Extracts from the Speaking notes for The Honourable Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P. Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism
At the Economic Club of Canada Event
Ottawa, March 7, 2012
“..... As with other countries with aging populations and low birth rates, in the not-too-distant future, Canada will not have enough people to keep our workforce growing. With Baby Boomers beginning to retire, our economy now relies increasingly on immigration for labour force growth. In fact, we are already facing large and growing labour shortages. Based on current trends, many studies have estimated a shortage of hundreds of thousands of workers within a decade. ....”
..... “ I said right at the outset of this speech that it is critical for our immigration system to function fairly, effectively and in a way that best responds to Canada’s interests. I am proud of the changes we have put in place over the last few years that have improved that system.
But challenges remain.
For the immigration system in general – and especially for the skilled worker program – possibly the biggest challenge is the large backlog of applications that have accumulated in the system. A huge chunk of that backlog pre-dates the recent changes I have mentioned.
So we are left with many applicants who initially applied under older criteria which were not as responsive to Canada’s changing economic needs.
We are grappling with the best way to eliminate that backlog. We have managed to make some progress, but until it is completely gone, we can’t get to where our economic immigration system needs to be.
We welcome all creative ideas that will help us eliminate the backlog better and faster.
The fact is that backlogs simply are not fair. They are unfair to the applicants themselves, who must wait for years for a decision on whether or not they can come to Canada, with all of the frustrations and life pressures that entails.
Backlogs are also unfair to Canadian society in general. They hurt our economy. We need fast and straightforward procedures to help ensure Canada remains a destination of choice for top talent.
Backlogs slow down the system and make it much less effective and much less responsive to rapidly changing labour market needs. There are people from all over the world with skills our economy needs now, and they want to come to Canada now. But we can’t welcome them now if we are busy processing people who have skills we needed five years ago, or may not have needed even back then.
And if we agree that it is in our national interest to welcome younger skilled immigrants to Canada, then making applicants wait in line for years works against that interest.
If our processing system is slower than the pace of change of the labour market, then we risk finding ourselves in a situation where we may be rewarding the longest-standing applicants over the best applicants.
We recognized the backlog problem several years back, and have taken actions to eliminate it as quickly as possible, including our 2008 Action Plan for Faster Immigration. We’ve made some progress on that.
In 2008, we had a backlog of more than 640,000 people in the Federal Skilled Worker Program. If we had not acted, that number would have swelled to more than 800,000 by today, with wait times in excess of seven years. Instead, as of June of last year, there were roughly 480,000 applicants in line. We celebrated an important milestone last year when the number of federal skilled worker applications received before February 2008 was reduced by more than 50 per cent – two years ahead of schedule.
But to put all that in perspective, we plan to welcome 55,000 to 57,000 Federal Skilled Workers into Canada this year. That’s a considerable amount, but it is only a small portion of the backlog. If current admission rates remain steady, the remaining backlog will not be eliminated before 2017.
We are exploring ways to reduce the backlog further. For example, we are launching a pilot project that will allow provinces and territories to “mine the backlog” – in other words, to review the applications in the backlog and nominate those applicants they think their economies need now. We are also informing some applicants stuck in the federal skilled workers backlog about possible opportunities under the Provincial Nominee Program.
We are also considering ways to obtain consent from applicants in the backlog to be considered directly by Canadian employers for employment. With job offers in hand, applicants would see their applications processed on a priority basis.” ....
