uppal

Oct/31/23 11:29:38 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to address the fact that the government's incompetence is not in only one area and that the Prime Minister's carbon tax gimmick will not help 97% of Canadians, such as Canadians in Alberta. It will help only one region of the country. There is only one answer on home heating: We need to remove the carbon tax from all forms of heating. I will also address another incompetence of the government. I want to talk about the countless families, students and skilled workers affected by the Liberal government's poor management of the immigration system. As a member of Parliament, I regularly meet with constituents in desperate situations that are due to the current state of our immigration system. I hear about the endless backlogs, years of separation from loved ones and businesses in urgent need of skilled workers. Immigrants contribute to our economy, not only by filling gaps in our labour force and paying taxes but also by spending money on goods, housing and transportation. In fact, among newcomers coming to Canada between 2011 and 2016 who were working in the health care sector, more than 40% were employed in the important areas of nursing and residential care facilities, as well as home health care services. According to the international education strategy, international students contribute more than $21 billion to the economy every year through student spending and tuition. Their spending amounts to more than Canada's exports of auto parts, lumber or aircraft. Many international students will stay and build their careers in Canada, enhancing our capacity for innovation and helping us build a stronger economy for the future. We are a nation of immigrants. I am the son of immigrants. My father would always say that, in Canada, there is value in hard work. Someone could buy a home and provide for their family, but not after eight years of the government and its mismanagement of the system. Many new Canadians, international students and Canadian businesses are struggling. Everything is broken, including the immigration system. The failures of the former immigration minister have hurt our immigration system. It is completely unfortunate that the same person has now been promoted to be the housing minister to address our housing crisis. The staggering backlogs and delays in the immigration system that he oversaw have created a profound human crisis, where families are left in limbo and the skilled professionals who came to Canada to work here and contribute to our country are forced to wait around without so much as an answer. The toll of these delays is immeasurable. Families endure emotional turmoil, financial strain and the crushing weight of uncertainty, all while awaiting a decision that holds their future in the balance. Those who want to come to Canada deserve a plan that provides clarity and certainty. Every person deserves a process that treats them with dignity, compassion and respect. However, the Liberals' record when it comes to immigration is one of failure, mismanagement and backlogs that last for years. Conservatives believe in a common-sense immigration system that is employer-driven. That is why the number of immigrants coming to Canada to contribute their skills will naturally fluctuate and should not be driven by arbitrary government targets. Instead, it should be driven by labour shortages and workforce needs. Immigration numbers should depend on demand from businesses to hire new Canadians for unfilled jobs, from charities to sponsor refugees and from families to bring loved ones to Canada. Because of the government's failure to process applications and provide work permits for skilled workers to address urgent labour shortages, provinces are having to step up and ask for more power to deal with the problems the Liberals have not solved, the problems that they created. Canada needs skilled workers today, but skilled workers are forced to leave because their work permits expire and they do not get a new one in time. The current IRCC application backlog is 2.2 million as of September 30. In September 2022, the department introduced an all-digital application system, promising that the application backlog would be reduced. It has not been reduced. This is just another failure by the current Minister of Housing and the former immigration minister. Processing times at IRCC are not even close to meeting service standards. According to a recent report by the Auditor General, privately sponsored refugees waited an average of 30 months for a decision on their file. Overseas spouses or common-law partners waited 15 months to be reunited with their partners in Canada. Members may think that things would be better for the trained professionals and skilled workers Canada needs, but this is not the case. Only 3% of applications for the federal skilled worker program were processed within service standards. According to The Globe and Mail, thousands of highly skilled immigrants who, in previous years, would easily have qualified for permanent residence in Canada are being forced to return to their home countries as their work permits expire because of a Liberal-made backlog. In 2015, the Liberals took over a Conservative-led immigration system, and processing times were as follows: Study permits were at 31 days, work permits were at 42 days and temporary resident visas were at 13 days. In April of this year, processing times were as follows: study permits, 88 days; work permits, 62 days; and temporary resident visas, 72 days. These numbers are even more shocking when considering the 144% increase in IRCC personnel since 2013. Executive management went from 135 people to 227 people in the same time span. Because of the government's failures, and under the watch of the current housing minister and the former immigration minister, dishonest immigration consultants and plaza colleges are allowed to flourish in Canada. Plaza colleges are colleges that pop up in strip malls. This is due to the breakdown in operations and system integrity across IRCC. Plaza colleges take advantage of international students, charging them tens of thousands of dollars to enrol, and some of them enrol 10 times more students than their buildings have capacity for. International students in Canada are being taken advantage of and subjected to poor living standards. This has led to international students living under bridges or sharing a floor mattress in a basement for $500 a month. Community organizations have also raised concerns about students' mental health and suicide rates among the international student population in Canada. Sadly, one crematorium in Brampton has a pamphlet for families of international students, outlining the process and cost of repatriating a body after a sudden death. Shamefully, after completely mishandling the international students file, the government is blaming the students for the current housing crisis. The same minister who was in charge of and broke the immigration system is now responsible for addressing the housing crisis. The government's failure to put forward a real plan to ensure a fair, orderly and compassionate immigration process has real consequences for those hoping to call Canada home. These people are not just file numbers; they are real human beings. Behind every statistic lies a deeply personal story of someone yearning for a better life in Canada.

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Mr. Sukh Dhaliwal (Surrey—Newton, Lib.)

Oct/31/23 11:38:37 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Edmonton Mill Woods did not mention one category of immigrants that is key to bringing in the brightest immigrants to Canada. This is the parents category. The reason he did not mention it is that, under the previous Conservative government, it took seven years for parents to come and join their families; for spouses, it took four years. However, under the Liberals, it is down to two years for parents and four months for spouses. I will focus on the parents and grandparents, because the Conservatives gutted that system. In their last year in power, they brought in only 5,000 applications and decreased the age of a dependent child from 21 to 18. When the Liberals took power, over the last so many years, we brought in a minimum of 20,000 applications every year, so more parents and grandparents can come. Is the parents category that I talked about also important to the member's constituents?

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Hon. Tim Uppal

Oct/31/23 11:39:57 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is an important category. I actually talked about that in my speech, and it is an important part of our plan for Canadians to be able to reconnect with their loved ones. However, one of the biggest problems here is that, instead of having some certainty for families as to when their parents or grandparents would be able to come and get through the whole immigration process, the Liberals introduced what they call a lottery system. If members talk to Canadians who are part of this lottery system, they say they have no idea when they are going to reconnect with their parents or grandparents. They have been waiting for years. This ridiculous lottery system is failing families; families are waiting and waiting, and they just do not get the lottery. Reconnecting with loved ones should not be left to a lottery.

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Mr. Mario Simard (Jonquière, BQ)

Oct/31/23 11:40:53 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, earlier in their speeches, my colleagues from Saint-Jean and from Mirabel each indicated how important it is to put immigrants at the centre of this process. Unfortunately, given the wait times and difficulties we are currently facing with the housing crisis, it is getting harder to focus on immigrants. I wonder whether my colleague agrees that, if we want to welcome immigrants in a more substantive way in the coming years, we need to really think things through.

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