Speaking Notes for the Honourable John McCallum, C. P., MP, Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship at a luncheon organized by the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal

Speech

Montreal, Quebec
March 16, 2016

As delivered

Thank you, Michel. Welcome, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here, and to have my colleague Mayor Denis Coderre here as well. For the first time, I think he won't be the one giving the speech. So thanks for coming, Denis, just to listen to me.

I'd like to thank the business community, CN and the Board of Trade in a few moments. First I want to start by saying that I am, in fact, a native of Montreal. And that's not all. I lived most of my life here. Yes, I taught at McGill, and I wear the McGill tie. I also taught at UQAM, and I'd like to tell you that it was a really valuable experience for me because it was in the middle of the 80s, when it was rare for an Anglophone like me to go to McGill as to go to UQAM as a professor. So I was a bit of a rare bird or a strange thing to descend upon UQAM.

And my French at the time was not good at all. It's not perfect now, but it’s a lot better than when I first arrived at UQAM. I can tell you that the language of instruction at UQAM is certainly not English. The language of instruction is French.

But the students were extremely welcoming, and when I didn't know a certain French word, I could say it in English and they would tell me how to say it in French. So it was a process of learning by doing.

By going to UQAM, I gained a better understanding of Quebec, and of the many different sides to life in Quebec, than if I had just gone to McGill. So thank you, UQAM, for that experience which really shaped my life. I was forced to understand and speak French. Thank you for that. I enjoyed my time at UQAM.

The other thing I would like to say, in terms of the refugee process, is that it was something different for me, because I'm an economist by training, and I usually deal with economic issues. But the refugee experience is more a matter of the heart, because the process has helped us to define ourselves as Canadians. It has helped to give us and the world the idea that we are truly a country that welcomes refugees. We are truly a country, at the time of the worst refugee crisis in decades, when literally millions of people are being displaced.

At this time of global crisis, when Europe and the very existence of the European Union is at stake, according to some, major problems have arisen. And during this major crisis, some countries have closed their doors to refugees or, at least, it has become harder for refugees to go there. And at the same time, Canada has opened its doors and welcomed refugees. I think this is a very, very good thing.

And the other dimension that was a matter of the heart which I’d like to mention is when I was at the airport in Montreal with Denis Coderre, Premier Couillard, my counterpart Kathleen Weil, and some other ministers, to greet the first of the refugees landing in Montreal, I can tell you that it was a time of high emotion.

I remember clearly that 15 minutes before the refugees arrived, we were told that they were going to be arriving in 15 minutes and the emotional atmosphere in the room was palpable. Everyone was excited to see them for the first time. I remember going with Denis and the premier to the door to welcome them, without the media, simply because we wanted to do that. I have never seen federal public servants working so well with provincial public servants, because everyone was so happy.

And the other good thing, and we did this in Montreal but not in Toronto, was that as soon as the refugees finished with their official business, they crossed the street to a huge room filled with all of the refugee families who were waiting for them. When we saw the refugees enter the room one by one with all of the families, there was plenty of emotion. It really made the whole thing worthwhile to see those families reuniting with each other. So it was a wonderful, wonderful experience which I will never forget.

The only problem for me as Immigration Minister being in that room with all those families, I was a total sitting duck for people coming to me and telling me they had problems with other family members. But I guess that goes along with the job.

I want to tell you a little bit about our refugee process. I want to tell you a little bit about certain other things that we have been doing because immigration is not only about refugees. I want to end with a couple of general lessons.

Basically, there were two stages. Stage one was bringing the 25,000 refugees from Jordan and Lebanon here to Canada. And it was difficult at the start. We had to build a machine to do it, and it was hard at the start. As soon as the machine was in place, it was not difficult at all.

So it took time. I must congratulate all of the civil servants involved. We had 500 of them over there working hard to accomplish something they had never done before.

One of the slogans of Justin Trudeau in the election was, Real Change. One of the definitions of real change is you do something you've never done before. If you'd done it before, it wouldn't be real change, would it?

And what these civil servants were doing was something they had never done before: to bring, in four months, 25,000 refugees fully checked for security and health from there to here. They had never done that before. That was real change. They got the job done on time. The refugees were here two days ahead of schedule on February 27, so I congratulate all the public servants and everyone else who made this possible.

But after that, we got to stage two.

And if you think the first stage was hard, the second is even harder, and in a way, more important, because it's one thing to bring people over here. It's another to help them succeed in Canada. And there, the priorities are housing, language and employment. As I said at the start, as Sean Finn said at the start, the three priorities were housing, housing, housing. Back in November, I said that it wasn't a government project. It's a national project, starting with CN and its $5 million contribution, to the young children carrying signs welcoming the refugees, and everyone in between.

And so I would really like to thank CN for leading the way on its $5 million. That was a wonderful contribution.

CN, thank you once again. However, CN is not the only contributor.

Community Foundations Canada, and Ian Bird is in the room.

Manulife and many others played a role as well. They helped out with housing, which is critical. But there are other things as well. We have received more than $30 million to date. We've done well. I wish to thank all those who contributed.

Now, jobs are also a priority. I just met with some business people from this group to discuss that. I know that many industries need people who don't necessarily have a lot of education but who want to work. Some industries have historically had trouble attracting workers.

Thank you to all those who came to the meeting. I would like to thank the Board of Trade for its Interconnection program. And I want to thank all of you to the degree that you can help, in helping us find jobs for our 25,000 new Canadians.

I was in Halifax yesterday. I'll be in Winnipeg tomorrow, and Vancouver the following day, giving the same message to the business community: get involved. I know you are involved, but I'm asking everyone to do their part. This is a Canada-wide project. We need your help, and I want to thank you for what you've already done, and I hope you go that extra mile.

Thank you very much.

Now I don't want to talk too long, but I would like to explain a few other things that we're doing, because life is not just refugees. Four things.

First, we have restored health care for refugees.

We introduced changes to the legislation on citizenship because we believe a Canadian is a Canadian. There is one class of citizens, not two. We are all equal. So it's not right for the government to be able to revoke the citizenship of people with dual citizenship. Once our legislation passes, that will no longer be possible. People convicted of serious crimes should be in prison, not at the airport. That will be our position for the future.

Thirdly, we think that non-Francophone immigrants and Francophone immigrants outside of Quebec are important. I can't make the announcement yet but I hope to be able to announce in the future that the Francophone Significant Benefit program has been restored. This program promotes French-speaking immigrants who wish to live outside of Quebec. I have been involved in this program. Some of my colleagues were also involved, like Stéphane Dion, Mélanie Joly, and Mauril Bélanger, who unfortunately is very ill.

He has devoted a good part of his life improving the lives of Francophones outside of Quebec, and I thank him for all his work. I can tell you that we, including Mauril and the others I mentioned, have worked hard on this issue.

And finally, credentials, or professional qualifications.

It is not an area of federal jurisdiction. In a meeting earlier this week with my provincial counterparts, I was a little reluctant to mention it because it's clearly under provincial jurisdiction, not only here in Quebec but across the country. But it's my Quebec counterpart who said that yes, we should have a federal-provincial meeting to discuss best practices in this area. It's really a major challenge we've had for decades.

The foreign doctors and engineers who come to Canada and end up driving taxis, that’s a problem, but it hasn’t been resolve for decades. I hope that by comparing best practices we'll have an opportunity to begin dealing with the problem.

The last issue is international students. If I think about which group of people will make the best group of future Canadians, it would have to be international students, because they understand French or English. By definition, they have an education. They know the country. So given our aging population, we should try our best to ensure that they come here, decide to stay, and become permanent residents.

Under Express Entry, they have been shortchanged. They have got the short end of the stick. I want to do everything I can to make it easier for international students to become permanent residents of Canada. And one thing we have done already is to restore the 50 percent credit for time spent in Canada they get to become citizens. If you want to court somebody, you don't punch the person in the nose. When they were deprived of the 50 percent credit, that was an insult. It was like punching them in the nose, so we're giving that back, but more importantly, we're going to work on stronger mechanisms to (help them) become permanent residents because I think Canada needs these international students. Quebec needs these international students. We will make it easier for them to come here and to stay here.

Two final points. The lessons I've learned: the first relates to my work as an economist. It's rather technical. With these refugees, we've learned how to do things much faster. I said that it was something new. So we’ve learned to do things faster for refugees. If we can work faster for refugees, we can do the same for families. Right now, spouses who want to come here have to wait two years, and that's not acceptable. It should be six months. There are some people outside the hotel demonstrating, and for good reason. So we're going to tackle the problem. One way we're going to tackle it is to take what we've learned in bringing in refugees quickly, and use that knowledge to bring in spouses and families quickly as well.

Lastly, I've learned one thing about Canada. It's rare that I say it.

It's very rare that I say Canada leads the world in anything. Canadians often say we lead the world in X, Y, Z when often we don't. So I don't want to be too liberal although that's not a bad word. But if there's one thing we lead the world in, it's as a model of integration. It's as a model of bringing people from different religions, different communities, different colours of skin together into a community that functions well. And I have lived this for the last 15 years as the Member of Parliament for Markham, which according to Stats Canada is Canada's most diverse community. And one example of this is that when ministers from Germany a big country, more than 80 million people, came to Canada, they asked for a meeting with the Mayor of Markham to say how do you do this? How do you do this integration?

So, I think that we are good at that, and I think we can capitalize on this further. We're not perfect. We're far from perfect, but if you look around the world, if you look at Europe with its anti-immigration parties who want to send people home, we don't have any (such) parties in this country. We may disagree with the Conservatives, but they're not anti-immigrant.

So we are a pro-immigrant country. We are a country which okay, I'll say it is a model for the world on our capacity to bring people in and to integrate people. And I think with the success we have had and how it has been noticed globally, we can play a role in helping the world become more of a model of integrating people and less of a model for shutting their doors and saying no.

I would like to thank you for your attention. It has truly been a pleasure for me to be in Montreal again. Thank you very much.

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