CALEB NICKERSON

PONTIAC Oct. 9, 2019

In the runup to the federal election on Oct. 21, The Equity has been putting questions out to the . . .

candidates vying for a seat in Pontiac.

This week’s question: What are your views on the current levels of immigration to Canada, and what, if anything, would you change about the system?

Denise Giroux – NDP

Our immigration system should be rooted in fairness, respect, and dignity. The shortage of skilled labour in Quebec calls for increasing our immigration targets to meet the needs of our workforce and improving foreign credentials recognition, not reducing the numbers as the CAQ proposes to do. We can create 300,000 new decent paying jobs—not in the deadly and polluting oil or arms industries, but by producing the goods and services real people need to improve their quality of life: retrofitting our homes, expanding our use of renewable energies, improving health care and home care, supporting organic farms and sustainable, fair trade. We also need to expand federal training programs for underemployed youth within our Indigenous communities and facilitate lifelong learning in every workplace by requiring employers to use one per cent of their payroll for this purpose.

Family reunification is another critical part to ensuring the successful settlement and integration of new immigrants; the unfair cap on applications to sponsor parents and children and tackle the backlog denying reunification must be lifted.

Canada also has a vital role in resettling people forced out of their homes by conflict, persecution and disasters but under the Liberal government the backlog of asylum seekers is set to more than double in the next few years. Canadians are proud of the 25,000 refugees welcomed in the last few years but we can and should do more. An NDP government will fix the system to get rid of the backlog, and work with humanitarian agencies within and outside the country to resettle refugees in our communities and ensure they are given the support they need to build successful lives and new homes here in Canada.

Jonathan Carreiro-Benoit – Bloc Quebecois

We should take less immigrants and take more care of them. Quebec wants the integration of the new arrivals in our culture and language, mainly in the rural regions. We have an issue with labour in our small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We propose to lower the level of immigration for the time that we are restructuring the way that we integrate them in the labour market. I’m pretty sure we can get them a job to make things easier for our producers and our contractors. The Bloc will propose the same things of Quebec on those points: more decision power on who come in Quebec and less federal bureaucracy. We need to put immigrants where we need them. Not in metropolises like Montreal. Regions need them. I think Ottawa needs to understand all the territories and the provinces in the respect of each government. That’s not a division or anything in report with some quibbles. It’s just about respect in the Quebec nation and the National Assembly.

Mario Belec –

People’s Party

The primary aim of Canada’s immigration policy should be to economically benefit Canadians and Canada as a whole. It should not be used to forcibly change the cultural character and social fabric of our country. And it should not put excessive financial burdens on the shoulders of Canadians in the pursuit of humanitarian goals.

Despite Canada already accepting more immigrants than almost any other country, both the Liberals and Conservatives support an unsustainable increase in the annual immigration intake, and are using mass immigration as a political tool to buy votes among immigrant communities.

Demographic studies have shown that newcomers are a bit younger on average than Canadians, but not enough to have a noticeable impact on the rate of aging. The Liberal government has made matters worse by increasing the number of parents and grandparents accepted under the family reunification program.

Our plan is:

• Substantially lower the total number of immigrants and refugees Canada accepts every year, from 350,000 to between 100,000 and 150,000, depending on economic and other circumstances.
• Reform the immigration point system and the related programs to accept a larger proportion of economic immigrants with the right skills.
• Accept fewer resettled refugees and limit the number of immigrants accepted under the family reunification program, including abolishing the program for parents and grandparents.
• Limit the number of temporary foreign workers and make sure that they fulfil temporary positions and do not compete unfairly with Canadian workers.
• Ensure that every candidate for immigration undergoes a face-to-face interview and answers a series of specific questions to assess the extent to which they align with Canadian values and societal norms.
• Increase resources for CSIS, the RCMP and Canadian Immigration and Citizenship to do interviews and thorough background checks on all classes of immigrants.

  Will Amos –

  Liberal Party

  Immigration plays an important role in Canada’s success. In communities across the country, new Canadians work hard teaching our children, caring for us when we’re sick, starting new businesses and creating good jobs. These contributions are needed now more than ever before. As our population grows older and family sizes grow smaller, businesses and communities are struggling to find enough workers, putting services and our economy at risk. Our agricultural and food processing sectors in particular are facing important labour shortages. That’s why our Liberal government launched the Agri-Food Immigration Pilot Project to meet labour needs on farms and the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilots to attract skilled newcomers to communities who need them.

  Liberals recognize the importance of immigration to Canada’s prosperity, however, we also understand that immigration must be properly managed and undertaken in an orderly fashion. The Auditor General’s report clearly demonstrates the effects of the inefficient and poorly-resourced asylum system left by the Harper Government. In Budget 2019, the Liberal government invested an additional $1.18 billion to better enforce our borders. We also introduced a triage project which helped facilitate the movement of asylum seekers when the influx was highest.

  To keep our economy strong and growing, a re-elected Liberal government will move forward with modest and responsible increases to immigration, with a focus on welcoming highly skilled people who can help build a stronger Canada. We will continue to work with the United States to modernize the Safe Third Country Agreement. Furthermore, to ensure communities are able to attract and support new Canadians, we will establish a new Municipal Nominee Program to allow municipalities, chambers of commerce and local labour councils to directly sponsor permanent immigrants. This means that Pontiac’s farmers and entrepreneurs would be able to more easily access the workers they need.

  Claude Bertrand –

  Green Party

  The numbers from Statistics Canada show that the baby boomers (that portion of the Canadian population so-called because they were born during a sudden increase in birth rates during the post war era; specifically designating those born from 1946 to 1964) have now come to retire. There are now just about as many Canadians over 65 years of age (6 million of them) then there are Canadians younger than 14 years old (5.8 million). The problem is that in just over ten years, there will be a shortfall of 2.2 million Canadians in the 20 to 50 years of age bracket. Those are the very people on whom the baby boomers are counting on to take care of them as they grow old. If nothing is done, a smaller generation of younger Canadians will be required to bear the burden of supporting our large aging population.

  The solution is to gradually compensate the 2.2 million population shortfall through immigration. Green Party MP’s will push for measures which will ease the integration of immigrants into the Canadian society. We will ensure that professionals being considered for immigration have the licensing requirements for their professions clearly explained before entry.

  Green Party MPs will work with professional associations to create a robust system for evaluating the education and training credentials of immigrants against Canadian standards, with the goal of expediting accreditation and expanding professional opportunities for immigrants.

  Green Party MPs will lead a national discussion to define the term “environmental refugee” and advocate for its inclusion as a refugee category in Canada and accept an appropriate share of the world’s environmental refugees into Canada.

  Dave Blackburn – Conservative Party

  A Conservative government will work immediately to restore the fairness, order and compassion of our immigration system. We will safeguard and emphasize economic immigration, stand up for families and ensure that spouses and children can be reunited. We will work to improve language training to ensure greater proficiency in English and French and newcomers’ ability to succeed economically and socially.

  We will improve credential recognition and make it easier for new Canadians who have existing skills that meet our standards to work here. We all lose out when doctors and engineers and technicians are not able to practice their profession. This issue is very important for Quebec.

  We will ensure that our system prioritizes people facing true persecution – focus government sponsorship on the victims of atrocities – and restore integrity to our system by supporting the consistent application of fair rules. We will work to reunite survivors of genocide with family members who have already resettled in Canada.

  We will put an end to illegal border crossings crisis by closing the loophole in the Safe-Third Country Agreement that allows some people to skip the line and avoid the queue.