44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 31, 2023 10:00AM
- Oct/31/23 10:27:52 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we do get the impression that the government is building the airplane in mid-flight. It is particularly deplorable when it concerns human beings. Ultimately, this is all about human beings. These are not numbers or files. I will even say that these are not clients or cases, either. These issues are far more human and the government is losing sight of that. It is setting thresholds without really considering the capacity to decently integrate these people we are reaching out to and welcoming.
Can we do this work in an orderly fashion and begin by ensuring that the people who are already here have all the services they need? I am not including only newcomers in that; I am including the entire population, all those who are being affected by both the housing shortage and the underfunding of our health care system. Let us start by resolving that. Then we can properly say to others, “welcome home”.
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- Oct/31/23 12:14:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to inform the House that I will be splitting my time with my terrific colleague from Thérèse-De Blainville.
Today's subject is a delicate one. We are talking about human beings who were courageous enough to leave everything behind, either voluntarily or because circumstances forced them to. These human beings crossed the globe in search of a new life. Many of them will never again see the people they grew up with or the land where they were born. Many of them experienced traumatic events.
We are also talking about human beings who want to give newcomers the best possible welcome. These human beings want to give newcomers a great new life that meets their highest expectations. These human beings wish for a society where all are equal in law and in fact. When we are talking about immigration, we are talking about all of that and more, so much more.
Today, we will be talking about immigration, but more specifically about successful immigration. There is one very important question we must answer: What is successful immigration? I could give a simplistic answer by saying that it means making every effort to ensure that people who settle in a given place contribute to the economic prosperity and the linguistic, cultural and social vitality of that place, especially if that place is a francophone environment, a minority in North America.
This brief definition raises two other questions. What do we need so that the human beings coming to settle in Quebec and Canada can contribute to our economic prosperity and linguistic, cultural and social vitality? Do the current immigration conditions enable the human beings settling here to contribute to our economic prosperity and linguistic, cultural and social vitality? Before answering these questions, I should bring my colleagues up to date on the situation.
According to Statistics Canada, Canada welcomes almost 500,000 new permanent residents every year. The goal is to reach or exceed 500,000 permanent residents a year. However, taking in 500,000 new permanent residents is equivalent to building a new city every year, somewhere between Halifax and Quebec City in size. Have we built such a city in the last year? No. Will we build one each year going forward? No.
Add to that students, asylum seekers and temporary workers, and we reach the shocking number of 2.2 million people between July 2022 and July 2023. I am not making this up. I am citing numbers from Statistics Canada. With 2.2 million residents, temporary workers and asylum seekers coming in, we would need to build a city almost as big as Toronto every year to accommodate them properly. Do we have a city the size of Toronto available, particularly in terms of housing? The answer is no.
All these people need jobs, as well as housing and various other services. We have not built a new Toronto or a new Quebec City, and the number of people without housing is alarming. Reception centres are overflowing. Sometimes multiple families have to squeeze into a home scarcely big enough for a single family. This leads to disappointment, stress, anger and bewilderment.
For months now, the business community has been saying it needs more workers. However, we know that many immigrants end up in jobs where their skills and knowledge are underused. These are minimum-wage jobs. Many have to hold down several jobs to make ends meet. Furthermore, like any other segment of the population, immigrants need public services like education, health care, day care, transportation, integration services, employment supports, and French language training, or English language training as the case may be, depending on the province. None of these things are Ottawa's responsibility, except for day care centres outside Quebec, since the federal government set those up. In Quebec, all these things are managed by the Quebec government. Everyone deserves quality services, whether they are newcomers, permanent residents or citizens.
It is easy for someone to say that we will take in 500,000 new permanent residents each year when they are not responsible for the services that the population needs. All of the services that I just mentioned are services that the population needs. These are services that allow people to integrate and feel included in society. These are services that they need to feel good, good enough to contribute to our economic prosperity and linguistic, cultural and social vitality.
We know what it takes. These are the conditions for successfully welcoming, integrating and including newcomers. These are the conditions for successful immigration: being able to deliver the same services to everyone, with the same degree of access and the same quality.
Are these conditions currently in place? All of the services that I mentioned do exist. However, demand far outstrips supply. Not a week goes by without me getting a call from a parent who needs subsidized day care. Not a week goes by without someone calling to ask if I know any doctors. I do not even have one myself. Every week, I get calls from isolated mothers who have no family here and need support. Every week, I refer them to different agencies in my riding so that these mothers can build a social life here and have someone to talk to.
That is not caused by immigrants. It is caused by immigration targets that are not aligned with existing capacity to provide these services. The people who call me come from all over the world, including Quebec. Everyone is aware of these problems. Everyone has these problems, no matter where they were born, how old they are, the colour of their skin or their religion. None of that matters when people have needs that cannot be met.
It takes to years to train a carpenter, a plumber, a plasterer or a painter. It takes three years of post-secondary education to train a nurse or an early childhood educator. It takes six to train a teacher or an engineer. In medicine, it takes seven years to train a general practitioner and 11 to train a specialist. Those are just a few examples of the workers we need now and the time it takes to train them. Even skilled immigrants have to adapt what they have learned to their new geographic and social situation, as well as to the laws and regulations governing their trade or profession here. That does not happen overnight.
We need these trades and professions in order to create the conditions that a society requires and to allow each person in society to contribute to its economic, social, cultural and linguistic development. These conditions are not being met.
For that, we have the government to thank. It is almost slavishly following the recommendations of the Century Initiative and its consortium, including senior McKinsey and BlackRock executives. In Dominic Barton's own words, it never occurred to the Century Initiative people to consider the social impact of a massive increase in Canada's population. Their focus was just on economics.
What, therefore, are the possible consequences of failing to meet the conditions necessary for integration, inclusion and immigration to succeed?
The shortage of teachers will lead to a decrease in the quality of education, which will lead to learning delays. Children with special needs will be hardest hit. Instead of making progress and overcoming their challenges, they will stagnate. If they stagnate, they will not reach their full potential. The shortage of hospital staff could lead to missed diagnoses or even preventable deaths. The shortage of carpenters will prevent us from building the housing we need.
The lack of housing, the difficulties in education and the dangers of deteriorating health care are the ingredients of a problem that everyone will have to live with at the expense of Quebec and the Canadian provinces, because the federal government refuses to listen to basic logic. To illustrate my point, welcoming people does not mean cramming 10 people into a studio apartment with a single bed and a box of Kraft Dinner.
When someone wants to achieve a dream, they have to put all the conditions in place to make it come true. Immigrants are answering Canada's invitation to come and fulfill their dream of a better life here. Canada is pocketing the application fees while putting all the pressure on Quebec and the Canadian provinces when it comes to the distribution of services. Thinking about and planning immigration so that everyone can have access to decent housing and quality services is essential.
That is exactly what the Government of Quebec is currently doing with consultations on immigration. A mature society is capable of discussing sensitive issues.
Quebec is mature and capable of having such discussions. Wanting equality for all is mature and responsible. It is also mature and responsible to want to ensure that human beings get to achieve their dreams and reach their full potential.
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- Oct/31/23 12:41:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from the Bloc for bringing forward this motion today. We certainly agree with the questions they have raised.
New Democrats have been talking a lot in the House, and today as well, about the housing crisis. We believe housing is a fundamental human right. The member spoke about welcoming immigrants and the humanitarian side of what we do to create a home for newcomers to this country out of respect. We want to focus on housing as a human right and respect all human rights as we define them in the charter, no matter what that means, whether it is the right to religion, the right to freedom of speech or other things.
Would she agree that what we need to do, as New Democrats have been proposing, is focus on the profiteering of housing and on housing as a human right, ensuring that people can afford housing and that governments build the social housing, co-operative housing and all levels of housing needed to ensure we have a human rights-based approach to housing?
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- Oct/31/23 12:44:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Vaughan—Woodbridge.
I am pleased to rise here this morning to speak to the Bloc Québécois motion. I would like to talk about how our government is supporting newcomers, as well as the economic needs of our provinces, territories and municipalities, including Quebec.
Canada benefits from good immigration policies and, as we have seen during and after the pandemic, newcomers are essential to sustaining our economy and our communities. With the challenges and hardships experienced over the past three years, Canadians and newcomers have shown a great deal of resilience.
As the latest census showed, our population is aging. Families are smaller and our high quality of life enables people to retire earlier. However, that also means that our ratio of workers to retirees went from seven to one about 50 years ago to close to three to one today. If we do not welcome more newcomers, that ratio could reach two to one in the coming decades, which would jeopardize our country's fundamental programs and infrastructure, such as health care and education. Canada needs young families, students and workers from around the world to strengthen our communities and grow our economy.
During our consultations with the provinces and territories, including Quebec of course, as well as with the municipalities, we saw that there is still a huge demand for newcomers, particularly those who work in key areas, such as health care, home construction and the high-tech industry to support our innovation economy.
We need an immigration plan that supports our economy and gives priority to the workers that communities need to grow. In order to do that, Canada must continue to be a welcoming country for newcomers so that they can thrive.
Our government has actively engaged and listened to numerous stakeholders, as well as the provinces and territories, to understand what we need for our annual plan on immigration levels. We have worked hard to bring in programs that respond to the priorities and needs of all the provinces and territories, including Quebec.
It is important to note that, under the Canada–Québec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens, Quebec has all the rights and responsibilities in terms of the number of immigrants going into the province, as well as the selection and integration of these immigrants. As such, we are already working with Quebec on everything to do with immigration.
We consult Quebec, and the other provinces and territories, when we bring in new programs and policies. When establishing the annual number of immigrants for the country, we also take into consideration the number of immigrants that Quebec wants to welcome. It is because we consult Quebec, at its request, that we harmonized the eligibility conditions for post-graduation work permits for certain programs with what already exists in the rest of Canada.
We are consulting and working with all levels of government, including the provinces and territories, on immigration. We are listening to how newcomers can help meet the needs of Canadians. We are working hard to support them, whether a small francophone community in British Columbia, a rural community in Ontario or a hospital in Nova Scotia.
Newcomers need housing. Canadians need housing. We also need more skilled workers to build new housing. That is why we continue to prioritize the trades and skilled workers in the construction sector.
In June, we invited 1,500 skilled workers to Canada through changes made to our express entry system to give priority to the most in-demand skills. Over the past five years, nearly 38,000 skilled tradespeople have become permanent residents in Canada through the Canadian experience class, the provincial nominee program and the skilled trades program. Many of them have work experience in key construction trades, such as carpenters, millwrights and crane operators.
Newcomers have the skills we need to build new housing across the country. We have tried to harmonize our programs to better meet the needs of employers and support provincial and territorial priorities.
We have been listening to the current challenges facing Canadians, newcomers and communities. We have been talking to the provinces about their needs for next year and beyond, to fill the jobs for which there are no Canadians available. We have also been looking at future requirements, so we can start planning how to meet those needs right away.
These consultations are already producing results. We have refined our express entry system to make it more targeted, inviting candidates with skills in areas where there are shortages through category-based selection.
As well, the minister recently announced major reforms to the international student program. International students contribute a great deal to Canada, promoting campus life and Canada's multicultural spirit in communities across the country. Furthermore, international students are talented and bright, helping to fill jobs and grow our economy.
We are also working to align international student admissions with current and future economic needs in order to better support employers and our economy. That is why officials at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada have been asked to review this program in order to ensure that it meets the needs and the objective.
There is no question that newcomers play an essential role in helping Canadians and contributing to our economy. Newcomers bring highly sought-after skills, those that are needed to build housing and deliver critical care. They have been able to make these contributions thanks to the programs that the government has developed and implemented in recent years. We will continue to improve our programs so that they better meet the needs of employers and are more closely aligned with provincial and territorial priorities.
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- Oct/31/23 12:56:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really appreciate my esteemed colleague's question because my riding of Sherbrooke is indeed a welcoming place. Every year, many immigrants settle there. Thanks to organizations that work hard to help them integrate and feel welcome, we have managed to achieve that objective.
I see it when I visit hospitals, the Maison Aube-Lumière palliative care facility, schools and day care centres. A woman from Colombia works in the new bakery that just opened and she sells baked goods from her culture. It gives us an opportunity to discover wonderful things.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Pontiac.
I think immigrants are poems in Quebec. I will come back to that a little later. Quebec is a welcoming society, much more welcoming than its government's words and actions might sometimes imply.
According to a Leger poll conducted in May 2023, which is consistent with the figures quoted by my hon. colleague earlier, roughly 20% of Quebeckers think we should welcome more or far more immigrants, as opposed to 17% elsewhere in Canada. This highlights a rather interesting fact about public opinion in Quebec. I would go so far as to say that Quebec could serve as an example to a number of countries that are facing far less significant demographic challenges, but that have strong reactions to immigrants. The U.S. of the last few years obviously comes to mind.
For quite some time, Quebec has extended a generous, and sometimes very charitable, welcome towards those who have come from abroad and who are very often in a desperate state. In particular, I am thinking of the Irish people who arrived in Montreal in the 19th century, suffering from disease, most notably typhus.
By the way, I would like to draw attention to my friend Scott Phelan, who, along with Fergus Keyes and many others too numerous to name, is working hard at the Montreal Irish Monument Park Foundation to redevelop the area around the famous Black Rock, which sits on a median in between the four lanes of Bridge Street, at the foot of the Victoria Bridge. This rock marks the burial place of 6,000 Irish people who fled the Great Famine of 1847 and had typhus, as I mentioned. Their graves were discovered in 1859 by workers building the Victoria Bridge, who were themselves Irish.
An interesting fact is that about 70,000 Irish immigrants arrived on the shores of the St. Lawrence in Montreal at a time when the population of the entire island was only 50,000.
Let me now speak about my own riding, located on the island of Montreal, the riding of Lac-Saint-Louis, in a region that is sometimes mocked here as the “West Island”, for example during the debates on Bill C-13. Singling out any region of Quebec for mockery is not worthy of Quebeckers and Quebec values.
I would like to take a moment to describe my riding of Lac-Saint-Louis. In terms of demographics, 71% of the population is bilingual, and about 42% of people have English as their mother tongue, while French is the mother tongue of about 22%. By the way, it is Premier Legault's home riding.
The riding is home to two CEGEPs, including the Gérald Godin CEGEP, which is an important hub of francophone Quebec culture. The CEGEP regularly hosts French-language music, theatre and film performances of the greatest variety and quality in its concert hall, named after Pauline Julien. As most Quebeckers know, Gérald Godin and Pauline Julien had a great love story that took place during an exciting time in the history of Quebec and Canada.
I would like to mention outstanding leadership of Annie Dorion, the director of the Salle Pauline-Julien. She has made this concert hall a true cultural jewel on the West Island. I would invite all hon. members to consult its events calendar and come for a visit.
Lac-Saint-Louis also has an English CEGEP, John Abbott College, where several House of Commons pages studied. This CEGEP is located in the heart of the Macdonald campus of McGill University, an internationally renowned academic institution. McGill University is unfortunately affected by the recent announcement about higher tuition fees for out-of-province students.
This announcement is part of an improvised and populist policy that is not justified. Why is the Quebec government afraid of the roughly 35,000 students who come to Quebec for post-secondary education, some of whom will choose to stay there for the long term because of their love for the French language and Quebec culture and who will use their brainpower to help advance the Quebec nation? What next? Will the Quebec government limit tourism?
The Bloc Québécois motion talks about the provinces' capacity to integrate immigrants, a very valid concern. However, the motion suggests that this capacity remains static, whereas we need to see things in real time. We must call on the provinces to work actively, hand in hand, particularly with professional bodies, to ensure greater capacity for newcomer integration in social services, health, education and the building trades, for example. This is needed in order to ensure Quebec has the workforce it needs to address the housing crisis, so that when we unfortunately have to go to the hospital, quality health care can be provided to us, or when parents have to send their child to school, there is a teacher at the front of the classroom.
I would like to come back to the very first sentence of my speech: “immigrants are poems in Quebec”. Who said that? It was Gérald Godin. According to an article published in Le Devoir on October 21, 2023, by Jonathan Livernois, a professor at Laval University, Gérald Godin had a “particular interest in economic immigrants”. I will again quote Professor Livernois, in reference to an interview with Minister Gérald Godin in January 1984 on the TV show Impacts, which some members will recall:
Robert Guy Scully spoke with his guest about undocumented immigrants, who at the time numbered between 50,000 and 200,000 in Canada. The host asked, “Do you think that rich countries, like Canada, will have to tighten their borders, perhaps even brutally, against poor countries?” Godin rejected the idea, believing on the contrary that mobility must not be curtailed and that we must take advantage of the extraordinary vitality of all those who move around the world, with or without documentation.
Mr. Livernois's article goes on to say:
These days, it is not uncommon to hear a premier on the campaign trail, when asked about integrating immigrants, blurt out that Quebeckers do not like violence and that we have to “make sure we keep things as they are”. During the same election campaign, an immigration minister can say that “80% of immigrants go to Montreal, do not work, do not speak French and do not subscribe to the values of Quebec society”.
That is quite the contrast.
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- Oct/31/23 4:53:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today.
Tomorrow, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship is going to present the immigration targets for the coming years. When it comes to welcoming newcomers to Canada, we need to make sure we have growth, and newcomers support our economy, they make a significant contribution.
I would like to talk about an extraordinary example. In my riding, which extends far north, the communities are remote. Maniwaki Hospital was having a hard time keeping its operating room open. However, thanks to two workers from France and the Maghreb, we were able to keep it open with two excellent doctors. So I would like to warmly thank, among others, Dr. Amahzoune for all his good work. He brought his wife with him. She now works at the RCM. It was very difficult in the regions to find qualified employees to fill badly needed positions.
Earlier, my colleague talked about our unlimited capacity to welcome people and about how we need health care services, schools and teachers. I completely agree with him. That is why we need immigration: because we need services. For example, my aging parents are going to need health care. If we do not get immigrants like Dr. Amahzoune, we will not have health care services. Quebec has a teacher shortage right now. Some schools will settle for having an adult in the classroom. What matters is getting a teacher via immigration. Even if that teacher brings two kids along, they can teach 30 elementary kids and even more in high school. It is important to have skilled workers. We were talking about housing. That takes construction workers, plumbers, electricians. All that takes workers, so, yes, I agree, we need services, but our ability to get those services depends on immigration.
My colleague spoke earlier about data. There is one statistic he did not mention. I would like to take us back 50 years. There were seven workers for every retiree in Canada. With the baby boomers retiring, there have been a lot of retirees. The figures are now three workers for every one retiree. The projections are that it will soon be two workers for every retiree. If we want services, we need immigration.
I agree with the French fact, but once again, Quebec has every ability to choose its francophone immigrants, to reunite families like mine and to ensure that French is strong and solid in Canada and Quebec.
Permanent immigration is therefore absolutely essential to our growth and to provide services for Canadians like us, particularly in health care and housing construction. These are absolutely vital functions, and yes, we are consulting the provinces. They are extraordinary partners in the growth of our economy. We are consulting the provinces, and certainly Quebec. In a moment, I will give some examples of the results of this wonderful collaboration.
I think we agree that discussions on immigration reflect the realities we are seeing in the labour market. We also need to make sure that when we welcome immigrants, they have all the resources and tools they need to contribute fully to their new community.
Under the Canada–Québec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens, Quebec has the responsibility to set the number of immigrants to be sent to Quebec, as well as to select, welcome and integrate these immigrants. To be very clear, we are working in close collaboration with Quebec on all matters of immigration.
The very origin of some measures we are bringing in comes from the willingness of the Government of Quebec to see certain provisions applied. The public interest policy that allows certain work permit holders to study without a student visa is an example of an initial willingness by Quebec to allow foreign workers on its soil to improve their skills. That is a good example of Quebec's influence on Canadian immigration policies.
Last year, it was at Quebec's request that we brought in the international mobility program plus, which allows people who are outside Canada, but who have been selected by Quebec in the context of a permanent residence program, to obtain an open work permit.
Ultimately, it is because we are consulting Quebec, and it was at Quebec's request that we harmonized the conditions for accessing post-graduate work permits for certain programs with what already existed in the rest of Canada. Every year, after extensive consultations and taking into account available data, the government presents an immigration plan. Previously, this plan covered only one year, but the current three-year plan gives the federal government and its provincial partners, as well as those working in the sector, a better planning horizon. This plan is practical and allows us to meet the country's current needs while adapting to the future.
In addition to our annual consultation on immigration thresholds, we recently consulted the provinces and stakeholders as part of our strategic immigration review, which aims to determine what changes need to be made to ensure that our immigration system meets our country's current and future needs. These consultations highlighted the need to work closely with many immigration partners to ensure that we meet the needs of our economy and our communities.
The federal government, the provinces and the territories all agree that brilliant and talented newcomers are essential to Canada's present and future growth, but we need to be successful. That means we have to align our immigration priorities with essential services such as housing and infrastructure. I spoke about that earlier. That is very important.
To date, we have made historic investments in housing in Quebec. Since 2015, we have invested over $6.5 billion to help more than 445,000 Quebeckers find affordable housing. Thanks to a bilateral agreement between Canada and Quebec, a joint investment of another $3.7 billion will be coming over the next 10 years to improve housing in Quebec. We recently finalized an agreement in principle with Quebec for $900 million through the housing accelerator fund. These are crucial investments, but the goal is to guarantee that Quebec will bring in new immigrants. We will also ensure that newcomers have all the resources they need to build new lives for themselves in Canada.
As I like to say, newcomers are not the cause of the current housing situation; they are part of the solution.
They have the incredible skills to come help us build our economy, the skills we need to build homes.
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