39th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION
EDITED HANSARD • NUMBER 036
CONTENTS
Thursday, June 8, 2006

Mr. Ed Komarnicki (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to debate the motion put forward by the hon. member for Halifax West. It recognizes that Canada's growth and prosperity are advanced by a number of key factors. Among these are measures to help newcomers and others integrate successfully into the workplace.

In citing various global and demographic challenges we face today, the motion reminds us that immigration must be a vital part of any plan devised to respond to them. It reminds us that when immigrants succeed in our society, we all succeed.

It is notable that the member for Halifax West's own party presided over a period when immigrants saw a marked decline in outcomes for their earnings and livelihood. At the beginning of the 1980s, two-thirds of skilled immigrants earned more than the Canadian average income within a year of coming here. Under the Liberal government, that 66% success rate fell to just 4%.

I would like to highlight a number of investments the government has made to assist newcomers in the workplace. They are precisely the kind of focused initiatives for which the hon. member calls.

First, Canada's immigration policy and immigration system is far more than a means of bringing newcomers to Canada. Getting them here is only one side of the coin, only one-half of the job. The other half is ensuring their successful integration once they arrive here.

The government has a fundamental role in helping newcomers adjust to their new homeland and ensuring they become productive and responsible citizens when they get here. It is not just to be in Canada, but it is also about succeeding and making Canada a part of their home and also feeling part of Canada.

Our immigration system exists to serve the interests of all Canadians in all regions and communities, in all sectors for all Canadians. It is for this reason that we continue to work on a fair and sensible immigration plan that works for Canada. The government moved quickly, after taking office, to implement a number of specific immigration measures. These measures were needed immediately to advance an immigration program that would work for our country.

In addition, the new Conservative government has acted to bring forward measures that “strengthen skills, job-readiness and successful workplace participation...among new immigrants”, to use the exact wording of the motion put forward by the hon. member for Halifax West.

Canada's economy is strong and thousands of jobs are being created. However, there is also a growing concern that vacant jobs in key sectors in regions are not being filled as quickly as employers need or sometimes are not filled at all. The solution is not technological or organizational. It is more than that. It is people, our greatest human resource. People have to be the centre of this agenda. To be successful, we have to make full use of the diverse talents and skills of all members of our society. They need to be what they can be. They need to become what they can become and contribute in a positive fashion to our society.

It is obvious that Canadian employers must be able to draw on the full range of their employees' skills, including assisting with their employees' skills upgrading. They must also be able to hire the additional workers they need and to do so quickly in order to meet the demands of our ever growing economy.

As we all know, immigration has been a major part of our country's labour mix from the beginning of our history. It must continue to be part of our strategy in facing the future. Our governmental plan is committed to making this so.

Through our permanent immigration program, we select skilled workers who have the training, education, language skills and work experience that will help them to make a contribution to Canada's longer term competitiveness.

The provinces and territories play an important role in this. Quebec selects its own skilled workers while the provincial nominee program helps other provinces and territories support the immigration of individuals who have the skills and other attributes needed by most provinces. Manitoba and my home province of Saskatchewan have shown leadership in the furtherance of the program and in the use of the program.

Still, there are urgent labour market needs that need to be addressed and they need to be addressed now. The temporary foreign workers program has been used to bring workers from other countries to Canada to fill jobs on a temporary basis when there is no one available to do the job in Canada. Citizenship and Immigration Canada is working closely with colleagues from Human Resources and Social Development to make this program work better for all Canadians.

Furthermore, the provincial nominee program could be used more extensively by the provinces and territories. We are prepared to work with any province that wishes to explore the greater use of this program.

In the recent 2006 budget, we delivered our commitment to cut in half the right of permanent residence fee from $975 to $490. This fee is a considerable burden for many immigrants at a time in their lives when every dollar counts. This fee reduction that we adopted would mean a $1,000 saving for a husband and wife coming to Canada; $1,000 they could use before finding that first job and money they could use to help start a new life in Canada. We said we would cut the right of permanent residence fee in half, and we did it. Budget 2006 delivers on that promise.

Budget 2006 puts an extra $307 million in settlement funding for new immigrants. This is over and above other recent increases. This money would go to the heart of improving outcomes for immigrants and to giving them opportunities to add to the success of our country.

Our budget earned praise from the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance as the first major increase in funding since 1995. This funding would go toward language training, help with job searches, skills upgrades, suitable housing and other programs, things that would make newcomers successful and integrate successfully in our society and country.

Canada has a variety of existing programs to assist newcomers in settling into their communities.

The immigration settlement and adaptation program focuses on various needs, particularly during the first year, including orientation abroad and in Canada. Our host program connects immigrants with people in their communities who provide a personal touch in assisting them. Through the language instruction for newcomers to Canada considerable resources are allocated for the provision of basic language training to help newcomers integrate more rapidly into their new society.

As well, the minister recently announced that foreign students in our universities and colleges would be allowed to compete for off-campus jobs on a level playing field with their Canadian peers. We estimate approximately 100,000 students would be eligible to participate in this initiative in all parts of Canada.

This program would increase Canada's attractiveness as a destination for students. International students bring more than $4 billion to our economy each year. We want to attract and retain these highly-educated people to Canada. The program would give international university and college students the ability to work off-campus and help them participate in Canadian society. This would also allow foreign students to gain valuable Canadian experience that would benefit both them and us.

These are initiatives the government has introduced quickly in taking office. They have been introduced to make Canada's immigration program one that works better for Canada, one that would advance the objectives that are at the heart of the motion here before us.

These measures help to strengthen the job readiness and workplace participation of newcomers that is the very intent of the hon. member's motion. There are already programs in existence that realize these objectives, such as enhanced language training.
Through Citizenship and Immigration Canada's enhanced language training initiative, $20 million goes toward an integrated service for immigrants that provides labour market levels of language training coupled with employment supports such as internships, skills and educational assessment, mentoring, workplace cultural orientation, preparing for licensing exams, and information on how to access professions. This is in addition to approximately $130 million a year the government spends on basic language training.

In conclusion, I have provided an overview of the targeted initiatives taken to advance workplace participation among immigrants. Most of them are the result of the action our government has taken to improve our immigration program. These improvements are serving the interests of Canada by better serving the needs of newcomers and the requirements of employers in the workplace.

I am sure members would agree that these targeted initiatives fulfill the objectives of the motion put forward by the hon. member for Halifax West.

Hon. Geoff Regan (Halifax West, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for taking part in the debate on my motion. I enjoyed listening to his comments.

When we talk about post-secondary education, which of course is a fundamental element of any innovation or economic productivity agenda for this country, we must recognize that we are looking at a situation where the last government was putting $2.75 billion into access to education and financial assistance for students.

What is the new government offering in its budget in return after that? It cancelled all that. It is offering an $80 tax credit for text books. It is laudable that it is not going to tax scholarships, but of course an awful lot of students do not have scholarships. An awful lot of low income and moderate income students do not have scholarships. That $80 is not going to go very far and is not going to help them pay their tuition in September when it is time to pay and start university.

When I asked the minister this same question earlier and about the importance of post-secondary education, as usual she turns to skills training. It is important but it is an entirely different topic. The question on one hand is what is the government doing for real about access to education and why is it not really doing anything?

The other thing of course is that in relation to skills training, what has the government done? It has cancelled the labour market partnership agreements that the last government signed with Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Each of those provincial governments signed agreements that have been cancelled. It is a bit like Kyoto and particularly Kelowna.

This morning in the human resources committee, a Conservative MP said that the answer to unemployment in Atlantic Canada is to move unemployed people to Alberta. I did not get an answer to this earlier from the minister, but is that the government's policy on unemployment in Atlantic Canada?

Mr. Ed Komarnicki: Mr. Speaker, first, that has little to do with immigration, but when we look at the budget and what we have introduced, we have over 24 tax cuts that will help every segment in our society. These tax cuts will reduce the tax burden of many Canadians, a tax burden that has increased year after yearmaking it nearly impossible for Canadians to survive in Canada.

We have reduced the burden on many Canadians so that they can go forward and start working. We have helped every family that has a child under six by investing $1,200 for everyone to have not only a relief in their tax burden but some money to help them to go forward.

We have helped families that want to be part of their child's education, to allow the child to make application for funding when we increased the amount of the income that can be considered by parents.

We have done a number of things that bring skills training to our Canadian people. We have also done a lot to bring people in who have skills. We set up the foreign credential assessment committee to ensure that the skills are appropriately matched.

We have also found that because there is such a demand for labour and skills training within our country, we are using every means we can to enhance that within our country and to ensure we can bring in others to make those economies, that are growing speedily, to have the people and the resources needed to continue to go forward in our country.

Mr. Bill Siksay (Burnaby—Douglas, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the backlog in immigration applications has gone up yet again. When the former government was leaving office, the backlog was around 700,000 applications. Now it is up to 826,000 applications, so it is steadily increasing and we have seen no progress.

In fact, the new Conservative government has cancelled the deathbed backlog money that the former government announced back in November of a $700 million contribution to work toward reducing the pile from 700,000 applications down to 500,000 applications.

I would ask the parliamentary secretary, what is this new government's plan to deal with the backlog? We have not heard anything yet. We have seen a cancellation of money but there is nothing in its place. What is it going to do about the huge backlog in immigration applications?

Mr. Ed Komarnicki: Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that under the former Liberal government there were no increases in funding to the degree that we see in this particular budget and immigration levels were not increased as promised. The Liberals made significant promises and said they would attain certain goals, like 1% of the population. They had many applications come in but did very little to actually increase the intake into Canada.

We have taken an approach where we are going to ensure first of all that we have the capacity and ability to intake and process efficiently to ensure that can happen. We have added 33% or more to the existing budget and we are looking at not only efficiencies but also ensuring that those who arrive in our country are able to integrate into our society appropriately and become contributors in the way it was meant to be.