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Mrs. Marie-France Lalonde (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Lib.)

May/10/22 2:58:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that immigration is critical if we want to address labour shortages. IRCC is fast-tracking work permits for occupations in demand, such as health care, agriculture, food and seafood production. In the last quarter, we processed over 100,000 work permit applications, nearly double the number processed in the same period last year. We will continue to ensure that Canadian and Quebec employers have access to the workers they need to secure our economic recovery in Canada.

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Context: House Hansard - 68 - May/10/22

Ms. Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East, NDP)

May/10/22 3:10:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today the media reported that Afghan interpreters who helped the Canadian military are being tortured and beaten by the Taliban while they wait for the government to get them to safety. Yesterday, our committee was told that 3,800 Afghans had their identities verified by National Defence, but only 900 of those have had their applications processed. No one knew or could advise what happened to the other 2,900 applications. Meanwhile, IRCC is in complete chaos and is asking GAC to resubmit those cases. Can the minister confirm if IRCC has lost those urgent applications?

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Context: House Hansard - 68 - May/10/22

Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

May/10/22 6:44:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this motion, which outlines ways to increase avenues for temporary foreign workers to obtain permanent residence. This motion focuses on occupations in key sectors that are under-represented in existing economic immigration programs. I am sure many members in the House are wondering if there is a way to compel a department like Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, or IRCC, to provide timely and predictable services to small- and medium-sized businesses. I am also convinced that the immigration process needs to be streamlined to help mitigate the devastating effects of this labour shortage. There are steps the government can take to make immigration to Canada attractive for employment in sectors that are vital to our economy. I want to give the credit to Richard Kurland, a lawyer and policy analyst with Lexbase, who appeared last week before the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. As a first step, he stated that the issuance of work permits should be subject to the Service Fees Act, and IRCC should be responsible not only for delivering work permits within the set processing times but also for refunding applicants if it misses the deadline. The second item is something called the labour market impact assessment, or LMIA. There is no need for this in the province of Quebec, as Quebec is already doing it. We have an ecosystem that is doing it. This is a classic example of government duplication and waste. Where Quebec is already providing the service, why do it again? Quebec has paved the road once, so why do it twice? The LMIAs are a useless duplication. With today's technologies, we have the means to ensure that small and medium-sized businesses do not duplicate their time and effort by sending the same information to two levels of government, and that governments do not simultaneously share information common to both levels of government. The IRCC has always been reluctant to relinquish power and control over its processing times. It is therefore time it was held responsible for upholding service standards that meet businesses' needs, particularly in the context of a labour shortage. There is no reason why the processing times for applications from Quebec should be different than those coming from other places in Canada. The federal government needs to modernize the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to reflect the labour needs, objectives and strategies established by the provinces, such as the regionalization of immigration in Quebec. There is no reason why we cannot think outside the box and take risks, particularly when it comes to immigration. There is so much global competition for the same people, so I do not understand why we need to make it so difficult for the candidates selected by Quebec to come to the country. Qualified young workers will want to immigrate to countries that require less paperwork. It is time to be effective because many communities in the various regions of Quebec depend on these workers coming here. The motion moved by the member for Surrey Centre is perfectly legitimate and humane. It proposes a pathway to permanent residency for these workers and supports their integration in the communities where they came to work. The temporary foreign worker program is a very costly and complex solution to the labour shortage at this point, but small and medium-sized businesses have no choice but to go with this time-consuming immigration program. We need a better solution fast. I would like to share part of an April 29 article by Romain Schué on Radio-Canada: Right now, a skilled worker selected by the Government of Quebec has to wait an average of 31 months for permanent residence. That wait time used to be six months in the branch serving other Canadian provinces, but it recently rose to 27 months according to data on immigration Canada's website. That is a huge disparity. Do you know the difference between my riding and yours, Madam Speaker? A worker in my riding has to wait 25 to 30 months, but a worker in yours, which is just a few kilometres away from mine, might get through the process in a year. That disparity is unacceptable. Also, there is a backlog of more than 29,000 files. In a brief submitted to the Federal Court on April 19 and obtained by Radio-Canada, IRCC discloses that there are currently more than 29,000 permanent resident applications from skilled workers in Quebec waiting to be processed. Nearly 10,000 of these files were sent to Ottawa before 2020. Some of these workers have been waiting for a federal decision for more than 10 years. The department says that the delays could be due to a security or criminal risk or a lack of co-operation. This is unacceptable. The real cause is the lack of consistency from the federal government and perhaps a lack of resources. This may be a result of the labour shortage that is hitting Service Canada so hard. Another way that our regions have shown creativity in attracting workers and addressing the labour shortage by hiring foreign workers is through universities and colleges. An article by Lisa‑Marie Gervais published in the February 18, 2022, edition of Le Devoir indicated that the regions are most affected by the rejection of international students, and the data are rather shocking. For example, the rejection rate at the Université du Québec à Trois‑Rivières is 79%. At the college level, international students are being rejected because they come from Africa, because they are francophone students, or for other reasons. It may simply be because they want to settle here in the long term and that goes against the current mandate of the international student program. That has to change. There is also the Chinook system, which Minister Fraser already talked about. The rejection rate is 73% at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, 71% at the Université du Québec à Rimouski and 68% at the École nationale de l'administration publique. That is not working. It is the same thing for CEGEPs, such as the Cégep de l'Abitibi—Témiscamingue, which has a rejection rate of 75%. These are all educational institutions that want to take matters into their own hands and that are spending large amounts of money to attract students from all over the world, only for those students to be systematically turned down. This is a problem, because part of our strategy for combatting the labour shortage in Abitibi—Témiscamingue is to attract people with the promise of good living conditions and training programs that meet the needs of our business owners and businesses. Motion No. 44 can go much further. It would be interesting to consider, but Ottawa must act quickly.

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