Speaking Notes - The Honourable Monte Solberg, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, for enhancing the Temporary Foreign Workers Program

Vancouver, B.C., November 15, 2006

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Good afternoon and thank you all for being here.

Let me start off by saying what a pleasure it is to be in Vancouver, and feel the economic excitement that just adds to the vibrancy that makes this city and this province such a wonderful place to be.

British Columbia continues to out-perform the Canadian average on a whole list of indicators, from GDP growth and job creation to retail sales and non-residential construction.

That’s good news for B.C. and it’s good news for Canada, but it takes a lot of hands to sustain that kind of growth. And that is a concern.

This summer in Whistler, British Columbia, business owners told me they were short 3,500 workers. They are worried that this winter they won’t have the people to run the ski-lifts, work in the restaurants or make beds. Managers are already pitching in to clean hotel rooms.

I suppose, that’s the price you pay for being successful, but we want to sustain and build on that success.

To do that, we need a lot of effort and innovative thinking from everyone involved — governments at every level and the private sector as well.

We need to plan for the longer term, and we also need to deal with the immediate need.

We’ve already started to make the existing Temporary Foreign Worker Program more effective and responsive.

Thanks to a concerted effort, three-quarters of work permit applications are processed in less than a month. A third of them are processed within a matter of days. Issuing permits is only one part of the process but we’re working with our partners to make the entire program faster and easier to use.

In July, we announced the creation of new Temporary Foreign Worker Units in Calgary and here in Vancouver to give employers easier access to this program. I’m happy to say today that both those units are now in full operation.

Since then, I have been working with my colleague, the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, to identify what else we could do.

Today, on behalf of Minister Finley and myself, I am very pleased to announce a series of additional measures that will make the Temporary Foreign Workers Program more responsive — while continuing to protect the access of Canadian workers to the labour market:

• We will create regional lists of occupations under pressure. These will allow employers to reduce how long and how far they must advertise available jobs before they are eligible to apply to hire a foreign worker. It will save them time and money.
• We have created new federal-provincial working groups in both B.C. and Alberta to speed the identification of existing and emerging skill shortages, and determine the best ways the foreign worker program can help address these shortages.
• We’ve completed a new suite of information products that offer practical, step-by-step guidance to employers interested in hiring temporary foreign workers.

These measures will make the Temporary Foreign Worker Program easier to understand and more user-friendly. They are also expected to reduce overall costs and time spent by employers who need to hire foreign workers — and I’m pleased that we’re launching them here in B.C. and Alberta where the need is unquestionably the greatest.

We’re doing other things to help ease the crunch. Since May, we have been allowing international students to take off-campus jobs. This is something that should help the service and tourism industry here in B.C. Since it was launched, we’ve granted more than 7,000 work permits under this program.

We’ve also committed $307 million in additional settlement funding over the next two years. These are funds our partners use to deliver programs and services that help newcomers get settled in this country, including connecting newcomers to the labour market. We need immigrants, and we need immigrants to succeed.

On Friday, I announced how this money will be allocated in provinces and territories outside Quebec, which has a separate agreement. For British Columbia, it means an 87 percent increase in settlement funding over the next two years.

We’ve committed $18 million to work with our partners on ways to streamline the recognition of foreign credentials — so the people we work hard to attract can reach their full potential in Canada as soon as possible.

These initiatives are part of ensuring Canada has a strong, competitive economy. Strengthening our economy for the long haul is one of the four pillars of the fall agenda for Canada’s new government. We’re also working to improve accountability; we’re better protecting Canadians by toughening laws and putting more police officers on our streets and strengthening border security; and through stricter environmental standards and proper enforcement we’re going to improve our air quality by way of the new Clean Air Act.

Immigration has an important role to play in keeping our economy growing. It always has — but it is only part of the solution.

We must also work together to ensure Canadians have the opportunity to benefit from our strong economy, and are ready for the jobs of tomorrow. That means looking at training and education — the funding commitment to apprenticeship in our Budget is but one example. We also have to look at building a mobile workforce, and increasing the proportion of under-represented groups in the workforce — women, Aboriginal Canadians, and visible minorities.

I can assure you that our government is committed to working with our partners in the provinces and territories, in communities and in the private sector. Together, we will develop and implement the strategies that will ensure Canada has the people and skills it needs to prosper. We have a lot at stake. Canada is a great country, not just because of geography and natural resources. It is a great country because millions of people from around the world see Canada as a place where if you work hard and play by the rules you can achieve great things. This government is committed to making sure it stays that way.

Thank you.