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As the country settles into a new year, Canadian officials have set their sights on speeding up the immigration process, increasing the number of accepted applicants and strengthening foreign credential recognition.
"We are taking steps to modernize our immigration process that will benefit all of Canada, including Quebec," said Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism during a downtown press conference on Jan. 6. "Recently we announced changes to our immigration systems as part of our action plan for faster immigration. This plan, essentially, is a comprehensive series of improvements designed to speed up processing of applications and make Canada's immigration system more closely aligned and responsive to labor market needs."
Faster processing
There are currently more than 900,000 immigration applications under review and, regardless of their category, the process can sometimes take more than five years, according to Kenney, who described the wait time as "just too long." Hoping to accept as many as 265,000 new arrivals in 2009, officials plan, for the first time in 15 years, to decrease the number of people waiting.
One of the many issues with long wait times, Kenney explained, is Canada is not competitive when it comes to attracting highly skilled workers. These skilled workers are looking to other countries, like New Zealand or Australia, which have faster application times.
While certain areas of the family class immigration process time have been reduced by 40 per cent over the last three years, Kenney said it's still not fast enough. Part of the reason there are such long wait times for family class immigrants, he said, is the broad eligibility guidelines. With so many people eligible, immigration bureaus are getting flooded with applications.
"We have added additional resources to speed things up," Kenney said. "The reality is we can't have an immigration system that is all economic. We can't have an immigration system that is all humanitarian or that's all family. We need a mixed, balanced system that meets our economic needs, that stays true to our humanitarian traditions and brings families together."
Although Canadian officials are working to speed up processing time and, overall, welcoming more immigrants into the country, Kenney said there are no "magic solutions.”
"There are practical limits to how many people we can reasonably and successfully receive in Canada over a given year," Kenney said. "We've managed, over the course of the last decade, an average of, give or take, a quarter million (immigrants) a year which is one of the highest relative levels of immigration in the world. We don't have to apologize for not bringing in enough newcomers or for not being generous enough on the definition of family class. We just have some really serious operational challenges to try to reduce the waiting times and, believe me, we are working very hard."
Foreign credentials
"Recognizing the credentials of foreign-trained newcomers is obviously a significant challenge all across the country and that's why we recently established the Foreign Credentials Referral Office to help people get the information about recognizing their credentials and their labor market," Kenney said. "We recognize that Quebec has been working on this issue for some time as well and we need to cooperate closely."
Describing the process of getting foreign credentials recognized as a "big hurdle," Kenney said there have been efforts to create foreign offices that allow future Canadians to jumpstart credential recognition.
"This is a challenge in Canada," Kenney said, noting the more than 400,000 agencies that handle credential recognition. "I'm sure that, between the 10 provinces and those 400,000 agencies, we can cooperate more closely together so that people who arrive here with their skills and education can actually get to work in their chosen profession rather than survival jobs."
Economy and immigration
While some might question the potentiality of immigrants taking jobs from Canadians, Kenney said he and other officials see things in a different light. In consulting with human resource leaders across the country, Kenney found that Canada is in need of more workers to fuel the economy. Shutting down immigration due to short-term economic instability, he said, would come at a hefty price.
"While other countries are talking about lowering their immigration levels, Canada plans to maintain its current high level of immigration," Kenney said. "We're taking the long-term view. Immigration remains key to addressing our demographic challenges and the needs of our labor markets."
The economic situation will, in the future, continue to be monitored, Kenney clarified. If the economic situation were to continue its plummet in the long term, there would be modifications made to immigration policies that correlate to the country’s needs.
"Last year, even though it was a tough year, there was very significant job growth and most of those new jobs were taken thanks to immigration," said Kenney. "We need to look at the positive side of this and I encourage Canadians to maintain their traditional generosity and openness."