StarBuzz Weekly, Toronto-OTTAWA, ON - February 15, 2011
11:30 a.m. Teleconference
Operator: Thank you for joining us for a conference call hosted by the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. Please note that during the Q&A portion of the call, you will need to press star 1 to be placed into a queue to ask one question. .
I will now turn things over to Media Relations at Citizenship and Immigration Canada to moderate the call.
The format we’re going to follow is that Minister Kenney will make his remarks and that will be followed by a question and answer period. We ask that you limit yourself to one question when it’s your turn. The conference operator will identify you when your turn arrives. If you have any questions that are unaddressed today, please call the CIC media line at 613-952-1650 and we’d be pleased to help you.
Minister Kenney: Thank you very much everyone for joining us. I just wanted to share with you some good news. Yesterday, the Board of Internal Economy, a Committee of the House of Commons considered a motion put forth by the Bloc Québécois to ban kirpans from the precinct of Parliament, that is to say from the buildings on Parliament Hill. The Conservative government represented there by Minister John Baird led opposition to the motion and it was defeated. And so, that issue has been put to bed, at least here at the federal level.
We continue to watch with concern and interest developments in Québec, which is of course the jurisdiction of the Québec government and national assembly, but I thought you should know that the, the, this issue has been resolved favourably with respect to our understanding that the kirpan constitutes a legitimate expression of religious freedom as an obligation of baptized Sikhs and reflects the motion supported by our government and other parties in 2006 that was adopted by the House of Commons recognizing the, the Five K’s as essential, as essential symbols of Sikhism. So that’s, that’s good news.
I also wanted to underscore, some of you may have been at the announcement I made in Toronto on Sunday. If you were not, I wanted to underscore for you the historic immigration figures that we released this weekend, pointing to 181, excuse me, 281,000 landings of permanent residents in 2010, which is the highest number in 57 years and the second highest number in about 80 years. So we saw a particular growth in arrivals of economic immigrants and that was a result of my announcement last June about enhancing, increasing intake through the Foreign Skilled Worker Program. So we had a record intake of newcomers in 2010.
We can’t maintain, we probably can’t maintain that level, but we will continue with our planning range this year of up to 265,000 permanent residents. And this, this large intake last year, particularly through the Foreign Skilled Worker Program means that we’ve been able to further reduce the, the backlog in that program and, and assure much quicker decisions for new applicants. Unfortunately, there are some people that are stuck in the backlog and, and it will take some, quite some time to get around to those.
So those are just two items of good news that I wanted to bring to your attention, and I’m happy to take any questions that you may have.
Moderator: Thank you Minister. We will now proceed with the question and answer period.
Minister Kenney: Oh, yeah. Excusez-moi. Je dois dire juste quelques mots en français, que on est heureux qu’hier, la comité interne d’économie de la chambre des communes a rejeté une motion du Bloc Québécois pour interdire le kirpan dans le parlement du Canada. Et deuxièmement, que nous avons annoncé ce week-end l’arrivée du plus grand nombre des immigrants en 57 ans. Ça veut dire 281 nouveaux résidents permanents qui sont arrivés au Canada en 2010.
Go ahead.
Moderator: Merci monsieur le ministre. We’ll now proceed with the question and answer period. Operator, you may open the line for questions. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad.
Si vous désirez poser une question, veuillez appuyer sur l’étoile 1 de votre clavier téléphonique.
The first question is from Manjeet Singh Athwal from Desi Times Weekly and Radio Humsafar. Please go ahead.
Question: Yes, good morning Minister Kenney, this is Manjeet. How are you?
Minister Kenney: Hi Manjeet.
Question: My question is that you have indicated in a previous press conference that we should not succumb to this divisive politics by the Bloc Québécois and the Parti Québécois.
Minister Kenney: Yes.
Question: And also that you will stand for the freedom of the practice of religion and the culture and religious traditions of Canadians and of course that includes Sikhs. So if there is an attempt to attack other articles of faith of the Sikhs, what, what will the, you know, what will the government do to protect the rights of the Sikhs?
Minister Kenney: Well, we’ll have to look at each instance at it arrives. It depends on the context where this might happen and, and what the, what the particular issue, but I can tell you that as a general rule, we, we supported the motion for, to recognize the Five K’s in 2006. We, we, we publicly endorsed the, the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2006 on the Multani case, and so we, we’ll continue to maintain that the kirpan and the other elements of the Five K’s are legitimate expression of, of religious freedom.
Now, obviously there are some special circumstances where I think the Sikh community has, has been sensitive to extraordinary security concerns such as airport, air, boarding airplanes, but you know, we will certainly try to, I think a lot of these things are based on ignorance and wherever one of these things comes up in civil society where there’s a misunderstanding about the nature of, of any of the Five K’s, we will certainly try to explain that to the people involved as best we can. And we encourage the Sikh community to continue its efforts to educate Canadians about the nature of their faith. There are elements, you know, elements of the Five K’s that are, that are, many Canadians are not familiar with and we just need to continue educating them about them.
Operator: Thank you. The following question is from Sunil Rao from South Asian Focus. Please go ahead.
Question: Morning Minister. Good to talk to you again. My question is how does your stated, what do you say, tipping your cap at the newcomer vote, how does that square with your axing funding for newcomers in Ontario? Even as your colleague for instance for the Status of Women, over the weekend, announced some funding in Edmonton against family, women, violence against women.
How does it also square with having the number of parents and grandparents coming into the country under the Family Reunification plan? You plan to reduce that, we understand. How does all of this square with you’re tipping the cap at the newcomer while on the ground doing things against newcomers?
Minister Kenney: Well, I don’t know if someone from liberal research wrote your question, but it certainly doesn’t reflect reality. The, the reality is that in fact, this year, 2011, new, federally funded services for newcomers in Ontario will be about 350% higher than they were when we came to office. And when we came, in 2005, the last year that the Liberals were in power, after 13 years in power, they were funding $109 million for settlement services in Ontario. This year, we will be funding 300, I believe it’s $346 million in settlement services in Ontario. That’s an increase of well over 300%.
In fact, there are regions of Ontario such as York Region where there are a growing number of newcomers which will, which will be seeing a 43% increase in funding for settlement provider organizations this year. Similarly, the funding for settlement services in increasing 2011 over 2010 in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Québec, Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan. But what’s happened is that there are fewer newcomers settling in Ontario, Toronto in particular and, and slightly less settling in British Columbia. This has resulted in a situation where new, where it, newcomers to Ontario on a per capita basis are receiving nearly $4,000 in federal settlement services whereas newcomers in the other provinces are only receiving about $3,000 per capita.
So the funding shifts that we are making, the reallocations, are designed to ensure that immigrants in every part of the country are getting roughly the same levels of services available to them. Because over the past five years, there are about 40,000 few immigrants per year choosing to settle in Ontario and that many more are choosing to settle in Atlantic and Western Canada because of, largely because of economic opportunities.
So essentially, the principle here is that the dollars are following the immigrants, but the bottom line is I have no problem at all, you know, not only do I have, not have to defend the government but, on, on settlement funding, but this is, in a political sense, a great positive because after 13 years of neglect by the Liberal government, where they systematically underfunded settlement services, they opposed the $1,000 right of landing fee on, on all newcomers, we cut that right of landing fee in half. That has saved newcomers several hundred million dollars in taxes they otherwise would have had to pay to the federal government. And we have increased the overall federal budget for newcomer settlement services from $200 million to over $600 million this year. So that’s not a cut. It’s not a cut. It’s not a cut. It’s a 300% increase.
With respect to parents and grandparents, in point of fact, last year I believe we received a record number of family members of immigrants. We, we, we received, one of the, one of the challenges we have is that there’s a growing number of applications for spouses and children. That’s, that’s our priority category for family reunification. We are obliged under the Immigration Act, to process applications for spouses and children on a priority basis. So we start procing, processing those essentially as soon as we get them. And there is so much volume of spouses and children that that has offset slightly the category for parents and grandparents.
Now, let me emphasize, Canada continues to have the most generous family reunification immigration policy in the developed world. We are the only country that allows grandparents to be sponsored and one of the only countries that allows parents to be sponsored. But regrettably, we can’t accept everyone, we can’t accept every application in a given year because we have, we have to deal with all the different pressures. We have to give some space to refugees, we obviously need to emphasize economic immigrants who are going to pay taxes and build our economy and we need to focus on spouses and children and other dependent members of the immediate family. And that means we can’t bring in all of the parents and grandparents who, who we would like to. But we will continue of course with that program and as time goes by, see if there are ways we can speed it up.
Operator: Thank you. The following question is from Bhupinder Hundal from OMNI-BC. Please go ahead.
Question: Hi Minister Kenney, how are you?
Minister Kenney: Fine, thank you.
Question: Just a quick question. With regards to the Québec situation, what is the federal government specifically looking at doing in dealing with that issue because they have imposed the ban and it seems that though Québec has the stance that they don’t cater to multiculturalism at all. So what is the federal government, or what’s your plan of action in order to, in order to deal with that?
Minister Kenney: Well that’s actually not new. The, the Québec separatist parties have always said they oppose multiculturalism and in fact, a Bloc Québécois MP had a bill in the House last year to end the application of the federal Multiculturalism Act in Québec, which we opposed of course. I guess all we can do is, is try to explain to Quebecers that our approach to multiculturalism should not be seen as a threat to the identity of, of Quebecers.
You know, Quebecers have a very strong and proud history and identity that they want to maintain and I think it’s important for them to see that, that our approach to multiculturalism does not undermine that cultural identity. To the contrary, what we’re trying to do is to get more, is get better integration, more unity in our diversity and ensure that newcomers and members of cultural communities are familiar with and respect Canada’s basic political and legal values.
And, and so I would, I would ask, you know, some of those separatists politicians to take another look at what we’re actually doing in multiculturalism in the rest of Canada. We’re not trying to reinforce ethnic enclaves or cultural ghettos. To the contrary, we’re trying to build bridges between communities and, and integrate with people more successfully. So I think there’s a, I think that perhaps to some extent, their approach is based on a misunderstanding. I do however find it unfortunate that in this last vote, the Liberal Party supported the kirpan ban in the national assembly.
Operator: Thank you. The following question is from Sapal Jahal (ph) from Daily (inaudible). Please go ahead.
Question: Good morning Minister. Good to have you.
Minister Kenney: Thank you.
Question: Sir, in 2006, as promised, landing fees were, was reduced almost to half, but the promise was that you’d reduce it $200 in your government’s first mandate. So my question is when you are going to reduce landing fee further?
Minister Kenney: That’s actually, thank you for that, it’s a good question. You know, when we do the platform, it’s based on the idea of a full four-year mandate, which we didn’t have in the last Parliament. It was I think about 20 months that our government lasted in the first Parliament. And then, when we come back, when we came back into the second Parliament, the one that we’re now sitting in, of course we were hit by the global economic downturn and, and, and a huge reduction in government tax revenues, consequently a very large deficit, as you know. Last year, a deficit of $54 billion, this year, likely in the range of $40 to $45 billion.
And so a number of things that we have committed to doing, that we want to do have had to be delayed until we can substantially reduce the deficit. So that is a commitment that we made and I haven’t forgotten about it. We, but the promises that we, we deliver on have to be done in a way that’s affordable. So going forward, we will continue to, we’ll look at the right time when we can actually meet that commitment, but for the time being, that and a lot of other things are going to have to wait until, until the deficit is further reduced.
Operator: Thank you. The following question is from Jagtar Singh from Radio Apna. Please go ahead.
Question: Good morning Minister.
Minister Kenney: Good morning.
Question: Okay, I have one question. I heard about that one, you have said that your government has set up some quota for family (inaudible) from India and you increase the quota from Chinese. Now we have to wait for our family to come over here with (inaudible) to 13 years. Is that right?
Minister Kenney: Well, every year, the public servants in, in Immigration Canada assess targets for different streams of immigration, including family reunification based on the number of applications received in the previous year. Typically, that’s the main thing they look at. And so yes, from year to year, they do reallocate targets, operational targets for processing different steams of immigration from some missions to other missions. I, I don’t know the detail, I’ll look into it because this is really something that’s done at an operational level by the public servants in our ministry. But if for example, they see a larger backlog of, of say, parental cases in, in China as opposed to India, then they might very well adjust some of the processing targets to, to China or vice versa. These things move back and forth.
All I can tell you is that overall, India was the largest source of new permanent residents to Canada in 2009, I have not yet seen the 2010 data, and that we have seen a huge increase in the number of visitor visas issued to Indians coming to Canada. That has basically doubled in the past five years and we also see a very significant growth in the number of students coming from India. That’s, that will have tripled in the past two years. So overall, we see more people immigrating, very large numbers of people emigrating from India and an increasing number visiting or studying or working from India, many of whom will now benefit from our new Canadian Experience Class. That is to say the students will be able to transition into permanent residency in most cases from within Canada.
So again, I, I’ll look into the family stream allocations in particular, but overall, India remains one of our top two immigration source countries to Canada.
Moderator: Thank you everyone. Mr. Kenney, would you like to say a few closing words?
Minister Kenney: No, just again, I want to thank everyone for their, for their time and good work that you all do and look forward to, to seeing you or talking with you in the future.
Merci beaucoup. Thanks very much.
11:30 a.m. Teleconference
Operator: Thank you for joining us for a conference call hosted by the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. Please note that during the Q&A portion of the call, you will need to press star 1 to be placed into a queue to ask one question. .
I will now turn things over to Media Relations at Citizenship and Immigration Canada to moderate the call.
The format we’re going to follow is that Minister Kenney will make his remarks and that will be followed by a question and answer period. We ask that you limit yourself to one question when it’s your turn. The conference operator will identify you when your turn arrives. If you have any questions that are unaddressed today, please call the CIC media line at 613-952-1650 and we’d be pleased to help you.
Minister Kenney: Thank you very much everyone for joining us. I just wanted to share with you some good news. Yesterday, the Board of Internal Economy, a Committee of the House of Commons considered a motion put forth by the Bloc Québécois to ban kirpans from the precinct of Parliament, that is to say from the buildings on Parliament Hill. The Conservative government represented there by Minister John Baird led opposition to the motion and it was defeated. And so, that issue has been put to bed, at least here at the federal level.
We continue to watch with concern and interest developments in Québec, which is of course the jurisdiction of the Québec government and national assembly, but I thought you should know that the, the, this issue has been resolved favourably with respect to our understanding that the kirpan constitutes a legitimate expression of religious freedom as an obligation of baptized Sikhs and reflects the motion supported by our government and other parties in 2006 that was adopted by the House of Commons recognizing the, the Five K’s as essential, as essential symbols of Sikhism. So that’s, that’s good news.
I also wanted to underscore, some of you may have been at the announcement I made in Toronto on Sunday. If you were not, I wanted to underscore for you the historic immigration figures that we released this weekend, pointing to 181, excuse me, 281,000 landings of permanent residents in 2010, which is the highest number in 57 years and the second highest number in about 80 years. So we saw a particular growth in arrivals of economic immigrants and that was a result of my announcement last June about enhancing, increasing intake through the Foreign Skilled Worker Program. So we had a record intake of newcomers in 2010.
We can’t maintain, we probably can’t maintain that level, but we will continue with our planning range this year of up to 265,000 permanent residents. And this, this large intake last year, particularly through the Foreign Skilled Worker Program means that we’ve been able to further reduce the, the backlog in that program and, and assure much quicker decisions for new applicants. Unfortunately, there are some people that are stuck in the backlog and, and it will take some, quite some time to get around to those.
So those are just two items of good news that I wanted to bring to your attention, and I’m happy to take any questions that you may have.
Moderator: Thank you Minister. We will now proceed with the question and answer period.
Minister Kenney: Oh, yeah. Excusez-moi. Je dois dire juste quelques mots en français, que on est heureux qu’hier, la comité interne d’économie de la chambre des communes a rejeté une motion du Bloc Québécois pour interdire le kirpan dans le parlement du Canada. Et deuxièmement, que nous avons annoncé ce week-end l’arrivée du plus grand nombre des immigrants en 57 ans. Ça veut dire 281 nouveaux résidents permanents qui sont arrivés au Canada en 2010.
Go ahead.
Moderator: Merci monsieur le ministre. We’ll now proceed with the question and answer period. Operator, you may open the line for questions. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad.
Si vous désirez poser une question, veuillez appuyer sur l’étoile 1 de votre clavier téléphonique.
The first question is from Manjeet Singh Athwal from Desi Times Weekly and Radio Humsafar. Please go ahead.
Question: Yes, good morning Minister Kenney, this is Manjeet. How are you?
Minister Kenney: Hi Manjeet.
Question: My question is that you have indicated in a previous press conference that we should not succumb to this divisive politics by the Bloc Québécois and the Parti Québécois.
Minister Kenney: Yes.
Question: And also that you will stand for the freedom of the practice of religion and the culture and religious traditions of Canadians and of course that includes Sikhs. So if there is an attempt to attack other articles of faith of the Sikhs, what, what will the, you know, what will the government do to protect the rights of the Sikhs?
Minister Kenney: Well, we’ll have to look at each instance at it arrives. It depends on the context where this might happen and, and what the, what the particular issue, but I can tell you that as a general rule, we, we supported the motion for, to recognize the Five K’s in 2006. We, we, we publicly endorsed the, the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2006 on the Multani case, and so we, we’ll continue to maintain that the kirpan and the other elements of the Five K’s are legitimate expression of, of religious freedom.
Now, obviously there are some special circumstances where I think the Sikh community has, has been sensitive to extraordinary security concerns such as airport, air, boarding airplanes, but you know, we will certainly try to, I think a lot of these things are based on ignorance and wherever one of these things comes up in civil society where there’s a misunderstanding about the nature of, of any of the Five K’s, we will certainly try to explain that to the people involved as best we can. And we encourage the Sikh community to continue its efforts to educate Canadians about the nature of their faith. There are elements, you know, elements of the Five K’s that are, that are, many Canadians are not familiar with and we just need to continue educating them about them.
Operator: Thank you. The following question is from Sunil Rao from South Asian Focus. Please go ahead.
Question: Morning Minister. Good to talk to you again. My question is how does your stated, what do you say, tipping your cap at the newcomer vote, how does that square with your axing funding for newcomers in Ontario? Even as your colleague for instance for the Status of Women, over the weekend, announced some funding in Edmonton against family, women, violence against women.
How does it also square with having the number of parents and grandparents coming into the country under the Family Reunification plan? You plan to reduce that, we understand. How does all of this square with you’re tipping the cap at the newcomer while on the ground doing things against newcomers?
Minister Kenney: Well, I don’t know if someone from liberal research wrote your question, but it certainly doesn’t reflect reality. The, the reality is that in fact, this year, 2011, new, federally funded services for newcomers in Ontario will be about 350% higher than they were when we came to office. And when we came, in 2005, the last year that the Liberals were in power, after 13 years in power, they were funding $109 million for settlement services in Ontario. This year, we will be funding 300, I believe it’s $346 million in settlement services in Ontario. That’s an increase of well over 300%.
In fact, there are regions of Ontario such as York Region where there are a growing number of newcomers which will, which will be seeing a 43% increase in funding for settlement provider organizations this year. Similarly, the funding for settlement services in increasing 2011 over 2010 in Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Québec, Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan. But what’s happened is that there are fewer newcomers settling in Ontario, Toronto in particular and, and slightly less settling in British Columbia. This has resulted in a situation where new, where it, newcomers to Ontario on a per capita basis are receiving nearly $4,000 in federal settlement services whereas newcomers in the other provinces are only receiving about $3,000 per capita.
So the funding shifts that we are making, the reallocations, are designed to ensure that immigrants in every part of the country are getting roughly the same levels of services available to them. Because over the past five years, there are about 40,000 few immigrants per year choosing to settle in Ontario and that many more are choosing to settle in Atlantic and Western Canada because of, largely because of economic opportunities.
So essentially, the principle here is that the dollars are following the immigrants, but the bottom line is I have no problem at all, you know, not only do I have, not have to defend the government but, on, on settlement funding, but this is, in a political sense, a great positive because after 13 years of neglect by the Liberal government, where they systematically underfunded settlement services, they opposed the $1,000 right of landing fee on, on all newcomers, we cut that right of landing fee in half. That has saved newcomers several hundred million dollars in taxes they otherwise would have had to pay to the federal government. And we have increased the overall federal budget for newcomer settlement services from $200 million to over $600 million this year. So that’s not a cut. It’s not a cut. It’s not a cut. It’s a 300% increase.
With respect to parents and grandparents, in point of fact, last year I believe we received a record number of family members of immigrants. We, we, we received, one of the, one of the challenges we have is that there’s a growing number of applications for spouses and children. That’s, that’s our priority category for family reunification. We are obliged under the Immigration Act, to process applications for spouses and children on a priority basis. So we start procing, processing those essentially as soon as we get them. And there is so much volume of spouses and children that that has offset slightly the category for parents and grandparents.
Now, let me emphasize, Canada continues to have the most generous family reunification immigration policy in the developed world. We are the only country that allows grandparents to be sponsored and one of the only countries that allows parents to be sponsored. But regrettably, we can’t accept everyone, we can’t accept every application in a given year because we have, we have to deal with all the different pressures. We have to give some space to refugees, we obviously need to emphasize economic immigrants who are going to pay taxes and build our economy and we need to focus on spouses and children and other dependent members of the immediate family. And that means we can’t bring in all of the parents and grandparents who, who we would like to. But we will continue of course with that program and as time goes by, see if there are ways we can speed it up.
Operator: Thank you. The following question is from Bhupinder Hundal from OMNI-BC. Please go ahead.
Question: Hi Minister Kenney, how are you?
Minister Kenney: Fine, thank you.
Question: Just a quick question. With regards to the Québec situation, what is the federal government specifically looking at doing in dealing with that issue because they have imposed the ban and it seems that though Québec has the stance that they don’t cater to multiculturalism at all. So what is the federal government, or what’s your plan of action in order to, in order to deal with that?
Minister Kenney: Well that’s actually not new. The, the Québec separatist parties have always said they oppose multiculturalism and in fact, a Bloc Québécois MP had a bill in the House last year to end the application of the federal Multiculturalism Act in Québec, which we opposed of course. I guess all we can do is, is try to explain to Quebecers that our approach to multiculturalism should not be seen as a threat to the identity of, of Quebecers.
You know, Quebecers have a very strong and proud history and identity that they want to maintain and I think it’s important for them to see that, that our approach to multiculturalism does not undermine that cultural identity. To the contrary, what we’re trying to do is to get more, is get better integration, more unity in our diversity and ensure that newcomers and members of cultural communities are familiar with and respect Canada’s basic political and legal values.
And, and so I would, I would ask, you know, some of those separatists politicians to take another look at what we’re actually doing in multiculturalism in the rest of Canada. We’re not trying to reinforce ethnic enclaves or cultural ghettos. To the contrary, we’re trying to build bridges between communities and, and integrate with people more successfully. So I think there’s a, I think that perhaps to some extent, their approach is based on a misunderstanding. I do however find it unfortunate that in this last vote, the Liberal Party supported the kirpan ban in the national assembly.
Operator: Thank you. The following question is from Sapal Jahal (ph) from Daily (inaudible). Please go ahead.
Question: Good morning Minister. Good to have you.
Minister Kenney: Thank you.
Question: Sir, in 2006, as promised, landing fees were, was reduced almost to half, but the promise was that you’d reduce it $200 in your government’s first mandate. So my question is when you are going to reduce landing fee further?
Minister Kenney: That’s actually, thank you for that, it’s a good question. You know, when we do the platform, it’s based on the idea of a full four-year mandate, which we didn’t have in the last Parliament. It was I think about 20 months that our government lasted in the first Parliament. And then, when we come back, when we came back into the second Parliament, the one that we’re now sitting in, of course we were hit by the global economic downturn and, and, and a huge reduction in government tax revenues, consequently a very large deficit, as you know. Last year, a deficit of $54 billion, this year, likely in the range of $40 to $45 billion.
And so a number of things that we have committed to doing, that we want to do have had to be delayed until we can substantially reduce the deficit. So that is a commitment that we made and I haven’t forgotten about it. We, but the promises that we, we deliver on have to be done in a way that’s affordable. So going forward, we will continue to, we’ll look at the right time when we can actually meet that commitment, but for the time being, that and a lot of other things are going to have to wait until, until the deficit is further reduced.
Operator: Thank you. The following question is from Jagtar Singh from Radio Apna. Please go ahead.
Question: Good morning Minister.
Minister Kenney: Good morning.
Question: Okay, I have one question. I heard about that one, you have said that your government has set up some quota for family (inaudible) from India and you increase the quota from Chinese. Now we have to wait for our family to come over here with (inaudible) to 13 years. Is that right?
Minister Kenney: Well, every year, the public servants in, in Immigration Canada assess targets for different streams of immigration, including family reunification based on the number of applications received in the previous year. Typically, that’s the main thing they look at. And so yes, from year to year, they do reallocate targets, operational targets for processing different steams of immigration from some missions to other missions. I, I don’t know the detail, I’ll look into it because this is really something that’s done at an operational level by the public servants in our ministry. But if for example, they see a larger backlog of, of say, parental cases in, in China as opposed to India, then they might very well adjust some of the processing targets to, to China or vice versa. These things move back and forth.
All I can tell you is that overall, India was the largest source of new permanent residents to Canada in 2009, I have not yet seen the 2010 data, and that we have seen a huge increase in the number of visitor visas issued to Indians coming to Canada. That has basically doubled in the past five years and we also see a very significant growth in the number of students coming from India. That’s, that will have tripled in the past two years. So overall, we see more people immigrating, very large numbers of people emigrating from India and an increasing number visiting or studying or working from India, many of whom will now benefit from our new Canadian Experience Class. That is to say the students will be able to transition into permanent residency in most cases from within Canada.
So again, I, I’ll look into the family stream allocations in particular, but overall, India remains one of our top two immigration source countries to Canada.
Moderator: Thank you everyone. Mr. Kenney, would you like to say a few closing words?
Minister Kenney: No, just again, I want to thank everyone for their, for their time and good work that you all do and look forward to, to seeing you or talking with you in the future.
Merci beaucoup. Thanks very much.
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