The CBA’s Immigration Law Section looked to the past to answer questions about the future of Canada’s immigration policy, with its responses to an online consultation carried out by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) this summer.
The consultation looked at four topics: strengthening the Canadian fabric, what needs immigration policy is responding to, modernizing the system and leadership in global immigration and migration.
The Section responded to the consultation’s first three queries at as much length as the process would allow – the form limited the response to each topic to 1,000 words – but left the question of Canada’s global leadership in immigration to others.
In the past, it said, Canada relied on the waves of immigrants who literally built the society and much of the infrastructure around us.
“Immigration must continue to play a key role in nation-building, in addressing Canada’s demographic gaps, and in driving innovation and economic growth,” the Section said. “For Canada to benefit from the full potential of its immigration programs, however, it is crucial that:
- Both temporary and permanent residence programs be refocused on assessing the net benefit to the Canadian economy as a whole, rather than focusing on protecting individual jobs for Canadians;
- Immigration programs be flexible and take into consideration business norms and realities;
- Immigration programs be efficient, timely and less bureaucratic;
- Barriers to the economic success and integration of immigrants be addressed through implementation of policies and incentive programs.”
The requirement for immigration policy to accommodate economic needs was strongly emphasized.
We live in an era of globalization, rapid technological innovation, cyclical economic fluctuations and increasing international labour mobility. To compete internationally, Canada must not only be able to recruit and retain top talent to drive research, development and growth, it must be able to do so quickly and efficiently. Attracting highly skilled immigrants – both temporarily and permanently – will support economic growth, innovation and job creation.
In addition to making sure skilled – and unskilled – workers can enter and depart the system smoothly, the Section said emphasis should be placed on keeping family units together, and that spouses and children should not be denied entry based on a quota or on an evaluation of the parent’s capacity to support them.
As well, the Section proposes programs offering incentives to facilitate home ownership by immigrants and to help those newcomers to obtain recognition of their foreign credentials, or the necessary equivalencies here. “These programs would allow these immigrants to enter the workforce more quickly at a level matching their education and expertise, settle down and raise families in the region (where) they work and become successful members of our communities.”
The Section made several recommendations for modernizing the system, including:
- That the IRCC provide yearly milestones and updates to establish clear quotas and figures on the number of immigration applications processed and proposed to be processed;
- That the IRCC provide detailed reasons for refusing immigration applications in their initial letters, so that individual applicants will be able to address those reasons, if possible, more readily;
- That the IRCC work to address technological barriers in its new online systems;
- That the IRCC provide more frequent program delivery updates, operational bulletins, and other updates to IRCC guidelines, and also that it improve efforts to remove and archive outdated guidelines and processing manuals.
- That the IRCC implement global processing for temporary residence applications to reduce backlogs;
- That the IRCC ensure decision-making is consistent across regions.
One of the questions asked in the consultation was whether IRCC should offer expedited services to those willing to pay higher fees. The Section replied that not only would this risk creating a two-tiered system, but it wouldn’t address the systemic issues that lead to the backlogs in the first place.
“Instead of offering expedited processing to wealthier applicants, the CBA Immigration Law Section supports attempts to improve efficiency and processing times across all applications. Investigation into reasons for existing inefficiencies and solutions to those specific problems would be more equitable and would function better in the long term.”