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Hon. Marc Miller (Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Lib.)

Nov/1/23 2:50:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am not going to talk about astrology. The member opposite was in the House when I gave my speech yesterday but she must not have been paying attention or she would have heard the details of what we are doing with Quebec to ensure that there is co-operation and coordination. We have disagreements, of course, but what she does not understand—and this is odd because the agreement has been in place for as long as the Bloc Québécois has existed, since 1991—is that this falls under Quebec jurisdiction.

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Hon. Marc Miller (Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Lib.)

Nov/1/23 2:49:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, obviously, we have to keep increasing our efforts to integrate newcomers. The flip side of those numbers is the unprecedented volume of people who want to come to Canada. I do not blame them, but the reality is that so many people want to come here because Canada is a welcoming country. I think that criticizing Canada and Quebec by saying that we do not have the integration capacity shows bad faith and is essentially a refusal to listen to what is going on in the country. Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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Hon. Marc Miller (Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Lib.)

Nov/1/23 2:34:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in an hour and a bit, people will have a chance to see the plan, and I would ask them to take a look at it. As for Quebec, the Canada-Quebec accord has been in place since 1991. Under this agreement, we send Quebec $700 million a year. Do we demand accountability? No, we do not, because that is the relationship we have with Quebec. Perhaps we should be asking questions, but the fact is that Quebec has complete freedom to use this money to adapt its integration capacity, and we are going to support it.

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Hon. Marc Miller (Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Lib.)

Nov/1/23 2:33:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, that is not true. We are constantly consulting with Quebec. There is direct communication between our public services every day. I would also like to point out that I have spoken directly to the Quebec minister about these targets, the integration target and sponsorship for refugees. I have asked her to make an extra effort. We are certainly consulting. We disagree sometimes, but I would ask the member to look at the plan that talks about the Canada-Québec accord and says that that is to be determined. The entire determination process remains in the hands of Quebec City. It is perfectly good consultation.

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Hon. Marc Miller (Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Lib.)

Oct/31/23 2:47:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will say it again because it does not seem to be getting through to the Bloc Québécois. First, we have already held consultations. Second, these people are frustrated because we are going to vote for their motion.

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Hon. Marc Miller (Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Lib.)

Oct/31/23 2:46:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, obviously our review of the thresholds and our measures will include consideration of Quebec's integration capacity and that of the rest of Canada. Consultation is not a two-way street; it involves 13 of us. We are a country. This is a debate for our whole society. We have to talk to all Canadians to ensure we all have a good understanding of immigration and of what our country's future looks like. I invite the Bloc Québécois to look at what we are going to propose. Quebec already knows, actually. It has been consulted all year.

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Hon. Marc Miller (Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Lib.)

Oct/31/23 2:45:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, once again, the Bloc Québécois refuses to understand that the Canada-Quebec accord on immigration has been in place since 1991, which is just as long as the Bloc Québécois has been around. For some mysterious reason, it refuses to understand how this works. Quebec has a voice. Canada has a voice. We are in constant talks with Quebec and, for that matter, with all the provinces. We are setting our thresholds. We have to respect jurisdictions, but it is clear that, on the Bloc Québécois side, there is a foolish refusal to understand what is at stake.

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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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Oct/31/23 11:06:58 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what I will not do is commit to the NDP funding formulas on the floor of the House of Commons. I would note that in the member's home province some very good work has been done to clean up some of the designated learning institutions that have been responsible for creating false hope abroad with respect to international students. They have attracted people here on a false promise of hope, on a false premise. They do not need to spend $40,000 in fees to end up driving an Uber. We need to work together with provinces to ensure they are doing their jobs in their jurisdictions and to rein in a lot of designated learning institutions, which they sanction, they back and they get the funds for directly, not the federal government, then ask us at times to rubber stamp applications from folks whose hopes have been entertained, sometimes falsely, about coming to this country. International students are a huge credit to our country and the vast majority of them will contribute in their own countries when they return by being soft ambassadors for Canada or increase the productivity in Canada when they become permanent residents or, eventually, Canadian citizens. It is not a guaranteed pathway, but clearly there has been some fraud. An ecosystem has been created that has been very lucrative and people are taking advantage of that. Last Friday, we instituted a model for the federal government to start doing its job a little better, and we expect provinces to do that as well. It depends on the province, but we have open arms with regard to working with them and get it done.

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

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Oct/31/23 11:02:24 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of speculation in the Bloc Québécois member's question. She obviously was not paying attention to what I said about the consultation we held as part of the review of our strategic plan, which we will be announcing within the next few hours. I am a little disappointed because she knows full well that Quebec has been making most of the decisions within its jurisdiction since the Canada–Québec Accord relating to Immigration and Temporary Admission of Aliens, which, as I said in my speech, has been around as long as the Bloc Québécois has, dating back to the early 1990s. I am sensing a bit of unwillingness to hear what I just said. Clearly, there is always room for improvement in terms of communication and coordination, but that does not mean we always agree with Quebec. That is how relationships work. We each have a say. If she believes that we have not consulted properly, it is because she did not listen to my speech or because she is acting in bad faith.

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