[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, April 10, 1997

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Stan Dromisky (Thunder Bay - Atikokan, Lib.)): We have our quorum.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the order of the day is a study of Citizenship and Immigration Canada's foreign workers policy.

Before we proceed with presentations by our witnesses, I'm going to inform the members that there is a change in the format because of certain factors. Most important is that we would like to get as much information as possible from our witnesses, covering a broader field. Also, we would like each witness to handle questions. Often when we have three or four witnesses, one person does all the answering and the other witnesses just sit there. I think that's a drastic shame, having all the expertise and knowledge sitting there and not being utilized by members of the committee.

There is also a basic principle of effective learning. As soon as a presentation is made by one of the witnesses, immediacy comes into the picture. While it's still fresh in our minds, each member will ask a question. Also, we are on TV today. As a result, the format will follow this routine.

Ms Nicholson, you will be the first witness. You have five minutes maximum, and as soon as you finish we will go to Mr. Nunez for one question, then Ms Meredith, then we jump to the other side and each member will ask one question. Then we will have the second witness, followed by questions, and then the third. We will finish earlier if we stick to these rules and regulations. Keep your answers short as well.

Once we've completed the three rounds we'll have time to continue with this round-table model. We'll go back to Mr. Nunez and he'll ask his fourth question and Ms Meredith will ask her fourth and so on. That way we will cover a much broader spectrum and I hope we will become much better informed to handle our report.

Mr. Nunez.

[Translation]

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez (Bourassa, B.Q.): Mr. Chairman, I must object to some of the rules you just stated.

First, why is the floor going to be given immediately to all the members present? Why don't we follow the same rules as in the House and in committees, namely to give 10 minutes to the Official Opposition, 10 minutes to the Reform Party and 10 minutes to the government party?

If you proceed the way you explained, that means that the government party will have a clear advantage since it will be able to ask seven questions, whereas the opposition will have only four questions, because they have seven members whereas we have four.

I object to this departure from the rules followed in the House. In the House the government party speaks first, followed by the Official Opposition and then the Reform Party. The same rule should be followed here in this committee, as has always been the case.

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Nunez, I've already made a decision and there is no such thing as a rule of the House. If you go from committee to committee, and I've been on many committees in the last three and a half years, it depends upon the chairman what format is followed. It's true that custom reigns in many committees, but you will find there are variations from committee to committee.

We will now begin our meeting. Our first witness is -

[Translation]

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: I object because what you are doing here is not democratic.

[English]

The Chairman: Ms Meredith.

Ms Val Meredith (Surrey - White Rock - South Langley, Ref.): Mr. Chairman, I'd like to register my objection to the process as well. It should be five minutes for the opposition, five minutes for the Reform, five minutes for the government and then a second round. That is the tradition of this committee.

The Chairman: Ms Bethel.

Ms Judy Bethel (Edmonton East, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that this would give everyone as much opportunity as they would like to ask questions in the sense that we could do as many rounds as we felt were necessary, but it would move things quickly. It's not unlike how other committees do it to give everyone an opportunity to ask questions.

We're not debating a motion, in which case I would agree that the official opposition and the third party should have their ten minutes and that kind of order. But this not a debate.

The Chairman: It is a round table and it's a unique situation today. We're not following the customary pattern.

We will now begin with our meeting. Ms Nicholson, would you please make your presentation.

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: [Inaudible - Editor]

The Chairman: Mr. Nunez, please. There is no motion on the floor.

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Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: My motion is to respect the regulation that has been respected until now.

The Chairman: Do you have a motion on the floor?

Ms Maria Minna (Beaches - Woodbine, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, may I interject for a moment? Just for clarification, so we don't have to delay this with motions and debating of motions - we'd be here all afternoon.

Just for clarification, are you saying - because we've done it before, at least when we did the social security review - when we have round tables, it is not intended to cut down on the time, because you come back as often as you wish. It is intended to just keep the flow going, because we have a group here. We would go back as often as required to finish all of the questions you may have. Is that what you're saying, Mr. Chairman?

The Chairman: That's right.

Ms Maria Minna: So you would not be limited until such time as you'd exhausted your questions.

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Regardless, my motion is to respect the normal procedures.

The Chairman: Okay, we have a motion on the floor. Do we have a seconder?

The Clerk of the Committee: There is no need for a seconder.

The Chairman: There is no need for a seconder - yes. I'm sorry.

The Clerk: It's only for this meeting.

Motion negatived

The Chairman: Thank you very much. We will now continue with the meeting.

Ms Nicholson, will you start with your presentation, please?

Ms Lynn Nicholson (Manager of Human Resources, Corel Corporation): Certainly. Thank you very much.

My position here today as a representative of Corel Corporation is simply to support the individuals, my peers from the industry. I will briefly read over the information I have prepared for you today.

Corel Corporation has been a very active employer in the Ottawa region for the past 11 years. Over the last three to four years we have begun to notice a significant shortage of skilled individuals seeking employment in the Ottawa area. We have made a concerted effort to hire Canadians into the vacancies and will continue to put hiring Canadians as our first priority.

Our recruitment advertising costs within Canadian publications are well over $250,000 per annum. This effort is complemented by our participation at career fairs and advertising at post-secondary educational institutions.

In the last three years we have successfully recruited on average 100 individuals per year into technical roles alone, such as software developers and quality assurance technologists. In addition to full-time hires, we have hired on average 75 students per co-op work term to fill this type of role.

We are reinforcing our commitment to hiring Canadians by sponsoring and partnering in training efforts at all levels, including actively supporting high school and university co-op programs and job shadow days, as well as donating software and hardware to universities and learning institutions throughout the region and across Canada.

We also sponsor events that support academic youth groups such as Global Vision, the Canadian Alliance of LifeLong Learning, Skills Canada and the Canadian Centre for Creative Technology's Shad Valley program.

In addition, in attachment 1, you can see the involvement Corel's academic program has had in providing support to educational institutions. This support includes reducing software prices by up to 70% off retail and by partnering with various public sector service groups to support training and attempt to reduce unemployment.

The youth initiative plan is the first ever joint program between government and private industry to take action against youth unemployment.

The information technology professional program, of which Corel plays an active role on the advisory committee, is dedicated to providing training to university and college graduates with the information technology needed in today's job market.

Despite our ongoing efforts to hire Canadians from across the country, the shortage of individuals with technical skills is growing. Due to this, Corel and a number of high-tech companies in Ottawa have begun competing amongst each other for skilled people - a sort of cannibalism, as it were. By not being able to fill the growing gap of skilled workers versus positions available, we will begin to lose our competitive edge and not be able to compete as effectively on a global scale.

The United States reportedly has over 190,000 vacancies, and has begun to aggressively recruit from the Canadian workforce. This has become quite apparent in the last six to eight months as we have seen a number of Corel employees emigrate to the United States. This makes recruiting talent twice as difficult, because we are competing not only with our neighbours in the Ottawa-Carleton region but also with our neighbours down south. For these reasons, we have began to look outside Canada to help us address the issue of supply versus demand.

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Regardless of our current training effort, a snapshot of the Canadian labour pool at this time shows that the number of university or college graduates is simply not as large as in other countries such as India, China or Russia. The ability to tap into this huge labour force will assist Canadian companies by providing a wealth of trained skilled workers.

Corel Corporation has been actively employing foreign workers in our development groups for a couple of years. Many of these individuals come to us through a third-party contracting organization whose mandate is to provide us with people who have already been granted work permits. Therefore, in many cases we are not involved in the initial work permit request process.

With the recent changes in the immigration process to fast-track certain positions, we will be able to eliminate this need for costly third-party intervention, which will allow Corel to realize significant savings.

As it stands right now, once many of these workers have fulfilled their contractual agreements with the third-party organizations, we can attempt to hire them as Corel employees. This is true of approximately 20% of the foreign workers who have come to work at Corel.

At the point that we make the commitment to hire these individuals as employees, we contact Human Resources Development Canada for extensions on work permits and validated job offers for permanency. In the past we have found this process extremely slow and tedious, often taking more than eight to ten weeks for correspondence from HRDC about our request. Fortunately we have seen great improvements in this process over the last few months and are receiving our requests back in less than one week. We have also been involved with requesting work permits for individuals directly as opposed to through the third-party company, and again have seen significant improvements in HRDC's turnaround time.

Our concerns lie mainly in the length of time it takes a foreign worker to receive landed immigrant status and the feasibility of foreign workers being granted spousal work permits. Often an individual's decision to accept a position in Canada may rest upon the ability of his or her spouse to work in Canada. Having the ability to promote to a potential foreign worker that his or her spouse can easily receive a work permit will greatly improve the numbers of individuals who will make the decision to move to Canada.

It must be clear that our requests to offer employment to foreign workers will not mean fewer jobs for Canadians. On the contrary, by increasing our staff on a permanent basis with foreign workers, Corel can continue to develop at high standards and adhere to our aggressive annual release schedule, which will in turn ensure our growing success. The direct positive impact of the increased resources in our technical teams will in turn foster growth in all areas of the company, thereby creating more jobs.

The Chairman: That's a good place to end. Thank you very much.

Could we have a copy of that presented to the clerk?

Mr. Nunez, you have the honour of presenting the first question.

[Translation]

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: First, I would like to congratulate you for your presentation. This is a very interesting subject. We are concerned by the large number of young people who are unemployed. The unemployment rate for Canada as a whole is 10%, and 12% for Quebec. When you advocate policies aimed at bringing foreign workers into Canada, that creates a problem for our party and the millions of people who don't, have work.

My first question concerns the money Corel invests in training. From what I have seen, businesses in Canada do not invest a lot of money in training. I have here a study which states:

[English]

Wayne Simpson and David Stambrook found that Canadian expenditures as a percentage of GDP are only 40 percent of those in the United States, 18 percent of those in Japan and13% of those in West Germany. A recent OECD study found that only 31 percent of Canadian enterprises reported some training activity compared with 55.8% in France, 73.8% in Japan and 80% in Great Britain.

[Translation]

How much money do you invest in training? Do you believe that businesses should be obliged to invest more money in training instead of bringing in so many foreign workers?

[English]

Ms Nicholson: I can certainly appreciate your concerns and unfortunately I don't have exact dollar numbers for you as to how much we spend on training. If you look at the attachment I've included in my presentation, there are some notes there about the activities we have been involved in in providing training and assisting in training to Canadians.

Our academic program, as I've mentioned, offers our educational software at 70% off retail price, which is a significant savings, for all educational institutions.

We have donated a free copy of Corel WordPerfect to every school member involved with the SchoolNet, the Canadian Internet site focusing on connecting schools in Canada to the nationwide network. So we do involve ourselves very actively in supporting these organizations and donating a lot of software, which in turn translates to a fair amount of dollars for us.

Ms Val Meredith: There are two issues I would like to raise with you. I notice that you refer to a third party, that third-party contracting organization. Do you mean that you contract foreign workers?

Ms Nicholson: We have, yes.

Ms Val Meredith: So you have contracted foreign workers. What is the cost of doing that?

Ms Nicholson: Unfortunately, again, I do not have a lot of numbers on that, because when they come in as contract employees they're handled out of the legal side as opposed to the human resources side. I'm a representative of the human resources division so I'm not really privy to those numbers.

Ms Val Meredith: Would you know whether these contract employees are paid by the foreign company or by your company?

Ms Nicholson: They are paid by the foreign company. It's an agreement that we would pay a certain sum per developer to the third-party organization. It would then in turn pay the employee and then of course take its fee out of it as well.

Ms Val Meredith: I have five minutes, do I?

The Chairman: No, you don't. One question.

Mr. Bélanger.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa - Vanier, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, I would like to focus on the intent of the work of this committee, which is not necessarily to de faire le procès of how much money is spent by a certain company or not spent by a certain company in training. We have had representatives of the industry tell us quite clearly that those companies that don't spend any money on training their staff are not likely to be around all that long.

Over and beyond the willingness of companies to grow and survive, and therefore having to spend money to train some staff, I'd rather leave that alone and focus on what I thought this committee was trying to get at. That is whether or not there is a need - and if there is, what size is that need - to bring people to the country, in order to keep Canada's market share of this world market, either as immigrants or on a temporary worker's permit, to fill jobs that we cannot fill from within our own resources.

I'd like to ask the first witness to comment on what you've already said in this document, that for the last few years you've been witnessing and experiencing a growing difficulty in filling all your positions. Has that prevented the company from tackling or obtaining contracts it otherwise would have had? Has it stifled the growth in any instances, or do you figure it will?

Ms Nicholson: I think it has already. It hasn't necessarily hindered us in getting additional contracts, but the nature of our business is to produce software. We have a fairly wide range of software packages available. We are on a very aggressive release schedule. This is an aggressive business. You always have to be one step ahead of your competitor. In order to produce the packages that are of high quality and are that one step ahead of your competitor, you have to have the labour force available to you. When the labour force is not available to you to create and develop the packages, you slip and will therefore lose money, because your competitor may get out before you and then you release and that's it.

The Chairman: Thank you. Ms Bethel.

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Ms Judy Bethel: I understand from what you said that you are in essence in charge of recruitment of workers. I'd be interested to know if you determine the jobs that are necessary to design the job descriptions and actively recruit. Would you explain in some clear detail exactly what your recruitment is here in Canada and also abroad? I'm assuming of course you are responsible for the recruitment abroad as well as the recruitment here in Canada. I'm also assuming they should be similar.

Ms Nicholson: Actually, recruiting is just a tiny portion of my job. I am the human resources manager and we're all generalists, so to speak, in our corporation, so we do not have a dedicated recruiter, which unfortunately puts us in a bit of a different situation. But I and my co-workers are all responsible for recruiting.

In terms of advertising, we are very active in advertising nationwide in the national newspapers and in regional newspapers. Of course our jobs on the Internet are available worldwide. Anyone can plug into our Internet site and look at the positions we have available. We participate in career fairs. I'll just mention that a number of U.S. companies are now coming up and participating in those career fairs as well. So we're competing directly with the people right down the hall; they're right there, trying to recruit the same people and lure them down south.

The Chairman: Thank you. Our next witness will be Dr. Jocelyn Ghent Mallett.

Thank you very much for appearing. You have a maximum of five minutes.

Dr. Jocelyn Ghent Mallett (Member, Executive Council, Newbridge Networks Corp.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm taking a slightly different approach from that of my colleague from Corel. I want to talk a little bit about Newbridge and what this company is, because perhaps not everyone on the committee is familiar with it.

Newbridge Networks is a world leader in designing, manufacturing and servicing a large family of telecommunications networking products. The systems that Newbridge builds deliver the power of multimedia communications around the world to organizations in more than 100 countries. Newbridge products are the choice of an expanding range of customers, which now include the 200 largest telephone companies and other telecommunication service providers, more than 10,000 public and private enterprises.

We have our corporate headquarters here in Kanata, but the company has facilities throughout the rest of Canada, also in the United States, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. Our sales are now in excess of $1 billion Canadian dollars, and over 90% of what we make is exported from the country. Newbridge has over 5,000 employees located around the world. We have about 3,000 of them in Canada. More than 30% of our workforce is dedicated to research and development. That's a very important point in terms of the work of this committee.

Just to give you an idea of how much wealth Newbridge has been able to generate, if you just look at the amount of taxes Newbridge has paid in terms of corporate taxes, also the personal income taxes, the capital gains and other taxes, it's close to $0.5 billion just in the 10 years since Newbridge started up. I might say that in the first few years they were operating at a loss and therefore weren't paying any taxes at all. That's just in the growth spurt we've had since 1993-94.

What's happening out there in the world is that the global telecommunications industry is in a time of very dramatic change. Trade barriers are coming down, regulatory restrictions are being lifted, more powerful technologies are available, users are becoming much more demanding and sophisticated. The competition within that $200 billion global market is very fierce. Newbridge is very well positioned to earn its share of that market. But the company's ability to sustain rapid growth and to go on creating significant wealth and jobs is increasingly challenged by our inability to find the skilled people we need. Right now there are 2,000 positions just in the Ottawa-Carleton area, 2,000 vacant high-tech positions. About 10% of those positions are at Newbridge.

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We are always on the look-out for both experienced people and new graduates. Once we get them into our Canadian operation, they tend to stay, but first we have to battle very heavy competition - and my colleague from Corel mentioned this - from outside recruiters, from people coming up from the U.S., from companies that are offering our new graduates and some of our experienced workers higher salaries, signing bonuses and all kinds of inducements such as a lovely climate in California to attract our people south.

So importing foreign workers helps us balance the equation, at least in the short term, and we do see this as a short-term solution. This is not a long-term solution.

The longer-term solution centres around public and private sector partnerships that reach down as far as we can go into the elementary schools, into the secondary schools, to encourage a much stronger development among our students in science and math, much more interest than they have now. In fact, if we look at enrolments, we see that it's been declining in science and math. Starting from that base, we can then develop a much larger group of future high-tech employees - the engineering, research, computing and other skills we need - to prevent the shortages that we see coming up in the 21st century. Some of the numbers I have seen, and which were discussed over the last couple of days at the innovation forum here in Ottawa, are very scary.

However, pending getting this long-term solution in place, we still have a requirement - and this is where we seek the support of the immigration department to help us - to fill the gap with foreign knowledge workers so that we can continue to generate wealth, expand our company operations at home, while making use of every export opportunity abroad.

Our people are our primary competitive advantage. That's a very important point. That's what our competitive advantage is - based on our people.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Nunez.

[Translation]

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: I am surprised that there are 2,000 vacancies in your company. I see so many people wishing to work.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: The company represents 10% of that figure.

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: I see. I see so many people looking for work, particularly young people. I would like to ask you a question about your salary policy. In percentage terms, how much lower are salaries here in Canada than in the United States or Europe? If you do not deal with the problem of salaries and conditions of work, Canadians will go to the United States and Europe, and people from other countries will come to work here. There is an anomaly here.

Also, are you in contact with universities and colleges? What sort of relationship do you have with these educational institutions? Why are salaries so low in Canada compared with the United States and Europe?

[English]

Dr. Ghent Mallett: Thank you. We have 200 vacant positions, not 2,000; 2,000 is the region. As for salaries, we pay very competitive salaries in terms of the Canadian environment. In other words, it would not be very smart for us to pay less than Northern Telecom pays. It's important that we pay competitively, but if you look at the United States...I can't give it to you in percentage terms, but I was recently involved in Newbridge's acquisition of a company in California and that company paid salaries that were two to three times higher than what Newbridge pays people in Canada. But it's a factor of the standard of living in the United States. In other words, their cost of living in California is also that much higher.

The way we compensate our people in any case is partly salary, but it's also partly stock options. Every one of our employees is eligible for our stock option plan, and that's why they tend to stay once they get there, because once we get them in through the stock option plan they realize that if they stay long enough they can generate very significant wealth for themselves.

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As for our relationships with universities, yes, we do have very close relationships with both local universities and universities across the country. We have connections, for example, between Newbridge and Carleton University in engineering. I think this is an area in which we need to focus much more. I believe there is a lot of room yet to form some very significant partnerships between the private sector, the public sector and the university community. We need to do a lot more work in this area.

The Chairman: Thank you. Ms Meredith.

Ms Val Meredith: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I find it interesting that you have just said you have a very good relationship with Carleton University, and yet in today's paper it was reported that 22 graduates from a new program specifically on telecommunications engineering didn't even get an interview from any of the companies here in Ottawa. Yet you're saying that you have 200 vacant positions. Here were 22 graduates in the city graduating specifically in the field at a post-secondary level or a post-graduate level, and yet they didn't even get an interview with the company. I find that somewhat strange if you have such a good relationship with Carleton University.

So my question to you is this. One of the fast tracks that I understand the industry is looking at, and that the immigration department is looking at, is removing the onus on the industry to find whether there are Canadians, whether there are 20 graduate students who could fill those positions before you hire overseas employees. Do you feel that is something that with 1.5 million unemployed Canadians, many of them university graduates, we should be considering as a country, rather than putting our resources into training and retraining and making sure these 22 graduates get the experience they need for a growing industry?

Dr. Ghent Mallett: That's a really good question. I didn't see the article. I heard it was in the The Ottawa Citizen, and I found it rather surprising myself. Someone told me about that just before I came into the committee room.

The only way I can understand it is that these 22 graduates must have been missing some set of specific competencies or skills. In fact, if you were to check our web page you would see a list of the 200 positions we have available right now. They're very specific. We're looking, for example, very intensively for people with experience in asynchronous transfer mode technology, because that's a main driver in the company right now. So it may be in our case, in any case, that these 22 people just didn't match the particular skill set.

I agree with you that we should be taking every possible opportunity we can to look at graduates and to make sure they do have the right skill set. I think that's something we need to focus on.

The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Bélanger, please.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: I believe the story also pointed out that all of them have found jobs, though. It's not a matter of - pardon me?

Ms Val Meredith: Jobs in Toronto and southern Ontario.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Can I make a point as well?

Mr. Chairman, this whole story also pointed out that all of them did find work in other parts of the country. This points out that the problem is not just Ottawa-based, and I believe that's the question I'd want to ask our witness.

I believe you are involved in a number of national boards and associations dealing with the industry. You've given us a picture here of the Ottawa-Carleton area. Would you be in a position to give us a sense of the situation throughout the country in terms of shortages of skilled workers?

Dr. Ghent Mallett: This is certainly not unique. The Ottawa-Carleton area is Silicon Valley north, so we want to become the high-tech centre of the whole country.

Newbridge has an establishment in Vancouver, and we moved to Vancouver in part because we were looking to tap into another part of the country where you would get another set of skilled workers. We found it difficult. In Vancouver, in some respects, it becomes even more difficult because they're even closer to California.

We have an affiliated company in Halifax, and I know they have no problems at some levels, but at certain senior levels in Halifax there are problems.

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So this is certainly not unique to the Ottawa - Carleton area. I think you would find that right across the country. Often you find just a mismatch between the skill set you're looking for and the skill set that is coming out of the university community. It's a very big problem for the whole of Canada.

The Chairman: Could you zero right in on your question, please.

Ms Judy Bethel: As I speak to young Albertans, our new graduates, what they tell me is that the difficulty they have in getting jobs is: no experience, therefore no jobs; no jobs, therefore no experience. That's the dilemma they are caught in, the ones who are trained, who are well-educated. I guess they are well-educated Canadians who paid for that.

I'm wondering what your industry has done in order to take them from there, to provide them with the experience they need. It seems to me that it is definitely the problem here.

I'd also like to know about your recruitment. Specifically, how do you aggressively recruit? Where do you go? What do you do? How are you involved in the curriculum so that when they come out they have what you need?

Dr. Ghent Mallett: On your first point, I think I could speak for my colleagues on our co-op program. That, to me, is one of the best ways of bringing students with some immediate work experience. We hire 100 co-op students every term, so that's 300 a year.

I was speaking before of the meeting with my colleagues from Corel. They're even more intensive in terms of the number of employees they have at Corel. They hire...what was it?

Ms Nicholson: About 75 a term.

Dr. Ghent Mallett: Yes, 75 a term, but they have fewer people than we do. Actually, I don't know what the situation is in Alberta, whether Alberta universities have that program, but a co-op program is by far and away the best way to get students that kind of experience, so they can come out of university actually saying, I worked at Newbridge, I worked at Corel, or whatever it is.

On your second question with regard to the way we recruit, we recruit extremely aggressively across the country. We do have a set of dedicated recruiters at Newbridge. We have seven of them, I think. We have one team of two that just dedicates itself to going into universities and colleges. Every year they go out, they visit, they do career fairs. They put a whole picture together to try to get as many young people interested in Newbridge as they possible can. But it is a very competitive environment. We are out there at career fairs with U.S. companies doing exactly the same thing.

The Chairman: Thank you. Ms Minna.

Ms Maria Minna: I'll pass, thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Scott, keep it short. Thank you very much.

Mr. Wayne Scott (Manager, Government Programs, IBM): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee, because the availability of an adequate number of skilled people is critical not only to our company but to our whole industry. I believe strongly that the software industry represents a very important opportunity for Canada.

I'd like to make three points about the software business and the availability of skilled people. First, in this business the work goes to where the skills are. Second, immigration to Canada is only part of the picture, a relatively small part, and even under the best circumstances could not solve the whole problem. Third, every skilled and experienced person added to Canada's software workforce will create several more jobs for Canadians as the industry grows.

Let me comment briefly on these points in order.

Software work goes where the skills are. Let me illustrate this with two kinds of examples, first with new companies, software start-ups.

The software business is truly a global business. It's undergoing explosive growth and churn. Start-ups happen every day in Canada and elsewhere. At the same time, software companies are also failing every day. Software development is a skill-based business.

If Canadian companies are to compete successfully in this dynamic marketplace, they must have access to the people they need to grow, and they must have access now. Chances are that someone somewhere is already working on a better idea, and if they have better access to skills, they will capture that market. The Canadian opportunity will be lost.

That's the perspective from the start-up end of this business, an extremely competitive and fast-moving arena.

The second perspective is that of the larger company with software development in several countries already. IBM is an example that I can speak about from personal experience.

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One way to think about software development inside IBM is that we create our own start-ups, as well as improve the products we already have. We make decisions about where to do software work weekly, if not daily. In making these decisions, one of the most important questions we ask is: where are the people with the skills to do this work?

Our software lab in Toronto has an excellent reputation within IBM for delivering quality products on time. For this reason, lots of IBM product managers want to put their work in Toronto. The key constraint on the growth of IBM software jobs in Toronto is a lack of confidence in an adequate supply of skilled people.

The second point I want to emphasize is that we are not saying that immigration can or should solve this problem completely. At best, it can only be part of the solution.

At IBM, and at other Canadian companies, we are aggressively looking for skilled Canadians every day, both on campus and in the marketplace - and you've heard that from my peers. We are investing heavily in training, not only for newly hired employees but for all of our employees. This is a rapidly changing business, and continual learning is absolutely essential.

While we have traditionally hired people from computer science programs for software development jobs, we are now looking at alternative sources, such as the community colleges and companies such as ITI. ITI is a private training organization that offers computer training to non-computer science graduates.

At IBM in 1990, we established the Centre for Advanced Studies in our software lab. This centre is a place for graduate students and computer science professors to come and do their research while working with the industry. Through this centre we also fund research in Canadian universities. These activities are intended to increase the supply and quality of Canadian computer science graduates.

Also, in the past two years we have begun working with school boards at the primary and secondary levels because we believe that a long-term fix to the skills shortage must start there.

These kinds of programs are, and will continue to be, critically important. But they are not enough. As a country, we lost opportunities for software growth yesterday, we are losing opportunities today, and we will lose Canadian opportunities for growth tomorrow, because we don't have enough skilled people. These opportunities come and go every day in this business, and I literally do mean every day.

Immigration can only help, but it will help. We applaud the pilot program to speed up the granting of work permits to skilled software developers, and we encourage this committee to work to expand the pilot. There are a few countries in which a concerted focus on speeding up the approval process would generate real gains for Canada, and we strongly urge you to move quickly.

Finally, let me turn back to jobs for Canadians. The picture I have tried to paint is one of an industry with tremendous potential for growth in Canada. Highly skilled people are absolutely necessary for that growth to occur. It just will not happen without them.

But growth in this industry is not limited only to high-skilled software jobs. Successful and growing software companies also need people with other skills. They need financial people, they need salespeople, they need administrative people, and so on. They also need buildings and supplies. They need services. They pay taxes. Growth of this industry will create many jobs for Canadians with many different skills. The timely addition to our workforce of skilled people from other countries can help make this a reality. As software people and as Canadians, we look to this committee for your support.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Scott.

Mr. Nunez.

[Translation]

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Thank you for your presentation.

IBM is a multinational corporation with a lot of resources and outlets in many countries.

I would like to know how many foreign workers you employ here in Canada. Where do they come from? Does your corporation agree, for example, with the Quebec legislation requiring that 1% of the payroll be allocated to training?

I would also like to know what problems you encounter when dealing with Immigration services or the Department of Human Resources Development when you bring in foreign workers. Do you consider the offer validation process to be useful? What criticism would you make of it?

.1620

[English]

Mr. Scott: Let me first talk about the number of foreign workers we use. There are two categories of foreign workers employed by IBM in Canada. One category are those workers who are IBM employees in other countries who are here on temporary assignments, either for special projects or for personal development. Canadians get similar opportunities to transfer temporarily to other countries for skill development and then return to Canada. So that's one category.

The other category, which you are perhaps more interested in, is the number of people who come to Canada and are hired by IBM here. In fact, that is a relatively small number. I don't know what the absolute number is. I do know that in 1996 we hired only 16 people who were recent graduates from other countries. I might guess that we might double the number in total in terms of foreign workers. So it's not a large part of our recruiting at this point. But I am here representing not only our company but the industry. As we look forward, the rapid growth in this industry will create increasing demands and I think potentially an increasing requirement for people with skills from other countries.

In terms of investment in training, IBM has a long heritage of investment in its employees. In 1996 our investment in Canadian employees was $44 million. That's approaching 2% of our sales revenue in Canada. We have increased our plans for investment in training and education of IBM employees by 30% in 1997. Our population certainly has not grown by 30%. So we place this kind of investment at the highest priority.

The Chairman: Thank you. Ms Meredith.

Ms Val Meredith: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

If you are not employing the numbers of foreign workers, I assume you are able then to find Canadian workers to fulfil those functions you're looking for. Why do you feel it is necessary to change the requirement of companies to first seek Canadians for employment before going overseas? Why do you see the need to change that regulation?

Mr. Scott: In response, I have a couple of comments. We have been fortunate to be able to hire a significant number of people in the last couple of years and we continue to hire people. In 1997 to date, we've hired over 300 so far in Canada. That's a result of a significant investment in recruiting in Canada, an ongoing investment in recruiting in Canada, which is our first priority. It's a result of our close relationships with the universities in Canada for that portion of the hiring that is recent graduates. In 1996 that was 25% of our total hiring. But over the last two years we have seen an increasing cost of hiring in Canada. It is harder and harder for us to satisfy our needs.

At the present time the number of open positions with hiring authorized in Canada numbers in the hundreds, not in the tens, across the country. While in the past we have not had a conscious strategy of recruiting outside Canada, our foreign hiring has been from those who came to us rather than our going to them. I see the future of this industry in Canada as being one in which the shortage becomes greater and greater. Therefore I think it's important for Canada to have access to skilled people from outside Canada.

The Chairman: Mr. Bélanger.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Mr. Scott, thank you for your presentation. I don't know if I misunderstood a comment you made, but if I did, I apologize for putting you on the spot. You seem to suggest that there were certain countries where we'd be better off trying to recruit as opposed to others. I was just wondering if that was a generic statement or if you had countries in mind where either we're having difficulties or they are more fertile grounds, if you will, for recruitment.

Do you feel comfortable commenting on that?

.1625

Mr. Scott: I'm not sure I feel as comfortable as I might like to, but let me respond anyway.

You should also understand that this is a comment coming from a company that has not had a conscious strategy of recruiting outside Canada, so it's what I'll call informal knowledge. It's my understanding right now, from talking with my peers in the industry, that the countries of India, China, Russia, and in eastern Europe, particularly the Czech Republic, are countries in which there are highly skilled people who have a real interest in coming to Canada. Those countries, as you might understand, are also countries in which Canada's presence, at least in some cases, is relatively recent. We don't have the infrastructure in place to deal with the number of applicants who might be interested in coming to Canada on a timely basis. That's what was behind my comment.

The Chairman: Ms Bethel.

Ms Judy Bethel: I'm a little confused about your relationship with the industry. You are a lawyer, so I'm not sure exactly what is the relationship. You say you represent the industry; it would be interesting to me if you could tell me in what way.

I wonder if you could give me some idea about how our validation process is different from that in, say, Japan, or the United States. Could you do a comparative analysis of our validation process as it's compared with other countries?

Mr. Scott: I seem to have misled you as to my role, so I can't answer your real question. My role is that I am an employee of IBM, and until two months ago specifically my job was human resources manager in our software development lab in Toronto, a lab of some 1,200 people.

Ms Judy Bethel: Then I want my question back. On a new question -

Mr. Scott: All right.

Ms Judy Bethel: Then if it's human resources that is your responsibility, I'd like to know this. What we've heard mostly in terms of identifying the need has been anecdotal or, as you say, informal knowledge. I would like to know from you some good, clear research and studies that clearly identify the need.

Mr. Scott: And I understand the need to be the need for software development skills in Canada.

I can only speak for IBM with specific numbers.

Ms Judy Bethel: So there has not been a study by industry that has defined the labour market needs of that particular industry. Is that a responsibility of the industry itself or is that a responsibility for Industry Canada?

Mr. Scott: It's my understanding that the Software Human Resource Council, which is a council in which we actively participate both as an industry and as an individual company, did such a study approximately 18 months ago, perhaps in that range. I've seen various numbers reported, but they found, I believe, a shortage of 20,000 jobs in our industry at that point across the country.

The Chairman: Ms Minna, do you have a question?

Ms Maria Minna: I'll pass for now. I'll come back.

The Chairman: Okay.

I would like to thank the witnesses for appearing. You certainly presented us with a tremendous amount of information. We certainly did get quite a few questions across that covered quite a few different interest areas.

We will take a three-minute break and suspend the committee's operations, clear the table, and get the next three witnesses in position, and then we'll resume.

Thank you.

Ms Val Meredith: Mr. Chair, are we going to have an opportunity to ask any more questions of these witnesses?

The Chairman: No, because we lost so much time at the beginning and because of the time factor, and then there's a vote at 5:30 p.m.. So I would like to get the next three or four witnesses in.

There's no vote? I'm sorry, I was misled. I was told there was going to be a vote a 5:30 p.m. but apparently there isn't. If anyone has a question, just stay where you are, and we'll continue - a quick question, another round.

.1630

[Translation]

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: As regards the job offer validation, I would like more details about the problems you encounter with the federal Department of Immigration and the Department of Human Resources Development. Does it take too long for the application to be processed? What do you think of the current process?

[English]

The Chairman: Have you directed it to some specific person, Mr. Nunez?

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: To Mrs. Nicholson.

Ms Nicholson: We have actually found great improvements in Human Resources Development Canada and their processing of the validated offers. We've actually been very successful in requesting work permits and validated offers for permanency through this branch. Probably about twelve months ago we were experiencing very lengthy delays, delays to the point where an individual's work permit was virtually about to expire and we were on the phone saying, please, we need an answer. But now we are getting this turned over within less than a week, and we're very satisfied with that change.

The Chairman: Ms Meredith.

Ms Val Meredith: I am really confused, then. If through the existing regulations you are now satisfied with the way the immigration department is able to facilitate your needs to accommodate foreign workers, why do you feel we should be changing the regulations? If simply the department being more efficient in the job they are expected to do is meeting your needs, why should this committee or this government start changing regulations that are there to protect Canadian workers?

Ms Nicholson: Although we have seen an improvement, when I'm talking about the improvement these are isolated cases. We may be putting through ten to fifteen applications in a year and it's not meeting the number of positions we have available. There are still a number in excess. I can't comment on what will happen if we start putting through twenty, thirty, or forty requests for validated job offers in a week or two weeks, two months, or whatever the case may be. We may see that slide.

There's another point to this as well, seeing spousal work permits come through. A lot of individuals making a decision to move to Canada want their spouses to work, and we would really like to see that happen. We would like to see them come over and be able to get a work permit for their spouse or have the spouse able to secure a work permit if they were to find employment. We would really like to see that happen.

The Chairman: Mr. Bélanger.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There is always something to be learned from observing the official opposition. I'll have learned something here from Mr. Nunez today, in that I'll try to squeeze in two questions, or even three, in one.

The spousal permit recommendation is a delicate and touchy one for the very simple reason that we have a high level of unemployment - too high still. It's going down, but it's still too high. The industry is going to have to present that.... One gentleman we had here Tuesday from the West Island Business Development Council tried to present that argument as a competitive hedge for the country. If the industry is going to make that case, it's going to have to be documented and so forth. It's an interesting argument and one that I think may have some potential, but it has to be developed.

My question, though, is perhaps to the three of you. Would you have very specific recommendations, even if they are minute, for improving the process on the immigration side for people coming to live in Canada as Canadians or on special work permits, recommendations we could then present to the government for it to take a look at? I think if you had, either today or within the next week or so, some very fine-tuned suggestions to help us help the industry, that would be appreciated. You can maybe alert us to some of them today, if you care to.

Mr. Scott: Let me answer in part by going back to a discussion we had earlier in response to a question of yours. I believe there are some potential sources of skilled candidates who are underutilized in their home countries today and whose application and potential entry into Canada are constrained not by the validation process but by the broader capacity of Canadian officials to take applications, to process medical examination results, and in fact to help the industry collectively consider them as candidates.

.1635

I'm not sure that's specific enough, but certainly that is one.

Ms Judy Bethel: I would like to move a bit from information technology to advanced technology. Certainly we're all aware there are these same types of shortages for advanced technology in agriculture, oil and gas, mining, manufacturing, biotechnology; the list goes on and on. Given that there are needs, I really would like to know from each of you simply which departments should be responsible for defining Canada's labour shortages so we can move in a more targeted, less anecdotal way.

Dr. Ghent Mallett: I would strongly suggest, since I have a government background - before I joined the executive council at Newbridge I worked for fifteen years in the federal government - what we would call ``sector partnerships''. Let's take agricultural high-tech. It would be a marriage of the agriculture department, HRD, and Industry Canada. Each one of them would bring something separately to the partnership. HRD is a key department in all of this. Industry Canada is as well. Industry Canada was my home department, so I can say that.

It's very critical that they work together. What you sometimes find is true in the world is that people are working in silos. It's bringing individual government departments together in these specific areas which I think would be very helpful.

Ms Maria Minna: You've all mentioned vacancies you've not yet filled, over and above the staffing you have, so obviously you have vacancies currently. If we were to facilitate or find a way to assist you to fill those vacancies as quickly as possible, could we at the same time ask whether, parallel to that, there is a program you would consider, or your industry has looked at, which would retrain people - Carleton had a program retraining people who had skills that were not quite right but they could be retrained within a short period - to begin to fill at least the next set of positions with Canadians as quickly as possible? We would begin to have two parallel things going on, with the involvement of the industry. At some point you have to work with us to find ways to begin to get Canadians who are not now working into those positions.

Dr. Ghent Mallett: There is a program that I think is a model. It's called O-Vitesse. It's a partnership among the universities in Ottawa, Mitel, and the National Research Council. What they are doing is retraining people who are having difficulty finding jobs in their own field - say a biotechnologist. It has to be somebody with a science or math background. We're training them to become software engineers, software designers, or other things the information technology industry needs. That is the kind of partnership that I think is really important, a partnership of the industry, the university community, and in this case the federal government, through the National Research Council.

The Chairman: Once again, thank you for appearing before this committee.

We'll suspend our operations for three minutes. It will give us an opportunity to clear the desk and invite the other witnesses to come up for round two.

.1639

.1647

The Chairman: The committee now will come to order and resume its sitting with the second portion, the second round table.

Thank you very much. You were very patient sitting there and listening to the other witnesses. You know the format. We'll start from the other side of the table, and ask Elda Paliga to speak first.

Ms Elda Paliga (President, Cross Border Management Inc.): I represent CBM, Cross Border Management Inc. It is an immigration training and consulting firm.

I should probably say that you might like to know some of my background. I used to be a director with the immigration department.

What our company is proposing today is a simplified and more cost-effective proposal than what has been suggested thus far.

There are really three principal ways to get into Canada on the temporary foreign worker side. The first is with a visitor exemption, and I call that the global expressway because it's fast; you don't need a work permit to work in Canada.

The second way is through what are called validation exemptions, and I call that the firebird express.

The last one is very slow. Why? Because the human resources department doesn't have service standards.

The suggestion I am going to present today involves the validation exemption. Currently there are over 40 exemption categories that allow foreign workers to come to Canada. To create a new validation exemption category, you don't need to change the regulations. The authority is there now.

The suggestion I'm going to make is to create a validation exemption category under the significant benefits criterion. It could be done in a day; there are precedents for it. And because you've created it in a day, you can also revoke it in a day.

A unique code for information technology workers would be better, because you could monitor them. You could monitor them once every three months, every six months, or once a year - it is your pleasure.

Just so you can understand the validations that come under this significant benefits criterion, I'll mention a few, and you can judge for yourselves whether the IT professionals in this proposal are any less significant.

.1650

So the following I'm going to mention are allowed into Canada, validation exempt, under the significant benefit criterion: booth operators at exhibitions and fairs; Amway distributors; camp owners or directors; professional and hobby collectors selling at other than conventions; training personnel; inter-company transferees; specified foreign worker employment; and Canadian Football League players, coaches, and their spouses.

But the beauty of the Canadian immigration system is its flexibility, and there is another one. It speaks of any others that could be justified under the creation of significant benefits.

What is the volume? In 1994 there were 83,725 validation-exempt entries into Canada. That same year 36,463 came in through the HRD validation process.

So why is this proposal I am suggesting simple and cost-effective? Because it would take only one day to create if the will were there. There would be no need for the industry to create generic job descriptions, which is a resource-intensive exercise for the industry. There would be no need for the HRDC-CCIC pilot project. It's easy to monitor and to analyse. You could revoke it.

This proposal is also inclusive. It would not only allow entry of IT professionals who are in themselves developers in the software industry; it would allow the entry of IT professionals who work for other than that industry.

I would like to make a comment on the spousal employment issue. The companies can broker reciprocal agreements. They can broker those in other countries where they have a presence. For example, if Newbridge and Corel have companies - and they do - in other countries, they can enter into an agreement with Immigration so the companies themselves can broker with the foreign government an ability for Canadian spouses to work in those countries. It's done. It's possible. Alcan Aluminum has such an agreement.

I would like to make a comment on processing time. Currently the case processing centre in Vegreville, Alberta, has a published processing time of service of 25 days. There's no reason why we shouldn't have a processing time published overseas. I'm not suggesting the number of days. I'm suggesting there ought to be a published service time. People need to plan. When you're planning a relocation you need to know if it's going to take you two weeks, three months, a year.

Last, I would like to make a comment on accessibility. On Sunday I had a woman call me at my residence. Her sister called because she was in a panic. They had tried to contact an embassy, a visa office. They had lost the medicals. Now, that happens. That happens in all industries; some things go wrong. But where do we go when something goes wrong? She didn't have anywhere to call. When she did call, she was told not to bother calling again, and to wait.

These people shouldn't have to seek out people like me. They are paying customers. Immigration fees are there. She paid her processing fee. She paid for her medical fees. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe paying customers deserve better.

The Chairman: Mr. Nunez.

[Translation]

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: You just said something which I said a long time ago, namely that the application processing centre in Vegreville was a failure. This was realized everywhere, particularly in Quebec.

.1655

Second, you are the first person to make specific proposals which we will be able to study. As a former official with the Department of Immigration, it is clear that you are familiar with the subject. Since you were a director in the said department, why didn't you make such proposals and implement the suggestions you are making today concerning that category of permit, job validation offers which could be done the same day? I think that is an interesting suggestion. Why did you not become involved beforehand and why did the Department of Immigration not implement your recommendation?

[English]

Ms Paliga: I was then no longer an employee of the government.

The Chairman: Thank you. Ms Meredith is next.

Ms Val Meredith: Like my colleague, I want to thank you for bringing some concrete proposals that we can consider here.

I have asked previous witnesses why they feel we need to exempt the need to seek out Canadians to fill jobs, why we need to change the regulations, why we can't just get Immigration to do what they are supposed to be doing. That's basically what I think I've heard you say.

From your experience in Immigration.... How many years did you work there? A good number of years?

Ms Paliga: Fifteen years.

Ms Val Meredith: So in your fifteen years you've seen where this process has worked for other companies, other industries, which have had a need to bring in foreign workers, and you feel comfortable that this process of validation exemption could work for the high-tech industry.

Ms Paliga: Yes, I do.

The comfort you should have is that Immigration should monitor and report back. It's not as if, boom, it's done and you forget about it. If you want to know certain things, what are the occupations that come in, how they are doing, what the genders are - anything - they have.... By the way, if you want immigration statistics, you can have them. It's $100 for ten minutes of computer time, but they are readily available if you request them.

The Chairman: Mr. Bélanger.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: This is very good material - I will echo my colleagues - and I thank you very much for volunteering to present this.

I want to touch on the reciprocal agreements for spousal work permits. Pick Newbridge, for instance. You mentioned it has offices around the world. If I understood correctly, you're suggesting Newbridge could go to the Government of the Czech Republic, say, if they have an office there - I don't know; I would have to verify that - and make a deal that Canadians going to the Czech Republic to work in Newbridge could bring along their spouse and that spouse would have a work permit, just as people coming from the Czech Republic to Canada could do the reverse. Is that essentially what you're proposing?

Ms Paliga: That is exactly what I'm proposing.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: Would you have a suggestion to make for companies that are starting out and that may not yet have established offices around the world? You seem to know your way around these regulations. Are there ways and means such that people could broker a deal in anticipation of having an office, or through another company or affiliates or that kind of thing? Could they make a conglomerate and that conglomerate make a deal with the country?

I'm just fishing for a way, if it exists, of -

Ms Paliga: That's wonderful. You're using your creativity. And that's exactly what this proposal does.

The primary purpose of having allowed that is reciprocal opportunities for Canadian spouses. If that's what the company is able to broker...and they will find out it's not easy, because there are some countries where it's very difficult. But then again, there are some countries that want similar opportunities for citizens and their spouses in our country.

The Chairman: My understanding, Mr. Trister, is you're acting as a resource person there. Is that correct?

Mr. Benjamin J. Trister (Greenberg Trister Turner): I came here to offer assistance on the processing issues, but my partner Mr. Greenberg will address the issues relating to high technology specifically.

The Chairman: Fine, thank you. Mr. Greenberg.

.1700

Mr. Howard D. Greenberg (Greenberg Trister Turner): I'm an immigration lawyer. I don't work for computer companies. I don't understand the technical points from the computer side.

I understand the aspects of moving people. In the last 12 months our firm has moved over 400 IT professionals worldwide to Canada and the United States, so we live each and every day with exactly this issue. It's that concrete type of relevance to the issue I want to bring to you today.

There are two aspects to this that I think will tie in with this discussion. Number one, how did this happen, this validation process that comes before you, from the practitioner's perspective? Software people were getting into Canada in two ways: through a validation process through Human Resources or a Canada employment centre on a one-by-one basis, or under what was called an E-19 exemption, significant benefit for Canada. There were two avenues into Canada.

As the volume of applications started to rise and pressure was placed on the immigration department, it found itself around December having to come up with some practical solutions to a problem. This wasn't just a company having a problem or a region having a problem, this was an industry that was having a problem. So the department got together with Industry and HRD, and they put their heads together in order to come up with a solution. Their solution to the problem was this national validation. The validation arises from HRD. What the validation means is there's no adverse impact on the Canadian labour market.

My friend talks about the exemptions under the Immigration Act as being a vehicle. Those are tied to terminology under section 20 of the regulations, which says there are significant benefits for Canada.

So Immigration will let you fast-track if there are significant benefits for Canada, and HRD validates you because there is no adverse impact on the labour market. Are they one and the same? I don't know. I don't know what it means.

This issue has been very illustrative of comments we've been making over the last three years that there's a strong need to revise foreign worker policy in Canada. The regulations need to be rewritten. The role of HRD needs to be redefined. Canada needs to look back and analyse how it is that people should come into the country and why they should come in.

You have an industry here that has a need, and so the department has come up with an appropriate solution. As a practitioner I can tell you that I have a very close understanding as to what they propose to do, and in terms of eligibility to come into Canada, that solution is as practical as an exemption. In both cases a person will be eligible immediately upon demonstrating they have certain knowledge and certain experience.

My interest in coming here today was not so much on that side of the equation. One way or another, whether it's HRD or the department, people are going to come quickly. That's the evidence you've heard.

My concern is the process. It's all well and good to tell people they're approved on a Monday, but what should arise from that is that they arrive in Canada on Wednesday or Friday or the following Monday.

I represent a good deal of multinational corporations, and I can tell you that what they are doing is making plans around these types of employees for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks off. That's when the projects are coming together. They're working on very sophisticated projects in, for example, financial institutions and commercial institutions. They have to be able to plan. They have to be able to plan the Canadian resources around the people coming in. They devote a great deal of money and time to planning. To put somebody through the process and tell them they are eligible because there is an exemption but that we don't know when they are going to get to Canada is fundamentally wrong.

So here's my proposal, which has actually gone to the minister and has been articulated and discussed in the department. Number one, I think these types of applications should be handled at immigration business centres. There should be one in North America, one in Europe and one in Asia. Why? Because you dedicate staff expertise to fast-tracking applicants, staff who will understand the computer requirements set out by the software association, who will be able to evaluate the applicants and be able to fast-track them into Canada by having control of all the aspects of the application.

.1705

They can evaluate the application when it comes in. They can assess it against the criteria. They can issue medical reports from countries such as India or Sri Lanka where there is this issue of being medically admissible. They can follow up on the medical reports, they can be back in contact with the applicant, and they can get the applicant to come in and pick up the visa.

One of the reasons why I really like the idea of having a business centre in the United States to handle this is that all the corporations are here in Canada. This is an economically driven policy. There is a need from the corporate side. Corporations have all the knowledge.

If you took a worker in India and you asked him about Corel, he couldn't tell you very much. All he can tell you is what his computer skills are. But if a visa officer wanted to understand whether somebody qualified and what the company's needs were, they would talk to the company. The company would make the presentation. That way I think business centres that are strategically placed worldwide, with dedicated staff, would significantly benefit - significantly benefit - from the implementation of this policy. And that's one of the recommendations.

The second is to re-evaluate the clerical parts of the process to see if they can be streamlined. I tell you medical reports from Sri Lanka are read in Singapore, halfway around the world. This doesn't make any sense. We have X-rays going into packages and being sent by couriers and other countries opening them up and their results being sent back again. It's not an efficient way of doing business. It does not provide predictability.

The policy is adhered to. If the policy is encouraged, it's encouraged because there is a need for Canada. You want to deliver the body to Canada, because when they get off the plane that person is going to do something to benefit a Canadian employer in a strategic way.

So the process must be looked at.

The Chairman: Mr. Nunez.

[Translation]

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Thank you, Mr. Greenberg. You have some interesting recommendations. In looking through your brief, which I will read carefully, I see that you dealt with NAFTA. As you know, the Treaty makes it possible to trade and undertake capital investments in the countries concerned, but there are many restrictions on the mobility of labour. There is not the same mobility of labour as in Europe. Nevertheless, there are certain provisions in NAFTA and also in the World Trade Organization Treaty. What is your view of those provisions? Are they adequate? How are they implemented, particularly between Canada and the United States?

[English]

Mr. Greenberg: We do a lot of transfers to both Canada and the United States.

Before I answer your question directly I would like to make one point, which goes to the last line in that article. That article was presented at the American Immigration Lawyers Association conference in Phoenix last year for American lawyers to read about our experience.

There are no borders any more. We like to think we're deciding borders. There are no borders. I can tell you that if this software programmer can't come to Canada to do the work for one of my clients, my clients will do the work in a third country and bring the disk to Canada - not the expertise, the disk. The borders are over.

We've just got the NAFTA figures from the U.S. The numbers are astounding. There are in excess of 300,000 movements. I can process a computer systems analyst, a Canadian graduate of the University of Waterloo, to the United States in 35 minutes; 35 minutes and he's on his way to a U.S. employer. That's very serious as far as Canada is concerned.

In fact, there is a study, which I had my hands on and unfortunately I released to HRD, from Queen's University, talking about where the graduates have gone, and it's frightening. It's absolutely frightening how Canadian students are leaving.

.1710

That ties into your NAFTA question, and the answer is simply this. NAFTA is working very effectively between the countries. If you give me a hundred Canadian citizens who have projects in the United States as computer systems analysts, as engineering technicians and technologists, as management consultants deploying -

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Including Mexico?

Mr. Greenberg: There is a funny quirk about Mexico. There is no activity of any consequence with Mexico, from what we can see. The Mexican equation, as for the transfer of human technology, is non-existent. We can't see it. But insofar as Canada and the United States are concerned, that movement is very strong.

The Americans interpret the NAFTA provisions differently from Canadians. Although they are mirror provisions, they are not treated exactly the same way. But more or less, the movement of Canadians to the United States each day is tremendous, and the number of Canadians we're bringing up here under the NAFTA to step into a corporation to carry on work is considerable. The processing is very quick - very, very quick - because it's border processing.

Ms Val Meredith: I never thought I would see the day when I would agree with a lawyer, but I'm interested in your concept of better overseas screening, shortening the process with people who are competent to make those kinds of selections, if you will, so we know the foreign workers who are coming in are going to be able to do the jobs they are coming in for.

It's very clear in our policy that the Reform Party believes our immigration should be economically driven. So my concern is not whether it's an identified need for which we're bringing people in. The concern I have is changing a policy that protects Canadians, changing a policy that says employers have an onus to make sure there are no Canadians who can fulfil those job requirements before seeking overseas workers. How do you feel about taking away that kind of protection for the Canadian worker?

Mr. Greenberg: I've been looking forward to responding to this question for four days. You didn't disappoint me. With the greatest of respect, this is my response.

The protection of the Canadian labour market is an illusion. It is a first reaction to seeing foreigners come in when the unemployment rate is 10%, which is a natural reaction. From where I sit and with what I watch, this is what I see. All the time I see employers that would rather hire Canadians than foreign workers. There is no preference.... Foreign workers are difficult workers to recruit and to keep. None of my clients would prefer to have foreign workers if they could have Canadians. The relocation costs are between $5,000 and $15,000 a worker.

In this area a worker is so skilled that they could readjust their status at the Canadian consulate in Buffalo in under six months to immigrant. When they are an immigrant they could work for anyone in the country. So the goodwill between the employer and the employee is the only thing that holds that employee with that employer.

That employer expends $10,000 out of its pocket. It brings a person halfway around the world on a project that has already been signed in a contract. Resources are allocated. They can't hold that worker; he or she is a free person. So that person would rather deal with somebody from Toronto or from Montreal than they would somebody from India or from France. But they have no choice.

The shortage is so significant, the skill levels are so unique, the industry is evolving so rapidly, that the job titles from my companies don't exist in the book. They have job titles that don't exist in any Immigration documentation. In fact, they make them up. They are leading-edge.

Isn't it quite unusual that in a country like Canada, for example, our animation industry is number one - so much so that Walt Disney would open up in Toronto from California, so much so that Sheridan College is known internationally as the foremost animation college in the world?

What has happened here is something that is absolutely overwhelming. The government now has a strong appreciation that we are on the leading edge of technology. I can tell you that with five or six companies I work with we turn out a product that is accepted worldwide, sold worldwide. Our reputation in Canada is five star.

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I'll give you an example from my experience. I brought in an individual who's a mathematician. What he did in animation was figure out in a computer simulation how to make the wrinkle of a garment. Making the wrinkle of a garment is vector analysis. It's mathematical. It's two points found together. He was able to write the code in software, and it is the leading software in the world in this area, animation.

There are no Canadians who could do it. There is no Canadian research in the area. He comes in and works with a team of five Canadians. After three months they have his knowledge, and they can see what he sees. Now I have six Canadians, one I immigrated and five already here, who have that knowledge. So what we're importing is a high level of technology.

Your concerns are well founded in standard white-collar areas. Do we need another accountant? Do we need another secretary? Those are good questions. When you have high-tech expertise like this with companies crying out, the answer is fill them quickly in order to remain competitive, because the market is moving.

The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Bélanger.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: It's a pleasure listening to you, Mr. Greenberg. I'd like to hear more on your business centres and the notion of having these in North America, Europe and so forth. Please expound.

Mr. Greenberg: Immigration is concerned about the truthfulness of the applicant. Why these people are called in for interviews worldwide is to ask them, are you really a computer programmer with C++ programming? My response to that is, do you believe IBM would make a job offer to an individual who didn't have the qualifications? Is it likely IBM or Corel would be fooled in this process, that after interviewing and extensively looking into a person's qualifications that person would come to Canada and not be able to do the job?

Why should we allocate resources to investigating applicants when they've already been investigated by the private sector? Why don't we then just look to the private sector and say, Corel, what's your need and why is it specialized, and why can't the DeVry Institute of Technology or the University of Waterloo provide them? We hear your explanation and we're satisfied. Now, who is it you've selected, and tell us how you did it? If it's a credible selection process, we're going to facilitate getting these people to you quickly because that's in the best interests of Canada.

I have to tell you one irony to your comment. The irony is that computer companies sit in this chair and tell you about their need. These people in the regular immigration process score more than enough points to qualify, and they're going to be here in Canada in six months to a year anyway. The whole objective of this special program is to get them here in four weeks because the company needs them now, not seven months from now. They're coming anyway. This policy is not letting people come who otherwise don't qualify.

The Chairman: Thank you. Ms Bethel.

Ms Judy Bethel: Define for me the service standards you think are appropriate in terms of processing for foreign workers, and how would you realign the process to ensure they are followed?

Mr. Greenberg: In a visa office we have a non-immigrant or visitor visa section that handles employment authorizations. That application comes in on a Monday. Within 48 hours a medical report must be issued if required. If no medical report is required, then the only selection decision that's made is to whether or not you have to interview the applicant because it looks like a fraud. If Corel has provided substantial evidence in the documentation plus you can see that the person went to the Institute of Technology in India, which is one of the top eight schools in the country, there is no real selection decision. There's no reason a document shouldn't be issued within four days. If it's a resource issue, then you resource that function. But if it's a selection issue, that selection issue is more or less done when Corel comes forward.

So what I'm suggesting to you is that I could right now create a time line for a visa office. When a medical is involved and when a medical is not involved and in the usual case where there's no criminal problem, I could tell you that time line should not exceed five days.

Ms Judy Bethel: I just have to pursue this issue. I'm concerned about the service centres. We're talking about cost-effective delivery of services. We have service centres in most countries in the world. Why would you think we need another one, as Mr. Nunez says, not in Vegreville but someplace else? Why couldn't we improve the services in the existing ones to include service standards for visa applications?

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Mr. Greenberg: In fact, that's what you would end up doing. For example, if I were minister for the day, the first thing I would do is make the Canadian consulate in Buffalo a service centre. Why? Because it's an hour away from southern Ontario, and it has direct proximity to Quebec. Those officers have the strongest knowledge of computer processing because they see the most of it. They can smell a fraud a mile away. That's number one.

Our experience with the offices we select is that the turnaround time is somewhere between two to seven days, because we know who's efficient, who works fast, and who roles up their sleeves and gets involved.

You can see the dilemma. I'm asking someone to decide on a foreign worker exemption from a telecommunications industry in, for example, Singapore, Hong Kong or South Africa. Am I supposed to have an expert in every one of those offices who understands how to evaluate that applicant? No. Do you want to know what the problem is? They scratch their head a little, take a closer look at the application, don't understand the language, and read the resumé over more carefully. You're asking an officer to perform a task that is inappropriate. You're better off to create specialists in the field who can carve through it like a hot knife through butter.

The Chairman: Ms Minna.

Ms Maria Minna: Just to follow up on what my colleague was talking about, that's really what I wanted to ask about. Do I understand your business service centre would be servicing only the requests that come from industry, or would they be also handling independent applicants who are not connected to any particular company or industry who, as you said earlier, would come anyway because they have the skills? Are you talking about a centre that deals specifically and only with requests coming from companies? Would the others, the self-applicants, go through the existing process?

Mr. Greenberg: What I contemplate is a system that's employee-driven in the sense that the employee is the one who makes the approach to the service centre or to the specialized centre. What that employee has in his or her package are formatted documents, such as employer documentation, resumé, work history, enough to allow the officer to see who the employer is and to judge the truthfulness of the employer and the applicant.

At the end of the day, nobody is going to really want to ask Corel very intimate questions. They're going to be satisfied Corel is who they say they are. The only issue is whether or not it's a good mix between the employee and Corel. If Corel says so and the documents are right, it can be done in the service centres that are close to where the employee is.

We've done so many of these. If I had 20 applicants out of hundreds interviewed, I'd be shocked. A good person can see right away whether they're good or no good. They're not burning interview resources. These people are going to move through quickly. But if criminality or medical issues are involved, then the visa officer is in some proximity to put their hands on them, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the one in the home jurisdiction.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

We have one more witness, and that is Warren Creates. You have the floor.

Mr. Warren L. Creates (Immigration Law Partner, Beament Green Dust, Lawyers): I see I have five minutes.

The Chairman: Yes. Go ahead.

Mr. Creates: I spent the last two days here in Ottawa with the innovation forum, and that was two days spent with the Mitels, the Corels, the Newbridges and so on. It was very convincing and gave us a very thorough understanding of the nature of their problem with regard to the issue you are studying.

It was interesting also that Minister Manley, in the opening address, said to about 350 people that he opposes critics who say immigration takes jobs in this particular area of which we're speaking, and that he certainly supports the buoyancy of a strong and well-managed immigration program. For examples of that, he no doubt pointed to many people who were in attendance at this conference, and he of course included Dr. Millard, Dr. Matthews, Dr. Cowpland, Dr. Carty and so on. These are the entrepreneurs and the thinking minds that had the skill and took the courage to develop many of the very successful companies that are sustaining 15% and 20% growth in their industry and employment. So spending two days with them was really interesting.

I've prepared a written submission, which I hope each of you have received, and I just want to work a little bit through that and finish with my recommendations, which are found at the end.

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Like a couple of the previous speakers, I want to talk about the trends the immigration program has experienced. The points I want to focus on in the first page of my paper are 7 through 13.

It is very costly and it takes a very great amount of time to develop the skills my previous colleague spoke to you about. It is, relatively speaking, inexpensive and relatively fast to recruit them from the overseas market. There was some debate in the last two days of the conference about the life cycle of a product, whether it was twelve months or it was six months. I think that was very instructive, because the projects that are being worked on crank out the products and bring them to market very, very fast, and they move on to the next product and so on. They cannot wait to incubate the skills through the education system and otherwise domestically here in Canada.

Like the speaker from IBM who appeared before us, I firmly believe the immigration program, part of it being the foreign worker recruitment and part of it being an increase in the pool of skills through the immigration program, is only a partial solution to the overall problem, but it can play a very important role nonetheless.

About my eighth point, in the past we've seen a very passive immigration. Those days are gone. I think the days of having a very active or proactive immigration program, where we actually recruit the workers and the skills we want to develop the Canadian economy, not unlike what Val was speaking of earlier.... I firmly believe this can play a very important role in the evolution of our economy, not just to stay competitive, not just to retain the 3% of the multi-trillion-dollar industry the high-tech industry says it has.... The piece of the pie worldwide is estimated now to be only 3%. But to maintain that is going to be an awesome task.

Listening to them speak the other day.... If we rely just on our educational institutions to crank out the technology workers we need to keep the 3% share of the pie we have worldwide, we are going to be short somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 skilled workers nationally and in the next ten years.

Till now Canada has been a beneficiary of the brain drain of other countries. But like the migration of goods, services, information, and technology, the migration of skills will become even more important. Although a lot of the skills are now inbound to Canada - and Mr. Greenberg, who spoke just before me, deals a lot with the NAFTA agreement - I can tell you from my own experience that more and more practitioners like me are seeing the outbound movement of people, as companies, not just Canadian but others, recruit in Canada and move people offshore. I think that's something we have to pay particular attention to.

I think there's a perception among the Canadian public that immigration in this field can be harmful to the Canadian economy because it's taking jobs. Like the other speakers - and I think the ones I would like to point to are the ones in industry - I will tell you it's very costly to recruit overseas. Why would they go through this effort of recruiting overseas if it wasn't to their benefit and to the benefit of their companies and the economy generally?

I think we will move in the direction of the Canadian public understanding that immigration and foreign worker recruitment can be beneficial to the Canadian economy. The multiplier effect is anywhere between one and four jobs for every software worker.

At page 2 of my paper you can see the platform that is the premise upon which Canadian immigration policy is based in the area of economic development and prosperity for all regions. I want to bring two things to your attention.

One is that foreign worker recruitment such as it is now configured will bring to Canada a very small number of people. Yes, it can offer some short-term assistance. Yes, it is administrative and doesn't require any changes to the legislation or to the regulations. Yes, it is relatively cost-free. But I pose this question: how many highly skilled workers who we know and we want to be the brightest, the best, and the most sought after not just by Canadian employers but by employers worldwide are going to leave their homes, fold their tents, bring themselves and their families, those who have them, to Canada if only one of the family members can work and if their children are going to pay foreign student fees? It will not work. It will not recruit the best, the brightest, the ones we want.

.1730

So the answer is that very few will come under the current model.

Raph Girard, the assistant deputy minister who was your first witness, spoke at the conference I was at yesterday, where I also spoke. He said they process immigration applications at the ratio of two immigration applications to one foreign worker. If you look very closely, it's my speculation and my submission to you that for the foreign workers who are being processed by the department the ratio would be far less than that in the area of technology workers, because of the problems I've identified.

The immigration program is the other answer to it. Again, it's short-, medium- and long-term assistance. It is administrative. In my submission, it doesn't require any changes to the legislation or regulations. It is, relatively speaking, cost-free. It will result in more people coming to Canada. They will bring their spouses because their spouses will be able to work. They will bring their children because their children will be able to attend schools at the same cost as for permanent residents and citizens. It is a more permanent solution, because unlike the foreign worker recruitment, which results in a work permit for only six months, one year, perhaps up to two years, this is a more permanent solution.

It is also lower cost to the employer, because the employer wants to recruit domestically. Like Mr. Greenberg, I see that Canadian companies want to recruit people who are here in Canada, because of lots of things: language, culture, the Canadian experience, and the lower cost of doing so.

I want to move to my recommended actions. They are on the last two pages of my speaking notes. Some of them are relevant to your mandate, others are not. I think 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9 are particularly relevant. You could circle those. If even one of those could be achieved, I think we would be much further ahead.

The designated occupation list is a tool that's available and should be used. It hasn't been used in most of the provinces of Canada, and it hasn't been used in this area at all. It has fallen into disuse.

As for HRD people, like Mr. Greenberg, I believe expertise has to be developed in HRD and in the immigration department. I think that's starting to happen, but there's a lot of room for improvement.

I talked about the bar to spousal employment. That's number 5.

On number 8, I think we have to deliver the message firmly to the department that processing times have to be reduced. The department has to react by developing the specialization and the expertise in-house to fast-track applicants in this field. I also think officers have to be accountable and the process transparent. They have to react and be proactive much more than they are now.

Those are my recommendations. They are all administrative. They don't require a cost and they don't require an amendment to the act or to the regulations.

The Chairman: Thank you. We'll go to Mr. Nunez.

[Translation]

Mr. Osvaldo Nunez: Thank you for your presentation. I would like to ask you a question which is not clearly legal in nature, although you are a lawyer. Could companies not abuse a system which is too free and without control? You told us that hiring workers abroad is expensive for companies, and that is true, but when those foreign workers are here they probably cost less than Canadian workers since are more docile and less demanding than workers born in Canada; they are prepared to accept lower salaries.

We also see that highly skilled Canadian workers leave for the United States where the working conditions are better. How will you resolve those problems, when on the one hand you have companies bringing in workers so as to pay lower salaries, and on the other Canadian workers wanting higher salaries and having to go to the United States to get them?

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[English]

Mr. Creates: Like Mr. Greenberg, I believe there are no barriers and there are no borders. The skills will go where the opportunities are perceived or real. Yes, there are workers in Canada who perceive or who feel there are greener pastures in other places, be they in the United States or elsewhere. There is no way to legislate or by policy control the outbound of these skilled individuals, and we shouldn't try to do so. What we should do is make our industries more competitive and give them the tools they need to employ the people they feel they have to employ.

It's not just a question of wages, sir. It's a question of lifestyle and other working conditions and so on. Right now Canada is perceived to have leading-edge technology, and it doesn't hurt us when the United Nations, for the last five years, has said Canada is the best place in the world in which to live.

Ms Val Meredith: The concept you've presented us with is really not different from the immigration policies our country was built on. When we needed farmers on the prairies we looked to the areas of the world that had people who understood the climatic and soil conditions and could make our barren prairies productive land. So this concept has been there in the past.

I do have a few concerns about the approach both you and Mr. Greenberg brought up. That's where we are passing on the responsibility for selecting new Canadians to companies rather than the government. The reason I have problems with that is that at some point they may no longer be employees of the companies who have selected them but they will still be Canadians.

The second point I have is that there are requirements in bringing in immigrants, receiving them, and approving them. Health requirements are one. They have to be medically admissible. That's not just for Sri Lanka and India but for immigrants coming from Great Britain or Germany or wherever. The other is that they don't pose a threat either criminally or to national security. I am not so sure the individuals in corporations would have the ability to understand or to make sure those kinds of selective processes or criteria would be met.

Therein lies my concern with its strictly being a business matter. I have no problem with saying that if it's an economic need of the country they should be the immigrants we are allowing in. They are the ones who are going to be productive citizens our industries need, and therefore they are the primary ones we want to select. But that choice still has to be with the government.

Mr. Creates: I agree with you. We're not talking about delegating all areas to the company to make those decisions. What we're talking about is letting the company take responsibility for the recruitment and for making the decision that the person has the skills they want. Who better has the expertise to do that? In that respect I think we should trust the employer, for the most part; with some overviewing, but not an overriding concern that's going to result in great delay.

Yes, the companies don't have the skill. Perhaps they don't have the interest, the national interest, in protecting Canada against health and criminal concerns. That should always be a feature of the federal officers who do that, and the same is true with Quebec. It's federal officers who make those overseas decisions, based on medical and criminal background and security risk clearances.

So I see no problem with what is being done now, but I see problems with the myopia of the officers who are responsible for this. They are Cyclops. They have one eye and they can do one task, and when that task is done on the file it's moved over, put back in the cabinet, and it sits there for three weeks or six months or a year until the next thing has to be done, be that a health check...six months go by; a medical clearance, another six months. A lot of these things can be done all at one time.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: I'm going to revisit the spousal matter because you raise it as one of your two major concerns. You make a very eloquent case for allowing people the country would like to bring in within its borders because there's an economic benefit to allowing the spouse of that worker to work also. Some members of this committee have raised the flip side of that. That spouse may not bring significant benefit per se, himself or herself, in that they don't have the same technical expertise we're looking for and they may displace someone else in the country who is unemployed. Whether we like it or not, it is a difficulty we have to come to grips with.

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We've had one witness suggest that in the world we're competing in, the country will have to look at that possibility of allowing spousal working permits in order to give the country a competitive edge. I would like to hear your comments on that.

Mr. Creates: The department studied the issue of the selection criteria of the immigration program and found principal applicants who are selected on the basis of their skills, highly skilled, highly educated people with adaptive skills, people who are resourceful and motivated.... Guess what? They tend to marry people who have the same skill set. That's no surprise.

So what they did, for the most part, was try to re-engineer the selected skilled worker program and the selection criteria. It never came through.

If you look very closely at people with these skills, we want the best. We're recruiting the world for the best. The best tend to have spouses who have high skills as well. If we don't recruit the best, even the ones who have family members, we're going to lose them.

That's why I'm telling you if you look at the model currently being used, we're not getting the best. We're getting only a few people. The question is whether these few people are going to help the industry problem you've heard the witnesses before us speak to you about. Not a chance. It will have not even a measurable impact, in my view, other than the anecdotal evidence of one worker here and there who does make a difference.

You have to multiply that through the industry. One worker will create somewhere between one and four jobs. Those are the credible numbers I have read. Whether it's four or it's one, who knows? We're crystal-balling it. But it's something, and we're not going to get any of that if we don't let the spouses work, because they're going to go to countries where they can work.

Ms Maria Minna: I want to come back to Mr. Creates, although others have made the same comment. When we're talking about screening in immigration - I think Ms Meredith was rightly pointing to other functions Immigration does - we seem to be talking interchangeably about work permits, temporary work permits, and immigration. You mentioned three days a week or what have you. If it's an immigration situation, even if the administration is very straight and very fast you will still not do it in five days or a week. There's just no way, because you have security, and that's done by CSIS or the RCMP.

So I think you're talking about two different things. We tended to have that discussion interchangeably this afternoon.

In my understanding, when you talk about five days or one week, you're talking about work permits and temporary workers, you're not talking about landed immigrants. Am I right?

Mr. Creates: Absolutely. That's correct.

Ms Maria Minna: I just wanted to clarify that, because I don't think we're talking about the same thing here.

I also understand there are some people who are slow and many others who are much more effective in the system, but I hate referring to people as Cyclops, with respect. I think that's going a bit far. I just don't like characterizing any individuals in that way. It's just as a comment.

Mr. Creates: Like it or not, I see it, and it happens out there. Those of us who work in this field every day have to deal with that. As a previous speaker said during her presentation, industry wants to accomplish this. Why should they have to hire high-priced consultants to fix their problems? I may be shooting myself in the foot, but for twelve years I have made a career out of fixing problems that occur in the delivery of the immigration program, either on the immigration side or on the foreign worker recruitment side.

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It exists, and it can't be fixed overnight. I acknowledge that. But the institutional problems are there.

There are two components to the solution in what you are studying. That is the foreign worker recruitment. But I don't want you to forget about the possibilities of the immigration program, which are there and also administrative. I see no problem whatsoever - industry would have told you this already - from increasing the number of skilled workers who come to Canada under the categories of occupation industry needs them in.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger: I would like to have one word, if my colleague would allow me. This is a side-bar. I'm very pleased the committee has agreed that we will look into this. It has raised some interesting questions. But there is one thing it has raised throughout, and it's a theme I, as a member of Parliament for the Ottawa-Carleton area, would like to flag. For once we've talked about the nation's capital in terms of industry, in terms of problems in recruiting people, instead of just as a government town. I think that deserves to be flagged and I thank you for the time to do so.

The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Trister.

Mr. Trister: I didn't get the opportunity to make a couple of comments in response toMs Meredith's issues.

I've provided the committee with some copies of a book I wrote on work permits and visas. In the beginning of the book a chart talks about the structure of the employment authorization system. You made the comment, why should we change the regulations that protect Canadian workers first and put the onus on the company? I presume you are aware that in reality most employment authorizations are issued by all of the exemptions to the general rule that you have to go to HRD and prove no Canadians are available.

I think it is very important that the government consider changing the model it uses to identify who it wants and who it doesn't. The Americans have a system where everybody has a letter. If you are an inter-company transferee you are an L, if you are an entertainer you are an O, and so on. There's no labour certification or job validation process there. If you are this person we want you. If your employer is paying the prevailing wage we'll take you. In our system there are people we clearly want.

I also noted a comment about the onus. Somebody suggested that surely there's an onus on the industry to prove there's a shortage in the area and then have the government react. I think the government really needs to get out of the way of industry in areas where the private companies and the public and trade organizations are saying the same thing.

If you look at the NAFTA numbers, tens of thousands of Canadian computer professionals are going down to the United States every year. When you consider that the software council, which doesn't really have an axe to grind on getting in foreign workers, other than to feed its own demand for them, says there is a shortage, we ought just to get out of the way and facilitate industry and Canada's economic interest.

So I think we need a category.

One of the points I wanted to make is about transparency as an issue. If you are an employer and you call up the government, they will tell you go to Human Resources Development Canada first. But if the company calls me first, I could say, oh no, you don't need them.

They should know that. The reason they don't know that is that our system is governed by what we refer to as exemptions to the general rule, which create for visa officers who don't see this kind of work every day a perception that they shouldn't grant it unless a very heavy burden is met. The burden is lighter in the visa office that's more experienced and heavier in an office where there isn't much experience in the industry. There's no transparency even from office to office, let alone from category to category.

So what we need to do is say that we are not going to couch it in terms of exemptions any more. If the software council comes up with this pilot project and you are of this nature, if you fit within this, you win. If you're a senior executive with a multinational company transferring to Canada, you win. But if you're a cook coming to a restaurant in Toronto, maybe in Indian foods, you might be more concerned that somebody is maybe hiring a relative. Maybe there's an additional reason why they'd pay the extra money to go over and get the person. So you do need review in some cases and fast-track in others, and that, I think, is the model you really need to go for.

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I have one last comment on the spousal issue. We have been saying for years that spouses should be permitted to work, but we have not met with any success. The argument the department gives us is that the Americans won't give it to Canadians, and until they're willing to give that up, we're not willing to do it.

So how do we do spouses? We do them under the code E99 job validation exemption, reciprocal employment opportunities for Canadians. If you're going to London and London will let a Canadian spouse work, we will extend the same to you. We've even gone to using E19, general significant benefit to Canada, saying if the spouse came here on a significant exemption and wouldn't have come here if the spouse couldn't work, there's a derivative significant benefit argument. But what we really need to do is offer that competitive advantage to Canadians.

The Canadian Bar Association's proposal was that at a minimum you should try to open the door a little bit and let in spouses of people who come in under what we used to call the ``cream of the crop'', For a senior inter-company transferee or somebody who gets an employment authorization based on a significant benefit to Canada, let that spouse work. So don't open it up for everybody, but for the really key people you want to get in, let their spouses work. Try it and then see if the benefits do accrue. I believe they will. The corporate human resource managers I deal with are just champing at the bit for the change. They think it's really important.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Trister. We do have five copies of your publication, but we will require more for the entire committee.

Mr. Trister: Tell me how many, and I'd be happy to provide them to you.

The Chairman: The clerk will be in touch with you about that.

Thank you very much. I think this was a most rewarding and stimulating afternoon. We certainly received a tremendous amount of information from both panels, and I can see that our members are really stimulated. It's unfortunate we didn't spend four, five or six hours with you, because you certainly have a lot to offer. Thank you very much.

Members of the committee, the next meeting is on Tuesday, April 15, in room 269 in the West Block at 3:30 p.m.

This meeting is adjourned.

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