Immigration Minister Marc Miller says further reforms to Canada’s immigration and asylum systems will be proposed in the coming weeks.
The federal government recently made a significant cut to the targeted number of permanent residents to be admitted to Canada in the next two years, and tightened the rules on temporary worker permits.
Statistics provided by Canadian officials show the average wait time to process refugee and asylum claims is around 44 months.
Miller told the House of Commons immigration committee Monday that the asylum and refugee system is not working the way it should due to volume and inefficiency.
“I want to reform the system,” Miller said. “The growing claims that we see now, inland, are not unexpected. They’re ones that we saw with people having increasingly fewer hopes to stay in Canada, and being counselled to file, I think unjustly, asylum claims where they shouldn’t have the ability to do so.”
Inland asylum claims are those made outside of regular ports of entry. People must have been in Canada for at least two weeks before making such a claim. According to government data, 635 of these claims were processed between January and September this year.
Earlier in his testimony, Miller said an increasing number of people on student visas have been filing asylum claims.
At the committee, as Miller was wrapping up his testimony, protesters held up signs saying: “Don’t deport us! Don’t be racist! Rights not cuts! Status for All!”
One of the protesters from the group Migrant Workers Alliance for Change told the minister “we are the people you’re trying to kick out of this country,” as the minister exited the committee room.
The group of around 20 people was escorted from the building by officers of the Parliamentary Protective Service.
In her line of questioning, NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan brought up calls to reverse the recent immigration changes.
Miller replied that becoming a Canadian citizen is not a right.
The federal government is reducing the projected number of new permanent residents, changing post-graduate work permit eligibility for international students and more. Immigration Minister Marc Miller appeared before the Commons citizenship and immigration committee Monday to discuss immigration levels and how the government will enforce new rules.
“It is not a right to become a permanent resident. It is not a right to become a Canadian citizen, otherwise you dilute the value of it. That’s something I firmly believe in,” he said.
“It doesn’t mean at the same time that you treat people unfairly, and those that have undertaken in their own visas that they will leave at the end of this obviously have to respect that.”
Miller added there are nuances to the issue, which is why there is a target to draw 40 per cent of new permanent residents from people already in Canada.
Nearly 250,000 refugee claims were up for decisions at the end of September, and 48,000 asylum claims have been processed since the beginning of this year.