Hon. Lucie Moncion moved second reading of Bill C-19, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022 and other measures.

She said: Honourable senators, I rise today at second reading of Bill C-19, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022 and other measures. As the sponsor of this bill in the Senate, I am pleased to present the measures proposed by the government.

This bill enables the government to move forward with certain measures in Budget 2022. As you will see from my speech, the investments described in the government’s recent budget — and through Bill C-19 — are focused on some of the more pressing issues in the Canadian economy, because we are all well aware of the high inflation that is weighing heavily on the minds and wallets of Canadians.

This budget implementation bill contains several measures to meet the current challenges most Canadians are facing. These challenges include affordable housing, the labour shortage and the inequities in our current tax system, among others.

In my speech I will explain how the government plans to meet these challenges. I will then present the improvements that were made to the bill at the other place and, finally, I will talk about the Senate’s contributions to this bill, particularly by means of studies and private bills introduced by senators.

[English]

The first is making housing more affordable.

Knowing it is top of mind for many Canadians, I want to first touch on the set of measures aimed at addressing the housing crisis in Canada and, more specifically, the need for housing that is accessible and affordable to all Canadians.

Everyone should have a safe and affordable place to call home. However, according to StatCan, in 2018 more than 1.6 million Canadian families lived in an unsuitable, inadequate or unaffordable dwelling. This means that one in ten Canadian families was living in poor housing and couldn’t afford alternative housing in their community.

The people most impacted by this housing crisis are seniors living alone and racialized Canadians.

The government wants to change that by putting Canada on a path to double the number of homes being built over the next 10 years. Some of the measures proposed in Bill C-19 support this effort, including addressing barriers that keep more housing from being built.

The first one concerns payments of up to $750 million to support municipalities to address their pandemic-driven transit shortfall and improve housing supply and affordability.

More specifically, Bill C-19 would authorize the Minister of Finance to make payments to the provinces and territories out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund. The payments would be subject to the terms and conditions that the minister considers appropriate and, to maximize funding, be conditional on provinces and territories matching federal contributions.

At the Standing Committee on Finance in the other place, la Fédération québecoise des municipalités spoke about the importance of housing investment in coordination between the provincial and federal governments. For this to work, all levels of government will need to collaborate.

It’s important to note that the House of Commons unanimously adopted an amendment requiring that a report detailing the amount paid to the provinces and territories for transit and housing be prepared within three months, and another requirement for the tabling of this report within 15 sitting days after it is completed. Improving the transparency and accountability mechanisms could lead to greater and more visible results.

[Translation]

The investments announced in Budget 2022 to double the construction of new housing in Canada over the next decade are part of an ambitious plan that will require the cooperation and commitment of all levels of government.

Through Bill C-19, the federal government is giving itself the means to meet its goal of significantly increasing the number of affordable housing units in Canada.

[English]

Bill C-19 also seeks to make Canada’s housing market fairer by legislating a two-year ban on foreign investors buying houses in Canada. For years, foreign money has been flowing into Canada by way of residential real estate. This has fuelled concerns about the impact on costs in cities like Vancouver and Toronto, and across the country, leading Canadians to be worried about being priced out of the housing market.

Local average-income-earning taxpayers simply cannot compete in a market where foreign money flows freely, driving up prices. Division 12 of Part 5 of the bill would prohibit non‑Canadians from purchasing residential property in Canada for a period of two years starting on January 1, 2023. This measure would apply to foreign corporations and entities, and prevent ineligible persons from avoiding the ban by using corporate structures.

Individuals with work permits who reside in Canada, refugees, people fleeing international crises and international students who are on their way to becoming permanent residents would be exempted from this ban.

By banning foreign purchases of Canadian housing for two years, the government’s purpose is to make sure that houses in Canada are being used as homes for Canadian families, not as speculative financial assets.

In addition to these measures, Bill C-19 aims to help tackle speculative trading by making all assignment sales of newly constructed or renovated housing taxable for GST and HST purposes. This amendment would eliminate the ambiguity that can arise under the existing rules regarding the GST/HST treatment of assignment sales.

This would ensure the GST/HST applies to the full amount paid for a new home, including any amount paid as a result of an assignment sale, which would result in greater consistency in the GST/HST treatment of new homes and would contribute to a fairer housing market for Canadians.

[Translation]

For those who already own a home, Bill C-19 will help seniors and people with disabilities to live and age at home by doubling the annual limit of the home accessibility tax credit from $10,000 to $20,000 as of the 2022 tax year.

Doubling the credit’s annual limit will help make more significant alterations and renovations more affordable, including the purchase and installation of wheelchair ramps, walk-in bathtubs, and wheel-in showers; widening doorways and hallways to allow for the passage of a wheelchair or walker; and building a bedroom or a bathroom to permit first-floor occupancy.

This measure will be particularly helpful for Canadians who live in multi-generational homes. Even before the pandemic, the trend of multi-generational housing was on the rise. It only became more pronounced during the pandemic, when grandparents began playing a bigger role in the lives of their grandchildren to help parents better manage their work obligations, school and day care closures and remote learning. Multi-generational housing makes it possible to take care of the oldest and youngest family members at the same time.

During the pandemic, we also saw how young adults living with a disability had to settle for a very isolated and restricted lifestyle in long-term care homes, even when other options that could have considerably improved their quality of life were available.

[English]

Bill C-19 also aims to help build a strong and diverse workforce.

Through the bill, the government is also aiming to bolster Canada’s workforce and address labour shortages that have overwhelmed the economy for some time now; this includes making it easier for the skilled immigrants that Canada needs to come to our country by improving the government’s ability to select applicants from the Express Entry system who match the needs of Canadian businesses.

Express Entry has a proven record of selecting skilled immigrants who succeed in Canada’s economy and society. It is a significant improvement over the “first in, first out” model that was previously in place.

Division 23 of Part 5 of Bill C-19 proposes amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that would build upon Express Entry’s existing flexibility and support Canada’s economic recovery and future growth by permitting the government to easily select candidates who meet a range of economic needs and priorities. The parties in the other place worked together to improve this section of the bill by adding a requirement for a public consultation process when establishing the categories.

[Translation]

Bill C-19 proposes to make an amendment to the Income Tax Act by introducing a new labour mobility deduction for tradespeople for the 2022 and subsequent tax years to reduce the shortage of skilled tradespersons.

In the construction industry, at different times, some regions have more job opportunities than others. Many workers take advantage of these opportunities and accept temporary jobs in different parts of the country when opportunities arise.

This new measure would make it possible for eligible workers to deduct eligible expenses up to half of their employment income earned by relocating, up to a maximum amount of $4,000 per year.

[English]

Bill C-19 would also introduce 10 days of paid sick leave for workers in the federally regulated private sector, which will support 1 million workers in industries like air, rail, road and marine transportation, and banks, postal and courier services with implementation by no later than December 1, 2022. One proposed amendment would give the Governor-in-Council the option of delaying the application of the paid sick leave provision to small employers: for example, businesses with fewer than 100 employees. This is because small employers may require additional time to implement the necessary payroll and organizational changes to comply with the new requirements.

However, the government is not planning to use this option, and the paid sick leave provisions are expected to come into force on December 1, 2022, for all employers, small and large.

[Translation]

Bill C-19 provides for a one-time $2-billion payment through the Canada Health Transfer to address the many challenges Canadians have experienced because of delayed medical procedures during the pandemic, which caused significant backlogs. That payment is on top of the $4.5 billion already provided to the provinces and territories to help them reduce backlogs in their health care systems.

This amount, which would be proportionally distributed to the provinces and territories on a per capita basis, would help to further reduce the backlogs of surgeries and procedures that Canadians need but were forced to postpone because of the impact of COVID-19 on Canada’s health care system.

As part of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, Canada agreed to amend the Copyright Act, by the end of 2022, to extend the general term of copyright protection from 50 to 70 years after the life of the author. The general term of copyright protection applies to a wide variety of works, including books, films, music, photographs and computer programs. Division 16 in Part 5 will enable Canada to fulfill its obligations before the deadline, to be on equal footing with its trade partners and to create new export opportunities for Canada’s creative industry and Canadian content.

Some 80 countries, including some of Canada’s main trading partners, such as the United States, Mexico, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and South Korea, have adopted the general term of protection for 70 years or more after the life of the author. Extending the term of protection will ensure that Canadian copyright holders enjoy protection for the same period of time in those countries.

[English]

Next is a fair and robust tax system. By enacting the proposed select luxury items tax act, Bill C-19 would also strengthen Canada’s tax system. Those who can afford to buy expensive cars, planes and boats can also afford to pay a bit more. To that end, through Bill C-19, the government would introduce a tax on the sale of new luxury cars and aircraft with retail sales prices of over $100,000 and on new boats over $250,000. Luxury items of that kind are entirely out of reach for most Canadians.

The act includes modern elements of administration and enforcement aligned with those found in other taxation statutes. The tax would be calculated at the lesser of 20% of the value above this price threshold or 10% of the full value of the luxury vehicle, aircraft or vessel, with a coming into force date of September 1, 2022. It is important to note that the majority of the demand for these million-dollar yachts or private planes is not in Canada. Rather, 80% of what is produced in Canada is exported and so is not covered by the luxury tax. Therefore, manufacturers are not expected to feel a major impact. Regarding luxury vehicles, the majority are not manufactured in Canada, so there will be little impact on jobs.

To respond to concerns expressed by stakeholders regarding the potential impact of the tax on the aircraft industry, the other place adopted an amendment to Bill C-19 granting the government the flexibility with respect to the coming into force of the aircraft provision. This flexibility will allow the government to consult further and potentially improve what is currently proposed.

[Translation]

The government will also accelerate the creation of a public, searchable registry of federally incorporated corporations. The registry will go live by the end of 2023, which is two years earlier than planned, to fight illegal activity, such as money laundering and tax evasion. This measure will address the problem of Canadian shell companies being used to conceal the true ownership of assets, including businesses and property. It will help Canada reverse this trend through a risk-based approach to fighting money laundering.

On a more urgent and pressing note, Bill C-19 will also enable the Government of Canada to cause the forfeiture and disposal of assets held by sanctioned individuals and entities, including Russian elites and those who act on their behalf, and to use the proceeds of confiscated assets to help the Ukrainian population. This measure actually came from Senator Omidvar’s Bill S-217, An Act respecting the repurposing of certain seized, frozen or sequestrated assets. I applaud Senator Omidvar’s hard work and resilience in moving this important matter forward, especially given the current international situation because of the war in Ukraine.

That brings me to my next topic, recognizing the Senate’s and senators’ work on this voluminous and complex bill.

First of all, I would like to highlight the important work of the six committees that have already completed the pre-study of certain sections of Part 5 of Bill C-19: the Aboriginal Peoples Committee, the Banking, Trade and Commerce Committee, the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee, the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the National Security and Defence Committee, and the Social Affairs, Science and Technology Committee.

The National Finance Committee is studying all the details of the bill and doing its work, which is already well under way. I would like to thank the members of these committees and their chairs for their excellent work, which is crucial to the sober second thought worthy of this upper chamber.

[English]

Improvements to the bill: In the meantime, while the Senate was conducting its pre-study of the bill, the House of Commons, based on its work at their Standing Committee on Finance, adopted a series of amendments that greatly improved this legislation. The amendments were adopted with the support of the government and opposition parties. I mentioned some of them earlier in my speech. Let me go through a few more.

Part 1 of Bill C-19 expands the eligibility criteria for impairment in mental function as well as the essential therapy category of the disability tax credit. An amendment adopted unanimously makes it so that those who are diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes automatically qualify for the Canada disability benefit. This is a great improvement to the bill, and I am grateful that it was supported by all parties in the House of Commons.

[Translation]

(Pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on December 7, 2021, to receive a Minister of the Crown, the Honourable Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, appeared before honourable senators during Question Period.)

Senator Plett: On May 3, your parliamentary secretary also told the House that increasing the length of a super visa from two years to five years, as Mr. Seeback’s bill proposed, would undermine the system and contradict the spirit of the super visa. She said that the NDP-Liberal government supported increasing the stay to three years and not five.

A week ago, again, your government’s concerns about the five-year extension disappeared and you, again, minister, claimed this idea as your own.

Minister, you’ve been condemned for the delays in helping thousands of Afghans and their families come to Canada. Passport Canada is a complete and total mess. Isn’t that why you passed off Kyle Seeback’s ideas as your own — because you need some positive news to cover for your many failures?

When it comes to Afghanistan, we now have more than 15,500 refugees who have landed. When it comes to our response to Ukraine, there are tens of thousands of people already in Canada. When it comes to our permanent residency, we have now welcomed 200,000 new permanent residents who were already here a month and a half faster than any year on record. We are pumping out work permits at more than double the pace of last year.

With great respect, senator, there are many successes to point to. I would chalk up the changes to the super visa as one of them, but I would not claim it as my own; it has been the result of collaboration amongst different parties in the House of Commons. I think that is something we should all celebrate.

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: First, thank you very much for the question. I really do appreciate when people draw into focus the importance of helping those who have helped Canada in our time of need.

As I mentioned in response to the previous answer, a significant number of people have been arriving in Canada from Afghanistan as part of our special program. We are currently in excess of 15,500. There is another charter scheduled to arrive this Thursday with more than 300 people on board.

Despite some of the challenges and the very serious uptick in the pace of arrivals that we’ve seen since the end of March and the beginning of April, there remain certain challenges. Some of those have to do with safe passage on the ground. We also have an extraordinary number of people — in excess of 1 million — who have reached out to the department I’m responsible for in the hopes that they can be a part of the program.

We’re going to continue to move forward until we achieve our goal of 40,000, but, with respect to your particular question, for those who are not yet enrolled in the program who have made an actual application or submitted some sort of expression of interest that we have a touch point with, we will be letting them know very soon — I don’t have a specific date for you, but I expect it will be in a very short period of time — that those who qualify for the program will be certain. Also, those who, unfortunately, won’t be part of the program will be made aware.

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you very much.

To put this into perspective, the volumes we’re seeing are immense. If we are going to solve the problem, we have to understand where they came from. Certainly there are challenges with the short-term response to different humanitarian crises, but we saw during the pandemic that a decision was taken to resettle people who are already in Canada on a temporary basis, in some ways to the exclusion of people who couldn’t travel when the borders were closed. At the same time, our operational capacity as a department was hamstrung by public health orders all over the world that shut down offices, reducing our capacity.

We’ve seen an uptick in calls to IRCC in fiscal year 2020-21, from 5.9 million calls to 10.41 million the following year, and we’re increasing from there. What we’re doing right now to address the problem is putting more resources into the system, adopting policies to make more spaces and also adopting new technology. In a perfect world, we won’t be in the business of reaching back out to the millions of people who have come with us but proactively giving them information in their pocket so they can catch it themselves on their own schedule. We’ve already introduced that feature, a case tracker, in February of this year for family reunification. Because we’re transitioning from a paper-based system towards a digital one, it will take a little bit of time for all other lines of business to have access to the same feature. We are doing what we can and, frankly, we are starting to see immense progress.

I’ll wrap up by saying that we expect to be back to standard processing times across almost all lines of business by the end of this calendar year, pending further COVID shutdowns or humanitarian crises, with citizenship probably spilling a bit into next year before we’re fully caught up.

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Let me share a personal experience from my own community that sort of flips your question on its head to some degree. My belief is that if we don’t continue to welcome people to our communities we will actually lose that infrastructure, but we should be planning on it in the way you’ve suggested.

When I was first running for office, the biggest controversies in my community were the closure of the River John Consolidated School and the loss of the mental health unit at the Aberdeen Hospital in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. We’ve embraced immigration. We have seen a lot of people coming back to our community and a lot of people like me, who spent time in Western Canada and came back home. The biggest challenge we have now is whether we can build enough houses to welcome all the people who want to move here instead of losing schools and hospitals because so many people are leaving. I know which problem I would rather have.

We have conversations constantly. In the House of Commons, I sit beside the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion to talk about how we can expand housing stock to make sure that we can provide homes, not just for newcomers but for people who are here now. He quickly tells me that we need a workforce through immigration to actually bring the workers here to build out that housing stock.

When we seek to table the immigration levels plan in Parliament, I have conversations with my provincial counterparts to understand the absorptive capacity that they are dealing with. We are trying to develop strategies right now to ensure that, as we welcome more newcomers, we push them to communities that have the absorptive capacity to welcome people so that they don’t just get here but they actually succeed after they arrive.

[Translation]

Hon. Amina Gerba: Minister, welcome to the Senate. Nearly every one of Canada’s immigration programs requires a job offer, which workers need to have prior to applying for a work visa. It is extremely difficult for foreign workers to get a job offer if they are outside the country. As an employer, I have had to deal with these difficulties myself when trying to recruit qualified foreign employees. However, as you know, minister, there is a major labour shortage in Canada, and immigration is now seen as a solution to this problem.

Minister, what can you do to ensure that the job offer requirement is no longer a barrier to addressing labour shortages in our country?

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you very much for the question, senator. For everyone who is seeking to come into Canada who is not subject to visa-free travel, there is a requirement that you complete the biometrics analysis in order to come into Canada. In addition, we typically do a biographic screening.

It sounds, in the case that the senator has laid out, that there was an absolutely horrible fate that befell the individual. Not being familiar with the personal circumstances, I hesitate to go further, but it’s essential that we continue to apply a rigorous analysis to understand that the people who are coming here meet a very high threshold for people we would like to come to Canada and who will make a contribution and not be a detriment to our society.

To the extent that there are shortcomings in the system that anyone would like to raise for us to continue to improve the process, please know that I’m not rigid in my defence of the status quo. We seek to continually look for ways to improve the system and strengthen the integrity so that Canadians continue to believe that immigration is a good thing for our communities. I believe this is essential to our social and economic well-being.

[Translation]

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you for the question.

It is often said that immigration is essential to combat labour shortages.

[English]

Just for the sake of specificity and wanting to make sure I give good detail, I’ll answer in my first language, if that’s okay. One of the things that is really important that we understand is that the numbers you’re citing would include everyone who has applied, including those who have applied as recently as yesterday. When we recently introduced a program to welcome large numbers of Ukrainians, for example, we have seen a significant number of applications. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

What we need to continue to focus on is whether we are seeing the processing times come down so the individual applicant can actually have a reliable period in which they can predict and plan their lives accordingly in terms of how they are going to get to Canada.

What we are actually doing to address these challenges is really monumental, and it’s really starting to have a positive impact. In the Economic and Fiscal Update 2021, we invested $85 million to reduce the processing times for work permits, study permits, temporary residence visas, permanent residence cards and proof of citizenship, followed by a $385-million investment in the system to improve client service for people who are seeking to come to Canada. We have hired 500 new staff.

Regarding work permits, we have now processed more than 216,000 this year before the end of last month, compared to only 88,000 the year before. As I mentioned in a previous answer, we are now at 200,000 permanent residents, as of last week, who have landed in Canada, with 100,000 more in the landing inventory, which has never been achieved this early in the year. It was a month and a half later in 2016 when we hit that record previously.

The other things we need to do are continue to adopt policies that allow people to get here quickly, allow more people in a year to get here through the immigration levels planned and, of course, continue to advance the digital transformation of our department.

To sum it all up, it’s resources, policy and technology adoption. We will continue to promote all three. Canada has a world-class immigration system. It has been hit hard by the pandemic, but when I look at the numbers internally, the resources we are putting into the system are having the desired effect by boosting the processing times, getting workers here more quickly and reuniting families at a pace much faster than last year.

Hon. Bernadette Clement: Welcome, minister.

The Welcoming Francophone Communities initiative committed to funding 14 Canadian communities from 2018 to 2023. This type of investment is all the more important given that rural areas are still in the process of developing their network and have to compete with the larger cities to attract and retain newcomers.

My home city, Cornwall, was not selected for this first round, so the community members are doing their best with the limited resources they have. Imagine what more they could do with proper funding.

Will the Welcoming Francophone Communities initiative be renewed beyond 2023 and expanded to serve more French-speaking newcomers and the minority language communities that want to welcome them?

[English]

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you so much for the question. The Welcoming Francophone Communities initiative, in my view, was a big success. I don’t want to pre-empt some very important consultations I need to have. You will have likely seen in my mandate letter a requirement that I develop an “ambitious national strategy” to boost francophone immigration. We’re seeing some of the numbers come up but, to answer your question, if it’s not simply repeated, the lessons we learn from it will be reimplemented.

I would also like to draw your attention to an enormous tool we are going to have that will help both boost francophone immigration and regionalize our immigration system, and that’s in Bill C-19, which the House of Commons recently adopted. There are new flexibilities proposed to the Express Entry system that will allow the Minister of Immigration — me today, but whoever my successor may be — certain flexibilities in targeting people who are going to a particular region, filling a particular need in the labour force or meeting certain criteria.

[Translation]

I think that is a better opportunity to welcome francophone newcomers and people who want to live in very small communities like the ones in my riding. I encourage all senators in this chamber to support the bill.

[English]

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you so much for your question, and to you and Senator Jaffer for the advocacy on this particular issue. Frankly, though I don’t have notes in front of me, I would push them aside dramatically if I did and speak as a human being. It is an injustice to see someone who has had the state placed in charge of their care, who believes they are a citizen, who has grown up in our country and who has no ability as a child in care to have pursued citizenship themselves to face the kind of circumstance that you have outlined.

Frankly, I think we have some policy work to do to fully understand the proposed outcomes that are in the Senate public bill that you have identified. There is also a suite of other measures that are outside of my mandate letter commitment that I would like to consider for reforms when it comes to the rules around citizenship in Canada.

I do think I have more work to do to satisfy myself that a change to the rules will achieve their intended outcome.

I would like to address this because, at the end of the day, you are responsible not only for your own actions but, in my view, the instances where you witness an injustice and choose to stand by. I look forward to continuing our work on this. However, we have a bit of policy work left to do before we can identify the best path forward to ensure this kind of consequence doesn’t harm innocent children who are raised by the state in Canada.

[Translation]

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: I want to make clear that we have to do whatever we can to bring workers into Canada as quickly as possible. To make that happen, we need to continue to put resources into the system in the short term and adopt policies that make it easier for people to work — some of whom are already in Canada and some of whom are in another country.

In terms of resources, we simply need to put more people to work to ensure we’re processing the files. We need to digitize the application process and ensure that we’re identifying bottlenecks.

To answer your question on the service standard that we are trying to get back to, we’re typically looking at 60 days. I believe we can get there as soon as the end of this calendar year. If we continue to see the uptick in processing that I’m witnessing when I look behind the curtain at the processing numbers, some of which I shared, I anticipate that we’ll be able to get back there.

There are certain challenges in the province of Quebec because there is sometimes a two-stage process — some of which the provincial government is responsible for and some of which the federal government is responsible for.

To answer your question, the service standard is 60 days. I have faith that with the resources we have already put into the system, we could get back there as soon as the end of this year.

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Minister Gould is a dear friend of mine and one of the most competent members of any party in the House of Commons. I don’t take her comments as a personal criticism.

We work together to advance policies that can simplify the process for passport renewal. We also work together to ensure that one another’s departments — and, in fact, this is true across cabinet — have the necessary resources to provide the kind of service that Canadians quite rightly expect.

I think you’ll appreciate, senator, that we are living through exceptional times. As the world opens up more or less simultaneously and there is a pent-up demand for travel, there are challenges in predicting with certainty the exact number of people who will be seeking to renew their passports at a given point in time.

More than 500 new staff have been added. The wickets are now all open. For what it’s worth, I had to renew my children’s passports — one new issuance and one renewal — and I did this the same way that everyone else does. It was a bit frustrating, but at the end of the day, we were served professionally by competent civil servants who are working to ensure that as many passports as possible can be issued. As we see demand stabilize now that capacity has been ramped up, I expect that over time you will see an improved quality of service — like you’re seeing across different sectors of the economy as the world opens up from COVID-19 restrictions.

Hon. Leo Housakos: Minister, the delays, long lineups and shockingly poor service that Canadians are currently subjected to while simply trying to obtain or renew a passport are completely unacceptable. Just this morning, I went to Galeries St-Laurent, my local mall that houses the Canadian passport bureau. There was a lineup of Canadian taxpayers for blocks and blocks. They were there with their lawn chairs and umbrellas, waiting hours on end to fill out passport applications and then having to wait for months before they receive their passports. Anyone watching the scene would not believe they were in Canada; they would think they were in some banana republic.

Two weeks ago, your colleague Minister Gould blamed your department for this mess by not anticipating that the demand for passports would be high. She told the House committee:

One thing that’s a bit of a challenge for us is that Service Canada doesn’t do the forecasting. IRCC does the forecasting, and the original forecast for this year was for about 2.4 million passports, which gets us into the ballpark of where things were prepandemic.

Minister, do you accept this criticism from your cabinet colleague that your forecast for the demand for passports was completely inadequate —

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: I want to be careful here because I have personal knowledge about some of the things we discussed today. For some of them, I came in after the fact. Nevertheless, I am responsible for the department.

This is a huge opportunity for me to say thank you to all of those who were involved with the evacuation. As a result of the efforts on the ground, thousands of people have been given a second lease on life in Canada. In the middle of a war zone, as you can appreciate, there is absolute chaos. When you’re dealing with a list of terrorist entities seizing control of Kabul at a time when hundreds of thousands of people were seeking to leave, potentially millions, having a rigid process with referral partners and proper screening — as we would through essentially a managed UNHCR initiative — was not possible. Decisions were taken at the time to try to identify anyone who had a connection to Canada to get them on board planes that had limited access to the strip in Kabul to get them out.

Since then, of course, we have been able to put in a more reliable process than you can implement in response to an emergency of that nature to ensure that we continue to see people arrive. We are seeing more people arrive now, with more than 15,500 in Canada and more arriving every week.

The job that the members of my team have done — some of whom are still working with me; some of whom have moved on to other things, the previous minister as well as the department — was nothing short of heroic despite some imperfections along the way. There are no perfect responses in a war zone. However, as a result of the actions of a few Canadians who tried hard to evacuate some of the world’s most vulnerable people in those moments, there are thousands of people who made it to Canada.

[Translation]

Hon. Elizabeth Marshall: Welcome, minister.

Minister, parliamentarians depend on the work of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Yet, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, your department, along with Treasury Board Secretariat and Canadian Heritage, wrongfully refused to disclose to the Parliamentary Budget Officer how $16 million for initial implementation costs for Bill C-13 would be spent. This funding was announced in December. By now you would — or at least should — know how you are going to spend it.

You also refused to provide to the Parliamentary Budget Officer information concerning the ongoing tasks and costs associated with the bill. Yesterday, Mr. Giroux told the Senate’s Official Languages Committee that it’s the first time as Parliamentary Budget Officer that he has gotten such a refusal from three departments.

Minister, Mr. Giroux also told the Senate committee that Canadian Heritage has since provided him with some of that information. Will you instruct your own officials to provide all information on Bill C-13 to the Parliamentary Budget Officer? If not, why not?

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you for the inspiring question. Congratulations to all the students involved.

It reminds me of when I was an undergraduate student signing up in my first year to volunteer for the World University Service of Canada, or WUSC, an organization that seeks to bring refugees to Canada for the purpose of studying.

Are there lessons we can learn? Yes, absolutely. No one has a monopoly on good ideas, the government included. To the extent that we can understand how to support some of the world’s most vulnerable who also form part of the cohort of international students who make some of the greatest social and economic contributions to our communities, I think we can continue to do this.

One of the things I’m reluctant to do, though, is to find a good idea and have the government take it over. When it comes to refugee resettlement, private resettlement in Canada is actually the envy of many countries around the world when I engage with them on a bilateral basis. When people have a built-in network of supporters who have put energy, time and, sometimes, funds into welcoming people into their communities, it actually results in them being supported well after they arrive.

To the extent that the students at one of your alma maters want to see what we can do to help spread this kind of generosity, please note this is right up my alley. Supporting some of the world’s most vulnerable and leveraging our education system to do it seems like a positive initiative to me, and I want to reiterate my congratulations for this innovation. The positive social development space is deeply encouraging.

[Translation]

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you very much. This is an important question. For those who may not be aware, the quote, I believe, given the description, would have been pulled from a description of how our Express Entry system operates in Canada.

The Express Entry system scores people based on a number of factors: their education, work history, age and language competencies. What we see is that people who have a suite of skills have a higher score and are more likely to be invited to apply to come to Canada as a permanent resident.

There are some changes we can make to the system to attract workers who will make an even bigger contribution, not solely based on their scores but also by matching them with the regional needs or sector-by-sector needs of the economy. Those are the flexibilities I discussed in Bill C-19 that were recently adopted by the House of Commons.

In addition, though — and this is important, building on my answer to Senator Deacon’s question earlier — with respect to the Start-up Visa Program, we have an opportunity for growth, in my opinion. I want to be careful not to allow people to have a “golden passport” where they make an investment and can become Canadian. I don’t think that’s reasonable. However, if we can look at the rules to determine who is coming to set up a business that’s going to employ people in Canada and that will have a lasting impact on our communities, then we should examin how we can make revisions to the program to achieve those ends while still promoting high-growth sectors, such as the tech and innovation space.

It’s not easy to nail down the specifics of a policy that will have all those outcomes, but we will do that through consultation and collaboration with the sectors that have the greatest opportunity to use those streams to bring people here to start businesses that will employ Canadians.

[Translation]