Can you hear it? That groaning, creaking sound like ageing pipes about to burst.
That is the sound of pressure building in the immigration pipeline as Jason Kenney continues to systematically choke off almost every avenue except the student route and the family class.
Entrepreneurs? Gone - probably never to return.
Investors? Under renovation. Watch this space - until people get tired of watching this space and then invest their money in exchange for a visa to the United States, Australia or even a Caribbean "second passport" country, like Dominica.
"Well, good riddance," you say. "Canadian citizenship is not for sale," you say. And I, for one, agree with you.
But, then the government sidles up and whispers, "yeah, but all those rich people out there who really want to come to Canada...And I mean, rich, eh? Think of all that money - no more budget deficits, no more cutbacks...We're just going to help ourselves to a few of the choicest ones, okay?"
Trial balloons are being floated by Ottawa about attracting a "venture capitalist" type of investor. The next Steve Jobs! The next Mark Zuckerberg! The current Conrad Black? If the investor program comes back - watch this space - it will sell Canadian citizenship much, much more dearly, if that's any consolation.
Where was I?
Parents and grandparents? Gone - probably never to return.
Which brings us to skilled foreign workers. That's where the pressure is building fastest because no one knows what the new programs will look like.
So prospective immigrants and prospective employers hop nervously from one foot to the other and fidget in line, waiting for the store to open.
Everyone reckons there will be a quota and no one wants to get caught with their pants down when the starting gun goes off. But no one knows what the requirements will be so anxiety and pressure build.
On the plus side, no more occupations list. Thank heaven for an end to that farcical attempt to micro-manage labour market needs.
What else? Bifurcation! It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Skilled workers will be split into streams: management/ professional/technical and skilled trades.
Higher education, better language skills, and more Canadian work experience for the first group and more credentialing and licensing requirements, and practical experience for the trades folks, but lower language requirements.
Either way, skilled worker immigration is going to be tied to job offers. And that is a ticking time bomb.
The current, largely discredited Arranged Employment system is purportedly a hotbed of phony job offers and outrageous "placement" fees. So it's imperative that the job offers - the lynchpin of the new system - be squeaky clean.
Inevitably, given that job offers will become the currency of immigration and where there's currency there is temptation and corruption, people will continue to try to scam the system.
That means job offers will need to be first verified and later audited for compliance.
Employers will be required to bury government staff in enough paper to convince them that the job is for real.
The TSX will be led by companies that make red tape.
Even if a job offer is genuine, it might not answer a labour market need. Maybe it's just to help a relative or friend immigrate to Canada.
Labour market trends, and unemployment and wage levels will need to be tracked.
And so must the degree of effort the employer puts into filling that position with a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.
To properly service all of these increased demands from immigration, Human Resources Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) ought to be adding an army of bureaucrats, but they will instead be shedding significant numbers of staff as part of $4 billion worth of cuts in spending under the government's Strategic and Operating Review. That same review is going to cut a swath through Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) staff as well.
So one hand opens the tap on a torrent of pent up applications and the other decimates HRSDC and CIC - which is already in chaos from all the new programs and visa-post closures.
I'm all for balanced budgets, but significantly ramping up demand while significantly cutting back staff is a recipe for disaster, not fiscal responsibility.
More on the coming face of immigration, next time.
Dr. Joe Greenholtz is a regulated Canadian immigration consultant (RCIC) and a director of the Premier Canadian Immigration Co-op. He also sits on the Richmond intercultural Advisory Committee. He can be reached at [email protected].
