SoVote

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

Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Oct/31/23 11:03:31 a.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, we are debating this motion about wraparound services for immigrants and newcomers coming to Canada. The minister was just in Calgary. He would know that the Centre for Newcomers in Calgary and the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society have had their funding cut. They need another $3 million to provide the key on-the-ground services for newcomers coming to Canada. They have estimated about 8,000 Ukrainians have come to Calgary on a CUAET visa and they are helping to resettle about 6,000 Afghans. The situation has gotten so bad that the Calgary Police Service is dropping off government-assisted refugees, the responsibility of the federal government, in the lobby of its downtown locations because they have nowhere to go and this is the last place they can find refuge. Winter is coming. Many of the service providers have had to let go 65 staff members between these two agencies and thousands more are expected to need that type of frontline help. Why is the minister not providing that critical support? Why is he not there? When he was in Calgary, why did do nothing about this, knowing there would be a shortfall for this important frontline service to be provided in Calgary?

206 words

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

Hon. Marc Miller

Oct/31/23 11:04:43 a.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I would invite the member to speak to the organizations that I spoke to, because that was not the tenor of the conversations we had. We certainly had conversations about planning and ensuring we were more coordinated. There is this false impression that the federal government is responsible for everyone who crosses the border. This is a shared jurisdiction. Immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers all enrich our country and will enrich the tax base of it. To sit there and say that suddenly the federal government is responsible for people who come to our country simply because they cross the border is an operation in bad faith. We transfer monies under the social transfer to provinces to ensure they do their job. These issues are not limited to Calgary. In fact, I had some very productive conversations in Calgary. What Canadians and organizations are telling us is that we need to be more coordinated, whether it is at the municipal level or at the provincial level. I need to note in this context that in the last few years, we have seen massive transfers of money from the Canadian government to provincial governments. It is also time that they step up and do their job for future Albertans and Canadians.

212 words

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

Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Oct/31/23 11:11:01 a.m.
Watch

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.

1742 words

All Topics

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

Mr. Greg McLean (Calgary Centre, CPC)

Oct/31/23 3:09:19 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, with his government in free fall, the Prime Minister dropped his tax on home heating, but only for certain voters. After eight years, all Canadians are feeling the pain and know that the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost. His minister then admitted that this exemption was not granted to all Canadians because they did not vote Liberal. What about the Liberal member for Calgary Skyview or the minister from Edmonton Centre? Just one year ago, these Alberta MPs voted to keep the tax on home heating. Is the Prime Minister ignoring his Alberta colleagues or do they agree that Albertans should be taxed more for heating their homes than other Canadians?

116 words