Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism
Soroush: First and foremost, thank you so much for giving us your time. We basically have just a few questions. One question that I feel is integral/essential is: How did we get here in terms of the family reunification policy? Why was there such a backlog to begin with and why was it not foreseen in the past? Suddenly you bring out this new policy and many people are like “Oh my God, what is this?” but they don’t realize that this has been a problem for a while. How did the problem come into place?
Minister Kenney: There’s been a bigger problem that our Government inherited. When we came to office in 2006 we discovered that there was a total immigration backlog of 850,000 applications submitted, with application fees, in our system. And the reason this happened is because about 10 years ago the previous government brought in the new immigration act which imposed on the government an obligation to accept and process every application that it received. In a world where there is infinite demand to come to Canada but obviously a finite number of people that we can accept, that was a recipe for disaster. So, over the ensuing several years they were accepting about 450,000 immigrant applications a year, on average, but admitting 220,000 new permanent residents per year, on average; which means that they were over-selling the immigration plane to Canada 2 to 1. Let’s say there were 220,000 seats [on a plane], they were selling 440,000 tickets. So, every year there was a huge number of people who didn’t get on the plane and then they just added to that backlog year after year over-selling the plane by accepting a huge surplus of applications over admissions.
Some people think the problem is the incompetence of my department: “Why can’t you just process more; be more efficient?” That’s not the problem. Last year we admitted 280,000 permanent residents; the highest number in Canada since the First World War. Since we came to office we’ve increased immigration levels admitting, on average, 254,000 permanent residents per year. Some people confuse this and say that we’re bringing temporary [residents], no, those are permanent immigrants. That’s the highest sustained level of immigration in Canadian history. It is also the highest per capita level of immigration in the developed world. So the problem isn’t that we are insufficiently generous. The problem isn’t inefficiency in my department. The problem is, as generous as we are, there are still practical limits to how many people we can welcome and integrate. I don’t want a situation where we just increase immigration levels irrationally just to bring in more numbers regardless of the capacity of our economy and our society to integrate people. I want to make sure that the folks who are coming are able to find and keep good jobs or start successful businesses, that they’re able to integrate; that our healthcare system, our schools, our housing, has the capacity to absorb the people who are coming.
Now, we also must be mindful of public opinions. While Canadians are tremendously open to immigration and the diversity that comes with it, they also know that there are practical limits to how many people we can receive. Now, 8 out of 10 Canadians are consistently telling us, in polls and in consultations, that immigrations are already high enough or too high. Only 1 out of 10 Canadians say we should increase levels. So, next year we’re increasing levels a little bit. The operational target this year is 254,000. Next year we’re going up to 260,000, to be honest we’ll probably come up to 265,000. So, 8 out of 10 Canadians are saying “That’s enough. Don’t go above that,” but as long as we continue to receive 4-500,000 applications, guess what? The backlogs will grow and the wait times will get longer.
I’m sorry for the long answer, but you need to understand the broader problem. In the particular parents and grandparents program we’ve been receiving about 40,000 applications a year. But, historically governments, of different parties, have only admitted on average 17,000. Now, that’s still very generous. It’s a higher percentage of immigrations coming as parents and grandparents than to any other country. But, it’s still not nearly high enough to correspond to the demand of 40-50,000 a year. And so what we are trying to do as a government is to bring in the same kind of, frankly, common-sense management tools that every other immigrant receiving country has, so that the number of applications that we have to process roughly corresponds to the number of people that we can admit; so there’s an equilibrium rather than a big imbalance.
So this leads me to the announcement I made last week, the Action Plan for Faster Family Reunification. Oh, one last point. If I do nothing on parents and grandparents program we are headed for a backlog of 350,000 applications with a 20 year wait time by the end of this decade, the year 2020; if I do nothing. It is out of control. The easiest thing to do politically would be to do nothing. Just let that problem fester and say it was the other governments fault and, you know, we’ll get around to it. That would be irresponsible. It is totally unacceptable to tell people to wait 20 years, so we had to announce this thing.
Backlogs are created when applications exceed admissions over time and backlogs are reduced when admissions exceed applications over time. It is a math problem and so that’s what we’re doing. We are going to increase the number of admissions in that program from 15-25,000. That’s a 60% increase, it’s going to the highest level of admissions for parents and grandparents in our history and the share of our total immigration that will be amongst parents and grandparents will go from 6% to 9% as a result of this huge increase. At the same time we’re putting on the 2 year temporary pause. We’ll open up the program for new applications in 2 years, but our hope is that 2 years from now, as a result of these measures, the backlog will be about half as large as it currently is and the wait-times will be about half as long.
In the ensuing two years we will consult with Canadians, including the Persian community, on how we can redesign the parents program to make it sustainable, fast and fair in the future. Let me be clear about this. We are not suggesting that we should stop family reunification or even severely restrict it. What we are suggesting is that the program has to be better managed so we do not bring in way more applications each year than we are able to process and admit. And that’s where we’ll have to make difficult decisions. In the consultations we’ll look at all sorts of options. We’ll be releasing a discussion paper early in the New Year. We will have on-line consultations, town hall meetings round-table discussions, scientific polling, PMs will be involved, parliamentary committee on immigration will be studying this. The question will be: how can we better manage this program to, yes, maintain our tradition of family reunification, but to do so in a sustainable way that reflects our country’s limited resources.
The only way that I could reduce the backlog in the parents program without capping or reducing applications, so, the only way I could do this, through admissions, would be to go from 15,000 to 50,000 or 60,000 admissions a year of parents and grandparents. Now, I suppose, for people whose only concern is bringing their parents here, that might seem like a sensible option, but everyone else would be opposed to it because they know that three quarters of healthcare costs are associated with people after the age of 65. This is not an argument against family reunification. It’s an argument about scarce resources. It already takes people three years to get a family physician, 8 hours to see an emergency physician sometimes. Can you imagine what would happen if all of a sudden I tell the province “I’m sorry, over the course of the next five years we are going to bring in 300,000 additional senior citizens from overseas.” They’ll think I’m absolutely nuts. So, I’m just telling you the truth, which is yes to family reunification, yes to parental sponsorship, but on a sustainable basis.
Mary Jo: Part of the question is, as you mentioned, it is a math issue, but is there an answer to the question of why this problem wasn’t foreseen from the beginning?
Minister Kenney: No, because the previous government should have seen, when they made the legal change in 2001, they should have seen that there would be a perpetual surplus of applications over the ability to admit people. But here’s the problem; you know what I honestly think the answer to the question is? Canadians, we’re notoriously polite. We don’t like saying “no” to anyone and they just didn’t want to say “no.” They just didn’t want to say to some people “I’m sorry, we won’t be able to accept and process your application this year.” It was easier to say “yes” to everyone all the time. And when you say “yes” to everyone all the time you end up with a problem like this. That’s what it was, it was a lack of political courage. I’m sorry, that’s my own view.
Soroush: There’s a famous saying that “when you try to please everyone, you please no one.”
Minister Kenney: Well that’s what’s ended up happening. And so, some people are going to be ticked off at us that we’re saying “you can’t submit your new application for parental sponsorship in the next 2 years.” I say to them: “Let me be honest with you. You submit the application and you’re just going to the back of an 8 year queue.” In a sense, what’s the point? Give us some patience as we try to fix this and in 2 years when we reopen the program based on new criteria you should be able to apply and the wait times will then be 4 years and in the meantime, in principle, your parents will be able to get a visa for an extended visit of up to 2 years on a 10 year multiple entry visa, this new Super Visa, which will also protect the interest of taxpayers by requiring that they obtain private healthcare insurance. In that sense, I think everyone’s better off. People who are currently in the queue will see Mom and Dad quicker, people who are not yet in the queue should be able to reapply in a faster-moving program and people in general should, in principle, be able to get the Super Visa for extended visits. So, I’m hoping that reasonable people will support it.
Mary Jo: I wanted to ask you quickly about the Super Visa. Moving forward, once you potentially have the backlog in order, is the Super Visa going to remain ongoing? Is the intention to actually, at some point, reduce the amount of parents and grandparents immigrating to Canada?
Minister Kenney: I’ll tell you this, I don’t see a time when it’s going to go more than 25,000 that we admit. So, it will probably in the range of 20,000 in the future. So, we do intend to keep the Super Visa available in the future. It starts on December 1st, people must demonstrate that the hosting family here has an adequate income to take care of their parents for the 2 year extended stay, which is defined as the low-income cut-off. It is quite modest; it’s like $17,000 for an individual. Secondly, the parents must be medically admissible. So, they cannot have a serious pre-existing health condition. Thirdly, they must demonstrate when they come to the airport, here, that they have a healthcare policy that covers them for the duration of their stay in Canada. As long as there’s a high degree of compliance, as long as we don’t see a whole bunch of those parents visiting making false refugee claims or overstaying; as long as they respect the rules, we will be able to maintain the program. If there is widespread abuse of the rules, we’ll have to look at it again. Our hope is to keep it in place long term.
Soroush: One main concern that comes up in the bigger picture is the fact that some issues are not mathematical. Family values or psychological factors, for example. With regards to Canada, we have a multicultural society. Some cultures, perhaps, care a lot more about family values and perhaps see this new policy from a very different perspective than others may see it. Has this policy taken this multiculturalism into account that people from different cultures, such as the Iranian culture in which there is a very close relationship between adults and their parents, may have different perspectives on this issue? Has the government taken this issue into consideration that some people will react very differently than others?
Minister Kenney: Yes, absolutely and I think you can see the fact that we have taken into account the huge priority that many new Canadians place on family reunification. You can see the fact that we have taken that into account in our policy. So, this explains why, against public opinion, we’re increasing parental reunification massively to the highest levels ever by going up by 10,000 a year, increase by 60%; because we are very sensitive to that view. If I was just following general public opinion, we would eliminate the program. Most Canadians don’t see the need for it. A lot of older immigrants say: “When I came here I wasn’t able to sponsor my parents, we made it on our own.” A lot of native born Canadians say “Why are we bringing people into our public healthcare system.” We just did a consultation in my ministry and I think 45% of people said we should shut down the parents program, another 30% said we should dramatically reduce the number coming in. I’m doing the opposite. I’m expanding the program. So, this is against my political interests and I’m doing it because I’m sensitive to the cultural value of family reunification. But, again, in the real world there are reasonable limits to our generosity and so I have to find a balance. And the balance for me isn’t going up to 50 or 60000, the balance is the numbers that we have come up with. So, yes is the answer to your question. We have considered it. I am very aware of those concerns.
Soroush: I would like to thank you, once more, for giving us this opportunity to sit down and have a one-on-one interview with you.
