Speaking notes for the Honourable John McCallum, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
Speech
At the 18th National Metropolis Conference: Getting results; Migration, Opportunities and Good Governance
Toronto, Ontario
March 3, 2016
As delivered
Well good morning, everybody. A great pleasure for me to be here albeit a little bit late for which I apologize. I had a car breakdown earlier today followed by traffic jams and so I think we need some infrastructure but I’m sorry to keep you waiting.
Maybe I’ll try my go at that question that my two provincial colleagues answered: why are we doing this? And I think it’s right that we’re doing it in large measure for humanitarian reasons. The more time I spend on this job and the more I see, the more I’m convinced that it’s absolutely the right thing for Canada to bring over 25,000 people suffering in the scourge of a civil war over to this country to get a new life here in Canada. But I also want to say it’s not just that. Okay, it’s primarily that or you can give your own weights, but it’s also in the medium term a good investment for Canada. We’ve seen that with previous waves of refugees, from Vietnam, from Uganda, from Hungary. They come here and there’s a settling-in period and then they thrive and then they become supporters of the next wave of refugees.
In particular, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick with particularly aging populations, but all of us have that. We need these people, not just because we’re nice humanitarian people, I think we are, but we also need them because we need workers to keep the economy going. So that’s why we’re doing this.
I also want to say I’m very pleased to share this stage, in a way share the stage with two of my provincial colleagues. You heard them say that we are working extremely well together on the refugee project. You heard some of the things they say which had — perhaps barbs in them. But let me focus on the positive.
When I first got this job and phoned up all the provincial ministers, my counterparts, and asked them how many do you think you can take? We got over 25,000, we were over-subscribed and that reflects the attitude across this country, in every province and territory, that everybody joined with enthusiasm, as did more than 30 mayors who I contacted. So, from province to territory, to city to town, to business to settlement groups, to little children producing messages of welcome, this has been a truly national project and I thank the provinces. But I thank all Canadians for their great help on this journey.
So what I would like to do is to take stock a little bit, yes, mainly focusing on migration and refugees, but also a little bit on family class and economic immigrants because they too are important and there’s an interrelationship among the three. So you know, we did work very much on refugees, but there’s more to the job than refugees, important as they are. I have a mandate to fulfill and certain things we have fulfilled and others remain to be done. But all will be done.
So we have succeeded in bringing 25,000 refugees to Canada by the end of February. That mission is done, but we’re not celebrating too much because the important point is to settle the people property, to get them housing, jobs, language training and that is still ongoing. The easy part is to get them from there to here. The harder part is to ensure their success down the road in our country. So we have delivered on that. We’ve introduced a new Citizenship Act under which it will no longer be possible for a government to revoke citizenship for criminal acts. We believe that that is the right thing to do.
Thank you. We believe the right place for a terrorist is in prison and not at the airport. We also believe it’s right to reduce some of the barriers to citizenship in particular we should be courting international students. They’re prime targets to be permanent residents. We should not punch them in the nose by taking away the 50 percent credit they used to get for their time spent in Canada to be citizens. So we’ve done those things.
We have restored refugee healthcare and there’s a number of other items, but let me talk first about refugees because I think that’s the main topic. Let me give you a little trip along the path that we took four months minus a day ago, what was the beginning. I can tell you that I’ve been open with the media. I think it’s good to tell it like it is, good points and bad points. I’ve certainly come clean on the bad points, the challenges like we thought we would have trouble getting exit permits from Lebanon and that turned out okay.
We thought we might have problems with housing. We do, but those are in the process of being resolved but I think we’ve told this story. The most difficult, busy time was between November 4th and Christmas when the machine was not up. At a personal level, I didn’t have any staff. We had to build that machine to get the people flowing and that was a big task. I really have to commend my — the employees of my department, because we had a campaign slogan called “Real Change.” One definition of real change is you do something you’ve never done before, or else it wouldn’t be real change, would it? And they had never done this before: to mobilize 25,000 refugees in four short months and to bring them over here in that period of time. So I really thank my department members for all their work.
But there’s everybody else to thank as well. I’ve done that already, so I won’t repeat it. All Canadians deserve thanks but in particular my department for mobilizing that transfer.
So yes, we wanted to do it fast, but more important, we wanted to do it right. I’m convinced that on security checks, on health checks, we have done it right. We’ve had the endorsement of the heads of the RCMP, CSIS and the border services on security. The U.S. government has been satisfied with it, if not all the Republican candidates for president. So I think we have fulfilled that commitment to do it well as well as to do it fast.
I also thank my colleagues on the security side. Ralph Goodale has done a great job and to get that machine up and running, we could not have done it without Defence. I thank Harjit Sajjan for bringing in all those Defence people on the medical side, which make things go 10 times faster and that really helped to get the job done.
Okay, so now they’re here. The next challenge, and it always has been the biggest challenge, is to make them truly welcome. Three of the biggest things are housing, jobs and language. You should understand the profile of the government-assisted refugees. The typical government-assisted refugee speaks not a word of English or French, has very many children, very little education, probably knows not one person in Canada and probably is coming here for the first time ever on an airplane.
So if you think we want to import vulnerable people, I can assure you, we have imported vulnerable people. That, of course, was the object of the exercise. But the other side of that coin is that it’s a challenge. People with the characteristics I’ve described are harder to settle in and to make thrive in our country than had they come highly educated, highly fluent in English and French, etc. So it’s a lot of work. It’s not primarily the federal government at this end. It’s primarily settlement agencies, provincial, municipal and so on.
And so the main challenges are language training. We’re going to be providing additional funding for that. That is critical, and housing. Housing is crucial and housing is a challenge and some have told me that the federal government should put in more money into the pockets of refugees or — or apartment owners, to subsidize the rents. I have resisted that for two reasons. One, I think $700 million is quite a lot of money already. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Second, we have to be conscious of equilibrium in this country. We have to welcome the refugees warmly, but we don’t want to privilege the refugees relative to other Canadians. So if we gave rent supplements to refugees, but not to other Canadians receiving social assistance, that might not be well received. Neither do we give them special pathways to citizenship. They join the queue like others. So we don’t want them queue-jumping, we don’t want them getting privileges other Canadians don’t get, but at the same time, we want to welcome them warmly.
So that’s why I think it’s way better for the private sector to come up with the money for rent subsidies rather than the federal government. We have already collected over $30 million from the private sector. If you’re American, you can multiply by 10. By U.S. standards, that would be $300 million minus the exchange rate which is quite a bit of money these days. So, we’re making progress.
A week or so ago, 52 percent of the refugees already here had gone to permanent housing. Now, that number a week later, even though a lot more new ones arrived last week, that number is up to 58 percent. So, we’re making progress and partly that’s also by new settlement centres across the country, smaller places which have lower rents and places like Nova Scotia which want to welcome refugees. So, we’re spreading out the refugees across the country.
So, I think we’re on the way to solving that issue, but it’s still not totally solved. Finally on jobs, we are reaching out to employers. There are many employers, very keen to employ these refugees. So, my department, working through employers and chambers of commerce, we’re also working to make that happen.
So I would like to just say something, well two other things. What about the research? Because this group is research-oriented. Many of you I think. And the other about the international dimension.
We’re going to monitor this in my department very carefully for the next year, the next five years, the next 10 years, the next 20 years: to monitor the progress of this big wave of refugees. We’re going to fund SSHRC to ensure that there’s also academic research to really analyze and understand our progress on this project, so that we can have lessons learned for the future wave and maybe lessons learned that could be used in other countries.
But I also want to say a little bit about the international side. I think that the world has noticed. I think when Justin Trudeau met that first plane, that photo went around the world to the point where little children and the UNICEF organization who had never heard of Canada, who I met in Jordan, they all told me they knew about it. So, if they do, I think many others do as well. It’s heartening for me that at a time when many countries are closing their doors, are inching them a little shut, we’re throwing ours, not wide open, but open and welcoming 25,000 refugees. I think that sends a good message to the world when many other countries are sending the opposite message.
But that being said, many Canadians say Canada is a world leader in everything under the sun. I don’t believe that. We’re not world leaders in everything under the sun. Maybe one or two things. So let me say areas where I think we may be leaders and we may be able to help deal with the global refugee crisis.
One, I think we’re quite good at building a multicultural society, accepting newcomers from all different religions and communities. I’ve represented Markham for 15 years. Markham is, according to StatsCan, Canada’s most diverse municipality. When German ministers — Germany is a big country of over 80 million -- came to Canada, they requested a meeting with the mayor of Markham, a city of 300,000 to ask him how it is we did this integration so well. So that’s one indicator.
Another indicator is that Canadians are very positive about this refugee project. If you look at how many are coming forward to be private sponsors, if you look at all Canadians and companies and others helping in so many ways, if you look at opinion polls, we are a welcoming people. I think that that reflects the success we’ve had in building a multicultural society.
I think another way in which we can set an example for the world is through our private sponsor refugee program. I think people in the European Union are starting to look at that as a way to have more people coming in legally, possibly through private sponsors, and less — I think the term they — the term they use is irregularly. I think the example we have created through our private sponsor program could be emulated around the world. So I’m planning to have some engagement internationally on these issues because I do think Canada has something to say.
Well, I don’t want to talk too long, but I do want to just say a few words about two other components of our immigration because they’re kind of interrelated with refugees. One: it’s obviously very important to have successful economic immigrants. You heard my two provincial counterparts. They want more provincial nominees. So it’s gone from a few — 10 years ago, a relatively small number of provincial nominees -- to today when it’s roughly 50-50 between economic immigrants that are federal and economic immigrants that are provincial.
I have never met a provincial minister who wants fewer provincial nominees.
So, are we on a trend toward a condition where the federal government will have essentially almost nothing to do with choosing economic immigrants and the job will be turned over to the provinces? Is that the trend we are on? Is that where we want to go? I’m meeting my provincial counterparts next week and we’ll talk about that. We’ll have a give and take. But what I’m saying is that we want to reform our own economic immigrant processes. On that, we will certainly consult the provincial governments. Should we have a lower scale stream, do we need labor market impact assessments for our economic immigrants? Should we give so many points to those who have a job? Should we do more to favor international students? I won’t answer any of those questions except the last one, to which my answer is yes. We should do more to favor international students as permanent residents.
Those are all issues that are important, on which I will be consulting all the stakeholders. We’ll have some interaction between how many economic immigrants are provincial versus federal.
And finally, the other component is family. We have refugees, we have economic immigrants and we have family. One of our campaign commitments, we have many, but this one is arguably both the most important and the most difficult because Canada faces a mess in terms of processing times for family class. It takes more or less two years to be reunited with your husband or wife. Whereas other countries with which we compare ourselves, six to eight months. I think that’s unacceptable. I think we have to move faster rather than slower to get that processing time down.
And partly the reason I mentioned it, it’s because it’s important to me. Also, because there’s an interaction between that and what we did on the refugees. Yes, we would like some more money. We have committed more money, but we won’t necessarily get massive new money to bring those processing times down. We have to be left to our own devices, that is to say we have to re-engineer our department in terms of the processes we follow, the speed with which we do it. We can draw on the experience we’ve just had with the refugees. Real change is doing something you’ve never done before.
Well, the people in my department, they learned how to do processes concurrently rather than consecutively. They learned how to do things quicker. They learned how to drop certain parts of processes that weren’t really needed. We can apply that same logic to how we go through applications for family class, even for economic immigrants perhaps, to get the job done faster and thereby, to reduce the processing time.
So that is a big job. It won’t happen overnight, but I can tell you that just as I’ve finished thanking employees of my department for doing a fantastic job on refugees, soon I will be asking them to do an equally fantastic job on speeding up family processing times.
I will leave it at that.
I would just close by thanking everyone in this room. I know you’re implicated or you wouldn’t be here. For all that you’ve done as a stakeholder, as a researcher, as a person who has expressed a commitment to refugees to settlement and migration, we have done a certain amount, but we have a great deal more work to do. Thank you very much.
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