CPAC - Wednesday, May 22, 2024 - 10:00 a.m. (ET) - Segment #4

>> Welcome to our 32nd democracy forum. We've tried to do democracy differently and democratically. If you are watching live on the star or on tv by the cpac television network, thank you for joining us. A year ago our guest was canada's minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship who was very much in the headlines. Today, 12 months later, our guest is once again the minister of immigration refugees but there is a new minister making new headlines. Blaster the title was canada's juggling act and this year the title is canada's rebalancing act which is perhaps appropriate given the news over the last few days. So before we begin I remind people this is not a news conference or confrontation, it is a democracy forum where we dig a little deeper, more importantly we try to get more in-depth answers from our gas. So it's not that we throw softballs but we are trying to put more pressure on our guests to beat go beyond talking points or press conference scripts and give more thoughtful and reflective answers. So no pressure but let's tell you about our guest today. Marc miller, is canada's minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship since mid-2023. Previously the minister of crown indigenous relations and also minister of indigenous services. You could say he has been the prime minister's chosen fixer for some of the most challenging issues in government. He was elected as mp for the montréal riding in 2015 and in 2017, he delivered the first ever speech in the mohawk language in the house of commons. Before politics he had a life, he served as an infantry soldier in the canadian armed forces reserves and he later practised international and commercial law and new york and sweden. He has a ba and ma from the university of montréal and law degrees from mcgill university. Minister, welcome. >> Hello. >> Good to have you. There's a lot of interest on campus about your appearance today as was pointed out because we are the home to the centre for immigration and resettlement studies and we also host canada's excellence research chair in migration and integration in that position is held by my cohost today, professor anna triandafyllidou. Before coming here in 2019, she taught at the european university institute where she also earned her ph.d. She's a sociologist and migration policy expert and now leads our new multimillion dollar research program, bridging divides to a consortium of four universities led by us. Welcome back to the democracy forum. >> Hello. >> Hello anna. Both anna and I want to thank our audience for the hundreds of questions that we have received were submitted in advance. We will be borrowing and integrating them into our own questions. If you watch on zoom, you can use the chat function online if you think of more questions. I will kick things off. This is democracy so I would like to talk about the policy of immigration but first the economics of immigration and refugees. You have a lot of attention yesterday for a news conference where you said something I don't recall any previous minister of immigration refugees saying which is that you will dial down the numbers. Not in recent memory, anyway. We have 2.5 million temporary residents at 6.2% of the population as you pointed out. It also grew faster than almost any other country in the western world. Yesterday you said that that should come down to 5 percent in the next three years. That's a lot of people. My next question is, how do we get there and when did you realize as the new minister, when you took over, that we needed a significant course correction are almost a change in direction? >> Thank you for this martin. It is an important question, economic issues, social fabric issues have been the core of my focus ever since the prime minister asked me to serve as minister in my previous role. Particularly so in june when the minister of immigration. It's been clear that over the last number of years, there has been a jump from 2 percent of the population up to 6.2% of the population and what we call temporary residence. That is a very interesting pie chart to break down, it is and what people usually think of normally, which is temporary foreign workers in the agricultural fields. It is a very small percentage of that. It is people in postgraduate permits like people from tm you that are international students themselves. Those that are fleeing humanitarian crisis, particularly ukraine which will have about 300,000 people here that we did not have a couple years ago. And then other smaller parts of the pie chart including those

under international agreements, intercompany transfers, that is the nature of interwoven economies with other countries. But no doubt in the last few years, that has really jumped and we have seen the impact in something economists call the cost of shelter or housing. It is undeniable that that volume has caused an impact on affordability in general, particularly on the costs of shelter. That is something that I think we owe to canadians, "to ourselves to take a look back -- a look at and see this portion causes a factor, we need to address that. And I cannot do it alone is the federal government, we are not solely responsible for the labour market, it is also the responsibility and duty of the provinces. So sending that signal is very important both for the economy but also for provinces to say to themselves, let's get to the table and talk about what our labour needs are because these adjustments cannot be rushed, they have to be surgically done and they have to target areas where we feel we can bring things down reasonably without causing food inflation in all sorts of other respects to come with radical changes. Those are my thoughts behind it and we will have to take more questions. >> So you set the table for us and there is a lot to unpack there and I know anna wants to jump in a couple minutes to look more closely at the student fees and component of that. You mentioned the 300,000 ukrainians, that is a new number, I think. And it would be good to look at the couple minutes as well. But let's also talk about how we got here and why it took so long to do the course correction. Again, you are the new minister, I know you will not throw your colleagues under the bus, it's not what you do but these are really big numbers that have come up very fast. And I'm wondering, you said this week that -- are you said in the past that we have become addicted to temporary foreign workers and you have said that business has an incentive to drive down labour costs. You talk about that a little bit yesterday. So I think you mentioned in your speech yesterday, in your opening remarks that there are economic pitfalls overreliance on temporary workers. What did you mean by that? In your own mind, what are those economic pitfalls, what is that addiction, what is that issue that you are mindful of? >> I guess a couple things. First in terms of the responsibility of the federal government, clearly even going into covid we had labour shortages across the country r with broad, less sector specific then we have now. That was much the case as well coming out of covid so if you look at public policy decisions that we took, I don't fault my own government for having taken those decisions. In addition to the important public policy decisions we took, in terms of the crises around the world that were entirely unpredictable and as a haven for those seeking refuge, weather it is ukraine or afghanistan or syria, we have open up our hearts to a whole range of people that are now considered as an economic statistical measure and they are much more than that, you will see. But they are tallied into that number of people that are now here on a temporary basis and will transition eventually into permanent residents for a large chunk or go back to ukraine in cases of ukraine. >> But those were events, just to jump in quickly and clarify my own question, those were events we responded to. I'm thinking more about what your own thoughts are, which you referred to publicly about the pressure from business to have a low-wage source of workers that became an addiction. So what are the pitfalls they were worried about? >> My only point in all that, martin, was to say that policy decisions have consequences and sometimes we don't fully think them through and I think that's something we we need to take responsibility for. And the case of your question, clearly we know the need in business is to increase margins. And sometimes that is done -- I wouldn't overstate it because there is a low-wage stream from the temporary foreign workers that are here but some of them are highly specialized and respond to market needs. Whether that is exaggerated or not is something we have to look at with our own labour departments and economists and our provincial counterparts. But that motive and imperative exists. We have certainly heard, for example,, in one of the measures that my colleague announced, some of the areas were evil were allowed to take in temporary foreign workers as a covid measure to fill a gap in, for example,, the hospitality industry, food industry. That need is no longer there by their estimation and it is something that was continued throughout covid and that needs to come to an end. So those are the sort of adjustments that may be difficult and we will certainly hear about the impact that will have and the margins of some

chains that are threatened. But we do think that there is a domestic labour pool available that and be drawn on, weather it is asylum-seekers, whether students with graduate permits that does not need to be sourced from abroad and does not have to carry on with the impact of housing and the aggregate or cost of shelter. And the corresponding pressures of more people in the country on the education system or the healthcare system which are elements -- >> Before I handed off to anna, I just want to focus on what if you didn't do this course correction? What would be happening? If you didn't make this change, will be those pitfalls? Where would that addiction take us? >> I think it takes us to a space where our planning in terms of our social infrastructure, and for structure generally weather it is housing, education or healthcare are increasingly stressed by the unlimited number of arrivals in canada. That increase the population of people here is it we present and drive up that cost of shelter. That is undeniable. There are many other factors such as interest rates driving that up, that is not the fault of immigrants or temporary residents. In terms of that contributive factor, I think it's something we need to show that as a responsible government we have a handle on it and I think signalling that to the market is something that is very important but also making and effecting that change and the right way is even more important because what we can do in a recession is that we can drive that further if we overcorrect. >> Are you worried from what you hear from economists, you say you were consulting economists, that the business sector would become overreliance on this stream of low-wage workers? >> I would say not all economists are on the same page, you have had varying reports coming out of granularity and you will see some of them change their mind later and that is natural, we do that as well. But it does not mean that we shouldn't be scrutinizing what is coming out and analysing with their own data and that is always key. Obviously they do not bear the responsibility on that decision and at the end of the day we do. And we owe it to ourselves to be able to have something that is much more reliable so that we can use it to coordinate in terms of our policy that we take with areas that are outside of our jurisdiction and big show provinces are responsible for their actions and planning going forward. >> Over to you anna, there are two pieces to this puzzle. Workers, students, I think and had some questions on it. >> Thank you. First of all I would like to say I came to this country with a work permit in 2019. So I feel personally connected to this and I have learned beyond immigration policy experts have learned the ropes by doing it myself. So it is worth it. But to go back to the measures you took in december of 2023 in relation to international students, I have to say its a little bit lucky with the workers and international students there has been this up-and-down relationship to covid so our numbers were going up before the pandemic and then with the pandemic we faced a crisis, then there was this idea of weenie to keep attracting the best and brightest of international students but then it got a little bit overheated. So there's two questions there. First of all, to what extent it was the fault of the provinces, particularly ontario, and was the fault of the colleges and universities in your view? A second question is, I personally felt as an expert that the measures you took and december were the right measures and I was so happy you did them. And then less than three month later, you imposed a cap which we know is a stopgap measure but it can have a lot of negative side effects so I would like to have your reflection on what led you to first do the more structural measures and then impose the cap and what are you doing now to make those more important measures become reality? >> That is a really good set of questions. The measures that we took initially were to address what martin was talking about which is federal responsibility for these matters which is making sure that we had integrity and actual visa or occasion processes. The increase in the solvency requirements for students absolutely met our international competitor standards and the rolling out of a recognizable institution laws which is still ongoing and will be a very important part of the conversation going forward and to enter the last part of your question, to make sure that we are rewarding those institutions that have the ability to welcome and attract the top talent for which the international student program was designed for in the first place. What became also obvious as we were looking at the numbers, again to the earlier points, is that uncapped, we were seeing potential increases of the student numbers from one plus million up to 4 million which really -- and in areas we were

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