The Canadian Immigration Minister speaks about important reforms to be brought about in Canadian Immigration Policy

.......We have to deal decisively with these problems of huge backlogs and endless wait times, which is why in our budget last month we announced that we will be returning some three-quarters of the applications that have been waiting in our main federal immigration system. It’s a difficult decision. I regret it for those who have been waiting patiently in line. I regret that mistakes that were made in the past have made this necessary. But if we don’t take decisive action now, we will never have a fast immigration system that can actually respond to labour markets and bring in people to meet jobs that are available. We must act decisively. And, as a result of this, within about 18 months, we will have a real‑time immigration system at the federal level that brings people who are qualified into Canada within months of their application rather than years. And that will massively improve our ability to connect immigrants with the jobs that are available.
We have studied changes that have been made in various other countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, where they have created a system to pre‑assess the education and skills of people who want to work in regulated fields and regulated professions.
As I am sure you are very much aware, one of the most difficult problems for immigrants is getting their diplomas and skills recognized. At a domestic level in Canada, we are working with Quebec and other provinces in the context of the Pan-Canadian Framework for the Recognition of Foreign Qualifications. We have invested $50 million in this program through the Economic Action Plan to bring all professional associations—doctors, lawyers, etc.—onboard in pan-Canadian discussions to arrive at an accelerated and simplified system for assessing and recognizing foreign qualifications.
So that’s important work we’re doing and we will then take that at the federal level to invite people applying for immigration to Canada to go the national bodies representing the licensing groups and apply for a pre-assessment. We want to know whether they have at least an even chance of getting their licence to practise in Canada before bringing them here.
There are two problems with foreign credentials. One is, truthfully, some of the licensing bodies have engaged in a certain amount of gate-keeping and protectionism. But another problem, to be honest, is one we’ve created because we’ve invited to the country people who are on paper engineers and doctors but who aren’t really at the Canadian standard. We owe them truth in advertising.
We have a responsibility to be clear because if we attract an engineer who is in fact a technician according to Canadian standards, why are we bringing this person to Canada when we won’t be able to benefit from their skills? Why bring to Canada doctors from abroad who will become taxi drivers or convenience store workers?
That doesn’t do them any favours. It’s a huge waste of their potential. It creates enormous human costs and social costs and it represents a huge cost in terms of lost opportunity for the Canadian economy. And that’s why we’ll be doing a pre-assessment of credentials and education.
As you are aware, in the federal system, we give the same points to an applicant with a degree from Harvard that we give to applicants with a degree from the lowest-ranked university in the United States.
We don’t do any qualitative assessment of education, just a kind of look at the quality of education. In the future we’ll be assessing whether people’s education is actually relevant to the Canadian labour market.
And we intend to create a system of highly‑skilled applicants, which we will share with employers so that we can connect employers who are looking for skilled people with the immigration applicants. This is the same system that New Zealand and Australia have adopted.
So in this new system, employers will be able go in and do a query of those who are pre-qualified, and invite them into Canada with arranged jobs. In our studies, we have seen that immigrants who arrive in Canada with prearranged employment earn an average of close to $80,000 in their third year in Canada. This is twice as much as immigrants who arrive without prearranged employment. Therefore, we need to follow what the data says.
And the data tells us that people who have prearranged jobs do about twice as well as those that don’t.
So those are some of the reforms we are implementing to better align our immigration system with our economic needs. And, I should say, we have already carried out some significant reforms—for example, we have created the Canadian Experience Class and we want to help foreign students remain in Canada and become Canadians.
We have created a new program that allows foreign students to remain in Canada as permanent residents following their studies. We now issue two‑year post‑graduation work permits to help students as they start their experience in Canada. Also, we allow temporary foreign workers who qualify and who have worked in Canada for a year to remain in Canada.
These individuals, the highly-skilled students and temporary workers, have already been integrated. They have perfected their language skills. They have experience in our labour market and they have degrees that will be recognized by Canadian employers. This means that their success is almost certain. We need to retain them and, because of the changes we are implementing, we will be able to do so.
I should also mention the reforms we want to make to our immigrant entrepreneur and investor programs because I know that this affects a number of you here today.
I believe that Canada has been underselling itself when it comes to immigrant investors. We have a lower price point, but we give immediate permanent residency to those who just loan our governments $800,000 for five years, which is guaranteed and which they get back. That does not, in my mind, represent the creation of wealth or jobs. It is not a durable or ongoing commitment to the Canadian economy and they don’t even take a risk. Moreover, there is a huge surplus of applicants for these programs. There are literally millions of millionaires with a huge net worth who are interested in coming to Canada.
So in my view, we should modify these programs to extract greater economic benefit for Canada, to find some way to ensure a meaningful, ongoing, wealth-creating, job-creating investment from investor immigrants. We are underpricing ourselves. And, you know, we should realize that we are the gold standard in international migration. Permanent residency in Canada is as good as it gets.
I was at an event in Toronto announcing some of our new entrepreneurial programs the other day with Kevin O’Leary from The Dragon’s Den TV show. And he said, when he goes around the world talking to investors, Canada has become the global rock star for investment. According to Forbes Magazine, this is now the best country in the world in which to start a new business. According to the World Bank, Canada is the third best place in the world in which to invest.
There is, as I say, no shortage of people who want to bring their capital here. And, if we’re going to give them the privilege of permanent residency in Canada, we should require a meaningful and ongoing contribution to the Canadian economy.
This is the reason why we have announced consultations on reforms to the immigrant investor program. Quebec has a similar program and we want to work closely with Quebec in this respect. We also want to coordinate potential changes with Quebec as much as possible.
Lastly, we are reforming our entrepreneur immigrant program. Currently, we are attracting people who have to provide a loan of $300,000 and who are required to create employment within two years. They come, they purchase a small convenience store, and they sell it in two years. That is not creating employment. That is not the true spirit that we are looking for among foreign entrepreneurs. So we are going to reform these programs.
For example, creating a new start-up visa program will allow innovators, such as young people from overseas who are very talented, who have a business plan and who are supported by investors in Canada, to come here and create their businesses in Canada. So we’re thinking of this kind of a start-up visa idea. The same idea is now before the U.S. Congress. We want to beat the U.S. to the punch in attracting these people.
Let me say that – I’ll wrap up in a moment to take your questions –we also understand the central importance of language proficiency in our approach to immigration and integration.
As you are aware, the data indicates that language proficiency is the most important factor in ensuring that immigrants are successful. I am very much aware that this is a loaded issue here in Quebec. At the federal level, we are going to increase the language proficiency obligations for immigrant professionals. We are going to create a new skilled trades program, which will include a set minimum standard for these individuals.
Under the citizenship programs, language proficiency is a legal obligation. In order to become a Canadian citizen, immigrants need to show that they are proficient in English or French. However, I have met too many Canadian citizens who have been living here for many years who cannot express themselves in English or French. This is not acceptable because it limits their social mobility and impacts their lives in Canada.
So I’m announcing today that we will be requiring applicants for citizenship to obtain evidence of having reached our minimum level of language proficiency through a designated third party organization to ensure that all of those who join us as full members of our Canadian family in the future are able fully to participate in our society.
I would like to thank you for your patience. You can see that I have addressed only some of the changes that we are currently pursuing. I could also discuss our efforts to strengthen the integrity of the system but, at the end of the day, what is important is that we want to continue with our tradition of being a country that is open to the world.
We want to continue our humanitarian traditions towards refugees in need of our protection. But we also want to attract people from all over the world to help us build a prosperous and generous society, where they can maximize their potential. We have a moral obligation to do so for newcomers. We have an obligation to do so for Canadians. And we have a reform plan to do so for the future of Canada.
Thank you very much.