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

At a news conference to announce changes to the Federal Skilled Worker and Investor Immigration programs
Toronto, Ontario, June 26, 2010

As Delivered

I am here this morning to talk to you about important changes to Canada’s Action Plan for Faster Immigration. As you know Canada has been maintaining the highest relative level of immigration in the developed world at about 0.8% of our population. Last year and the year before we hit our targets of bringing in a quarter of a million permanent new residents in addition to nearly a quarter of a million temporary residents, many of whom will have the opportunity to transition to permanent residence and eventually citizenship.

We’ve done so because we believe in the power of immigration to contribute to our prosperity. As you know our government’s focus has been on improving economic outcomes for newcomers. That’s reflected in the Action Plan for Faster Immigration, in the creation of the new Canadian experience class to allow for a pathway for permanent residency for qualified temporary foreign workers and foreign students.

It’s reflected in our 400% increase in federal funding for settlement and integration services like Link and language training. As well it’s reflected in our creation of the foreign credential referrals office and the provision of pre-integration services abroad and our focus on faster and more streamlined credential recognition here in Canada.

But one of the challenges that we faced when we came to government with respect to immigration was the huge and growing backlog in the federal skilled workers program which of course is the mainstream of economic immigration to Canada. It is otherwise known as the points system.

The previous Liberal government when they came into office in 1993 inherited an immigration system where decisions were being rendered typically in a few months time and the backlog in applications was manageable. When they left office in 2006 they handed to us, thanks to their mismanagement, a backlog of some 640,000 applications for the federal skilled worker program which was taking 5 to 6 years for the Ministry to look at and render decisions on those applications.

This basically meant that the federal skilled worker program, our key immigration program, was fundamentally broken. It wasn’t working for newcomers who had to wait for several years. It wasn’t working for Canada who was losing the growing competition for the best and brightest with comparable jurisdictions like Australia and New Zealand and Britain that were making decisions in a few months.

That’s why we made the decision in 2008, supported by Parliament, to adopt the Action Plan for Faster Immigration by giving the Minister of Immigration the power to issue instructions to limit the number of applications that our officials are obliged to consider.

Let me be very clear about this. We intend to continue with historic high levels for immigration. In fact my announcement today includes the fact that our Ministry intends to actually see an increase in the total number of permanent residents accepted to Canada this year as we will be moving towards the high range of the published range for total number of permanent residents. The range is 240,000 to 265,000. In each of the last two years we welcomed just around 250,000 and we anticipate that number will go up this year as a result of the decisions that I’m announcing.

Let me be very clear about this, that we are actually not only maintaining, but intend to increase, the total number of permanent resident landings in Canada this year and next. Having said that, we do need to use the tools that Parliament has given us to better control the intake of incoming applications that we are obliged to process.

It’s a very simple principle and anyone should be able to understand that we have a limited number of people who we can welcome in Canada, for all sorts of practical reasons. We used to have an unlimited number of applications that we had to process. So accepting, let’s say a quarter of a million permanent residents a year but receiving 350,000 or 400,000 applications meant that year after year the backlog got longer, the processing times got longer, people had to wait longer and the immigration system was foundering under its own weight.

That is why in November of 2008, shortly after I became Minister and following widespread consultations with stakeholders, the provinces, territories, employers and labour, we came up with a list of 38 prioritized in demand occupations which we had seen as being in critical demand in the labour market on a national basis. We said that we would only process applications for the federal skilled worker program for those who fall within the 38 identified occupations.

These efforts, they were successful to a great extent. Thanks to them, we saw the backlog in the federal skilled worker program fall from 640,000 to 380,000 files. But more importantly we saw the processing times for new applications fall from 5 to 6 years under the Liberal government to 6 to 12 months.

The vast majority of these new applications are getting decisions within 6 to 12 months. That means we are finally competitive with other immigrant receiving nations when it comes to competition from many of the world’s best and brightest. That is very good news.

However, as always in immigration policy, there are pressures that you don’t foresee. Some of the occupational categories that we created were sufficiently broad that a large number, several thousands of people, ended up applying for them under the new ministerial instructions. For example, in the category of university instructors, we received several thousand applications in that occupation – just basically people with university degrees who may never have taught as university professors and who have now applied in that category because that’s the way to get a positive decision.

Because of this, in the past few months we have seen a very significant spike in the number of skilled worker applications coming to Canada. If we don’t take action, that spike in new applications is going to jeopardize the progress that we’ve made to reduce the backlog and speed up processing times. We always anticipated that the government would have to adjust ministerial instructions under the Action Plan for Faster Immigration and that’s what the regulations published today do. That’s what my announcement is about.

These positive changes have a very clear goal, to put a greater emphasis on economic recovery while reducing the backlog in the federal skilled worker program. I recently met my provincial and territorial colleagues to discuss these changes and I am pleased to tell you that I think they are largely in agreement with the need for these changes.

To go to the changes – to be eligible to apply to Canada as a federal skilled worker applicants must have either a job offer from a Canadian employer or experience in one of 29 occupations that have been identified as in demand. We’ve revised the list from 38 to 29 based on extensive public consultations. We had on-line consultations on this. We also had consultations with other government departments, with provinces, with academics, with experts. We have identified 29 in demand occupations on a national basis. Obviously many of these are in the medical field but an increasing number of them are in skilled trades, where we see large and future growing labour market needs.

I remind you that we’ve selected these occupational categories in part based on existing inventories of applications. For example, since we now have several thousand people in the queue waiting to be processed as university professors, we don’t need to continue receiving more applications as university professors. We have enough to fill our labour market needs in the future.

We did look at those occupational categories where we have a larger number of applications in the queue. So for those applying under these 29 occupations, we will be limiting the number of new applications that we consider on annual basis at 20,000 per year. This will be in addition to the hundreds of thousands of applications already in the backlog that we need to process.

I want to be absolutely clear about this. It would be fundamentally inaccurate for anyone to write a story saying, government to limit immigration to 20,000 a year, when in fact, we will be likely increasing the number of permanent residency landings from about 250,000 probably to the range of 260,000. We have hundreds of thousands of applications for the skilled worker program in the queue that we can draw down on.

Here is the very simple choice. We continue with an unlimited number of applications coming in, in which case we’re going to see huge and growing backlogs again and we’re going to end up back in the situation where it takes us five or six 6 years to process each and every application. Or we do what every other major immigrant receiving country in the world does and limit the number of applications that we are obliged to process. That’s what we’ve decided to do to ensure the fairness of the system and its efficiency in the future.

Within the limit of 20,000 applications we will consider a maximum of 1,000 new applications per year for each occupational category. These changes will bring the selection of skilled workers more in line with the country’s labour market needs while ensuring we are able to eliminate the backlog and eventually ensure that all new applications are considered in several months rather than several years.

In making this announcement I’d like to stress three things.

First we will actually increase the number of immigrants coming to Canada while working through the backlog by limiting the number of new, I stress new, applications.

Second, the limits will not apply to applicants who already have job offers in Canada. Those with offers of pre-arranged employment will not be affected by the limits. These are folks who we really want to encourage to come here because they’ve already got the first step in terms of their economic integration.

Third, the changes only apply to the federal skilled worker category. Other categories such as the family class will continue to operate without limits on the intake.

I should also note that these changes are being made after extensive consultations. They’ve helped us to identify those occupations that are in demand and ensure that we focus on those newcomers who have the best chance of finding a job quickly in Canada. Limiting the number of new applications is the only way to return to a manageable system where we are able to give people an answer in a reasonable amount of time. This will bring Canada in line with the practices of the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand who are our main competitors for skilled immigrants. It’s the only responsible way to ensure the success of our immigration system.

The generosity of our current skilled worker program is being taken advantage of. For example, since we issued our list of eligible occupations under the first set of instructions, close to 6,000 people have applied as college professors. Because of this sudden increase for certain occupations, we are acting to protect the integrity of our immigration system and ensure that those people with skills we most need are welcome to Canada.

In addition to these necessary changes our government will ensure fairness in assessing language ability when considering federal skilled worker and Canadian experience class applicants. Speaking English or French is a key to finding good jobs and successfully integrating into Canadian society. All that data shows us this.

When we all are worried about the difficulty of many newcomers to find good and durable jobs, all of the research tells us that the number one factor is language proficiency. That’s why we want to make sure that people who are being assessed for the points system, one of the criteria of course is language.

We want to make sure that that assessment is being done in a fair and efficient and objective manner. Currently, as you may know, applicants’ language ability is assessed on a fairly subjective basis. They submit a writing sample in their application. It goes to a visa officer and that visa officer, who is not trained to assess language proficiency, make a subjective decision. Often the visa officer may have suspicion that the person didn’t actually write the sample themselves. They may have borrowed it from someone else or from open source.

Frankly our current process for assessing language proficiency is open to abuse. This is unfair for the honest applicants who submit their own handwritten or hand typed writing sample to be compared to others who borrow someone else’s or borrow one off the internet. We are going to adopt the same practice as all other major immigrant receiving countries such as Britain and Australia, New Zealand by requiring people to do an objective language proficiency test with a service provider. They will then include the results of that test in their application.

This will ensure fairness and objectivity for everyone so that people who cheat don’t get an unfair advantage over those who play by the rules. In order to have a fairer, more consistent and objective approach to the assessment of language proficiency all applicants will now be required to submit the results of an independent language test before their applications are considered. These results will provide a transparent, objective and reliable assessment of an applicant’s language ability which will help speed up processing times.

That’s another key factor here. By not making our visa officers act as language assessors, we will be able to provide faster service to our clients. Let me stress though that these changes do not increase the requirement for language proficiency. We are not increasing the requirement or the points for English or French language ability. We’re simply saying, we want you to have an objective test done on this rather than a subjective writing sample.

Finally we are also proposing new eligibility criteria for our immigrant investor program so that it makes an even greater contribution to the Canadian economy. The current investment amount for this program which has not changed since 1999 is the lowest in the world. Canada has been under pricing itself. We want to ensure that the investors who we attract have the means to make a significant contribution to Canada’s economy.

Under these proposed changes those applying as investors would need to have a personal net worth of $1.6 million, which is double the current level of $800,000 and these applicants would also have to double the investment they bring to Canada from the current $400,000 to $800,000. We currently have levels for the investor program that are well, well below the international precedents.

Just one example, in the United Kingdom the comparable program requires an investment of GBP1 million which is the equivalent of CAD$1.5 million as opposed to our limit of $400,000. We have no shortage of people. We’re not proposing to reduce the number of investor immigrants that we bring to Canada. We have a huge and growing backlog already in the investor immigrant program. This will allow us to continue to receive the same number but ensure they are people with the means and the ability really to contribute to our economy while not underselling or under pricing Canada.

Most of the other jurisdictions with comparable programs, like the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, do not offer permanent residency like we do. Or their permanent residency is conditional and takes a long time to qualify. For Canada we’re offering the best product, if you will, in the world with respect to the investor immigrant program and we just want to maintain its integrity and ensure that it works. I think that these levels will be very well received.

These proposals were pre-published yesterday in the Canada Gazette for a 30 day public comment period. That relates to the investor immigrant changes. The other changes are effective immediately. I should note that until these changes are finalized we will stop accepting new immigrant investor applications in order to prevent a flood of applications before the new criteria takes effect. There will be a short-term pause in applications, just to make sure we don’t get thousands trying to meet the current levels.

Make no mistake, Canada needs immigrant investors and we greatly appreciate the contributions they make to our economy. Therefore, we will process new investor applicants alongside those already in our inventory, so we can start to benefit from these changes immediately. Our ability to attract and integrate highly skilled workers is a source of Canada’s competitive advantage. These newcomers contribute the talent, commitment and diversity we need to build a strong and bright future. These changes are necessary to keep our economic integration program competitive with other countries and keep pace with our changing economy.

In closing I’d like to stress that all of these actions demonstrate sound and responsive management of our immigration system. This is very important. Frankly politically, it would just be easier to do what the Liberals did before us and never take any difficult decisions. You know what happens then. The whole system just gets out of control.

We were on track, had we not introduced the Action Plan for Faster Immigration in 2008, we were on track to crest over a million files in the backlog. In fact by I think 2011 we would have 1.2 million applications in the backlog and the processing times would have gone from 6 years to 10 years. That is the option. If people want the government to just take a hands off approach and never make any difficult decisions and do as our Liberal predecessors did, then we end up with a one million person backlog taking ten years to process applications.

That would be wrong. It would be irresponsible. We will not act in that way. These changes are essential so that Canada can maintain our leading position in the global economy, react to shifts in labour markets and address our capacity to process immigration applications. Thank you very much.