The Liberals win points on housing policy, but it might not change the politics

2023/10/20 Leave a comment

As I have also argued, “The new Liberal measures to increase building and alleviate the shortage, meanwhile, aren’t likely to have a palpable impact on the supply of housing for years – and not before the scheduled 2025 election.”

Paying a price for their fixation on higher levels of immigration while ignoring the impacts on housing, healthcare and infrastructure:

Don’t look now, but the Liberals are starting to win some policy debates on the housing crisis. It just might be too late for the politics.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals spent much of 2023 getting hammered about the high price of houses, skyrocketing rents and mortgage spikes. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was making hay, and gaining ground, lambasting Mr. Trudeau by channelling the resentment about 30-year-olds living in their parents’ homes and families struggling to afford one.

For most of the year, the Liberals hemmed and hawed and declared that all the things they had already done were the greatest ever – as if they couldn’t see the problem nearly everyone was feeling.

But if you tuned into Question Period on Monday, there was Housing Minister Sean Fraser knocking back Conservative attacks with shots of his own, claiming, albeit apocryphally, that the Tories plan to raise taxes on rental units.

Liberals could, and did, claim that private-sector actors have endorsed some of their new housing measures. Four major developers said they plan to build more than 10,000 rental units between them because of the federal government’s September move to remove the GST on purpose-built rental housing. Mortgage lenders have said the tripling of the Canada Mortgage Bond Program will make a significant difference for builders.

Where the Tories were landing blows at will a few months ago, now Mr. Fraser was jousting gamely, responding to a Peterborough Conservative MP’s arguments that Liberal “inflationary spending” forced interest rates higher by pointing to a multimillion-dollar housing announcement in her riding. Though the Tories kept picking the fight, the Liberals were starting to win some of the rounds.

But if the Liberals are starting to get a grip on the issue in Question Period, it comes at a time when no one is watching. Not many people watch Commons debates, and this week, the public attention paid to Parliament was devoted almost entirely to speeches about events in the Middle East.

It’s not clear, anyway, if the Liberals can still rebuild credibility after letting the housing debate get away from them.

Their late-summer epiphany came when the public outcry was rising high and Liberal poll numbers were falling low. Their biggest new measure – that GST break – was something the Liberals promised to do in 2015 but didn’t.

Even so, the Liberals suddenly boosted housing policy on a bigger scale, with real potential. The deals Mr. Fraser is signing with cities and towns for money from Ottawa’s Housing Accelerator Fund could move the dials, too, if municipalities make rule changes that, for example, allow more triplexes to be built.

Mr. Fraser now likes to point out that the Liberal bill provides more extensive housing tax breaks than a bill Mr. Poilievre tabled in September – hence the minister’s disingenuous claim that the Conservatives would raise taxes on housing.

The Liberals now have better policy that will make a difference. But it might not change the politics for Mr. Trudeau’s government.

For starters, Mr. Poilievre’s Conservatives have had some success in making people believe that government deficit spending – and big Liberal spending, during the pandemic’s peak and now – is the cause of inflation, and therefore the cause of high interest rates.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland can argue that inflation is global and declining, and Canada’s deficits and debt are lower than most industrialized countries. And while the Liberals have been profligate spenders who showed little regard for controlling costs, there’s no reason to believe a Conservative government would take office and bring in spending cuts that would make interest rates rapidly tumble.

But those are arguments. People feel inflation. And they keep feeling it even when the pace of price increases starts to slow. Many felt the struggle of paying a high cost of housing exacerbated by a shortage of supply, and now are feeling the pinch of higher interest rates through mortgage bills or higher rents. The Bank of Canada’s rate increases seemed to park declines in Liberal poll numbers.

The new Liberal measures to increase building and alleviate the shortage, meanwhile, aren’t likely to have a palpable impact on the supply of housing for years – and not before the scheduled 2025 election.

So now the Liberals have regained their footing in the fight over who can address the housing crisis but it is still a government eight years into power hoping to win a political argument over who has the best solutions for years in the future. Mr. Fraser is starting to win debates in the Commons on housing policy, but it might be too late to make Canadians feel things will change.

Source: The Liberals win points on housing policy, but it might not change the politics

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Immigrating to Canada? The system is backlogged and at times unfair, a new report confirms

2023/10/20 Leave a comment

Pretty condemning report, reflecting political and official level weaknesses. Money quotes:

Overall, the report concluded that the Immigration Department’s ability to reduce backlogs is hampered because officials are taking in more applications than what they can handle under the immigration targets the government has set.

Another contributing factor, it said, is the failure of the immigration minister to use his authority “to apply intake controls” during the pandemic.

One despairs at times…:

Immigration applicants have long complained that newer applications are being processed ahead of the older ones, while some visa posts finalize the same files much faster than others.

Those experiences have been validated by the Auditor General in a report released Thursday that found Canada’s immigration backlogs have persisted, with the length of time some permanent residence applications are in the system ballooning in some programs.

The audit focused on eight programs that receive applications in economic, family, and refugee and humanitarian classes, and found a substantial number of applications across all programs remained backlogged at the end of 2022.

The Immigration Department aims to process 80 per cent of applications within its service standards. However, the volume of applications that remained backlogged far exceeded 20 per cent in all programs, with refugees waiting the longest for a decision.

On average, privately sponsored refugees waited 30 months for a decision, while overseas spouses or common-law partners waited an average of 15 months to be reunited with their partners in Canada, compared to the set 12-month service standards. That means, only five per cent of these refugee sponsorship cases and 56 per cent of the spousal applications were processed promptly.

The federal skilled worker program fared worst, with only three per cent of the applications meeting the six-month timeline.

Canada not abiding by ‘first-in-first-out’

The report also found that the length of time backlogged applications spent in the queue increased across all programs — indicating that the department finalized many newer applications over older ones.

In the family class, more than 21,000 applications were finalized within six months of being received, ahead of at least 25,000 older applications that remained in the inventory at the end of the year.

In the provincial nominee program, the time applications remained in the backlog had increased from 12 to 20 months from January to December last year, while for in-Canada spousal sponsorships, the age of the applications rose from 27 to 47 months.

“Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada did not consistently process applications on a first-in-first-out basis contrary to its operating principle,” said the 40-page report.

That principle was not adhered to, it said, due to other priorities such as the special resettlement program for Afghan refugess, as well as the pressure to complete large volumes of applications to meet the annual immigration targets.

Backlogs vary by country

The report also found differences in the size and age of application backlogs by country of citizenship in seven of the eight audited permanent-residence programs, particularly for government-assisted refugees, federal skilled workers and sponsored spouses who applied from abroad.

For example, in the government-assisted refugees program, more than half of the applications submitted by citizens of Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo were backlogged. By comparison, only one third of Syrian applications were backlogged.

The three countries have the most applications for government-assisted refugee sponsorships, but the visa offices are also under-resourced.

“The department continued to assign application workloads to offices without assessing whether they had enough resources to process them,” the audit said.

The Dar es Salaam office in Tanzania, for instance, had an assigned workload that was five times greater than the Rome office in Italy, even though both offices had a comparable number of staff.

Immigration officials recognized that the visa posts in sub-Saharan Africa were chronically under-resourced but continued to assign files to these offices, which have some of the highest processing volumes for family and refugee programs.

Although the department, with digital applications, has the capacity to redistribute files to let other offices to share the workload, the audit found family-class and refugee-class applications were not transferred out of the Dar es Salaam or Nairobi offices — which both have high workload and application backlogs.

“Department officials told us that they had no plans to transfer backlogged applications to other offices with available capacity, leaving these applicants to wait even longer,” said the report.

“The department did not know whether these offices had the resources they needed to process the volumes of applications assigned to them.”

Canada taking in more applications than it can handle

Overall, the report concluded that the Immigration Department’s ability to reduce backlogs is hampered because officials are taking in more applications than what they can handle under the immigration targets the government has set. (Canada’s annual permanent resident intake grew from 341,000 in 2020 to 465,000 this year.)

Another contributing factor, it said, is the failure of the immigration minister to use his authority “to apply intake controls” during the pandemic.

“From March 2020 through 2021, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada continued to accept applications to its permanent resident programs,” said the report. “But with office closures and travel restrictions, the volume of applications in its inventory grew.”

Despite the launch of a new digital assessment tool and online application portals, the report said the department did not monitor the implementation of its new automated eligibility-assessment tool to determine whether the tool was reducing processing times or to identify and resolve unintended differential outcomes for applicants.

What does the AG recommend?

The Auditor General recommends the Immigration Deportment:

Take immediate steps to identify and address differential wait times to support timely processing for all applicants;

Examine backlogged applications to identify and act on processing delays within its control, and prioritize the older backlogged applications;

Provide applicants with clear expectations of the timelines for a decision; and

Improve consistency of application processing times across its offices by matching assigned workloads with available resources.

“People who apply to Canada’s permanent resident programs should benefit from the government’s efforts to improve processing speeds regardless of their country of citizenship or the office where their application is sent for processing,” the report said

Source: Immigrating to Canada? The system is backlogged and at times unfair, a new report confirms

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Canada’s change to its Roxham Road deal is called a ‘shameful downgrading’

2023/10/17 Leave a comment

Of note. The Temporary Foreign Workers Program is economic, not humanitarian:

The federal government has been accused of downgrading its commitment to welcome 15,000 “humanitarian” migrants that it agreed to in exchange for closing down the land border to asylum seekers.

Instead of accepting 15,000 migrants on humanitarian basis, Ottawa now said 4,000 of the spots will be allocated to temporary foreign workers while the other 11,000 spaces — for permanent residence — are restricted to Colombians, Haitians and Venezuelans.

“It is a shameful downgrading of our commitment to refugee protection in the Western Hemisphere. We are deeply disappointed with the government’s backpedalling on already insufficient targets for refugee protection,” said Gauri Sreenivasan, co-executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

“Let us be clear, the temporary foreign worker program is not a humanitarian program. It is one designed to fulfil Canadian economic needs. It only affords temporary access and is marred by its own serious rights violations.”

In March, Ottawa and Washington expanded the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement across the entire shared border — not just at the official ports of entry.

In doing so, they closed a loophole that had been used by irregular migrants to cross from one country into the other, through unguarded border crossings such as Roxham Road in Quebec, to seek asylum.

Following the announcement, a joint statement said Canada would bring in an additional 15,000 migrants on a humanitarian basis from the Western Hemisphere over the course of the year to expand safe, regular pathways as an alternative to irregular migration. (Canada had set a target of 76,305 permanent residence spots for refugees and protected persons in 2023; the 15,000 will be on top of that.)

“We couldn’t simply shut down Roxham Road and hope that everything would resolve itself,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters at a news conference then.

“At the same time, we continue to be open to regular migrants, and we will increase the number of asylum seekers who we accept from the hemisphere — the Western Hemisphere — in order to compensate for closing these irregular crossings.”

Earlier this week, advocates who were already upset with the arrangement were shocked when Immigration Minister Marc Miller released further details about the new resettlement initiative.

Starting this fall, the permanent-residence pathway will be newly available for up to 11,000 Colombian, Haitian and Venezuelan migrants in Central or South America or the Caribbean. To qualify, they must have extended families in Canada, who are either a citizen or permanent resident.

The Canadian relative must be at least 18 years old and sign a statutory declaration that they will provide supports to the applicant to help their settlement and integration, such as helping them find housing, enrolling children in school, and registering adults for language classes.

While the humanitarian pathway has yet to open for application, immigration officials said they are on track to bring in the additional 4,000 temporary foreign workers from the Americas.

The 15,000 new arrivals would not have to meet the United Nations refugee definition — as those arriving at Roxham Road often sought to — and the Immigration Department has not clarified what the standard of humanitarian need would be.

“This is a far cry from the protection that was promised to refugee claimants when Roxham Road was closed and it is not acceptable,” said Sreenivasan.

“We urge the government to at the very least stick to their original commitment and ensure all 15,000 arrive to permanent safety in the country.”

The Immigration Department said the humanitarian program is open only to Colombian, Haitian and Venezuelans because they make up the largest volumes of irregular migrants fleeing ongoing violence and political unrest in the continent.

Those from other nationalities, it said, can still come under the temporary foreign worker program and the so-called Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot, which grants permanent residence to skilled refugees abroad if they have a Canadian job offer.

“Safe and regular migration pathway are alternatives for irregular movements, which are often dangerous ways to move across borders, where people are made vulnerable by criminal gangs and put in terrible humanitarian situations,” said department spokesperson Mary Rose Sabater.

“By providing access to regular pathways, including through existing temporary foreign worker streams, more people have access to safe migration opportunities to work in Canada.”

Sabater said the yet-to-open humanitarian program will close one year after launch or when 3,500 applications representing up to 11,000 migrants have been approved.

Source: Canada’s change to its Roxham Road deal is called a ‘shameful downgrading’

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Canadian immigration update: August 2023

2023/10/17 Leave a comment

Latest monthly update. Highlights:

Two-thirds of permanent residents were former temporary residents, mainly reached a new high, mainly from International Mobility Program and the Post-Graduate Work Program. Year to date: Permanent Residents: 338,000 out of which 189,000 are former temporary residents.

Among temporary residents, the greatest growth is with respect to the International Mobility program, recently driven by “Research, educational or training programs,” over one-third of total IMP. Year to date: 605,000. The number of international students also increased dramatically (school year), year to date: 475,000.

Asylum claimants remain high, year to date: 85,000, the majority of which are inland claims, perhaps reflecting relaxed visa requirements and vetting. 

The number of new citizens remains strong, largely driven by virtual ceremonies being the default option (ill-advised IMO). Year to date: 338,000. 

Visitor visas issued year to date: 1,293,000.

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How Canada is using AI to catch immigration fraud — and why some say it’s a problem

2023/10/13 Leave a comment

While I understand the worries, I also find that they are overwrought, given that the only way to manage large numbers is through AI and related IT tools.

And as Kahneman’s exhaustive survey of automated vs human systems in Noise indicates, automated systems deliver greater consistency than solely human systems.

So by all means, IRCC has to make every effort to ensure no untoward bias and discrimation is embedded in these systems and ensure that the inherent discrimination in any immigration or citizenship processes, who gets in/who doesn’t, is evidence based and aligned to policy objectives:

Canada is using a new artificial intelligence tool to screen would-be international students and visitors — raising questions about what role AI should be playing in determining who gets into the country.

Immigration officials say the tool improves their ability to figure out who may be trying to game Canada’s system, and insist that, at the end of the day, it’s human beings making the final decisions.

Experts, however, say we already know that AI can reinforce very human biases. One expert, in fact, said he expects some legitimate applicants to get rejected as a result.

Rolled out officially in January, the little-known Integrity Trends Analysis Tool (ITAT) — formerly called Lighthouse or Watertower — has mined the data set of 1.4 million study-permit applications and 2.9 million visitor applications.

What it’s searching for are clues of “risk and fraud patterns” — a combination of elements that, together, may be cause for additional scrutiny on a given file.

Officials say that, among study-permit applications alone, they have already identified more than 800 “unique risk patterns.”

Through ongoing updates based on fresh data, the AI-driven apparatus not only analyses these risk patterns but also flags incoming applications that match them.

It produces reports to assist officers in Immigration Risk Assessment Units, who determine whether an application warrants further scrutiny.

“Maintaining public confidence in how our immigration system is managed is of paramount importance,” Immigration Department spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald told the Star in an email.

“The use of ITAT has effectively allowed us to improve the way we manage risk by using technology to examine risk with a globalized lens.”

Helping with a big caseload

Each year, Canada receives millions of immigration applications — for temporary and permanent residence, as well as for citizenship — and the number has continued to grow.

The Immigration Department says the total number of decisions it renders per year increased from 4.1 million in 2018 to 5.2 million last year, with the overwhelming majority of applicants trying to obtain temporary-resident status as students, foreign workers and visitors; last year temporary-resident applications accounted for 80 per cent of the decisions the department rendered.

During the pandemic, the department was overwhelmed by skyrocketing backlogs in every single program, which spurred Ottawa to go on a hiring spree and fast-track its modernization to tackle the rising inventory of applications.

Enter: a new tool

ITAT, which was developed in-house and first piloted in the summer of 2020, is the latest instrument in the department’s tool box, one that goes beyond performing simple administrative tasks, such as responding to online inquiries, to more sophisticated functions, like detecting fraud.

MacDonald said ITAT can readily find connections across application records in immigration databases, which may include reports and dossiers produced by Canada Border Services Agency or other law enforcement bodies. The tool, he said, helps officials identify applications that share similar characteristics of previously refused applications.

He said that in order to protect the integrity of the immigration system and investigative techniques, he could not disclose details of the risk patterns that are used to assess applications.

However, MacDonald stressed that “every effort is taken to ensure risk patterns do not create actual or perceived bias as it relates to Charter-protected factors, such as gender, age, race or religion.

“These are reviewed carefully before weekly reports are distributed to risk assessment units.”

A government report about ITAT released last year did make reference to the “adverse characteristics” monitored for in an application, such as inadmissibility findings (e.g. criminality and misrepresentation) and other records of immigration violations, such as overstaying or working without authorization.

The report said that in the past, risk assessment units conducted a random sample of applications to detect frauds through various techniques, including phone calls, site visits or in-person interviews. The results of the verification activity are shared with processing officers whether or not fraudulent information was found.

The report suggested the new tool is meant to assist these investigations. MacDonald emphasized that ITAT does not recommend or make decisions on applications, and the final decisions on applications still rest with the processing officers.

Unintended influence?

However, that doesn’t mean the use of the tool won’t influence an officer’s decision-making, said Ebrahim Bagheri, director of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s collaborative program on responsible AI development. He said he expects human staff to wrongfully flag and reject applicants out of deference to ITAT.

Bagheri, who specializes in information retrieval, social media analytics and software and knowledge engineering, said humans tend to heed such programs too much: “You’re inclined to agree with the AI at the unconscious level, thinking — again unconsciously — there may have been things that you may have missed and the machine, which is quite rigorous, has picked up.”

While the shift toward automation, AI-assisted and data-driven decision-making is part of a global trend, immigration lawyer Mario Bellissimo says the technology is not advanced enough yet for immigration processing.

“Most of the experts are pretty much saying, relying on automated statistical tools to make decisions or to predict risk is a bad idea,” said Bellissimo, who takes a personal interest in studying the use of AI in Canadian immigration.

“AI is required to achieve precision, scale and personalization. But the tools aren’t there yet to do that without discrimination.”

The shortcomings of AI

A history of multiple marriages might be a red flag to AI, suggesting a marriage of convenience, Bellissimo said. But what could’ve been omitted in the assessment of an application were the particular facts — that the person’s first spouse had passed away, for instance, or even that the second ran away because it was a forced marriage.

“You need to know what the paradigm and what the data set is. Is it all based on the Middle East, Africa? Are there different rules?” asked Bellissimo.

“To build public confidence in data, you need external audits. You need a data scientist and a couple of immigration practitioners to basically validate (it). That’s not being done now and it’s a problem.”

Bagheri said AI can reinforce its own findings and recommendations when its findings are acted on, creating new data of rejections and approvals that conform to its conclusions.

“Let’s think about an AI system that’s telling you who’s the risk to come to Canada. It flags a certain set of applications. The officers will look at it. They will decide on the side of caution. They flag it. That goes back to the system,” he said.

“And you just think that you’re becoming more accurate where they’re just intensifying the biases.”

Bellissimo said immigration officials have been doing a poor job in communicating to the public about the tool: “There is such a worry about threat actors that they’re putting so much behind the curtain (and) the public generally has no confidence in this use.”

Bagheri said immigration officials should just limit their use of AI tools to optimize resources and administer its processes, such as using robots to answer emails, screen eligibility and triage applications — freeing up officers for the actual risk assessment and decision making.

“I think the decisions on who we welcome should be based on compassion and a welcoming approach, rather than a profiling approach,” he said.

Source: How Canada is using AI to catch immigration fraud — and why some say it’s a problem

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Yalnizyan: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is ballooning — creating a new class of wage slaves from abroad

2023/10/13 Leave a comment

Good commentary with reasonable recommendations:

This time last year, the media buzz about the labour market was over The Great Resignation, a bigger phenomenon in the United States but occurring here too, as workers took advantage of record-high job vacancy rates to abandon suboptimal jobs for better ones.

This year there’s an emerging made-in-Canada phenomenon that has barely generated a whisper, let alone a buzz: wage slaves from abroad. It’s a result of public policy.

The idea of owning workers seems like an abomination from another time and place. In Canada, in 2023, it’s difficult to comprehend how any worker could be beholden to a single employer.

Nonetheless, this year the government of Canada has issued more than 142,000 permits to employers to hire temporary foreign workers who are not allowed to work for anyone else. It’s the highest number ever issued, and that figure only covers up to August. Intake through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program has grown by 45 per cent across Canada this year compared with the same eight months in 2022, a record-breaking year of population growth, almost exclusively (96 per cent) due to newcomers.

Permits are issued to employers who make the case that they cannot find a Canadian to do the job — at “prevailing wage rates,” that is. When the federal government finds the reasons provided on the Labour Market Impact Assessment form acceptable, it permits a foreign worker to enter Canada to work only temporarily, and only for that employer.

Just since August 2021, the federal government has expanded the categories of occupations eligible for such a permit and increased the allowable proportion of migrant workers working for an individual employer to 30 per cent from 10 per cent. That gives such employers huge influence over not just their migrant workers but all their workers. It is far from clear this was necessary policy reform. It should be reversed.

Ontario’s employers are escalating their dependence on the permanently temporary in sectors such as warehousing and transport trucking, personal care workers in long-term-care facilities, restaurants and fast food outlets, and farm workers.

The vast majority of employers are moral. But tying permits to a single employer increases the odds of exploitation and abuse.

Although the federal government conducts investigations of employers using the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, employers are often given a heads-up before the inspection takes place. Last year, more than 2,100 inspections were carried out. Only 116 were found non-compliant.

Of the 766 employers on a public registry of employers who broke the rules over the past seven years, the most frequent violation was wage theft — not providing the pay promised in the contract. Only seven employers were banned even temporarily from hiring migrant workers through this program; 23 were just given warnings.

Wage theft is not the only issue. Farm workers had an extraordinarily high incidence of disease and death during COVID because of their living conditions. Abuse and assault of workers providing care to people in their homes and institutions remains all too common. These are the very categories of migrant workers least likely to find a pathway to permanence.

Migrant workers may have the same rights as Canadian workers on paper but are less likely to know what those rights are and even less likely to exercise them for fear of jeopardizing their jobs and futures. That kind of contagion needs to be contained. It spreads rapidly in an uncertain world.

The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology is studying this area of public policy. Last week, Tomoya Obokata, the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, presented testimony to the committee about his recent visit to Canada, expressing concern for “low-wage and agricultural streams of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program as the workers at the higher risk of labour exploitation, which may amount to forced labour or servitude.”

I appeared before the committee as well and presented some ideas for policy reform.

First: end the practice of tying work permits to an employer. An open work permit, tied to a region (for example, in parts of the country that are aging more rapidly) or in an industry or sector with high vacancies (such as hospitality or long-term care) would mean workers could leave terrible workplaces without risking deportation. This change could reduce the number of bad jobs and improve the quality of life in communities. Addressing potentially crippling labour shortages, while limiting the abuse of workers, seems a promising avenue of reform.

Second: create simpler pathways to permanent residency for all those who seek it and make those pathways clear before people arrive. Canada has developed an incredibly complex system, with more than 140 types of temporary permits in the immigration database, according to Rupa Banerjee of Toronto Metropolitan University.

In 2022, three times as many people were permitted temporary resident status versus permanent resident status in Canada. Less than a third of those who came here to work or study for a restricted period transitioned to permanent status, even after 10 years of temporary residency; but many more will grab at the chance, without knowing the odds.

There is a whole industry designed to lure international students and migrant workers here on what often turns out to be the false hope of permanent residency; and the relationship between temporary and permanent admissions to Canada is getting more lopsided every year.

Although Canada’s job creation rate has been remarkable, including for Canadian-born and landed immigrant workers, the fastest-growing rate of job creation has been among migrant workers: 61 per cent more jobs than pre-pandemic levels.

We are expediting the intake of migrant workers for entrenched needs, not temporary ones.

Increasing reliance on temporary foreign workers to do the work that needs doing, while not allowing them to form families, get sick, age or retire may be an employer’s dream and a labour market “solution.” But it risks creating a dystopian future for Canadian society.

Armine Yalnizyan is a leading voice in Canada’s economic scene and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. She is a freelance contributing columnist for the Star’s Business section. Follow her on Twitter: @ArmineYalnizyan. You can write to her at ayalnizyan@atkinsonfoundation.ca.

Source: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is ballooning — creating a new class of wage slaves from abroad

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Lisée: Les expulsions barbares

2023/10/12 Leave a comment

More Quebec commentary on the need for Quebec to exercise the same control over the IMP, whose numbers have ballooned as elsewhere in Canada, as it does for TFWP:

De mauvaises langues accusent le député Sol Zanetti d’avoir atteint le summum de l’exagération en gonflant, puis dégonflant, une balloune depuis son siège de l’Assemblée nationale jeudi dernier. Je ne suis pas d’accord. Juste avant, en point de presse, un autre député solidaire avait fait pire.

Au cas où on déclare atteinte, voire dépassée, la capacité d’accueil du Québec et qu’on veuille limiter le nombre d’immigrants temporaires au Québec, passés de 47 000 en 2007 à 470 000 cette année, il a dit ceci : « Si on définit qu’elle est remplie [la capacité d’accueil], on coupe qui ? On va commencer à faire des déportations massives ? On va commencer à dire que ces 100 000 là, qui sont de trop, peut-être, qui ont déménagé ici, qui ont eu des contrats, qui ont eu un logement, qu’on leur a donné un permis, qui travaillent dans le réseau de la santé et dans l’éducation… On va leur dire : “C’est terminé ? […] Vous savez quoi, là, on s’excuse, on vous a fait venir pour rien, on s’est trompé, finalement, on n’a pas la capacité de vous avoir” ? »

Je vais vous étonner. Il s’agit d’un député qu’on estimait jusque-là crédible et posé : Guillaume Cliche-Rivard. Il est avocat, expert en immigration. Comment peut-il ne pas savoir qu’on parle ici des temporaires qui, comme leur nom l’indique, sont bien temporaires. L’immense majorité des étudiants étrangers qui peuplent McGill et Concordia et anglicisent le centre-ville prennent la poudre d’escampette dès qu’ils ont leur diplôme en poche. L’immense majorité des travailleurs agricoles volent retrouver leur famille latino-américaine une fois la récolte terminée. Les autres savent tous que leur séjour affiche une date de péremption, ce à quoi ils ont librement consenti.

Bref, si on décidait, selon le chiffre évoqué, d’admettre désormais 100 000 personnes de moins, ce qui nous maintiendrait toujours à un niveau historiquement excessivement élevé, il suffirait d’attendre que ceux qui souhaitent repartir repartent et de ne donner des autorisations qu’à 370 000 candidats, plutôt que 470 000.

L’introduction du terme « déportation » dans un débat sur l’immigration qui se déroulait depuis quelques mois dans un contexte apaisé est simplement honteuse. S’il tient à sa crédibilité, Cliche-Rivard doit faire amende honorable.

Sur le fond, il affirme ne pas savoir si, oui ou non, notre capacité d’accueil est atteinte. Il voudrait qu’une équipe d’experts se penche sur la question. C’est une idée tellement bonne que je la proposais en 2018 lorsqu’on ne comptait sur le territoire que le quart du nombre de temporaires actuel.

On peut bien, comme le fait la ministre de l’Immigration, Christine Fréchette, par un appel de projets de recherche, en obtenir une analyse plus fine et régionalisée. Mais refuser d’admettre aujourd’hui que l’ajout depuis cinq ans de centaines de milliers de personnes supplémentaires aggrave les crises du logement, de la santé et des garderies me rappelle ceux qui, face aux méfaits du tabac ou du réchauffement climatique, réclamaient davantage d’études.

Heureusement, un grand nombre de Québécois ont entendu parler de la loi de l’offre et de la demande. Début octobre, 71 % d’entre eux (comme 68 % des Canadiens) ont déclaré au sondeur Ipsos qu’imposer un plafond d’admission aux étudiants étrangers serait une bonne façon de réduire la pression sur les logements abordables. Logiques, 75 % des Québécois (71 % des Canadiens) pensent qu’il faut revoir à la baisse les cibles d’immigration le temps que se résorbe la crise du logement. (Mémo au politburo de QS : ce sentiment est partagé par 66 % des 18-34 ans, votre électorat principal.)

Qui, parmi nous, à part les élus solidaires, figure parmi les dissidents de la loi de l’offre et de la demande ? Le gouvernement fédéral, bien évidemment. L’inénarrable ministre de l’Immigration, Marc Miller, a redit récemment qu’il fallait davantage d’immigrants pour construire davantage de logements. (Marc, ça ne marcherait que s’ils les bâtissaient avant d’arriver ou s’ils les emmenaient avec eux. Un pensez-y-bien.)

Plus terre à terre, son collègue Pablo Rodriguez, qui semble admettre l’existence d’un problème, a prétendu que l’augmentation du nombre de temporaires était la faute du Québec. Mme Fréchette affirme au contraire que c’est la faute du fédéral. Peut-on savoir qui remporte la palme de cet édifiant concours de Ponce Pilate ?

Mardi, dans ces pages, la spécialiste Anne-Michèle Meggs a mis clairement la responsabilité sur les épaules du Québec.

À l’exception des demandeurs d’asile, le Québec a indubitablement le pouvoir de réduire le nombre d’étudiants étrangers, qui comptent pour 44 % des temporaires, mais il ne le veut pas ; il a indubitablement le pouvoir de limiter le nombre de travailleurs temporaires (17 %), mais il ne le veut pas.

Sur le reste, les 36 % du Programme de mobilité internationale, Québec a omis d’exiger un droit de veto lors de sa création pendant l’ère Harper. Le gouvernement Legault — au pouvoir pendant l’explosion des temporaires et en possession depuis avril 2022 d’un rapport des experts Pierre Fortin et Marc Termotte l’avisant de sa « perte de contrôle » du dossier — a choisi de ne pas utiliser le levier à sa disposition : réclamer, comme le lui permet l’entente Canada-Québec, l’ouverture de discussions qui lui permettraient d’en reprendre le contrôle.

Bref, alors que 7 Québécois sur 10 savent que l’explosion du nombre d’immigrants rend intenable — et probablement insoluble — la crise du logement, entre autres, nous sommes en présence d’une opposition solidaire fantasmant sur des « déportations » massives et d’un gouvernement caquiste qui se prétend nationaliste, mais refuse d’utiliser les pouvoirs que détient déjà la nation.

Bref, bienvenue au Québec.

Jean-François Lisée a dirigé le PQ de 2016 à 2018. Il vient de publier Par la bouche de mes crayons, aux éditions Somme toute/Le Devoir. jflisee@ledevoir.com

Source: Les expulsions barbares

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HESA: Canada’s Internationalization Strategy [spoiler, not a strategy]

2023/10/12 Leave a comment

Another insightful analysis by HESA that applies to other areas of government than Global Affairs:

A couple of months ago, I was invited to participate in a Global Affairs Canada (GAC) stakeholder roundtable on its Strategic Plan for the next five years.  It was very kind of them to invite me and a few others to be part of the consultation.  It was an interesting window into how the federal government thinks about policy and – especially – strategy.

It seems to me that GAC is in the education business for three reasons.

  1. It has a commercial function in that it exists to make things easier within the limits of existing provincial and federal legislation to assist in increasing educational imports. 
  2. It has a diplomatic/soft power function in that it is, in conjunction with institutions, meant to generate ongoing goodwill towards Canada with current and future world leaders through programs of educational and cultural exchange. 
  3. It has an immigration function is there to promote immigration via education.  That’s been the policy of the Government of Canada for a decade and a half now. 

But instead of talking about goals and the role of GAC in these three areas, the department chose to jump straight into talking about four “pillars”: digital marketing, diversification (in the sense of widening the international student base beyond India and China), scholarships and education agents. The background papers for those four pillars are available here (there are also another 9 or so background papers here, and kudos to the folks at GAC for making all of this public…it would be normal in other countries, but in Canada, this counts as a major act of transparency).

I don’t want to dismiss these pillars – they are all important – but they don’t really amount to a strategy.  They are more like issue management.  And as a result, what pervaded the discussion was a mixture of presentism and mission confusion.  By presentism, I mean that the conversation tended to focus on “how do we make minor changes to things we do now” rather than “what should we be trying to achieve in this area”?  This was most evident in the discussion about the small suite of scholarships that that GAC runs such as the Canada-ASEAN Scholarships, the Canadian International Development Scholarships Program, and the CARICOM Faculty Leadership Program.  All the questions were about “how can we make these work better?”, where “better” means “in line with educational objectives with respect to student recruitment diversification.  This was disappointing.   The possibility of aligning these with actual foreign policy objectives, like, say, our vaunted turn to the Indo-Pacific?  Not on the table.

Similarly on the question of digital marketing – the Government of Canada spends $5 million year, spread across 25 countries (not India and China), on “promoting the benefits of studying in Canada as they relate to the primary drivers influencing international students’ choice of study destination” (which,  apparently do notinclude immigration – more on that below).  What was at issue was not “is spending this money a good idea?” either in the sense of “is there any evidence that this advertising is working” or “is there any evidence that there is a market failure here given how much institutions themselves spend on marketing?”.  Just, again, “how could we do it better” in the sense of more “efficiency”, not “should we be doing this at all”?

The issue of agents was a bit more intriguing.  As a host of recent news stories have suggested, there are some serious cases of study permit fraud in Canada and we could certainly stand to gain from being more pro-active and adopting stricter controls on agents as other countries have done through the London Statement (which is a good policy in theory, though I suspect over-rigorous enforcement of such policies are a potential nightmare).  But tucked into the paper is a sentence which suggest that from GAC’s perspective the problem is not fraud per se, but “the wrong kind” of students, to wit:

This advising fee model [among student agents] has led to a lack of quality control with respect to study permit applications, resulting in a huge increase in applications from students who have no chance of being approved for a Study Permit, increasing IRCC workloads and contributing to the backlogs in the system, negatively impacting genuine, high-quality prospective students. [emphasis added]

The sharp-eyed will see links here back to the whole “trusted provider” approach that IRCC is taking, only for some reason it’s taking aim at agents rather than institutions.  In any event, we see here that a group of Ottawa officials have a very clear idea in their heads with respect to “genuine” students vs. fake ones, “high-quality” students vs low-quality ones, etc.   And I’m guessing once again it has something to do with the use of the immigration tack.

Why do I think this?  Well, one very intriguing moment in the consultation happened when a fairly senior GAC employee recounted an event he had recently witnessed in Dubai.  At this event, an unnamed university President said something to the effect “come study at my university and you’ll be on a path to Canadian citizenship”.  This was deeply distressing to the GAC employee.  “That’s not what this program is for”, he huffed (he presumably meant both the PGWP program and pathway to Permanent Residency that follows). 

It was on Zoom and most everyone was muted, but I could still hear a lot of jaws dropping at this.  This is of course exactly what IRCC policy is meant to be for.  GAC might not like the policy that IRCC developed, but since it is responsible for selling the policy overseas, you’d think GAC would understand it.  The fact that not everyone there does, combined with the fact that – as noted above – GAC seems determined to ignore the evidence that immigration is a major factor in student choice, suggests some major communications gaps between Ottawa departments.  Maybe not the most auspicious conditions under which to launch a new strategy.

In short, I found this whole exercise to be well-meaning but not particularly strategic.  The strategy focuses on scholarships for students from other countries but refuse to link these scholarships to broader diplomatic or soft power goals.  The strategy wants to attract students from other countries using digital marketing and so forth but refuses to look at the link to immigration, because GAC and IRCC appear to be at cross-purposes on the subject.  It’s the kind of process that might lead to some tiny little improvements but never seems to have even considered the possibility of a strategy that was genuinely transformative.  I don’t feel that’s GAC’s fault, particularly: rather, boldness and ambition just aren’t in a lot of governments’ DNA these days.  Too bad.

Source: Canada’s Internationalization Strategy

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Meggs: Le Québec peut contrôler l’immigration temporaire, et voici comment

2023/10/11 Leave a comment

Former Quebec immigration official on the need to include the IMP in the immigration Accord Canada-Québec:

Il est facile de se perdre dans la répartition entre Ottawa et Québec et on peut se demander qui est responsable de l’explosion de l’immigration temporaire. En fait, les deux gouvernements y contribuent, mais grâce à l’Accord Canada-Québec relatif à l’immigration et à l’admission temporaire des aubains de 1991, le Québec peut la réguler sur son territoire.

Il y a quatre sources légales d’immigration temporaire — les demandeurs d’asile et trois programmes de permis, un pour les permis d’études et deux pour les permis de travail, soit le Programme des travailleurs étrangers temporaires (PTET) et le Programme de mobilité internationale (PMI). Selon les données sur le nombre de titulaires de ces trois programmes au 31 décembre 2022, les permis d’études représentaient 46,3 % du total, le PTET 17,5 % et le PMI 36,3 %.

En ce qui concerne les demandeurs d’asile, la situation géopolitique du Canada le rend unique parmi les pays développés. Depuis l’application de l’Entente sur les tiers pays sûrs à l’ensemble de la frontière canado-américaine, le seul moyen d’arriver au Canada pour demander l’asile est par avion. Le Canada se sert des visas et des permis temporaires pour essayer de limiter l’arrivée des personnes demandant l’asile.

Au début de l’année, une décision du gouvernement fédéral visant à réduire rapidement le nombre, considérable, de demandes de visas de visiteurs semble avoir donné lieu à une augmentation importante de demandeurs d’asile aux aéroports, surtout à Toronto et à Montréal. Le Québec régule, par les seuils d’immigration permanente, le nombre de ceux qui seront admis à terme pour rester au Québec, mais pas le nombre de ceux qui arrivent.

Pour le Programme des étudiants étrangers, les provinces, compte tenu de leur compétence en matière d’éducation, peuvent adopter les politiques visant à réduire le nombre de jeunes de l’étranger qui s’inscrivent dans leurs systèmes. Elles ont aussi la responsabilité de désigner les établissements d’enseignement pour les fins d’un permis d’études.

Au Québec, grâce à l’Accord, le fédéral ne peut délivrer un permis d’études sans le consentement du ministère québécois responsable de l’immigration. Pour signaler son consentement, le Québec délivre un Certificat d’acceptation du Québec pour études. Il établit les conditions afférentes et peut décider d’en limiter le nombre qui sera accordé annuellement. À ce jour, il n’y a pas eu de plafond sur le nombre de CAQ-études délivrés.

Il est évident que c’était l’intention des négociateurs de l’Accord que le Québec régule l’ensemble des admissions, permanentes et temporaires. On le voit dans le titre même de l’Accord et dans le préambule, ainsi que dans le titre et la substance de l’Entente Couture-Cullen (1978) sur laquelle l’Accord a été basé, ainsi que dans l’Accord du lac Meech.

En ce qui concerne les travailleurs, au moment de la signature de l’Accord, le PTET était le seul programme visant les travailleurs étrangers temporaires. Il s’agissait d’un programme relativement mineur incluant surtout les travailleurs agricoles saisonniers. Il servait réellement et uniquement de dernier recours pour les employeurs souhaitant pouvoir des postes d’une durée limitée et ayant fait la démonstration que tout effort a été fait pour trouver de la main-d’oeuvre locale.

Il n’est donc pas très surprenant que l’article de l’Accord sur le consentement du Québec pour l’admission des travailleurs étrangers fasse référence à ceux « dont l’admission est régie par les exigences du Canada touchant la disponibilité de travailleurs canadiens ». Il n’y avait pas non plus de politique visant à offrir la résidence permanente aux travailleurs temporaires. Pour demander la résidence permanente, il fallait le faire de l’étranger, une stipulation qui demeure dans l’Accord, mais ne s’applique pas depuis plus de vingt ans.

En ce qui concerne donc ce PTET, la source des fameux « permis fermés », le Québec détermine quels employeurs seront autorisés à embaucher combien d’effectifs et à quelles conditions, et il délivre un CAQ-travail aux personnes embauchées dans le programme. Encore une fois, il établit les conditions du CAQ-travail et peut en limiter le nombre. À ce jour, le gouvernement n’a pas mis de plafond annuel sur le nombre de CAQ-travail.

En 2014, le gouvernement Harper a divisé le PTET en deux pour pouvoir resserrer les règles concernant l’embauche de main-d’oeuvre de l’étranger pour les besoins du marché du travail. Il a créé un autre programme, le Programme de mobilité internationale, pour les personnes étrangères travaillant temporairement au Canada pour d’autres raisons. Normalement, la création de ce programme aurait dû être abordée par le Comité mixte, l’instance bilatérale créée par l’Accord pour gérer son application et résoudre les différends en matière d’immigration, mais on ne sait pas si cela a été le cas. Il suffit de dire que le Québec ne délivre pas de CAQ-travail dans le cadre du PMI.

Deuxième programme en importance après les permis d’études, le PMI a connu une croissance fulgurante dans les dix dernières années et est devenu le chemin principal pour la transition d’un statut temporaire à un statut permanent.

Si le Québec voulait réguler l’ensemble de son immigration, dans le cadre quasi constitutionnel qu’offre l’Accord, il suffirait de donner les instructions au Comité mixte de négocier les démarches nécessaires pour assurer le consentement du Québec aux permis de travail du PMI. Cela étant dit, même avec un tel contrôle, le gouvernement sera-t-il prêt à s’en servir pour inclure l’immigration temporaire dans sa planification pluriannuelle d’immigration ?

Source: Le Québec peut contrôler l’immigration temporaire, et voici comment

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Foreign doctors take up more medical residency spots as Canadians struggle to get in

2023/10/10 1 Comment

Another distortion of higher education objectives through international students (policy dates from 2010):

Canada has an acute shortage of doctors — a staffing crisis that is expected to get much worse in the years ahead as the number of residency positions on offer fails to keep up with rapid population growth.

Despite those challenges, roughly 1,000 Canadian doctors who went to school abroad are turned away every year because they can’t get residency spots in Canada, according to a CBC News review of medical school data. Physicians are required to go through a residency in order to be licensed to practice.

Canadian doctors who want to come home to work are routinely told it’s not possible because resources are limited and there are only so many residency positions to go around.

Source: Foreign doctors take up more medical residency spots as Canadians struggle to get in

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