Speaking notes for the Honourable John McCallum, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Manila, Philippines

Speech

Manila, Philippines
August 11, 2016

As delivered

I'd like to first of all just say something about our Ambassador. I am privileged, Mr. Ambassador, to be the last Minister to visit the Philippines in your three-year term. And I do congratulate the Ambassador, who has served under Trudeau one way back in '83, to Trudeau two just recently. And you said no Minister has been to the Philippines since the new government. That's true if you don't count the Prime Minister as a Minister. But I think he did have a very successful visit here as well. So I thank you, Ambassador, for your great service not only to the Philippines but to Canada. So thank you very much.

Now, it's quite normal for me to come to the Philippines. You know why? Because you are our greatest customers. We have more immigrants from the Philippines than from any other country in the world. The latest number is 50,000. And we also have many, many, many thousands of temporary foreign workers and visitors and students from the Philippines. And it's a pleasure therefore for me to come back here. The first time I came here, I was a brand new elected Member of Parliament. It was the year 2001, and I was invited to come here with – just by chance, it was the previous Immigration Minister, Elinor Caplan. So I came here in 2001, my first visit to the Philippines, and I'm really happy to be back here with you today. As was pointed out, I think we have over 700,000 Filipino people, or people with Filipino origins, living in Canada. They make a great contribution to our country. My riding of Markham is the most diverse in the country, according to Statistics Canada. Markham, the city of, is Canada's most diverse city. So I have many, many Filipinos, Chinese, everything under the sun. And so it's a very diverse and very successful place.

So I also know – I spoke to our immigration people in the Philippines, and we've made terrific progress. The processing times for reuniting families from the Philippines has dropped dramatically to, I believe, 12 months, cut in half in just a year, a similar drop in processing time for provincial nominees. And one of our big election commitments was to reduce the time it took to unite families, and the people, our immigration people here, have already made big progress on that front.

And of course the caregivers are a major part of the immigration that comes in from the Philippines every year. My mother is 92 years old, and she has a Filipino caregiver who gives her wonderful service. And Bob Orr, my colleague, Assistant Deputy Minister, he tells me the same thing applies to his father with a Filipino caregiver. So they provide fantastic service both to the older people like my mother and to the younger people. And so I am also pleased to say that we have a new proposal to provide better protection to caregivers. We already have a system in place where there are major fines and penalties for abuse. Provincial governments play a major role in labour market conditions, and we work with them.

But we also have a proposal in our platform, which will help caregivers. Because the idea is that we have a new set of regulated companies whose job would be to recruit caregivers on behalf of Canadian families. And I think this would help both sides of the market. On the families' side, they'd have these companies to do the work of recruiting, so they wouldn't have all the hassle of dealing with the bureaucracy. And on the caregivers' side, the company would be their employer, so if there were a situation of abuse, or even bad relationship with one particular family, they could be moved to an alternative family. So I do think this is a system which would be positive for both caregivers and for the families who hire them. It's not something we've done yet; it's something we're in the process of doing.

But perhaps what I might do in the remaining few minutes of my talk is just to say a few words about what we're doing in immigration in Canada more generally. The refugee issue has been very much in the news. It was the big promise that we started out with, and I'm very proud that we were able to bring to Canada 25,000 refugees over the space of four months, and to welcome them to Canada. That was a great deal of work. We pulled it off. And what makes me most pleased about this is that Canadians have been so welcoming.

Because if you look south of the Canadian border to the United States, if you look across the Atlantic to the UK and their recent vote on Brexit, which was partly related to immigration; if you look at the convulsions the European Union is going through over the refugee crisis; then Canada's a bit of an exception to the rule. Canada's a bit of a beacon in the sense that we just said come on in. We welcomed those refugees. The Prime Minister welcomed the first airplane, and some two-thirds of Canadians, polls indicate, are supportive. And not only that, but I am probably the only Immigration Minister in the world whose major problem is I cannot bring in these refugees quickly enough to satisfy all the Canadian families who want to sponsor them. So that's a good indicator of the generosity of Canadians to their refugees. It's a problem for me, but it's a good kind of a problem to have.

And I think on that note, partly because we as a country are welcoming to newcomers, add to that the fact that we are an aging population. Not like the Philippines, which is one of the youngest countries in the world. We have many industries with great labour shortages. So why not substantially increase the number of immigrants coming to Canada? And that is, I think, I hope, what we are about to do. We haven't made a final decision. We're doing consultations across the country with Canadians to see where public opinion lies. I have to take it to my cabinet colleagues. But the direction in which I would like to go is to increase substantially the number of immigrants. I think we need immigrants because we're aging, because we have labour shortages. And so that is the direction in which we are heading now.

The other point I would make is that we want to be more efficient and effective in bringing in immigrants who will make the best possible contribution to the country, people who will get jobs quickly, who will get good jobs, who will become entrepreneurs, who will employ other Canadians, and who will power the Canadian economy to grow faster. And to that end, we are reforming our Express Entry system, the way in which we admit immigrants, so that we will be better equipped to bring in the best and the brightest from all over the world.

So one of the things I am doing is to give a lot more welcome to international students. Because I think if you asked who are the people in the world who would make the best future Canadians, I cannot think of a better answer than international students. They're young, they're educated, they speak English or French, they know something about the country. So why not reel them in? Well, we are. And we're going to make it easier for them to come in under Express Entry. And in my conversations this morning with our immigration people in Manila, we here are trying to do more to court the younger university student aged people from the Philippines to see if they would like to come and become students in Canada. And we're going to make it easier once they get there for successful university students to then become permanent residents.

So we're going to make it easier for international students, we're going to reduce some of the barriers in our immigration system – we don't think that every immigrant needs to go through what we call a labour market impact assessment process. We think it can be simplified. We think there are some rules which are no longer necessary. So we want to make it streamlined and simple so that we can bring in the best and the brightest to power the Canadian economy forward.

Now, we have to convince Canadians of this. But I think it's a good idea. Not every Canadian will agree. But I think with our mind set of welcoming newcomers in the beginning, with the facts of the labour shortages, aging population, we have a good case to make, and I think we will be able to convince a higher proportion of Canadians that this is the right way for Canada to go.

So I think that gives you a summary of where we are. I thank you for your attention. I thank you for the opportunity to once again visit the Philippines, our biggest market. Thank you very much.

Hon. John McCallum Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada Government and Politics