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

I’m Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism and I just had our first of a series of roundtable consultations across Canada on redesigning the Investor Immigrant Program. As you know, immigration is an important tool for fuelling Canada’s prosperity but, unfortunately, for the past three decades, we’ve seen a decline in economic outcomes for immigrants — lower incomes and higher levels of unemployment.

That’s why the Prime Minister signalled at his speech at the Global Economic Forum earlier this year and Minister Flaherty in his Economic Action Plan two weeks ago that our government is launching a series of transformational changes to Canada’s immigration programs so that we can generate greater economic prosperity for Canada through the large number of newcomers that we welcome. And do a much better job of ensuring the success of newcomers so that they find and keep good jobs.

So we’re making a number of reforms. One of the reforms we intend to make is to redesign our Investor Immigrant Program. There are literally millions of millionaires around the world who would love to come to Canada and are willing to invest in this country. But we’ve been massively underpricing that program and relative to our major competitors like Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom. We think the Canadian economy can get much more value from this program, create far more jobs, retain far more capital and create more wealth for Canadians by redesigning the program to require a greater investment and ongoing contribution to the Canadian economy.

That’s why today I’m announcing the launch of national consultations on redesigning the Investor Immigrant Program to get more bang for our buck for Canada from that program.

I’m also announcing today that, in the near future, I will be tabling legislation in Parliament to allow the Minister of Immigration to create special pilot projects to facilitate the immigration of entrepreneurs who have great ideas to innovate and create wealth and jobs here in Canada.

These two reforms to the Investor Immigrant and our Entrepreneur Programs form part of the broader transformational change to our immigration system. The key part of that change will be moving to a much faster immigration system that links newcomers to the jobs that are available. I think it’s ridiculous that we welcome over a quarter of a million newcomers only to see many of them end up underemployed, stuck in survival jobs or unemployed. In fact, the unemployment rate amongst immigrants to Canada is unacceptably twice as high as that of the general population. That’s why we need, as I say, to better connect newcomers with the jobs that are available. That means we need a fast system. But we’ll never get to a fast system if we’re burdened by a massive backlog with seven- and eight-year wait times for our key immigration programs.

That’s why we signalled in the Economic Action Plan, the budget two weeks ago, that the government is taking decisive action to eliminate the legacy backlogs in our big federal skilled worker program so that by 2014 Canada will have a just-in-time, fast immigration program where applicants will get an answer and be able to come to Canada within months of their application rather than waiting for years.

So these constitute some of the other reforms that we’re making this week. I announced that we will be creating a special skilled trades stream for our immigration program. That will allow welders and heavy equipment operators, mechanics and those people whose skills are much in demand to come to Canada. Because they basically couldn’t through our federal immigration programs in the past.

Similarly, we’ve indicated that we will work with the provinces to ensure that people who are nominated for permanent residency through the Provincial Nominee Programs have at least a minimum benchmark of proficiency in English here in B.C. and, in other parts of the country, French of course. This is to ensure their success. All of our research says that the number one indicator of success for newcomers to Canada is their language proficiency. We want to make sure people can fully participate in our society and work safely in the workplace. Language proficiency is a key part of that.

So all of these changes constitute part of our very ambitious program for immigration reform. At the end of which we will be able to see a system that works quickly; that has higher levels of employment and incomes for newcomers; where new Canadians are fully realizing their potential, working at their skill level shortly after they arrive; where they are contributing productively to the Canadian economy; and all while we maintain our country’s tradition of openness while fuelling our prosperity in the future.

I’m happy to take any questions you have.