In this episode, I speak with Ravi Jain from Jain Immigration Law about the new Temporary Resident Program (TRIP) program, which will add 33,000 more permanent residents to Canada's immigration system.
00:00:47.000So, I wanted to kick off because a new announcement just came out, and it talks about the issuance of 33,000 permanent resident status designations happening.
00:01:02.640And, you know, when I heard about it, I got excited.
00:01:04.880I thought to myself, well, this is good news, right?
00:01:07.240Because, Ravi, we'll jump into it, and you'll take us through it all.
00:01:10.840But I'm used to the old P&P, you know, being from Ontario.
00:01:15.560I've heard this for quite some time now about the old PMP process where basically I call it
00:01:23.080Canadian immigration gambling, where a bunch of people actually sit around, they look for a score,
00:01:30.860they go into a lottery, and then one day, voila, right? You find out if you're a PR or not.
00:01:36.600So it's kind of Canada's form of immigration gambling. But now we've come up with a new
00:01:42.800program we've added on to the layer of programs and we've now call it uh i don't even know what
00:01:48.160do they call this rabbi what is the program called anything or did we just announce that it was an
00:01:52.720additional 33 000 people well the whole thing as i wrote in the globulin clause i was quoted
00:01:59.520in the globe mail as saying it was a nothing burger you know uh i think the reporter liked that
00:02:05.440that phrase, or that word, because essentially it encapsulates what we were, you know, feeling
00:02:16.700as immigration lawyers, hearing from the public, who were quite excited about this TR to PR
00:02:24.600version too, because they had a TR to PR, Temporary Resident to Permanent Resident Program,
00:02:30.280And it did capture a lot of people, you know, a lot of them who were, frankly, the minister was saying, you know, lower skill folks that, you know, we never really appreciated in COVID, right?
00:02:47.080So, and that minister at the time, Marco Mendocino, he didn't like the whole high skill, low skill stuff.
00:02:52.940I mean, it was the feeling he was trying to convey was that now we see who's critical, right?
00:02:57.760In COVID, we see the grocery clerks and the others, you know, who are providing essential services to Canadians.
00:03:03.920So, so he actually dropped the points really low and allowed many people to transition to permanent residents outside of the traditional point system,
00:03:15.480where we look at age, education, work experience, et cetera.
00:03:18.840So these are just folks that were here.
00:03:21.300And in some cases, it felt like you're here, you have a policy,
00:03:24.740we're going to make you a permanent resident.
00:03:26.700And that's, I think, in response to the fact that the liberals campaigned on a set number,
00:03:33.380whereas the conservatives were saying, let's just set immigration to economic need.
00:03:37.380And so when the liberals said that in their campaigning,
00:03:39.780it really bound the minister at the time to get people, right? And COVID prevented people
00:03:47.280from coming. So what did we do? There weren't people flying into Canada. So we just looked
00:03:52.280around and those who were here, he wanted to transition to permanent residents, I think,
00:03:58.280to meet some numbers target. So now we have an announcement by the new minister. And the
00:04:06.040minister says, you know, and it's right out, sets out in her levels plan that, you know, we're going
00:04:12.100to have 33,000 spots for a new TR to PR program. So of course, you know, people got excited about
00:04:21.260that. And then she said, surprisingly, that the program had already started. And then like, I'd
00:04:29.960never seen this before. So again, I did a, I did an interview with the Globe Mail and I said, you
00:04:35.100know, normally you announce a program, then you announce the criteria, and then you open the
00:04:42.920program, and then, you know, we as counsel assess whether people are qualified, and we take clients
00:04:48.320or we don't. But what happened is with the announcement, the way it was announced,
00:04:53.000that the program had already started, that, or that it was coming, and that, you know,
00:04:57.140all this stuff, it led to a lot of inscrupulous folks, a lot of non-lawyers, frankly, because I
00:05:04.860see a lot of lawyers taking on a lot of cases i saw a lot of stuff and um out there where people
00:05:11.980were saying you know we'll take you on you know do your english testing education testing and
00:05:18.140take some fees and that's really irresponsible and i think that the criticism of the bar
00:05:24.460was that the minister should never have really announced it the way she did
00:05:28.380she shouldn't have sort of said it's coming and and then she said okay it's open and then
00:05:33.420you know not knowing the criteria and then the whole thing's a nothing burger because
00:05:37.740there is no new program all it was was that the minister was saying look for those already
00:05:45.180in the atlantic immigration program or the rural program these programs that already exist
00:05:50.780if you've been in this sort of you know smaller community for two years
00:05:55.980you're going to get expedited well i mean the ndp wrote a letter saying what do you mean like
00:06:02.700you're just going to do your job then like you're just gonna you're just going to process people
00:06:06.220like you're supposed to so that was kind of a biting letter and then the bar association of
00:06:10.380course you know we were pretty critical uh in terms of the canadian immigration lawyers association
00:06:15.740the group that i co-founded and initiated uh wrote a letter and then many of us were interviewed in
00:06:20.780the press and we sort of you know said the same thing so you know that's the tr to pr in a nutshell
00:06:26.940okay yeah you know and i i was reading up on it over the weekend to get ready for the show
00:06:32.140and you know bang on roughly when before it was even announced and when it was announced they
00:06:38.620basically said you know 3 600 people had already been processed through it so it already started
00:06:43.260to move before the 33 000 then it gets off and rolling and then it was interesting because i was
00:06:49.260uh i was down east on last week and in in st john's and i was talking to someone in the airport
00:06:56.700coming back and they started telling me about this program so i'm having this conversation
00:07:00.700and this young man's telling me that he's thinking about moving to a small town because if you live
00:07:07.600in a small town for two years and you have a job and you're part of the community you can get PR
00:07:14.260and I said to him I said are you sure like yeah I would actually ask someone about this because
00:07:18.900it seems weird so anyways I got back and I took a look and and apparently you know I wish I would
00:07:23.920have got his number because quite frankly you already had to live in a small town it it was
00:07:29.740something you would have already had to do. It's not something that starts today. So just for our
00:07:34.740listeners that are listening, please do not go rushing to live in a small town to get a job,
00:07:39.960hoping that it'll get your PR. And Ravi, there's other programs, and a lot of people don't realize
00:07:48.080there's a bunch of programs you can still get a PR from, whether it's the PNP program or the
00:07:55.300atlantic program or the uh caregiver pilots and there's a number of programs yeah that one's
00:08:03.380close i mean i did want to pick up on something you said because i find it very interesting
00:08:07.360there's a lot of people who organize their lives according to the programs that are available now
00:08:14.840right and people will spend a lot of money sometimes they'll spend their parents life
00:08:21.620savings especially if you know we hear a lot of people from india you know the parents have really
00:08:27.620mortgaged themselves with a hilt to pay for the kids education and they come here in good faith
00:08:35.140and then they're lied to by many immigration consultants who are not lawyers in india who
00:08:41.460basically say there's a guaranteed pathway to permanent residence or they were joining these
00:08:46.500private public colleges which are now defunct because the federal government put a cap on the
00:08:52.660number of study permits that can be issued and so the provinces of course control education
00:08:57.460by constitutional right uh and so they were forced to choose between universities
00:09:04.500pure community colleges or community colleges with private partnerships and they got rid of
00:09:08.020all the private partnerships that's all the studying in strip malls and movie theaters and
00:09:11.540stuff so all that's pretty much gone um but those students were misled saying that they could study
00:09:17.700in some of those purely private ones and then or with a partnership and then they'd get a work
00:09:22.420permit afterwards and then they wouldn't right so people organize their lives they um many people
00:09:29.460are learning french many people will go to a small community now because they think that this program
00:09:35.140will surface again in the future and you know there's good and bad with our immigration system
00:09:41.620relative to say the american system the american system is arguably more democratic because it's0.98
00:09:48.180got to go through congress etc changes but we still have the same alphabet soup of h1s and l1s
00:09:54.660and all the all the different you know uh immigration categories really hasn't changed
00:09:59.380and you know even don trump was saying look i want i want our immigration system to be more like
00:10:04.500canada's which is ironic because he doesn't like canada you know pretty much in any way in terms
00:10:10.500of the way you know canada runs you know we run the country uh but ironically saying i want canadians
00:10:17.860you know the canadian immigration system because we have a point system where most of the people
00:10:21.860coming in are in the economic you know we're choosing economic immigrants maybe two-thirds
00:10:28.420roughly a third family class whereas in united states it's like two-thirds family class and
00:10:33.380one-third economics he said i want to be like can we uh but he can't because there's so much
00:10:38.180there's so much gridlock in congress whereas in canada we have immigration changes shoved through
00:10:47.300budget implementation bills that have nothing to do with immigration uh we have ministerial
00:10:54.020instructions where the minister can just ram through all kinds of changes we have the act
00:10:59.220which empowers the regulations which empowers a lot of rules which just live on the website that
00:11:03.860can be changed on a dime and it's the same thing with our immigration programs like the
00:11:08.020ministerial instructions right it doesn't go through standing committees parliamentary standing
00:11:13.060committees just the minister just changes the rules right and they and that that's what we're
00:11:17.620going to see how that's what we saw happening with the 32 000 uh we're going to start to see
00:11:23.140in terms of implementation like if it's going through anything going through express entry
00:11:27.220For instance, those changes can happen relatively quickly, and I would argue that they're not so
00:11:33.220democratic in terms of change. Now, the Liberals have a majority now anyway, but the point is
00:11:37.540just the way we do things, it's good in a way because we can respond to stuff. We can pivot
00:11:44.020on a dime. It's bad in the sense that if we use that power too frequently, then people aren't
00:11:53.940able to reliably plan their lives and they spent a lot of money they spent a lot of years of their
00:11:58.900lives working towards a goal that can change and i'll give you another example express entry
00:12:04.500economists say you know express entry should be like it used to be three years ago before
00:12:10.500three years ago uh it was just based on the number of points you had and then the government started
00:12:16.340doing targeted draws so they said if you speak french if you are an education or if you're a
00:12:22.180position or you know construction like certain there's winners and losers now and and they can
00:12:27.300do stem and they can change that they can say oh you know uh we have enough it workers we're0.84
00:12:32.580dropping now right uh we're gonna get rid of french now we're gonna do this so it's very1.00
00:12:37.940frustrating for people who are trying to you know um to plan their lives and and it's not about
00:12:44.980who's got the highest points and that's also problematic for an express entry program where
00:12:50.820the whole reason for the program is to select people and their ability to successfully
00:12:55.860economically establish in Canada but right now we're letting in a lot of people maybe they speak
00:13:00.180French and that's wonderful but it's really a political goal to increase the French language
00:13:04.580outside of Quebec to counter a separatist argument that the French is eroding all around them
00:13:09.620it shouldn't live inside express entry which is really about the ability to you know establish
00:13:14.820yourself and and make money and pay taxes etc so so the system's a little you know i have some
00:13:21.540criticism of it but yeah i'll let you jump in yeah no no i'm with you you know and if you look at it
00:13:29.300quite frankly you know it's it's very interesting because their goal is to get the um temporary
00:13:37.700residents down to about five percent yeah i guess so they've said you know let's get that number
00:13:43.700down it's currently at about 6.45 so they're trying to get it down so the interesting part
00:13:50.180of this is that would mean roughly 600 000 people so 600 000 people would have to be exiting if you
00:13:58.900look at the number of people entering between 26 and 28 we we project about 755 000 so on the low
00:14:08.260end we'd have to be exiting 1.3 million people on the high end we'd have to be exiting in my
00:14:16.020estimation about 2.3 million people so we're somewhere around that you know based on the
00:14:22.340people that are in the country today we have to be and i think the government if i if i'm correct
00:14:27.620you know you can uh tell me if i'm not the if i'm correct part of this all this uh rigmarole that
00:14:36.740we're doing currently is to slowly kind of get people you know some cash flow to get them in a
00:14:44.260position where they can pay off some school loans and get them moving back home right now it really
00:14:49.360is because if you look at this i started off the show with it's a gamble it really is kind of a
00:14:54.520system where people get enough points to your point they go and they get french and they get
00:14:58.98050 points because they got uh you know uh they passed their bilingualism test um and then they
00:15:06.260get an additional 50 points they get into a category that gets them above a score of 500
00:15:11.380and whatever and then they go into a lottery well they don't even know when the draws are going to
00:15:16.420be picked the draws are how how much notice do you get on a few weeks but you don't know like
00:15:22.020which category right so now that they have category here selection it can you know it can take a while
00:15:27.700yeah so then you know they go into these categories they don't know when they're coming
00:15:31.460so you're right they're they're moving all around they're they're trying to figure it out
00:15:35.620and then the surprise pr programs come out you know with an additional 33 000. so
00:15:41.700i think you know it's kind of and we've alluded to it before we're kind of putting a band-aid on a
00:15:47.860on a you know a major cut and we're trying to figure out ways to kind of hodgepodge systems
00:15:52.980in to deal with an issue we created after covid and here we are sort of not sitting down and
00:16:00.260figuring out a fulsome solution now it's interesting because we did a we did a show uh the other day
00:16:06.820on crime and one of the topics that came up was conestoga college and this issue you know we had
00:16:14.100the discussion about you know uh doug doug ford and the the conservative government stepping in
00:16:21.540and taking over the board of the college and taking a look at some of the financial challenges
00:16:27.940that were happening and we did we were talking about how that translated to immigration and
00:16:34.020you know then we get the announcement that the government is now going to start tracking the
00:16:40.820number of people in the country through these colleges through the designated learning centers
00:16:47.940and i'm like oh my goodness these are the designated learning centers that basically
00:16:53.460you know we all of a sudden you know during and after covet we saw you know programs we'd never
00:17:00.340seen before pop up all over canada people's uh going to these colleges to get degrees we never
00:17:06.740heard of uh very odd um you know is it you know is this a i guess in your mind is this something
00:17:16.740because to me i i just don't know how this is a uh reasonable way to drag uh people that are
00:17:25.860in the country and to figure out who's here who's not here uh when their permits are up
00:17:34.260is there is there anything you're seeing from your side well they were slow to do it i mean
00:17:40.340the americans had a system called service and you know there was a real linking you know when
00:17:45.700you applied for a student visa that you know the school would confirm that there was admission
00:17:50.420uh there was follow-up you know canada was a bit late to implement it and it wasn't a perfect system
00:17:56.980uh by any stretch now you have these reports the auditor general reporting um i think it's
00:18:05.620pretty significant right i think they said that uh only 2.6 percent um of flag international
00:18:12.900students were investigated just 150 153 000 students non-compliant potentially so they
00:18:22.820had the resources apparently to only investigate four thousand minas was ridiculous between 2023
00:18:28.420and 2024. so the auditor general you know has said that and um and that you know the public
00:18:35.220i'm sure and you know raised some eyebrows uh so i think i think that there needs to be that
00:18:41.380investigation uh there is now i was just looking before our talk today of the immigration of the
00:18:48.100immigration refugee protection uh acts the regulations uh to the act and there's section
00:18:55.060222.1 it talks about some power so essentially you know within 10 days of the minister inquiring
00:19:04.340uh at a designated learning institution so that's all the universities and community colleges
00:19:09.940Within 10 days, the college has to confirm whether the student has actually been accepted.
00:19:18.560And then within 60 days of the minister inquiring, the college or university has to explain the
00:19:26.980enrollment status of each of the foreign nationals that have been accepted.
00:19:31.620And then there's sort of a back and forth.
00:19:33.520And then the end result is that they can suspend the designated learning institution for up
00:19:38.48012 months if they fail fail fail so this is a real like warning to the schools like you better be
00:19:45.440tracking and you better be reporting when when the government asks which hopefully the government's
00:19:50.080going to now ask regularly they have to disclose and the act says that if you are well the
00:19:57.040regulations actually say that if you're not studying and 90 days goes by your study permit
00:20:04.720is now invalid which is interesting because study permits can be valid for many years
00:20:09.760and when a work permit's issued it could be valid for many years as well but if you get fired or you
00:20:15.120quit that work permit allows you to continue to stay in canada i think the idea is you may be
00:20:21.200supporting a family you may have kids in school maybe you can get a new job so and it happens
00:20:26.240people get laid off etc or it's an intolerable work environment they quit you know and then they
00:20:32.880go look for it so there's a there's a leeway there but study permits are treated very differently
00:20:39.120if you say you're going to go to school and you pay some tuition and then you just don't go to
00:20:43.520school even though the study permit on its face is still valid 90 days after you stop attending
00:20:51.760classes you're out of status period so that has a lot of implications because some people they
00:20:58.480come to me and they say i've been out of status because my permits expired maybe they you know
00:21:02.560know studied or maybe they worked or whatever uh and then i have 90 days to restore their status
00:21:07.600right i i go by the end of the the permit but if someone comes to me and they say well i studied
00:21:14.660for three months you know two years ago and i haven't done anything after that then i i don't
00:21:19.280i can't restore their status it's not it's not possible to restore their status for the 90 days
00:21:23.660they pretty much have to go so and that's because i don't do like there are some again i've seen a
00:21:28.960of immigration consultants who aren't lawyers sort of offer what's called a temporary resident
00:21:32.960permit when someone's inadmissible for criminality or medical inadmissibility they throw that at them
00:21:38.080and get some money and then it gets refused and then they finally go so we don't play those games
00:21:42.480i mean we just tell them straight up i mean you know you're without you're beyond the restoration
00:21:46.960period nothing i can do for you um and that's that so so yeah there are these new relatively new
00:21:54.240tools uh that the the government has and let's just hope that they actually use them and that
00:22:00.720they fund themselves properly to investigate because there has to be integrity in our system
00:22:05.040right yeah no there is you know it's interesting and i i'll just tell a brief story but
00:22:10.560i i'm i'm a young man i'm going to university and my cousin calls me and he says you know i'm
00:22:16.080i'm going up to western and i said oh that's great and he says you know i'm i said i'm playing some
00:22:20.800football so i'm trying to get a bursary and he says come with me and i said no i'm not interested
00:22:26.000in going to london and he says well he says you should come because i'm i'm really not going and
00:22:31.600i said what do you mean you're not going he says he says my dad's going to give me the money i have
00:22:35.280to go sign up and he says i've already i've already got a line on a ticket to australia i'm going to
00:22:40.080go to australia i'm going to take the money i'm going to head off to australia i'll call my dad
00:22:43.600later and i said i don't my i said my father would kill me number one and i said number two i said0.56
00:22:49.440my uncle would kill me next because he they would think that i put you up to this so i'm not doing
00:22:53.600it so he says no i'm going so he went and he actually got a job uh waiting tables then become
00:23:00.080a bartender in australia and he got a working permit and it lasted for i think two years and
00:23:05.120he lasted two years on the the last day of the two years of the permanent the immigration showed up
00:23:12.560and they dropped him in fiji wow yeah and he he tells the story he's my age now he's not a young
00:23:20.960guy but he tells the story how quick they were on him yeah like they knew they knew where he was
00:23:26.960working they knew a job he had and as soon as his immigration was up he was out you know and and
00:23:33.440we've just honestly we've kind of created this scenario where we don't seem to know where anyone
00:23:39.360is we're depending on schools that were for the most part highly unstable you know these programs
00:23:45.040that were popping up and giving these kids um you know it's a travesty that we let that happen
00:23:51.280but we did let it happen and now we're kind of stuck with all these people mulling around
00:23:55.760and if we think they're gonna exit so if it comes to the end they don't exit ravi what do we do
00:24:04.400like where do they go at that point a couple of comments i mean you know it's i think what they're
00:24:14.080the announcement has made been made that we're going to start tracking as a pilot project we're
00:24:17.920going to start tracking people's exits i find that to be ridiculous right why would we want
00:24:23.040a pilot project on it and why haven't we been doing so we've got to track people's outs right
00:24:28.160we actually do have to track because no one really knows how many people are out of status in this
00:24:32.800country that's also ridiculous so i think you know these things are coming to light there's been a
00:24:37.520real shift in how people perceive immigration and temporary residence because we went from 300 000
00:24:42.400people 10 years ago to 3 million you know in a 10-year period i mean that's it that's a huge
00:24:48.240increase right so so what did you expect right and and so in terms of what's going to happen to
00:24:53.360people here i mean you know now what they've done is again you know i try to be balanced and when i
00:25:01.600talk about you know the different sort of people assisting people with immigration but
00:25:06.880i mean the minister mark miller at the time called out the immigration consultants wrote
00:25:11.920a letter to their regulator and said you know obviously he knows who's filing the refugee
00:25:18.640claims he knows who the representatives are he didn't write to the law societies who regulate
00:25:23.680lawyers he wrote to the regulator for consultants immigration consultants and he said what's going
00:25:28.880on here you guys these are you know these these kids are coming from countries that traditionally
00:25:35.040don't produce a heck of a lot of refugees right maybe in narrow circumstances and we're getting
00:25:39.440flooded and you know so now what's happened is the the liberal government has passed something
00:25:47.200that you wouldn't expect a liberal government to pass but they basically said if you're here
00:25:52.880and you've been here for a year i don't care if you came when you're five years old the clock
00:25:56.800starts ticking the moment you set foot in this country and if a year has gone by even if you
00:26:02.960came as a five-year-old and left then you come back as a student later or whatever so if if
00:26:08.800if you've been there's been over a year you're barred from making a refugee point which is
00:26:15.760you know very problematic if you are an atheist blogger and you just you know you decide that
00:26:24.000you're not you're not uh you know you don't feel comfortable with the religion of your country and
00:26:30.240it's a theocracy there and you come and you say i'm an atheist new blog and then you know you
00:26:35.360want to make a refugee claim uh maybe you're in second or third year university uh you know you
00:26:40.720can't even if it's well established that you know you're something bad's going to happen to you uh
00:26:47.200if you are a young woman who maybe is going to be a saudi client young woman who's going to be
00:26:52.160married off to an older older man you know her uncle came here and tried to drag her away she's
00:26:57.520fled and she'd been sitting here and i was able to successfully um protect her right so for the
00:27:04.160liberal government to say that's it we don't care we don't want to hear anything from you i don't
00:27:07.760care what your individual circumstances are you're banned you can't make a refugee that's really
00:27:14.560problematic for me and i think they know that it's unconstitutional i think they know it goes against
00:27:19.200Supreme Court jurisprudence. But I think that there's such a mess with respect to how mismanaged
00:27:26.400the program was and the number of shared volume of the students. And I blame the liberals in part
00:27:31.600for federally because they finally put a cap, right, which is fine. But I was sounding the
00:27:38.400alarm bells well before anyone else, frankly. I mean, I was saying, look, I've seen a lot of kids
00:27:45.760killing themselves right the funeral homes in brampton are full uh these kids have come here
00:27:51.280they've been lied to by these consultants which i'm not a fan of right because i've seen i've
00:27:57.280seen the carnage of my practice not to say that there aren't some who try to be diligent i always
00:28:00.800say that there are some that are striving to do you know to be diligent and learn etc but i mean
00:28:06.400they're practicing law and they haven't run a law school right and so and you see some who are
00:28:11.280operating a business as opposed to practicing a profession, right? And trying to be professional.
00:28:18.860And as sworn an oath, like lawyers have to protect the public and, you know, dissuade people from
00:28:23.880things that are not good to do. Anyway, so it's just, it's terrible. These kids were
00:28:29.900killing themselves because they'd been misled, right? And had no hope and felt no hope.
00:28:36.300So, yeah, I mean, I have I have a lot of I have a lot of issue with with the way what was what happened and then the remedies, because some of them are not are not sustainable from a legal perspective.
00:28:52.180Right. Right. No, no, I'm with you. I'm with me, too.
00:28:56.520You know, I find I find it a total travesty of what's happened, you know, solution building for me, because I know, you know, there's a lot we can, you know, go on and on about.
00:29:05.260but i've been trying to figure out some solution so you know today before the show we were sitting
00:29:10.940in the studio and i said okay you know uh we have all these major projects in canada they're in the
00:29:17.580budget we talk about it all the time we're trying to get mining kick-started where you know whatever
00:29:24.140happens with the war in the middle east right now we need a we definitely need to find oil strategy
00:29:29.820um because that looks like something that's going to go on and on and that doesn't look like a short
00:29:34.060term uh you know war for sure so we have a lot of challenges and opportunities also in canada right
00:29:41.740now the challenge we have and this is someone brought it up as i started saying i said let's
00:29:47.340designate people who have come here gone to school paid tuitions paid taxes through working filed
00:29:53.340income tax let's try to find a spot for them in different parts of canada and different industries
00:29:58.620that they match up uh best with so i you know my my strategic uh project managing management brain
00:30:06.700started to go there then the other person said well unemployment is fairly high right now i said
00:30:11.660okay unemployment's high um you know so you got a lot of people or you got many people in canada
00:30:17.420right now are uh on the ei role as we see that go up and the government had budgeted i think in their
00:30:23.420fall budget that EI would go as high as 10%. It's hovering at the 7% right now, higher in places
00:30:31.440like Ontario and BC. But I look at it right now and I think, okay, are we offering the opportunities
00:30:41.440to people that are on EI right now? And are we saying to them, listen, we have this many people
00:30:49.620in the country that are basically exiting if we don't do anything with them soon. If
00:30:55.760you want to work now, you have to find work. Your work opportunities have to be. So to
00:31:00.820me, it's kind of an implementation of a restructuring of the EI system to force people who are on
00:31:06.840EI to move to markets to work that are currently here first. And then secondly, if we find
00:31:12.800that doesn't impact it, then we have to move towards trying to work with the people that
00:31:17.460are here to match them up with employment opportunities and the shame of it is we're
00:31:22.020not talking about that right we're talking about you know we focus on we're sole focused on prs
00:31:28.900all the time and we're not talking about what to do with the employment structures of canada
00:31:34.580you know any any thoughts on that and things you see from your clientele well the other piece of
00:31:38.900it right is his education right and so i think uh mark carney uh announced a few billion dollars
00:31:46.100right of funds to to for people as young as 15 uh and onwards to learn a trade right uh and so
00:31:55.620i think that that's that's a good move right because it's you know i'm an immigration lawyer
00:32:00.580but obviously i want canadians to you know to be trained and to do the work i mean we only really
00:32:07.220want to bring people in if canadians are not available right so if we can retrain canadians
00:32:12.580if we can get young people graduating from colleges and universities uh i think that's
00:32:18.180great and i think you know there are some other challenges right i mean i've said i was blaming
00:32:23.700the liberals in part you know federally uh but i also wanted to to share some blame for the
00:32:29.700conservatives provincial because the conservatives provincially control education right and if they
00:32:37.300wanted to stop the public private partnerships uh community colleges with the private colleges and
00:32:44.100you know they could have right and these these colleges you met like there's so many of them
00:32:49.380that have become so huge right and and again the talking points were uh you know we're competing
00:32:56.820against uh australia the us the uk and you know we're bringing in these international students
00:33:02.340it's billions of dollars coming into canada look at the shiny new buildings all across the country
00:33:07.300from the east coast all the way through and i was saying yeah but people are killing themselves and
00:33:11.700you know there's no other side of the story and you know and and you know they're getting really
00:33:15.860substandard education so at least when you know at least now there's now there's change right we have
00:33:22.900the feds put the cap on it forced the provinces to choose which they should have done before the feds
00:33:29.220forced them to the provinces should have better managed you know the colleges uh and they didn't
00:33:35.780they let them run wild and that's the fault of the conservatives uh particularly in ontario so both
00:33:42.340parties are to blame for this and i don't want to i don't want to single out any one of them
00:33:46.660and i'm non-partisan i'm professional i'm just saying both parties are to blame and if you look
00:33:51.860at the enrollment now the the college enrollment is down 75 university enrollment is down 46
00:33:59.620percent when if you look at 2023 24 24 to today um so yeah i mean it's just it's fascinating to me
00:34:08.580that you know we have we're seeing a major change we're going to see lots of people leaving like you0.61
00:34:13.540said uh they can't once they send the signal that you can't make a refugee claim and they start to
00:34:18.340say well you're not eligible many people will get those letters and they won't challenge them
00:34:23.060and they'll just leave so you're going to have even though the government i think is doing something
00:34:27.060that's morally incorrect because you know there's there are some some people who are vulnerable and
00:34:33.620you don't want to take a hammer approach you want to take a scalpel approach or you want to sort of
00:34:37.620figure out you know how to encourage people to go back um but yeah i mean there's you know there's
00:34:43.940going to be i think opportunities to retrain canadians i think you could look at ei uh i i'm
00:34:50.580also thinking that you know we're we're on the cusp of like a revolution right i mean this is
00:34:58.980ai is going to change everyone's jobs right and it's going to change the number of jobs
00:35:04.260out there and if you talk to economists i mean if if if the guy who's um you know claude uh you
00:35:13.380know that the the ai company that produced plod and and um mythos is the new product that uh you
00:35:22.180know is out there that essentially is so dangerous that the governments of the united states canada
00:35:28.820and the uk met within days of this announcement of it being released because it can identify
00:35:36.180um you know problems with banking uh security and major companies and so they've been trying
00:35:42.740to plug and they released it to the big banks and they released it to major fortune 500 companies
00:35:48.900to fix those things but now they're going to release it to the world and then there's going
00:35:53.060to be all this fraud and everything else but but it's really i mean that the ceo was talking about
00:35:59.060you know how many jobs are going to be um are going to go away and uh yeah some people say
00:36:05.380yeah don't worry they're going to be blue-collar jobs producing data centers and there's gonna be
00:36:10.180this and that but but i just think that you know if unemployment goes up five percent it's it's a
00:36:17.380big deal right it could be social mayhem right and if it goes up the numbers this guy's talking about
00:36:23.780it could be quite problematic so i think um i think that's part of a broader conversation but
00:36:29.380i think uh we've got to we've got to start thinking about things more broadly yeah well
00:36:36.180and i think ravi you make a great point and i think that's why we have to expedite that solution
00:36:41.620building mechanism so now's the time we got to jump in this is also what worries me and you know
00:36:47.220the ai component layering it on top i don't think we have a lot of time to kind of futz around with
00:36:54.260this waiting for two years to uh slowly kind of move people in and out of the system have that
00:37:00.740exit i think we have to quickly figure out what we're doing right now with with people who are
00:37:08.260not going to get their pr not going to be able to stay long term start to work solution build them
00:37:14.340at the same time with the implementation of all these technologies and ai we have to figure what
00:37:20.660we're doing with ei and all the things we have in our country and i think they're all culminating
00:37:25.380together with unfortunately in canada quite a mess right we've kind of created our own mess
00:37:30.740through our you know we lost control of our numbers as you alluded to earlier in the immigration
00:37:36.800coming out of COVID it got it got off on us and quite frankly unfortunately we're now in a position
00:37:45.220where we got to figure that out project you know as we build projects and this is the interesting
00:37:50.420part that I've done on other shows right now we have all these major projects coming up we're
00:37:55.240talking about them they're longer term projects i get it but you know we kind of have to figure out
00:38:02.520i think right now we have to be asking our younger citizens and people who are um you know we have
00:38:10.840an aging population so we have to figure out who in canada is willing to do those jobs who we need
00:38:17.560to keep in canada to do those jobs so it really is a parsing exercise that we have to figure out0.99
00:38:23.320otherwise you know and this would be the worst case scenario we would slowly exit people over
00:38:29.160a couple years we'd have ai eliminate a bunch of jobs and then at the end of it we'd find out that0.52
00:38:34.760no one wants to do the remaining jobs and quite frankly we'd have to go on an immigration push0.97
00:38:40.280again to bring all the people back into do like that's disheartening isn't it at this point it's1.00
00:38:46.680disheartening that we brought a bunch of people from other countries that came in and paid tuitions
00:38:52.440probably not to the best sources all the time that enriched a bunch of canadians probably not
00:38:57.480the best canadians and quite frankly now we're going to exit those canadians to bring in only
00:39:03.320another group of canadians when we find out where we weren't able to manage you say canadians but1.00
00:39:08.200exit the immigrants yeah i know what you mean yeah yeah it's a it's it's just i mean it's cyclical1.00
00:39:12.920right i mean we see um things drying up and then like you know getting busier again and you know
00:39:19.800out is frustrating and there are those who think that if you're good enough to to work here then
00:39:26.760you're good enough to stay right that's a slogan uh for people who don't believe in any deportations
00:39:32.120right um so there's there's people on the the far left who believe that uh and then there's people
00:39:38.840who want a much more orderly immigration system uh on the right but i mean at the end of the day
00:39:44.360or maybe that's not even such a right-wing you know view right i mean maybe it's just about having
00:39:49.320um you know being fair to people i think is a canadian instinct right i mean you want to
00:39:54.600people have paid a lot of money they they had the rules you know have changed you know on them and
00:40:00.840in some ways and so you know that seems that doesn't seem right and and if there is a need
00:40:06.520so what i mean a lot of people rail against immigration are the same sort of people who
00:40:10.920you know who then call me and say you know there's this great person working for me and he's
00:40:16.040amazing and i really need him to stay and all these other people can stay and why can't he stay
00:40:20.680you know and or that you know they need a caregiver is caring for their parents or something
00:40:25.160so there are there are there is a real need right i mean it's i would say it's not even an aging
00:40:30.600population it's an aged population at this point right we're already an aged population and so
00:40:35.880you need to have people who are going to pay taxes so they are revamping the system um i was just
00:40:41.720invited to some stakeholder meetings uh with some senior people in the department uh and uh
00:40:48.760i get my feedback uh what they're going to do is they're looking at economists are saying why can't
00:40:55.480we select people based on their notice of assessments right like why can't we say these
00:40:58.840people pay a lot of tax let's invite them because what happened is again because of massive fraud
00:41:04.680by immigration consultants who are selling you know job offers sixty thousand dollars you know
00:41:09.960a hundred thousand dollars uh if you could get a labor market impact assessment they coveted lmia
00:41:16.440because people were graduating and they had nowhere to stay and they couldn't transition
00:41:20.200from resident so they wanted to get some extra points that they would get for their the point
00:41:25.240system immigration application if they had a job so they really wanted to get um you know a job and
00:41:31.320to do that they had to go to the department of labor and get approval and to do that they needed
00:41:35.080a company sponsoring them and to have that they were willing to pay and so there's a lot of
00:41:40.680facilitating of fraud and a lot of people were you know scamming the system and and it was reported0.91
00:41:47.560and then you had people like calling them scumbag consultants like the premier of ontario0.93
00:41:52.440doug ford did and then you had the minister federally calling them out and the prime minister0.92
00:41:57.480uh you know there's so many people that were i thought there's finally going to be some change
00:42:02.040here but there's not i mean they're on the third iteration of the college regulating these
00:42:06.600consultants and it's just it's um it's not a great situation uh but yeah there's so what happened is
00:42:13.800they took away they took away the points that people get for having a job offer in canada
00:42:20.680which is one of the indicators of success long-term success but because of all the fraud
00:42:24.840they took away the 50 points and they took away the 200 points that executives would get and so
00:42:29.800then i have all these executives saying look i'm paying a lot of money like i really want to get
00:42:34.120permanent residents i've got my kids in school here i've you know i'm paying so much tax and0.54
00:42:38.760i can't buy a house there's all these you know because we banned foreigners from buying home1.00
00:42:42.680so there's all this all these problems and all these ideal immigrants that i wasn't able to do1.00
00:42:46.520anything for and so the government then came up with the solution to say okay we're gonna we're
00:42:50.440gonna have a targeted draw for senior managers and so now i think what they're looking at is
00:42:56.920they're going to revamp the whole express entry point system and instead of looking at the actual
00:43:02.440notice of assessment they're just going to pick the types of jobs for which normally people get
00:43:07.240paid a lot now my problem with that is it could again lead to more fraud right you could just have
00:43:13.480people selling jobs in those in those um you know in that at that level uh and you know i said to
00:43:22.360them i think it's just you know so like you said things are cyclical like we close it we tell people
00:43:28.760to leave they go then you know we have a labor shortage we bring them back same sort of thing
00:43:33.000like they never seem to want to deal with the actual problem which is the representatives who
00:43:38.520are committing all the fraud if they know just enough to game the system they will and there's
00:43:43.480there's like 13 000 immigration consultants running around right now uh only a couple thousand lawyers
00:43:49.480so it's really it used to be when i started practicing there were under under 2000 immigration
00:43:54.680consultants so they've really gone from just under 2000 to now like you know 13 000. so they they had
00:44:00.600a huge rise along with the international students because there was a thought that oh we need them
00:44:06.840to bring in the international students but now you know they're we're graduating a class every
00:44:11.880year and they're just we're putting hundreds and hundreds of more consultants out there
00:44:15.480uh you know every single year and the number of lawyers practicing is sort of steady ever since
00:44:21.640i started practicing but the consultants are shooting up and so then you get all these fraud
00:44:26.360awareness weeks and don't trust representatives and blah blah blah and lawyers are frankly quite
00:44:31.560offended by it um but yeah so it's uh it's a problem and i think we're gonna you know we'll
00:44:37.480see what what they come up with and if it works this time but i'm i don't have a lot of faith
00:44:42.360frankly yeah yeah well i hope so you know i find that interesting and i um if i'm correct ravi and
00:44:49.880you know correct me if i'm wrong you know when i was uh working in the states there were many
00:44:54.920programs above capital investment so you if you invested so much in the country you're able to get
00:45:00.280uh status and different statuses whether you know from a green car to working you know they've been
00:45:07.400severely limited in canada right so this is something that we've kind of and again you know
00:45:13.240i find it interesting we're in on this purge to go around the nation to go around the world
00:45:18.680and find people to invest in canada but if someone comes here uh even if they're working
00:45:25.160here and they invest in a home they invest in a small business they still struggle with getting
00:45:30.200residency in canada and it's really it's very frustrating i mean i myself have gone on trips to
00:45:37.960vietnam dubai you know india like i've gone all over and i've been essentially marketing the
00:45:44.520programs for the province or for the nation saying these are the programs you know if you qualify and
00:45:49.800i'm vetting them and i'm doing a very good job not taking bad cases and then all of a sudden
00:45:57.960you know the ontario government just killed the entrepreneur program now they're coming up with
00:46:02.120a new one i think may 30th uh but you know things are mismanaged again you have a lot of
00:46:09.000unscrupulous representatives same issue right it just i can't i can't not talk about these
00:46:13.720immigration consultants because it permeates every single area of the field right and it's
00:46:19.320you know it's just it's just so problematic because they've killed the ontario entrepreneur
00:46:24.200program when there were good good people that were coming in they they they were putting a lot
00:46:29.720of money into the province they were hiring a lot of canadians then virtually without notice they
00:46:33.800just axed the whole program because of all the fraud right and same thing with the um the startup
00:46:39.640visa which is a federal program is a small numbers program but then you had these agents and
00:46:45.480consultants selling it for like you know fifty thousand dollars you know you can come and and
00:46:51.400we'll we'll create a a fake you know business plan for you and everything else and we'll get
00:46:57.160a letter of support from a federally approved designated entity it was called designated
00:47:02.760organization who is supposed to be vetting like who the who has a good business idea and a bad
00:47:08.040business anyway all this fraud was was permeating that program and what do they do they killed it
00:47:13.800so you know if i wanted to bring in someone famous one of my colleagues used the example
00:47:18.680of taylor swift if i want to bring in taylor swift tomorrow i couldn't do it because we don't
00:47:22.360have an outstanding ability class of permanent residence anymore if i wanted to bring in an
00:47:28.680investor i couldn't do it if i wanted to bring an entrepreneur to ontario currently i couldn't do it
00:47:33.640if i wanted to bring in someone who wanted to do a great star amazing startup i couldn't do it
00:47:39.000so all these programs are dead and i think it's a deep suspicion particularly by the liberal party
00:47:44.120that you know we don't want people buying their way into canada right that's a you know there's
00:47:49.080there's some they'd rather have nobody than to have a couple well not a couple they'd rather
00:47:55.720have nobody than someone who's just getting in because they're wealthy well guess what some of
00:48:00.280those wealthy people do generally want to start their entrepreneurs are successful entrepreneurs
00:48:05.400they generally want to start up another business in canada they generally will employ a lot of
00:48:10.040canadians we generally need them right we need because you know i don't know who you talk to and
00:48:15.640what your sentiment is but i i talk to a lot of people who are successful entrepreneurs in this
00:48:20.840country they are leaving there are so many people and if you look at the stats it's not just me and
00:48:27.640anecdotally i look at this the statistics of canadians who are leaving this country
00:48:32.920and a lot of successful people are just saying i've had it this country doesn't respect me they
00:48:38.120want to tax me to the nth degree i'm gone right and and that's the problem if we don't have other
00:48:43.960people coming in if we don't reform our tax system okay but we don't have any immigration programs
00:48:49.640that attract these wonderful people who are going to employ a lot of canadians a lot of immigrants
00:48:54.440have an entrepreneurial instinct to them right and a lot of you know maybe maybe more so than
00:49:00.200canadians i was born here and you know and you know i have a lot of respect for people who are
00:49:05.640born here but i'm just saying that you know i've also noticed in my practice there's a lot of
00:49:10.280people that they come to a new country and they just are able to figure things out and start a
00:49:15.400business that blows my mind and why wouldn't we want those people well you know and and the
00:49:21.240interesting thing you know and i mentioned it before we are spending a lot of time trying to
00:49:26.440change our trade relationships around the world based on what's going on with the us so again it's
00:49:32.440it's it's it isn't uh it doesn't line up ravi in my mind you know number one i want to go to other0.92
00:49:38.520nations and i want them to invest in canada number two i can't get those people to immigrate here
00:49:43.000because i'm stuck on immigration and they can't get immigration because it doesn't matter how much
00:49:47.080they invest in canada so okay then show me a path so you know because if you go and you're trying to
00:49:53.400pitch that you should invest in the natural resources of canada great i'm all for it invest
00:49:59.160your money come into the fund come into the you know canada wealth fund i'd love to have you aboard
00:50:04.680so you come in but you can't come and live here or you can't come and send anyone of your
00:50:10.280employees or team to come manage your funds when they're here who would do that who would no one
00:50:16.600would do that that's just not reasonable so that's where that's where i struggle i do think there are
00:50:22.360you know and before we finish i do think there are solutions here so i don't want to be totally
00:50:27.240negative i just think we've kind of closed our mind and again we put that band-aid on a major
00:50:33.000cut a major injury and we're trying to kind of hodgepodge this through i think and i'm glad
00:50:37.880you're meeting with people in the immigration uh you know department i'm glad you're meeting with
00:50:44.760people to talk about it there are some ways to do this to align better and that's the biggest
00:50:49.960frustration i have as an as an older canadian i'm getting up there in age i look at it and i think
00:50:54.360to myself there's got to be a way to align new canadians into roles in canada if they want to
00:51:00.120invest money here if i'm here i have a job i'm working for a couple years i want to buy a house
00:51:05.320i want to invest in a small business there has to be a pathway because i've dedicated myself to
00:51:10.360become a canadian if i'm just here for a short period to make some money and go back home and
00:51:15.000i'm not ready to commit to the country that's a whole other thing but you know i really do think
00:51:19.960there is a way to do it yeah there is and it's like i say it's a pendulum swinging right i mean
00:51:25.480you know unfortunately there are some programs right when they recognize i think that there's
00:51:32.760there's been a backlash right going from 300 000 to 3 million temporary residents but then what
00:51:39.000they did is instead of instead of focusing just on that they reduced the number of permanent residents
00:51:44.920so it was a it was a temporary residence problem but their solution has been to also reduce the
00:51:51.480number of immigrants generally and when you do that you cancel things like the caregiver program
00:51:57.800like i can't there's no there's no program for caregivers so elderly canadians who need them
00:52:04.600what can i do right so you know there's there's also people as we exit people are exiting etc so
00:52:11.320it's just frustrating because there are real needs for labor in this country that we're recognizing
00:52:16.840and we're about to kick a lot of labor out uh there's you know there's
00:52:23.960you know it's just a disjunct right i mean you've got and there's real needs for entrepreneurs but
00:52:27.960then we because of fraud you know we eliminate that right and then again for executives same
00:52:34.120sort of thing like they have to get this targeted draw what if you're not a senior manager what if
00:52:37.720you just you know what if you're someone else who's you know even self-employment it's always
00:52:42.680bothered me if you're if you're here as a student and you started a company isn't that the kind of
00:52:48.520person you'd want to to to be able to immigrate and transition to permanent residence but we say
00:52:53.560no if you have anything that's any self-employment you do it doesn't count so anyway i think there's
00:53:00.520a lot of things to improve and i think uh you know there could be some steps in the right direction
00:53:05.320we'll see what happens in ontario uh on may 30th um i've given some feedback on that program as
00:53:10.200well so so i'm hopeful but uh pendulums will swing one way and hopefully they'll swing the other
00:53:15.960yeah thank you rabbi and you know i'd like to get you back if we can do another show after may 30th
00:53:21.720because i really want to i really want to see what happens in all the new programs and i really
00:53:26.840appreciate it i have you know and i'm gonna but the next time i see you we have uh with another
00:53:32.440company um that i have we're going to another job fair and so i i'm astounded i told the story a
00:53:40.920while ago about this job fair i attended and all these young new can uh new people to canada that
00:53:46.360i met and how uh educated and the programs they came out of applying for these jobs and some of
00:53:53.560the some of the interesting observations i had so i by the time i see again i'll have another job
00:53:59.000fair under my belt you'll have the may 30th report on sort of the new programs um and
00:54:05.320hopefully we'll have some solutions that's good