Education
Canada’s Newcomer Priorities Revealed In Immigration Minister’s Recent Speech
Canada’s Newcomer Priorities: Canada Immigration Minister Marc Miller has shown that everything is on the table in his overhaul of the Canadian immigration system.
In a tacit acknowledgement that the system has run out of hand under his Liberal government, Miller has spent his time since becoming the Minister for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship setting out how he plans to fix it.
His speech after the recent Forum of Ministers Responsible for Immigration in Montreal underlined his priorities and summed up much of what he has been doing in recent months.
He spoke of the “significant progress” made on “the need to retain temporary workers with in-demand skills and help them transition to permanent residence, with our duty to safeguard job opportunities for Canadians and existing permanent residents”.
Canada will make temporary residents part of its annual immigration planning for the first time this fall. The number of work permits and study permits issued has been rising exponentially.
Canada issued a combined 259,155 work permits through the International Mobility Program and Temporary Foreign Worker Program in 2015, the year Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party came to power. Last year, 949,270 work permits were issued, representing a 266 per cent rise in eight years.Study permit numbers have risen similarly, from 219,035 issued in 2015 to 682,900 last year, a 212 per cent rise.
The fear is that Canada does not have the capacity to absorb these numbers. It is currently experiencing a housing supply problem, while Miller has moved to place caps on study permits to begin to tackle the problem. The move to include temporary residents in immigration levels planning is also part of a measure to reset the balance.
It does not mean the Liberals are suddenly anti-immigration. Canada will still welcome a record number of newcomers this year. Instead, Ottawa has simply realised it cannot let numbers continue to rise in such an uncontrolled manner.
There was one very interest section in Miller’s speaking notes are the recent federal-provincial-territorial meeting. He described one of his priorities as: “Recognizing the importance of having good data to ensure we understand labour market needs and communities’ capacity to support newcomers.”
Labour Market Need
We’ve been told for years that Canada has welcomed new immigrants based on labour market need. This statement would imply that the data that has been used to decide those labour market needs has not been reliable.
Miller says he has asked provinces and territories for data on temporary resident populations, rates of temporary to permanent transition and capacity to absorb.
It has to be a source of concern to Canadians that the immigration minister does not know how many temporary residents are in the country.
The Canadian government website has figures on temporary to permanent residency transition. It says that 156,580 former work permit holders and 25,605 former study permit holders become permanent residents last year.
When you compare that to the number of permits issued, mentioned above, it reveals a wide mismatch.
Miller’s intention is to bring those figures closer together, ensuring that those coming to Canada on study and work permits have a realistic chance of staying here permanently.
Remaining immigration priorities outlined in Miller’s speech included spreading the benefits of immigration to smaller communities, strengthening Francophone communities outside Quebec, supporting the world’s most vulnerable people and improving Canada’s response to crises, such as wars and natural disasters.
