ARCHIVED – Speaking notes for The Honourable Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P. Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism

At the National Metropolis Conference

Toronto, March 1, 2012

As delivered

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Canadians, it is truly a pleasure to be here at Metropolis once again, to share some ideas with you. This is a crucial time for immigration policy in Canada — a time of reform, a turning point for improving our immigration programs and, especially, for improving outcomes for newcomers and for Canada.

We’re standing at an interesting moment.  You’re all, in this room, immigration and integration policy junkies.  You work on the ground, many academics.  These are issues about which you are passionate and deeply informed.  I suspect you note as I do that right now we seem to be living through and experiencing a real focus of attention on immigration policy in a way we have not seen for a long time – a lot of views and a very healthy and constructive debate.

One of the things I always take pride in as a Canadian is that we are able to have a healthy and informed debate on immigration that avoids the kinds of negative problems that we see in other western countries.  I think it’s something perhaps we take for granted, that in our country there is really no organized or serious voice of xenophobia.  Our Government has been for six years maintaining an average intake of over a quarter of a million immigrants, permanent residents, per year which represents the highest sustained absolute levels of immigration in Canadian history.

We’ve also been maintaining the highest per capita levels in the developed world.  I think right now, we’re tied with New Zealand, but ahead of virtually every other country.  It’s remarkable that there is virtually no serious controversy about maintaining such robust levels of immigration.  Where the debate is focused, and what my speech will address, is how we can do better to ensure that immigration works for newcomers and works for Canada.

One of the reasons I find this interesting is that Prime Minister Harper spoke about the importance of immigration to Canada recently in his major address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month.  I can’t recall a Canadian Prime Minister before emphasizing immigration as a key part of Canada’s economic strategy on the world stage. 

He said, speaking about the recent recession, that “we did not reduce immigration or give in to protectionism.  Instead we have maintained the high levels of immigration that our aging labour force of the future will require.  We will also undertake significant reform of our immigration system. We will ensure that while we respect our humanitarian and family reunification objectives, we make our economic and labour force needs a central goal of our immigration efforts in the future.”

As I said earlier quoting the Prime Minister, one of the backdrops for my concerns is Canada’s aging population.  “If not addressed promptly this has the capacity to undermine Canada’s economic position and for that matter that of all western nations well beyond the current economic crisis.  Immigration does help us address that and will do so even more in the future.”

With that framing my remarks I want to say that I will be addressing what we’ve been doing to try to improve our immigration system and our plans for the future about how to develop a modern immigration system that, as I say, works for Canada, and for newcomers.

We have been blessed in this country with a virtuous circle when it comes to immigration:

Newcomers want to come to Canada because we are a free, prosperous, peaceful, and pluralist country.  We are a free, prosperous, peaceful, and pluralist country thanks in part to the newcomers we have welcomed to Canada over the years, many of whom have had direct experience of violence, state repression and collectivism and who have no wish to see those illiberal forces take root in Canada.

We always need to be vigilant to ensure that the immigration system continues to function in our national interest.  And we are always looking to make improvements to the system so that it serves Canada better.

As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has written:

“We have gone from the Iron Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Talent Age and countries that make it easy to draw in human talent will have a distinct advantage today.”

By opening our doors to immigrants with qualifications that can be easily recognized in Canada and the skills to immediately fill acute labour market needs, our Government will give Canada that “distinct advantage” that we need to keep our economy strong and our societies vibrant and safe. 

We want a system that is attractive to that engineering student of an Indian institute of technology or a biochemist from Tsinghua University. We want a “real time” immigration system that allows potential immigrants to apply to come to Canada on January 1st, arrive in Winnipeg on June 1st and to be working gainfully employed at their skill level by Canada Day. 

Rationale for Reform

I described the immigration system we want, but it`s clearly not the system that we have.  Although we’re moving quickly with much-needed reforms, we still have some way to go before we get to where we need to be.

Before the government began our process of reform, we identified many symptoms of a system in need of change.  I’ll share with you some of the most critical symptoms. 

For decades, in fact, until very recently, Canada saw a continuous, year-after-year decline in economic results for newcomers.  Employment rates for newcomers were on a long, steady decline, as were income levels.  This has been well documented. 

All too often, being a newcomer to Canada meant being poorer, more likely to be underemployed, and less equipped for modern economy and society than someone born in Canada.

To pick one of many examples, results from the 2006 census showed that immigrants who arrived in Canada in 2004 were more than three times as likely to have low incomes as the general population.  Fully 34.1 per cent of newcomers fell into the low-income category of the census, as compared to a rate of just 9.7 per cent for all Canadians.

We have also seen, in recent years, that the paradox of having chronic labour shortages in parts of Canada, coupled with high immigration levels that haven’t been properly addressing these shortages.  This is becoming a very acute problem. 

Just today, as I speak, out in Alberta there’s a new advocacy group of employers being formed, calling for a better connection between immigration policy and labour shortages. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has said that labour shortages are one of the top economic challenges facing Canada, with an expected shortfall over the next decade or so that includes 160,000 construction jobs, 60,000 nurses, 7,000 truckers, 130,000 oil workers.

I was just down in south-eastern Saskatchewan, around where I grew up and where there are, just in that little corner of the province, thousands of unfilled jobs in a province where they estimate in the next decade over 100,000 unfilled jobs right across the entire skill spectrum – right from manual labour on farms where operators are offering $25 an hour, all the way up the skill spectrum.  In fact, I never thought I would hear it, but last week I actually heard for the first time in my life the expression: “We’re facing a shortage of lawyers.”

They’re actually bringing in, can you believe it, South African lawyers as temporary foreign workers because they can’t find enough lawyers to do the work that’s going on down there.  This is a huge and growing problem.  It’s such a paradox.  This is something that keeps me awake at night when I think about it. 

We still see too much unemployment and underemployment amongst many of the newcomers that we welcome to the country, and yet in many industries and regions the number one issue now is an insufficient number of people to fill jobs that are available today and which are essential for our growth.

In the past, immigrants would come to Canada, usually settling in greater Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, regardless of whether or not there were better employment opportunities elsewhere.  We would let them in without ensuring they had the qualifications or flexible skills that would allow them to best integrate into our modern, ever-changing job market. 

There are many other symptoms of the problems we’ve had in the past.

We know from years of studies that official language proficiency is among the best predictors of newcomer success in Canada.  At the same time, studies showed the English and French literacy levels of immigrants were below average compared with those of Canadians born here. 

Sixty per cent of newcomers were below Level 3 on the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey, which is considered the minimum skill necessary to meet the challenges of today’s labour market.

Looming over all of these issues was the problem of immense backlogs clogging up the entire immigration and refugee systems. Not only were our selection criteria not ensuring the best outcomes for our society and our economy, we were also allowing wait times to bring the system to a slow crawl. 

Imagine this.  On February 1, 2001 a Canadian visa officer would go to work in Damascus.  He’d see in front of him an application from someone who was apparently a 45 year-old Professor with 15 years experience teaching Persian history from Iran. The officer would look at our rigid points grid and do a rote calculation, giving the person points for age, job experience, education, etc. regardless of whether the candidate’s specific job experience and education actually matched a Canadian labour market shortage.  Seven years later, after waiting in the queue, this person would be notified that they’d finally been accepted and probably arrive in Toronto, usually without a job. 

Seven years later, a person without in-demand skills arrives in Canada.  Is it any surprise that such an applicant would not be able to find a job easily? Is it any mystery that they would consequently experience a lot of immigration challenges? 

Any impartial observer of the immigration system we had for the last period of time would come to the same conclusion: That it is in need of repair. 

Remedies to Fix Policy Mistakes of the Past

What have we done about all of this?  Obviously, we need immigrants who are filling unfilled jobs, and that’s our priority.  After all, the vast majority of newcomers come here to pursue economic opportunities.

Of course we welcome those who are in need of our protection, who are victims of violence and persecution and they of course often make tremendous contributions to our economy, but the vast majority of newcomers take the risk to leave everything that’s familiar in their countries of origin – their family, their loved ones, in order to take this big chance because of the dream and the possibility that they will enjoy greater opportunity and be able to pass that on to their kids.

If they are working, immigrants are able to support themselves and their families, integrate into their communities, and pay taxes to fund our generous social programs. 

The good news is that, in the past several years, we’ve begun to turn the corner.  We’ve addressed some of the problems associated with the declining economic performance of immigrants and the growing inequality between newcomers and those born in Canada.

The data show that immigrants selected for their human capital, immigrants with pre-arranged offers of employment, and immigrants with Canadian education and experience have much better economic outcomes.

That is why we have focused on selecting immigrants who meet these criteria. 

As some of you know, in November 2008, we launched the Action Plan for Faster Immigration based on some changes we made to the Immigration Act.

Before that time, we were obliged to process every application we received – even if it meant creating a large backlog that had swelled to 641,000 federal skilled workers and about 850,000 applications altogether.  Each of those applicants could expect to wait at least six years before they would get a decision to be invited to come to Canada – obviously impractical and frustrating. 

The Action Plan has paid off in the federal skilled worker program. Through the judicious use of limits on new applications in certain categories, the backlog of old skilled worker applications has been cut to less than 309,000 since 2008 – a reduction of some 50 per cent. And, as you know, new applicants who qualify are getting decisions often in less than a year. 

Instead of waiting six or seven years, many of the new applicants are now getting an answer and coming to Canada in less than a year.

I’ll be honest.  When the department told me that it was going to work this way I was a little skeptical but I have been so thrilled to actually meet some of the incredibly bright young newcomers who applied less than a year ago and are now in Canada.  Boy, that makes me happy to see it working that way.

We can and must do better. 

Let me just pause for a moment and explain on the issue of backlogs, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Immigration is just finishing a comprehensive report.  I think the tabling is next week.  There have been some misunderstandings.  We’ve been applying this tool of limiting new applications, not just in the skilled worker program but now in the parents and grandparents reunification program, privately sponsored refugee program, the investor immigrant program, etc.

Every time we do this some people accuse the Government of cutting and slashing immigration levels, which I think if you understand, you would understand that critique is really disingenuous.  We’re maintaining high levels of intake, over a quarter of a million a year.  We’ve actually increased the number of permanent residents admitted by 14 per cent as a Government over that of our predecessors.  But, what we had to do is finally get a handle on the huge inflow of new applications, that we were mandated to finalize because the way I describe it, there is virtually infinite demand around the world to come to Canada.

We’ve seen polls indicating estimates of hundreds of millions of people who would like to immigrate to Canada.  For many years we were receiving 400,000 to 500,000 applications in all of our permanent residency programs, but before 2006 we were admitting on average 220,000 people.  In some years we received twice as many applications as there were positions available in the immigration plan, which just meant that the backlog got longer and longer and that wasn’t good for anyone.

Obviously one of the other big symptoms of failure in the past has been the huge and continuing problem of foreign credential recognition. 

We’ve made some progress in this area.  We now have clear processes in place for eight regulated occupations, which means we can tell workers in these occupations how their credentials compare to Canadian standards within a year of their application. By the end of this year, we expect to add six additional regulated occupations to that list. This is through what we call the Pan-Canadian Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of Foreign Qualifications.  It comes out of an agreement that the Prime Minister and First Ministers signed in 2009, backed up by a $50 million federal investment in doing the hard detailed work of getting all of the 40 some regulated professions from all ten provinces around one common national table to hammer out a streamlined process for credential recognition.

I’m very proud of some other projects we’ve launched in this respect like the Canadian Immigration Integration Project which is being delivered by the Association of Canadian Community Colleges in many of our major immigration source countries. Eighty-five per cent of our selected economic immigrants are invited to attend a free two day seminar with personalized counselling before they leave their country of origin for Canada on how to find a job.  How to apply for credential recognition online, to compare how difficult is it to become an engineer in Ontario versus B.C., and so forth.

We see a growing uptake of that program and higher levels of employment for those who enrol.  You may know that last week we announced the first wave of our pilot programs being managed by Human Resources Social Development Canada to help provide micro credit loans to finance skills upgrading for foreign trained professionals.  They’re stuck here in a survival job.  Their savings are depleted.  They can’t get credit in Canada but they need to take additional courses in order to qualify for licensure.

Now this is a bit of a hand-up that we’re developing in cooperation with NGOs, with financial institutions and philanthropists to provide them with that little bit of a financial credit, so they can upgrade their skills.  While much work remains to be done in this area, these are significant milestones and a real improvement over the previous system.

We also know that greater proficiency in English and French correlates with success both economically and socially.  Those with limited English or French abilities are more likely to earn less, be unemployed, and depend on government support.  We’ve introduced more stringent criteria for federal skilled workers to demonstrate their language skills.  I think some of you may know, in the past, when all we required was a sample of writing competence, all too frequently some of these dodgy immigration agents overseas would just submit rote writing samples that had been printed off Wikipedia or something.  Now we put in place mandatory third-party language testing.

Quebec has followed our lead, I should add. 

As a result, the number of skilled workers we admit who speak English has gone up from just over 41,000 in 2001 to more than 49,000 last year.  Likewise, the number of workers admitted who speak French has also increased from just over 3,300 to almost 4,000.  What’s most impressive is the number who arrive speaking both of our languages.  That has doubled from about 7,500 to more than 16,000.

We also know from our research that federal skilled workers with arranged employment do much better than those who don’t.  Data show that federal skilled workers with an arranged employment offer earned an average salary, get this, of $79,200 just three years after landing, compared to $44,000 for those without a prearranged job. We’re working to make this job more accessible to employers, by simplifying the process to hire the skilled workers they need and to get them here sooner.

Finally, in 2008, we introduced the Canadian Experience Class.  This program allows temporary foreign workers and international students with skilled work experience or education in Canada to apply for permanent residence.  Once again, this change was driven by common sense and backed up by data, which tell us that immigrants who already have some Canadian work experience or education can do much better than those who don’t.

Actually I’m so excited about this program.  This is a picture of our 10,000th entrant into the CEC: A bright young student from Carleton, originally from Mongolia, now working at the Royal Bank, who typifies exactly the kind of candidate who will benefit from this program.  It’s helping Canadian universities to market our high quality post-secondary experience to foreign students overseas and it makes so much sense.

In the past you know we’d invite foreign students here.  They’d work hard at our colleges and universities, get a degree that would be recognized by a Canadian employer and then we’d say, “Please leave the country.  If you want to immigrate get in the back of a seven-year-long queue”.  I think that was the definition of stupid. 

Now we’re saying, ”Great, you’ve got your degree or diploma. Please stay in Canada. And by the way, we’re giving you an open work permit while you’re doing your studies, a two year open work permit when you’re done your studies.  You’re going to get a little bit of work experience, perfect your English or French language skills, have a degree that is recognized by Canadian employers.  You are set for success”. It’s a good program. 

These changes are all improvements, but they are just a start.  In 2011, we launched public consultations on further changes to the selection criteria for skilled workers, changes that would place even more emphasis on language ability and youth, and reduce barriers for skilled tradespeople to immigrate to Canada.  As you know, basically the points system has made it impossible for skilled tradespeople to come here. We received a lot of excellent feedback on our proposed changes, and right now we’re finalizing the new skilled worker points grid, which we hope to announce later this year. 

While the skilled worker program has been our flagship economic immigration stream to Canada for decades, it will continue to be an important source of immigration after these changes.  But it is no longer the only stream.  We’ve diversified and created a more flexible system.

Over the last few years, we have admitted an increasing number of immigrants through the provincial nominee programs, going from about 4,000 to about 40,000 admissions in that program.  Most of you probably know that the provincial nominee programs enable provinces and territories to select permanent residents typically based on a request from an employer.

A recent evaluation of this program found that provincial nominees are generally doing very well, and that their economic performance is comparable to federal skilled workers, in fact, slightly better in the earlier years.  Most importantly, the program is really helping to address regional and local labour market needs.  One of the biggest headaches of my predecessors was that 90 per cent of newcomers were going to the biggest metropolitan areas, particularly the Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver regions, and precious few were settling in the so-called regions of Canada, in Atlantic Canada, the Prairies, the West generally, or even the interior of B.C.

That has turned around quite dramatically.  I know you follow these statistics but we’ve gone from 11 per cent of immigrants settling outside of B.C., Ontario and Quebec in 1997 to 26 per cent.  We’ve seen a quadrupling of immigration to Saskatchewan in the past four years, a tripling to Manitoba, a doubling in Alberta, significant increases all across Atlantic Canada, relatively more settling in the interior of B.C., rather than just the greater Vancouver region.

I know some of this has come at the expense of somewhat fewer immigrants settling in Ontario, particularly the GTA, but quite frankly, people are going to where there is gainful employment and are happy to contribute.  I think that’s a positive experience.  I can certainly tell you that is what we find in the data, and that’s what I find anecdotally.  I was just out there in south-eastern Saskatchewan, as I said, meeting newcomers.

I was a bit skeptical.  I have to be honest.  I was a bit skeptical that some of the people coming through that program would actually stay permanently in rural areas, less populated areas where there’s no perhaps cultural community that they’re familiar with. There are some problems with the program we have to tighten up but by and large the experience, particularly in the Prairie West, is very positive in terms of retention.

They took me to the supermarket in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, where they have a whole section of Filipino foods now, for example.  You wouldn’t have seen that five years ago, let alone any time before that.  That’s bringing diversity and the benefits of social and cultural diversity to all parts of the country.  My colleague Leona Aglukkaq, the Minister of Health from Nunavut, tells me about the growing number of newcomers up there, for example.

While this is all good news, we must remember that only about 30 per cent of all immigrants are actually selected based on their skills.  The remainder – roughly two thirds of all newcomers – are either accompanying dependents, sponsored family members, or arrive under a humanitarian class such as refugees. 

Of course we must also recognize the importance of family immigration and ensuring that Canada abides by its humanitarian obligations. In fact we’re increasing the number of resettled refugees by 20 per cent from 11,500 to 14,000 a year.  We’re increasing the number of parents admitted by 60 per cent from 15,000 to 25,000 a year to help reduce that old backlog.  But, we have to keep the focus again on the economic streams.  That’s also one of the reasons why we’ve helped to increase settlement support for newcomers, with a tripling of the federal investment in settlement and integration services going from about $200-million outside of Quebec six years ago to $600-million this year.

By the way, I know there are many people here from the settlement sector.  I just want to commend you for the excellent work that you do right across the country.

What do all of these reforms amount to?  Essentially, what we’re trying to do is fix some of the mistakes of the past, and avoid repeating them in the future.  So far, our reforms have helped to improve the economic outcomes of immigrants.

By the way, if you go back to the original chart and we have that slow decline in incomes and employment for 30 years, the most encouraging thing is that our recently published analysis of the federal skilled worker program shows a very encouraging turnaround in economic outcomes for federal skilled workers who have been admitted since roughly 2007.  We believe that’s because they were the folks selected under the current points grid that came into effect with IRPA back in 2002 emphasizing again the importance of language proficiency in immigrant selection.

Big issues remain and more needs to be done.  Let me talk about that. 

Looking Forward

To begin, as I noted earlier, newcomers continue to earn less than native-born Canadians and continue to be underemployed at higher rates.  We know that many immigrants come here with professional backgrounds and high levels of education, at least on paper, only to be stuck in survival-type jobs just to pay the bills.  I know every one of you have had the same experience I have where your heart breaks meeting the people that we’re talking about.

I was recently in Red Deer, Alberta and met a man who was working as a janitor now for four years. He and his wife are both dentists who came here from Colombia.  They left the top socio-economic strata of their society, not as refugees, but as economic immigrants, came here, and they can’t get an answer on their application for dental licensure in the province of Alberta.

Last month in Montréal, I met an Algerian man, an engineer. He is a brilliant young man who has been in Quebec, unemployed, for two years now. I could see on his face the disappointment, the discouragement, the dejection he feels.

We know when we meet these individuals you see the human drama that lies behind these numbers, these statistics – the disappointment and often the shame that people feel that they can’t work in their own skill level.

We also have to address the paradox that I mentioned earlier with regard to our country’s unemployment rates, huge labour shortages in some regions and industries, but disproportionate levels of unemployment, high levels of unemployment amongst some immigrants.  We don’t want to bring to Canada people only to have them face years of unemployment or underemployment, of being stuck in survival jobs.

One part of the solution is quite simple:  We must make better choices.  We must select immigrants who have the skills and trades we know will lead to their success, and qualifications that are already recognized in Canada, or can be in a short period of time.

We need immigrants with adaptable skills who can survive in an economic downturn or adapt to changing circumstances.  We also need a points grid that is more flexible and intelligent.  A welder with a job offer in Prince George may not need to have university-level English or French, but somebody expecting to work as a medical doctor does, for example. 

To do this, as I mentioned, we are in the process of making further refinements to the points grid.  Although we’re still reviewing all of the feedback that we’ve received, and the relevant data, I expect that our changes will place more emphasis on language proficiency, as well as spousal language proficiency, Canadian work and study experience, as opposed to foreign work experience which we find is not an indicator of success here, and to put more emphasis on younger workers while for the first time providing access to skilled tradespeople, as well as professionals.

Turning to the provincial nominee programs, while we consider the overall program to be a success, there is, again, room for improvement.  In the short term, we see that provincial nominees are actually doing better financially than federal skilled workers, but while provincial nominees do well in the short term, federal skilled workers do better in the long term.  Part of the reason is the points system’s emphasis on language proficiency, which allows workers to adapt their skills and move more easily within the job market. That is why a recent evaluation of our program recommended that we establish minimum language standards for all provincial nominees. 

I was just out in Regina and in Calgary, meeting with my provincial counterparts and I’d like to commend them for moving in this direction.  Secondly, while we recognize that provinces are usually much more aware of regional economic needs, there are now more than 50 provincial nominee streams, some of which duplicate some of our federal permanent residency programs. We’re saying to the provinces, “Let’s stop the duplication.  Don’t nominate people who could come to Canada as permanent residents through a federal program like the Experience Class.” 

Our government will, therefore, work with provinces to address some of these challenges.  Let me say though, those of you who are from Atlantic Canada and the west will know the large and growing pressure for continued enormous expansion of the provincial nominee program.

We’ve already accommodated huge growth, as I said, from 4,000 to in this year’s level plan 45,000 permanent residents in that program.  Frankly, we’ve had to accommodate that by offsetting admissions in our federal skilled worker program.  That’s caused challenges for Ontario - we’re conscious of that.  Some provinces, quite frankly, are so understandably obsessed with the labour shortages they’re facing, and they see the PN program as a perfect solution, that they just don’t really care about our federal immigration program.

They’re just saying, “Give us more – double, triple – PNP intake.” And they’re really saying, “Who cares about the Federal Skilled Worker Program?” I’m here to say, and I hope that most of you agree with me, that I believe there is a critically important ongoing role for federal selection of immigrants.  Immigration is about nation building.  It’s not just about addressing regional labour needs.  We will not vacate the role of the federal government from selecting economic immigrants.  Ontario, I know, supports us in that.

One of the other problems we need to address in the PN program is making sure that people actually go and stay where they are committed to going.  We see some of these problems in Atlantic Canada, and I’ve recently learned from some people in the ethno-cultural media about immigration agents encouraging folks to establish fake residences in Regina or in Winnipeg in order to use the PN program to nominate people.  As always, we need to be mindful of how these programs can be distorted.

We will continue our work with the provinces in this area.  Through better monitoring and reporting, we will be able to tell what is working and what isn’t, and to move quickly to stop issuing visas where there are clear problems. 

We’re also considering changes to our federal entrepreneurial and investment streams, to ensure that they best respond to our economic needs. 

I think we can all agree that things have changed considerably since the current entrepreneurial and investor programs were designed in the 1970s and 1980s.

The drivers of economic growth and job creation, the way in which business is conducted, and the free movement of people and capital, all require business immigration programs that will better support Canada’s economic development. 

In particular, we need to encourage more immigrants to start new businesses in Canada.  This past July, the World Bank ranked Canada as the third best place in the world to start a business, after Australia and New Zealand. But we lag behind the United States and other peer countries when it comes to technology start-ups and immigrants starting successful new businesses.

In the United States, half of the top 50 venture-capital-backed companies were founded by immigrants.  We don’t do nearly as well here in Canada.  We have to do a better job of attracting entrepreneurs and investors. 

Finally, we need to be more aggressive in reducing the huge backlogs we inherited.  We still have wait times of seven years or longer.  It’s completely absurd to tell people, “Apply now, put your life on hold for several years, and then we’ll get back to you to let you know whether you qualify.”

That doesn’t work for newcomers and it doesn’t work for Canada.  We must ensure that we’re able to get the skilled workers that employers need, when they need them. 

While we’ve made some progress in reducing the backlog of skilled workers, the fact is that a large number of the files in the backlog pre-date the recent improvements to the skilled worker program that I’ve mentioned.

We’re left with many applicants who initially applied under the old criteria, which were not as responsive to Canada’s changing economic needs.  Until the backlog is completely gone, we can’t begin to get to where our economic immigration system needs to be, and we won’t have a “real time” system. 

Vision for Future Immigration System

Now I’ve spent some time with you here today outlining some of the past problems with our system, some of the reforms that we’ve made, and that we’ll continue to work on.

In my remaining time, I’d like to speak a bit about what I believe makes all of this hang together. In other words: The broader vision of the Government of Canada when it comes to immigration policy. 

Everything that we do and that we plan to do is in the interests of creating a faster, more flexible immigration system that boldly puts Canada first. One that is clear about its rules and is committed to enforcing them fairly.

The immigration system we had for too long was passive, slow, inefficient, and unfocused.  For years, most newcomers waited too long to get into Canada and typically settled in the bigger cities even if that’s where the best job opportunities couldn’t be found. 

The system we envision is pro-active, fast, efficient, and laser-focused on specific labour needs across Canada.

In this system, we will better select newcomers with the flexible skills our job market needs, or with a direct job offer from an employer that is prepared to put their skills to work immediately. 

Newcomers will be assessed in their trade or profession, and their credentials assessed against Canadian standards, even before their applications are accepted. 

They will have the strong language skills that are so important for long term success. 

They will be selected within months of their application and will be working in jobs that make use of their skills shortly after they arrive.

They will settle in communities all across Canada, so that their skills are best matched with the different needs across our vast and diverse country.

Ladies and gentlemen, if we can get this right –if we can improve the economic outcomes of immigrants – debates over the degree of their social integration, I think, would virtually disappear.  That’s because I strongly believe that economic integration is the best path to social integration.  If new Canadians can maximize their contribution to the labour market, social integration will quickly follow.

I’ve told you this before.  When I go abroad, my counterparts in the rest of the world think we have almost a model system in Canada.  In some respects, they’re right.  To the extent that we have managed to avoid the terrible and divisive problems we see in Western Europe of social exclusion and parallel communities and all of the difficult debates that engenders with respect to social and cultural integration, it’s because we have attracted people who can succeed in our labour market.

I believe, if we can do a better job with our economic immigration programs, that we can avoid many of those real problems with respect to social and cultural integration.  The bottom line is so clear. 

When people come here and they’re working at the level which they expected, when they’ve actually been able to pursue the opportunity they dreamed of, when they are not facing social exclusion or massive barriers to their employment or the success of their business or ideas, then you have happy new Canadians who have a stake in the country and its success. 

That is exactly where we want to go.

I just have one caveat.  Although we want a better system, we also want a balanced system.  We are very much aware that we need to maintain a balanced system that is focused on economic prosperity, but that also continues our longstanding humanitarian tradition. And that is our commitment, as we continue to receive a larger number of resettled refugees, for example, and family class immigrants as well.

I hope that you’ve seen in these remarks some of the indications of where we hope to go this year.  I am delighted frankly to be in a government that is taking immigration policy seriously, that has invested considerable funds, and political capital to be honest, in making some important reforms. 

I know that not everyone agrees with everything that we’ve done.  There is a variety of views, but I hope as Canadians that we can all agree that immigration is essential to our character as a nation, that it will continue to be in the future, and that we have a responsibility to the newcomers who have not yet arrived to make sure that this country is as open and welcoming and as prosperous for them and their children as it can be. 

Thank you very much for your time.

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