Government Response to the
Report of the Standing Committee
on Citizenship and Immigration

The Provincial Nominee Program

October 2003

 
Introduction

The Government of Canada is pleased to respond to the Report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration: "The Provincial Nominee Program: A Partnership to Attract Immigrants to All Parts of Canada," tabled in the House of Commons on May 7, 2003.

The Government welcomes the Report, which looks at the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) with a particular view towards its potential to improve the distribution of immigrants across the various regions and communities of Canada. All Ministers responsible for immigration supported the objective of improving the regionalization of immigrants to Canada when they met at the federal/provincial/territorial Immigration Ministers meeting, held in Winnipeg on October 15-16, 2002. Provincial governments recognize that the Provincial Nominee Program is one of the main tools available to help realize this objective.

While the various provincial and territorial nominee programs offered across Canada are principally the purview of the jurisdictions operating the programs, the Government shares the Standing Committee's interest in seeing these programs strengthened. The development and growth of the PNP has been based upon the Government facilitating provinces and territories that have strong interests in managing immigration to meet their regional objectives. The Government is confident that this approach will continue to be successful in growing PN programs and pursuing the improvements recommended by the Committee. Initiatives that will address some of these recommendations are already under way.

 
Recommendation 1

The Provincial Nominee Program should be one of the main tools used by the federal government to encourage more immigration settlement in all regions of Canada.

Response: The Government agrees with the recommendation. Many of the regionalization proposals submitted by provinces use some element of provincial nominee powers. The Government believes that a key to immigrant retention is effective settlement of newcomers, and immigrants nominated by provincial governments tend to be quickly integrated.

 
Recommendation 2

To encourage permanent residents to remain in particular regions, Citizenship and Immigration Canada should pursue incentive-based programs that promote settlement throughout the country.

Response: The Government agrees with the recommendation, and believes that provincial nominee programs have already proven effective at encouraging immigrants to Canada to settle and remain in communities outside of Canada's three main metropolitan centres. Immigration through provincial nominee programs is often based on a job offer and/or community support. Citizenship and Immigration Canada continues to work with the provinces to ensure that PNP frameworks allow employers and communities to create incentives that attract immigrants to their particular region.

 
Recommendation 3

It is necessary that Citizenship and Immigration Canada prepare an annual report outlining the functioning of the various provincial nominee programs. The report should highlight positive developments as well as identify problems and concerns that have arisen.

Response: The Government agrees with the recommendation. The PNP was developed as a series of bilateral agreements with the provinces/territories, and the various provincial programs became operational at different times. It is only recently that a sufficient number of jurisdictions have had a level of nomination activity large enough to justify an annual report. Citizenship and Immigration Canada staff work with officials of the various provincial programs to coordinate data sharing so that coherent reports of national PN activity, including impacts by gender, can be assembled and made available.

 
Recommendation 4

The Committee recommends that Citizenship and Immigration Canada facilitate the sharing of information between provinces and take an active role in advising jurisdictions with a Provincial Nominee Agreement of issues that have arisen with respect to other jurisdictions.

Response: The Government agrees with the recommendation. A Working Group of Provincial/ Territorial Nominee Program representatives has been in place since December 2001. It is committed to quarterly meetings or teleconferences to share data, exchange information regarding best practices, identify areas of concern with respect to co-ordinating the activities of the provincial/territorial programs with federal immigration activity, and seek consensus on key issues of program policy where appropriate.

 
Recommendation 5

Citizenship and Immigration Canada should encourage the provinces participating in the Provincial Nominee Program to expand their programs. The Department should work towards significant increases in the allotment of Nominee Certificates when current agreements are approaching expiry.

Response: Citizenship and Immigration Canada has been extremely open and responsive to requests from provinces for increases to their nomination allocations. The Department has encouraged, and will continue to encourage, provinces and territories to expand their programs in a responsible manner as reflected by past performance and resource commitment.

 
Recommendation 6

Citizenship and Immigration Canada should make the necessary corporate commitment to process significantly more provincial nominees.

Response: The Government's provincial and territorial partners designed their provincial nominee programs to meet specific economic and social objectives. They also partake in the decision-making process regarding the numbers of nominations allocated per year. Any increases in the number of provincial nominees must correspond with the desired size and scope of their programs and available resources. CIC will ensure that the nomination allocations negotiated each year are supported by adequate immigrant processing resources.

 
Recommendation 7

The provinces that are participating in the Provincial Nominee Program must also ensure that they commit the necessary resources and should develop strategies to ensure the success of their programs.

Response: The Government agrees with the recommendation. Citizenship and Immigration Canada works closely with program officials of the various PN programs to assist them in developing efficient and effective models for program delivery and to ensure that their resource commitments are adequate for their preferred program model.

 
Recommendation 8

Adequate resources should be dedicated to ensure that Provincial Nominee Program applications are processed by our visa posts overseas within six months.

Response: The profiles of persons nominated for immigration by the provinces are as diverse as the entirety of the immigration movement into Canada, and represent the same range of processing challenges. While the Government agrees with the Committee that processing times for provincial nominees should be improved, it does not believe that this should be considered in isolation from the processing of other important classes of immigrants to Canada such as refugees, skilled workers, and members of the family class, many of whom have much longer average processing times. The Government is committed to doing what it can to improve processing times for all immigrant applicants.

 
Recommendation 9

Provincial Nominee work permits should be used as a method of allowing Provincial Nominees to begin work in Canada pending the final processing of their permanent residence application.

Response: The Government agrees with the recommendation. Provisions for providing work permits to provincial nominees were included in the recent renewal of the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Agreement and will be included in other PN agreements as they come up for renewal.

 
Recommendation 10

Provinces should be encouraged to include a domestic component to the Provincial Nominee Program by permitting temporary residents in Canada, such as international students and live-in caregivers, to apply.

Response: There is no element in the legislative authorities of any of the PN agreements that precludes the nominations of foreign nationals who are temporarily residing in Canada. Many provinces have expressed particular interest in encouraging temporary residents such as foreign students and live-in caregivers to consider permanent residency in Canada, and the Government is piloting various approaches to support the provinces in these efforts.

 
Recommendation 11

Local municipal government, community groups and business associations should be actively encouraged to participate in the Provincial Nominee Program.

Response: The Government agrees with the recommendation. CIC encourages provinces operating PN programs to consult and otherwise involve local level players, such as municipal governments, community groups and business associations, in all aspects of their programming. The Government believes that it is important to respect the primacy of the provinces in these matters and to ensure that the involvement of these local level institutions takes place through provincial officials and not directly with federal officials.

 
Recommendation 12

Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the provinces with Provincial Nominee Agreements should include local municipal government, community groups and business associations sponsoring immigrants with targeted skills and business entrepreneurs.

Response: The Government agrees with the recommendation. Most Provincial Nominee Programs include a separate category for business entrepreneurs. As well, many of the PN programs already base a considerable amount of nomination activity on commitments such as job offers from employers and/or specialized support from community groups.

 
Recommendation 13

Citizenship and Immigration Canada should pursue a Provincial Nominee agreement with the Government of Ontario.

Response: CIC has encouraged the Province of Ontario to enter into a Provincial Nominee agreement. A representative of the Ontario Provincial Government is invited to, and attends, all meetings of the Federal/Provincial/Territorial Working Group on Provincial Nominees. CIC values Ontario's interest in the PN Program and would welcome its continued and increased involvement, including entering into a Canada-Ontario Agreement on Provincial Nominees.

 
Recommendation 14

Citizenship and Immigration Canada should undertake an international marketing program in coordination with the provinces that have entered into an agreement under the Provincial Nominee Program.

Response: The Government agrees with the recommendation. The Government already coordinates international immigrant recruitment initiatives in which multiple provincial representatives take part. We note, however, that international marketing is a resource-intensive activity and the ability of some of the provinces to participate is limited for this reason.

 
Recommendation 15

The provinces that have entered into an agreement under the Provincial Nominee Program should be encouraged to promote their regions at Canada's visa posts overseas.

Response: The Government agrees with the recommendation. CIC's International Region provides advice to PN program officials regarding international locations with rich potential for recruitment. As well, an increasing number of missions are preparing and delivering recruitment presentations that specifically detail opportunities offered by Canada's various provincial nominee programs. And CIC web sites offer hotlinks to provincial web sites promoting their PN programs.

 
Recommendation 16

Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the provinces involved in the Provincial Nominee Program should, in conjunction with Industry Canada and Human Resources Development Canada, develop a communications strategy directed at the Canadian business community to inform them of the Provincial Nominee Program and its benefits.

Response: As the various provincial programs have been operationalized at different times, CIC has tried to ensure that no provincial program is promoted in a way or at a time that could create public demand before the provincial government has developed the capacity to deal with it. The Government agrees that CIC, along with interested federal departments such as Human Resources Development Canada and Industry Canada, should offer to work with interested provincial governments to develop effective communications strategies directed at provincial businesses. However, as all provincial programs are different, each jurisdiction must take primary responsibility for the promotion of its own program, to ensure that program criteria are not misrepresented and that the jurisdiction's accountability for its own program is not undermined.

 
Recommendation 17

Citizenship and Immigration Canada should review how it provides information to the public and, in particular, how Canadian employers can arrange for personal consultations with CIC officials, as part of an overall communications strategy for the Provincial Nominee Program.

Response: The Government agrees that the Provincial Nominee Program would benefit from the development of a communications strategy. However, each province has its own unique criteria for nominating candidates, and CIC officials cannot speak on behalf of the provincial programs. The Government believes that the most effective way for the public, including the employer community, to become aware of the various Provincial Nominee programs is through representations from, and communications with, the specific province of interest. Citizenship and Immigration Canada can best support communication efforts by working directly and closely with provincial PN program officials, leaving it to the provinces/territories to make direct contact with employers in their jurisdictions.

 
Recommendation 18

The necessary administrative resources must be provided by Citizenship and Immigration Canada to ensure that increased application volumes that result from marketing and promotional activities are processed quickly.

Response: The Government agrees that CIC's capacity to process provincial nominee applications should be adjusted to accommodate increased program activity that would result from increased promotion and marketing activities. The scale of current Provincial Nominee programs is such that even with substantial increases in volume, nominee levels over the medium term will still form only a small percentage of Canada's overall immigration intake. CIC is confident that the Department will continue to process provincial nominations expeditiously with existing administrative resources, even with the increased volumes that promoting PNP may bring.

 
Recommendation 19

The Committee recommends that adequate settlement resources be provided to ensure the successful establishment of provincial nominees.

Response: The Government provides funds to help all newcomers to Canada, including those nominated through PNPs, to adapt, settle and integrate into Canadian society. Settlement programs and services are delivered by the Government in partnership with provinces and communities, and by those provinces that are responsible for the administration and delivery of federally funded settlement programs and services. Activities include language instruction, orientation and referrals to community services, job-finding clubs, interpretation/translation and mentoring.

Since 1996-97, Parliament has provided $173.3 million annually for settlement funding. These monies provide for language training, immigrant settlement, adaptation and mentoring programs outside Quebec. The Government assesses funding for settlement programs within the scope of broader government priorities.

While settlement services are not specifically targeted to provincial nominees, the share of funds allocated for settlement services in provinces and territories is increased to the extent that provincial nominee activity results in an increase in the overall number of immigrants settling in a given jurisdiction.

© Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, 2003
Cat. no. Ci-51-148/2003
ISBN 0-662-67644-0
C&I-563-10-03