Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Issue 2 - Evidence - Meeting of November 27, 2013
OTTAWA, Wednesday, November 27, 2013
The Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade met this day at 4:22 p.m. to examine the subject matter of those elements contained in Divisions 4 and 16 of Part 3 of Bill C-4, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013, and other measures.
Senator A. Raynell Andreychuk (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, we are going to commence our meeting today by video conference on the subject matter of those elements contained in Divisions 4 and 16 of Part 3 of Bill C-4, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures.
We are the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. This is a pre-study of Bill C-4. We have been given two parts to study, one to do with passports, but more particularly in this session we are looking at Division 16 of Part 3 of the act, which has to do with a new immigration policy.
We have with us by video conference, from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Government of New Zealand, Christine Hyndman, Manager, Immigration Policy; Sam Foley, Senior Advisor, Immigration Policy; and Fraser Richards, Senior Solicitor, I believe with the same Immigration Policy division.
Welcome to the committee by way of video conference. We generally like an opening statement, and if you can provide us with a few minutes for questions and answers, it would be very much appreciated. I'm not sure who is making the presentation.
Ms. Hyndman?
Christine Hyndman, Manager, Immigration Policy, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Government of New Zealand: Thank you. Can you hear us?
The Chair: Yes, we can.
Ms. Hyndman: Excellent.
Thank you very much for inviting us to attend and present to your committee. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is responsible for both the policy and delivery of immigration in New Zealand. We have had an expression of interest for our skilled migrant categories since 2003, and we consider that it has been operating successfully over the last 10 years, so I would be very pleased to answer any questions that the committee has.
I do have with me Sam Foley, Senior Immigration Policy Advisor, who has been involved both in policy development and also in operating when he worked in our London branch, and also Mr. Fraser Richards, who is Senior Solicitor in the department and very familiar as well with our immigration legislation.
The Chair: Could I ask the first question? Your policy — and I'm presuming you're aware of what we're introducing here in Canada — can you tell us whether it is similar? Obviously, there will be some variations because of our varying structures, but perhaps having quickly reviewed our proposals, are they similar to yours? Our questions will be on what we know about our proposals, and we want to test them against what you've already been doing for several years.
Ms. Hyndman: Yes. From what we can tell, they are very similar, which is not surprising to us, because we know that CIC has consulted extensively with us. We've had officials come and visit and observe our system a number of times over the past two to three years, and we've provided considerable information both about policy detail, about how we implemented the system, and also about the outcomes of the system to your government. We do, therefore, feel confident that the main elements are very similar.
There are a couple of enhancements being proposed in your legislation which we don't have. I think one is that it can be used for people entering temporarily, as we understand it, and the other one is that employers will have access to applicants' details. That is something we are moving toward, but it's not something we currently do.
The Chair: Okay.
I do have a list. I'm going to turn to Senator Fortin-Duplessis to ask the first question.
[Translation]
Senator Fortin-Duplessis: Thank you for getting up this early in order to answer our questions.
If you could go back to the time when you were implementing your expression of interest, would you change anything?
[English]
Ms. Hyndman: I don't think that there is anything large that we would do differently. The one area which is a matter of pure operationalization, and therefore I think not an issue at the legislative end, is that when we voted, the questions that applicants have to ask were hard coded into the system and the system was Internet based.
The Chair: We have lost our connection.
I will go to Item No. 3. Is it agreed that we not go in camera?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Item 3 is the study that we put forward on the floor of the Senate, on the economic and political developments in the Republic of Turkey, their regional and global influences, the implications for Canadian interests and opportunities and other related matters. That was the agreed reference that we re-tabled in the Senate chamber. The Senate has adopted this reference for us. The only item of business under this reference would be the consideration of a draft report, which was our report as tabled June 20, 2013.
I need a motion that we adopt the draft report as tabled June 20, 2013, as a report under this reference, and then I will table it in the Senate.
Senator Dawson: So moved.
The Chair: Agreed?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Perfect, so we've got that.
Have we made contact again? We have you visually but we don't have a voice connection yet. I take it you can hear us but we cannot hear you. That is the problem.
Ms. Hyndman: Can you hear us?
The Chair: We can now hear you.
Ms. Hyndman: Okay.
The Chair: All right, so perhaps you could finish. I don't want to lose you again, so I'm going to move very swiftly. You were in the middle of answering a question. I don't know if you'd completed your answer or not.
Ms. Hyndman: Not quite. I will complete it quickly.
There was no legislative issue with regard to the implement of the EOI system. The one difficulty that we have experienced is merely in the design of it from the perspective that the initial questions were hard coded and that made it very expensive to change when we changed policy. However, the mechanism of the EOI with regard to enabling the national government to choose people well, and to only seek applications from people who meet the criteria, has worked very well from our perspective.
Senator Ataullahjan: Which industries or sectors most benefited from the expression of interest program?
Ms. Hyndman: The policy that we have is targeted towards high-skilled areas, so basically all sectors have benefited because New Zealand has an issue of very high rates of emigration. That is balanced out by a high level of immigration of about 1 per cent of our population per year. As we share a labour market with Australia, which economically is generally slightly healthier than New Zealand, we lose 0.7 per cent or 0.8 per cent of our population and our labour force every year.
On that basis there hasn't been a particular sector, I would say, which has benefited more than any others. It's merely that an employer who has a skilled vacancy can offer it to a prospective migrant who otherwise meets criteria. They can express interest and if they meet criteria they will be invited to apply.
Senator Verner: Has your system been audited and evaluated since 2003 on a routine basis to determine if it was achieving its objectives and goals? If so, what were the results? Have these assessments led to several adjustments and improvements?
Ms. Hyndman: I think that here we would make a distinction between the policy settings and the actual expression of interest system. The policy settings for the skilled migrant category have indeed been subject to ongoing evaluation and monitoring. We've had a number of very large research projects which have looked at the outcomes of people selected. We now have an ongoing mechanism that integrates a number of government databases by which we can determine outcomes of where people stay in the country, what incomes they are earning after they have arrived and so forth, and those have generally indicated that the skilled migrant category is working very well.
With regard to the expression of interest system, that has probably been not so much evaluated in itself. There are questions sometimes. The one outstanding question is also a policy question, which is whether we should select people a little lower down in the rankings that the EOI gives them in order to meet our residence target, but that, once again, is not a question of the mechanism. The mechanism is delivering as it was intended.
Fraser Richards, Senior Solicitor, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Government of New Zealand: The only thing I'd add is that our immigration went through a complete review when the new Immigration Act 2009 was passed. The EOI expression of interest and the invitation to apply system was brought across almost in its entirety to the new legislation.
Senator Verner: Have you been confronted with several cases of fraud from foreign applicants or employers, such as false statements?
Ms. Hyndman: I would say that there is an ongoing risk in immigration because the prize of living in a country like New Zealand or Canada is a very valuable prize and people can be tempted. The expression of interest is pretty much purely declaration. We do not verify the information that people provide us at that point. That is one of the mechanisms which keeps it inexpensive to the applicant because the fees that applicants pay fully fund our immigration decision-making system.
When someone is invited to apply, at that point they are required to submit documentary evidence of the things they are claiming, such as their qualifications or their skilled work experience, the job offer and so forth. Therefore, it is possible for fraud to be attempted at that point, but the verification that we undertake is obviously intended to discover that and prevent it.
Mr. Richards: I will also add to that. If fraud is detected at the application stage and that fraud occurred in the expression of interest stage, that means the application itself can be declined with no other reason, and there is no appeal right if fraud was the cause of the issue of the invitation to apply.
There are some safeguards built in, but like any system, immigration in particular, all fraud can't be ruled out. There is a small element of fraud, but there are safeguards and protections built into the legislation itself, and the ability in the legislation to do something after the point in time in which residence has been granted.
The Chair: We take from your answer that you have not detected any more fraud than necessarily might be the case in other immigration policies that you have; is that correct?
Ms. Hyndman: Yes.
Senator Dawson: I have a question on the cost of changing and operating this system. Do I understand correctly that it's a self-financing operation so that the people who apply pay for it?
Ms. Hyndman: Yes.
Senator Dawson: Is it more expensive than the former system for applicants or was the previous system more accessible?
Ms. Hyndman: The costs fall slightly differently. Previously, because applicants for residence all submitted an application, there was no step of expression of interest and invitation to apply, therefore everyone who was applying for residence basically paid the full fee. A number of people who then found that they did not meet the criteria for residence had basically paid the fee in order to receive a declined decision.
With the EOI system we have there is a mechanism on the website so that people can do a dummy run, effectively, to test what their points would be and see whether they would likely be invited to apply, and that is free. Then the expression of interest itself is cheap for us, but possibly not so cheap for every applicant. I believe it is now about $400 or $450 for the applicant to undertake, to fill it out and submit it into the pool. If they are invited to apply then the application fee for the full application is more in the area of around $2,000, plus they have to pay for their health screens and so forth.
Overall, yes, it is more expensive than the total application fee was beforehand, but the people who are paying the full fee are very likely to be approved and the people who are not likely to be approved pay either nothing or just a few hundred dollars.
Senator Dawson: Thank you; that answers my question perfectly.
[Translation]
Senator Demers: Since the Government of Canada intends to model its expression of interest system in part on yours, do you have any advice for us, from your experience and any difficulties you had to face?
[English]
Sam Foley, Senior Advisor, Immigration Policy, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Government of New Zealand: I think, as Ms. Hyndman said earlier, there's not a huge amount we would do differently this time around. We had some technical limitations initially. We are getting a new IT system for the immigration business coming in over the next two to five years, and we are hoping to gather leverage from more modern technology and redevelop our expression of interest system during that time.
I'd say it's much better to get the technical aspects right early on, which goes more to implementation than the legislation. Other than that, I think it's been very good for us in the way we can manage our immigration business program and the numbers, keep queues down and generally smooth the process.
Senator Housakos: I have a number of questions. One is a follow-up to Senator Dawson's question regarding the cost of the process. In short, has the program been a revenue generator or is the cost of the program just covering the cost of operations?
Ms. Hyndman: Legally we aren't able to make a profit from our fees. There are quite strict rules around the setting of fees for government services in New Zealand. About 20 years ago we moved to user pay for a large number of government services, and so there is a quite well-developed set of rules amongst the Office of the Auditor General, the Regulations Review Committee of Parliament and our Treasury to ensure that departments do not gold plate the services and are efficient, but also do not expose the country to financial risk. That is a very long-winded way of saying that we have quite a sophisticated cost allocation model, which does mean that the system pays for itself.
We are hoping, with some of the changes that Mr. Foley alluded to as we redevelop the IT systems, to make it even cheaper with the new technology that we will be able to use.
Senator Housakos: In our country — and I assume you've had the same experience — we are having a hard time overlapping our immigration policy with the market sector demand for skilled labour, manual labour or whatever the case may be. There have always been gallant efforts on the part of our government to set up a system where our immigration influx corresponds to the marketplace demands and, unfortunately, we haven't been successful.
Have you seen a difference prior to 2003 and post-2003, once this program was implemented, if your marketplace requirements in the immigrant skill set that is obviously being recruited under this level have actually helped in the marketplace? In what ways do you quantify the marketplace need today?
In Canada right now we have certain high-skilled labour shortages and simultaneously we have manual labour shortages, and we're trying to cope with those two issues. If you have tangible evidence about the results before and prior in New Zealand, can you elaborate?
Mr. Foley: As Ms. Hyndman mentioned earlier, the expression of interest is a particular aspect of change that we introduced in 2003, replacing our previous general skills category with a skilled migrant category, so two quite different immigration systems both based on points. The new system incorporates that first step, the expression of interest.
More importantly, in terms of the outcomes, we're seeing it has moved our model from a very human capital model to where a person's qualifications, age and skill were assessed and a person got residence based purely on those aspects, to one where those points in human capital characteristics get you so far but the decision as to whether a person gets residence is whether they can find skilled employment in New Zealand.
That's probably the one aspect that's made the biggest difference in our system. It has moved very much from a human capital supply model much more to a mixed or demand side model. It has resulted in employers offering jobs, which reflects the demand for all those jobs, so the government has taken a step back in terms of selecting migrants and placing a lot more trust in the ability of employers to select the skilled migrants they need.
The outcomes we've seen since 2003 have been pretty impressive. In terms of the studies we've seen, we've generally got about a 92 per cent to 94 per cent employment rate of our migrants a year after they get residence. They earn considerably more than the average local-born population and very few are on any kind of government benefits. We are now able to log that data over time and it appears to be holding pretty steady.
The biggest change, as I said, is probably placing more trust in employers and picking people based on the jobs rather than purely on work experience and age.
Ms. Hyndman: Just to elaborate, we do not ``labour market test'' in the residence program. Therefore, if someone has a skilled job offer, the employer in that situation is not required to check that there is a local person available to do that job.
We do have a requirement in the policy that the salary be at market rates, although they can be a little tricky to determine in individual cases. That is intended to ensure that employers are not simply getting skilled people at a lower price than a local person would be prepared to supply those skills for.
With regard to temporary migration for employment, we do have labour-market testing for that, for our essential skills policy. That does not use the EOI system. It's probably much easier for us than it is for you. We're a country of only 4.6 million people, so labour-market testing is at least theoretically possible, whereas we do recognize that Canada has got hundreds, if not thousands, of different labour markets.
Senator Housakos: Is it fair to say the current program has met all your market demands, or would you say there still are some sectors, and what would they be in New Zealand where there's a shortage?
Ms. Hyndman: There are some ongoing shortages, and we have other policy mechanisms to meet those, which are around more streamlined mechanisms for pathways to residence, where employers have been accredited as good employers, effectively, or where a job is determined to be a persistent long-term shortage, in which case there is a much easier pathway to permanent residence than using the EOI system and going through the skilled migrant category. For example, certain medical professions are in that situation, various other registerable areas, although there, obviously people have to gain registration before they are able to actually practise here.
Mr. Foley: Our system doesn't support recruitment in the lower skilled area. We have seen structural skill shortages particularly in lower skilled areas like the agricultural sector, age care workers, care of the elderly.
Our policy deliberately doesn't help employers recruit in those areas. They generally have to go for the temporary workers. So we have seen some tensions in that area. Largely those jobs are ones that for whatever reason, through their location or their low pay, some New Zealanders won't do.
In terms of the high skilled end, it's not been our experience that the policy itself has been a barrier. I mean, New Zealand is competing for those types of skills at the really high end with all other countries, including Canada.
New Zealand has some advantages in our landscape and our pace of life and cost of living, but we're not generally able to compete on high salaries for some of those jobs with other countries, so some of those skill shortages are things that there's not much policy can do about.
Senator D. Smith: My question is similar to the one Senator Housakos asked. In Canada, for years we've had hundreds of thousands who want to come here, and the backlog was getting to the point where the waiting time was into the years. I think the reality was that some of the best and the brightest, where Canada might be their first choice, were going other places if they could get a quick answer rather than wait several years.
To the extent that you've implemented this, was the waiting time getting to be a problem in terms of being competitive and have you got it significantly down to the point that it's not an issue any more?
Ms. Hyndman: Yes and yes. We had real issues with our previous policies because they were kind of internationally equivalent. We ended up with excess demand from some countries where the majority of people would be declined. India was a particular issue. We had a backlog in our New Delhi branch of two years' worth of applications at the point that we changed over.
The decision times now are typically about six to nine months, so we have improved. We never had quite the backlog that Canada has had because you mostly are getting people that you're going to approve; therefore, you don't have to spend all of the time and all of the process and have all of the appeal rights of people who actually don't have a hope in heck but who nonetheless go through the process and get declined. As a result of that, it has just freed it up.
Mr. Foley: The other advantage is that we can select the highest, best people. If we have excess demand, we can limit that demand and select only the highest people rather than the first in and first served.
Senator D. Smith: I get it.
The Chair: Thank you.
I know we have run over time, but with the technical difficulties, I appreciate that you've stayed. We also appreciate your information.
It is a new program that is being put into place in Canada, and I hope you will follow it here to determine whether our implementation is as successful as you're indicating that yours is. I would like to thank, on behalf of the committee, all three of you for answering our questions today and outlining your program. It has been extremely helpful.
Senators, that's the last of our witnesses on this pre-study. In light of the short time frames, we've been working on a draft. I've had a bit of a difficulty, but I think we need to go into in camera. I need, after we go in camera, a resolution to allow staff of senators to stay, but first we have to go off camera.
(The committee continued in camera.)