In last week’s column I wrote about Canada’s immigration record in the wake of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s announcement that the Conservative government had set a 50-year record in 2010 by admitting 280,636 new immigrants to Canada.
While that number is impressive, there are other aspects of the Conservatives’ performance that are less impressive.
Before the Tory’s came into power, CIC was processing more permanent residence applications annually than it received, and by doing so was slowly making a dent in its huge inventory of backlogged cases. Under Tory leadership, CIC is not keeping up with its workload. It is receiving more applications than it did under the Liberals but is processing fewer applications both in real, and in relative, terms.
When the Tories took power, there were 829,000 applicants waiting for their applications for permanent residence to be processed. Under the Tories that number shot up to 998,000 in 2008 and has dropped only slightly by September 2010 to about 967,000.
The types of applicants the Tories are selecting are considerably different than the Liberals. For instance, the Tories are allowing many more immigrants to be selected by the provinces in which they intend to live. This is good since the provinces are more in tune with the kinds of immigrants they need than Ottawa might be. Before the Tories came into power, only 13,000 immigrants were being nominated by the provinces. That number has almost tripled to 36,000 under the Tories.
While it is commendable that a new breed of immigrant is being allowed into Canada, it is unfortunate that it is at the expense of other types of immigrants that are also important to our country.
Even though our population is growing, we are bringing in fewer spouses and partners, fewer sons and daughters, and fewer parents and grandparents. Although our collective “family values” clearly have eroded, presumably in favour of greater economic aspirations, interestingly, we are also receiving fewer investors, entrepreneurs and self-employed applicants under our federal Business Immigration Program and our Federal Skilled Worker program.
We are definitely not as charitable as we were under the Liberals, who accepted 35,776 refugees in 2005. In 2010, the Tories landed only 24,693 refugees but didn’t hesitate in giving the nation the impression we were being overrun by refugees when the Ocean Lady and Sun Sea vessels arrived off the shores of British Columbia. These arrivals were used as justification for the introduction of a bill that would create a new refugee regime which would, amongst other things, include the detention of certain refugee claimants for one year.
In November 2007, the Tories announced the creation of the Canadian Experience Class, initially envisioned to include about 25,000 new immigrants who would graduate from a Canadian college or university or accumulate two years of Canadian work experience. Although the Tories later promised to bring in only 10,000-12,000 in 2008. the fact is not a single applicant was landed under this category in that year and only 1,775 were landed in 2009, followed by another 2,532 in 2010.
Although there are more permanent residents applying now to become citizens of Canada, far fewer are being approved. When the Liberals were in power, approximately 199,000 permanent residents became citizens of Canada in 2005 representing an approval rate of about 91 per cent of the applications received in that year. In sharp contrast, the approval rate plummeted in 2009 to about 67 per cent, yielding only 156,000 new citizens. The acceptance rate for 2010 may prove to be even lower than that.
As for processing times, nothing seems to have changed. It seems that everything is just as slow, or slower, than it ever was, even though more money seems to be going from each federal budget to CIC for the “modernization” of its processing operations. The Tories managed to convince Parliament that the immigration minister needed unprecedented powers to “issue instructions” to his officers which would allow him to change the rules of the game, without notice, so that he can respond quickly to economic and other trends. In reality, these powers have not resulted in any real improvements in the time it takes to bring needed skills to our workforce.
Immigration policy is not necessarily “good” when we bring in more people or “bad” when we bring in fewer numbers. It must make sense in the context of the social, economic, and demographic facts on the ground. In other words, it must make sense.
Improved efficiencies, economic advantages, the fulfillment of political commitments, and the adherence to core Canadian values must be our prime considerations.
It is against these standards that I rate the Tories’ performance in the last five years as being sorely lacking.
Guidy Mamann, J.D. practices law in Toronto at Mamann, Frankel Sandaluk LLP and is certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada as an immigration specialist. For more information, visit www.migrationlaw.com or email metro@migrationlaw.com
