Halifax, Nova Scotia
March 15, 2016
As delivered
Well, thank you, Wadih. And good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It’s particularly good to see my former colleague, Mike Savage, the Mayor.
Last time I saw him, he was winning a prize in Ottawa from the Institute in Governance. And Wadih, you offered me a penthouse to live in Halifax?
But we do have limits on the gifts we’re allowed to accept.
It’s also a pleasure to acknowledge my colleague, Scott Brison, in the room, my Nova Scotia counterpart Lena Diab. And also, we had really good conversation with Gerry Mills of ISANS. They are doing a fantastic job.
You clapped before I gave the punch line.
And one good indicator of that is there are now zero people in hotels because ISANS has managed to settle them all. So, well done.
Now, what I and I’m pleased to be in Halifax. I’m also doing a swearing-in ceremony later today. We did the ISANS visit. So it’s great for me to be back here, it’s a real pleasure. And I think I’m beginning to get a message that you like immigrants in this province.
But what I’d like to do in my talk is to spend a little bit of time talking about the trip we’ve been on on refugees and some other matters since coming to office not even five months ago, and then get down to brass tacks and talk about Nova Scotia and immigrants. Okay? I think you’ll want to hear about that.
So let me start at the beginning, that I’m an economist by trade, and most of the jobs I’ve done have been economics related not all. Defence wasn’t entirely to do with economics, although it did cost a lot of money. But this job I’m doing now is different because it’s more less about dollars and cents and more it’s a matter of the heart, it’s a matter of who we are as Canadians, it’s a matter of working together in a national project to bring 25,000 people from the worst civil war, the worst refugee crisis in decades, over the Atlantic Ocean and here to receive and settle them in Canada. It is the right thing to do, and I am honoured to have a role in this job.
It was a big job to get the machine up and running. I had one visit to Lebanon, two to Jordan. But our civil servants came together in a magnificent way, and we did get the job done. We got 25,000 over here before the end of February. And it was amazing to see the hard work of our public servants and the country coming together to achieve this feat. But and this is a big but the real job is still being done. The real job is not just to get them here. We did that, but the real job is to equip them for success in Canada. And we have said from the beginning it’s good to do it fast. Because if you had been like me, visited the region and saw the conditions from which they were coming, you would agree with me it’s good to get them here quickly. But it’s even more important to do it right. And we, I think, have done it right on security issues, on health issues, and now 25,000 are here, and now our main challenges are to find housing for them, to find help them find jobs, and to help them learn French and English.
And the typical demographic picture of the average government-assisted refugee from Lebanon is not a word of English or French, not much education, large numbers of children, and probably never been on an airplane before they came from there to here. So there’s two sides to this coin. On the one hand, we want to help the most vulnerable. That’s the mission, and these are clearly among the most vulnerable. But secondly, it’s a harder job, given the vulnerability of our new Canadians, to equip them for success. It would be easier if they were all fluent in English, had PhDs and Master’s degrees, and they off they went. But they’re not. And so it is a challenge for all Canadians to equip them for success. And I’m sure that will happen, as it has with past waves of refugees, but it’s not without a whole lot of work, including from the business community.
And I am here speaking in large measure to the business community, so I want to thank the business community across the country and here in Halifax for your support. And we need your support in various ways. We are collecting money from the private sector. So far we’ve raised over $30 million, led by CN at five million, and part of this money goes explicitly for housing subsidies. And I am very happy to announce that today, thanks to CN and thanks to Ian Bird of the Canadian Foundation for Canada, and Denise Leahy, we are funding $200,000 for Halifax to support rental payments.
And I should not say we are funding; the private sector is funding, for which I am grateful. And I would also like to congratulate the Prince George Hotel as an exemplary employer, which has won the Refugee Employer Award, and because they have done a fantastic job not only employing refugees but also providing them language training. And so congratulations to the Prince George Hotel.
So we’re certainly making progress on housing. A couple of weeks ago, 52 percent of the refugees had been housed. Now we’re up to over two-thirds, including a hundred percent out of the hotels here in Halifax. There’s still a lot of work to do on the language training and on the jobs, and another area in which I ask employers for their support is to provide jobs for these people. And they need jobs, and I know that ISANS is very happy if you contact them to convey the jobs that may be available. Every job is important, and I do ask you for your support in this area.
So we’ve been doing other things in immigration. It’s not just refugees. As some of you may know, we’ve returned refugee health care. We’ve introduced our Citizenship Act so that no one can have their citizenship revoked anymore.
You know, we believe a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. We’re all equal. We don’t want two-tiered citizenship. If you commit a crime, you go to the jail, you don’t go to the airport. So that’s how it’s going to be under our new law, assuming it passes through both houses of Parliament, which it’s currently on the way to do, I hope.
We also have announced levels, and this brings me now to the question of Nova Scotia. And you know, I think I’ve heard the message that you want immigrants. I think there’s nothing like at least three conversations in the last three days with your Premier and my colleague Scott Brison to drive home that message, not to mention the two introductory speeches we just heard a few minutes ago. So I get it. I get it. And I agreed on the 300 after a couple of weekend conversations with the Premier, and then announced that on Monday, so that’s fine. But that’s not everything. You know, that’s a small part of the issue. You’re not really talking about 300 immigrants; you’re talking about thousands of immigrants into the future. And I have read the Ivany report, and I know they have substantial recommendations, not only on immigration but also on interprovincial migration and international students, and I support the ideas.
And I know that when a society faces an aging population and does not have access to immigrants, it’s a recipe for trouble. And if you don’t believe me, just look at Japan. Japan is a rapidly aging society, and for various social-cultural reasons, they can’t take too many immigrants, and they suffer the consequences. So you in Nova Scotia, we in Canada, don’t want this to happen because your population’s a bit more advanced in aging than the rest of the country, but all of us face an aging population. So immigration is important not just to Nova Scotia but to the country as a whole. And so I am determined to do as much as I can to increase the overall number of immigrants. And we have raised that number to 300,000 for 2016, and that is maximum capacity. We cannot get higher than 300,000, no matter what money we throw in. We cannot get higher than 300,000 this year. But now we are entering into consultations on immigration levels in 2017, ’18, ’19, and I am hoping that we will increase the capacity, partly through additional funds. I don’t control that, we’ll see in the next budget. But the more money we have, the more officials we can hire to do things quicker.
But equally important, I would say equally as important if not more important, we have to reform the way we do our business in the Immigration Department. We have to make it more efficient. We have to eliminate unnecessary processes. We have to learn to do things concurrently instead of consecutively. In brief, we have to learn from the lessons of the Syrian refugees, where we learned to do things quick but right, and we have to transfer those learnings to how we deal with economic immigrants and family immigrants, and that way we can improve our efficiency, and thereby allow more newcomers into this country.
So that’s really my number one priority, to improve the efficiency of my Department to allow more newcomers into this country. Of course some of those will be refugees, some of those will be Family Class, and one of my other major priorities is to reduce the unacceptably long processing times for spouses and other family members. It is disgraceful that, for Canada, it takes two years for spouses to be reunited when it should take more like six months. So that is another thing high on our agenda to achieve.
But because of the aging population, because of the needs of Nova Scotia, the needs of Canada, we must grow our economic immigrants over time. But economic immigrants include refugees. Refugees work. Economic refugees include family members. Most spouses work. Economic immigrants as defined also include spouses of principal applicants, some of whom don’t work. So we should get out of this foolishness of black versus white, economic versus others. All immigrants are economic immigrants in the sense that they contribute to our country.
Nova Scotia has led the way in many ways. It’s amazing how enthusiastic your province has been to accept refugees. Scott Brison tells me that all the time. He’s on the committee. And I know it is true. You’re trying you’re aiming for 1500, which is five times more refugees than you normally got, so that is one avenue for receiving newcomers. So congratulations to Nova Scotia on this huge refugee effort, and in particular to the settlement organizer for getting everybody out of the hotels so efficiently.
But not only that, not only the refugees, but you’ve also used up your whole quote of provincial nominees. That means you know how to work the system. You don’t leave any wasted. So every single one that you’re entitled to bring in, you do bring in, and that’s why you asked for more. But most other provinces don’t bring them all in. And so you are on top of your game on immigration, and, as was pointed out, you have a very satisfactory retention rate, 75 percent. Could be higher, but it’s a lot better than it used to be, and it’s certainly leading the way in the maritime provinces. So I think Nova Scotia is in good shape. But you can’t do it alone; you need federal help. And I’m going to come to that right now in the last part of my speech.
But one thing I am doing, with the support of your Premier and having spoken to Ministers of all provinces Atlantic provinces, is that I’m setting up a working group of Atlantic representatives, chaired by Bernie Derible, who’s an extremely competent staff person for me who’s in the room now, and having one representative from each of the four Atlantic provinces. And that group will work between now and when we pronounce on levels in the fall to think up ways to bring more immigrants into Atlantic Canada and to think of ways as well through which Atlantic Canada can retain a higher percentage of those who come. And I know Nova Scotia will play a major role in this working group because, as I’ve just said, you have in many ways led the way on these issues. And I hope this group will come up with good results that will be able to inform our levels decision later in the year.
So let me now just name three things that I want to do to move along this file with Nova Scotia and other provinces of Atlantic Canada. One, we’ve maintained the 2015 levels, absolutely. And through this committee and other means, I’m hoping to be able to have significant increases in levels in ‘17, ’18, ’19. Second, we want to reform Express Entry, and one of the major reforms is to improve the situation facing international students. I cannot think of a more fertile ground for which to look for new Canadians than international students. They are educated, by definition. They speak English or French, or they wouldn’t be at our universities. And they know something about the country. And they tend to be younger than me. So for all those reasons, they’re the best source for new Canadians, so we should court them actively.
And we’re doing that already in our Citizenship Act by restoring the 50 percent credit for time spent in Canada on the way to citizenship. But more importantly, I hope to address that with the through the reforms to the Express Entry system, which have kind of short-changed international students. And we’re just in the process of working on this, so this is not an announcement that we’ve actually done it; it’s telling you an intent to work on something. But this will certainly benefit Nova Scotia because you have many, many international students, or students in general, much more than your province would dictate. So if we can make progress on the international students, that will be a plus for Nova Scotia, and I very much hope we’ll be able to do that.
Finally, I would say don’t just think of provincial nominees. I don’t think Nova Scotia cares whether you get a new immigrant through the federal program or a new immigrant through provincial nominees. What does it matter? You want new immigrants skilled immigrants who can contribute to your economy. So since Nova Scotia already is doing well on immigration and understands it better than most, I think you could do even more to bring in more immigrants not just through provincial nominees but through working harder to access the federal economic immigrants by working between government and business to get applications in, to tailor those applications to do even better than you are currently doing on the economic immigrants that are federal. So in other words, don’t just look at provincial nominees: look as well at the federal economic immigrants and work to achieve the highest possible numbers in both of those streams.
So I, as I said, understand your message. You’d have to be an idiot not to understand.
And I’m telling you we’re going to work hard to achieve those objectives. So I thank you for listening to me.
I would be happy to take questions in English or French. Thank you all very much.
