True Patriot Love - Immigration Updates & Changes ft Phil Mooney

00:00:00.000 you know they've done a good job they've actually done all the things necessary

00:00:03.120 to reduce the number of temporary residents and in fact they're going to go too far and they

00:00:07.600 have gone too far and so we've got certain areas of the immigration system now that are suffering

00:00:13.200 badly um entrepreneurs if you can imagine people come to canada they come with money they start a

00:00:18.800 business they invest in that business they hire canadians small entrepreneurs which are the heart

00:00:23.360 and soul of our employment structure many of them from for the last two years have had no path to

00:00:29.520 permanent residents at all hi this is tplmedia.ca i am brady wedham and today we are talking about

00:00:40.640 one of these subjects that i know seems to be in a category that people are very hesitant to

00:00:46.400 talk about but i do have one of the most knowledgeable people in that actual category

00:00:51.280 today with me to talk about immigration phil mooney phil how are you today i'm doing just

00:00:57.040 great thank you very much so before we got this the show started i was telling you that my knowledge

00:01:02.160 on immigration really isn't that vast what i know about immigration is pretty much what i've learned

00:01:07.040 um from these these interviews not only with the the fellas sitting down with you and near rosenberg

00:01:11.920 and i suggest anybody watching go back and watch some of that it a lot of clarification on on the

00:01:16.320 process and how it works but what would an average canadian like myself need to know about immigration

00:01:22.240 before we start this off and we start getting into some of the points and the changes over

00:01:26.880 the past couple months, but what would a gentleman like me need to know about immigration to fully

00:01:31.360 try and understand what it is? Okay, well, a couple of things.

00:01:37.920 This subject of immigration, everyone in Canada has an opinion. Everyone has some experience with

00:01:43.760 it. The key things to understand are that fundamentally immigration is based on law,

00:01:50.160 that there are laws and regulations and policies that fundamentally guide the immigration system

00:01:57.360 and the people who work in it and affect everyone who's trying to come to canada okay so that the

00:02:03.600 legal system and part of this is very good and sometimes the law makes no sense at all okay so

00:02:10.320 what you might think should happen isn't what happens it's the same thing as going to court

00:02:14.960 for any other court process and the judge and the lawyers know they make rules or they make decisions

00:02:20.560 and it affects the outcome but you don't understand why because you can't understand

00:02:24.800 everything about the law but just like the weather where we all have an opinion about it and we all

00:02:29.520 talk about it um unless you're a meteorologist you can't really understand a lot of the things

00:02:35.520 about the weather um immigration is is somewhat like that um the other part that makes this so

00:02:43.600 confusing is that almost all of us have an immigration story we've we either are immigrants

00:02:48.960 we've come to canada we're children of immigrants we're we're knowledgeable of and friendly of

00:02:53.760 immigrants and we all hear stories and many of those stories are true but they're for a whole

00:02:58.880 lot of them because they happened more than say five years ago they actually don't help you

00:03:03.520 understand the system because the system has been changing so to keep if you keep all that in mind

00:03:10.400 i think the best thing i can say is approach any immigration topic with some humility knowing that

00:03:17.360 there are nuances and details that may affect this story that unless you listen a lot and and

00:03:23.760 and learn from them you won't you know it it doesn't make sense to form opinions unless you

00:03:29.840 have some factual basis okay well and i think i'm the perfect guy to sit down and talk to you because

00:03:34.960 i really don't have any opinions because with what you just said and that kind of clarifies my own

00:03:39.760 my own thoughts are i don't know enough about this to form that kind of an opinion that's

00:03:43.520 like saying i'm going to complain about the government while i don't vote yeah yeah exactly

00:03:49.360 now there is there is a benefit to be said that if you don't know enough to vote you shouldn't vote

00:03:53.840 um you know i know everyone wants to talk about participation in elections i'm sorry it's a

00:03:57.680 political point but why do you want an 18 or 19 year old to affect this you know who's in parliament

00:04:03.280 when they know they don't understand anything about it okay so there should be a knowledge

00:04:08.160 test before anybody votes otherwise what you get are basically fandom okay um which we get a lot

00:04:14.960 in elections but that's a different issue so we've seen that a little bit in canada but yeah we'll

00:04:19.680 we'll leave that to the side all right so in with regards to immigration um the the the the history

00:04:27.920 of this and and the big picture is really important um it's important to know that until uh 30 years

00:04:33.840 ago immigration was looked upon as completely favorable because there were there was not a

00:04:41.040 great demand for canadian immigration if you want to know canadian immigration officers used to go

00:04:46.400 out to recruit people to come to canada my father-in-law came from germany in the early 50s

00:04:51.920 because canada needed mechanics so they sent immigration officers outside canada to bring them

00:04:56.960 here and and that happened with many countries um it was also quite restrictive in the sense

00:05:03.200 but it only allowed people from white northern european countries effectively to come here

00:05:08.720 or from the united states um and and it wasn't until the 70s when that changed under pierre

00:05:14.640 trudeau when basically immigration became completely and totally um colorblind and

00:05:20.240 ethnic blind okay and it just said people are coming here not people from somewhere

00:05:26.640 at the same time there wasn't a great demand for immigration until the age of the internet

00:05:32.320 okay because most people wouldn't have imagined coming to canada except as on a holiday unless

00:05:37.520 they were educated and had access to news media and access to to information sources like

00:05:43.600 television and and radio etc that they could understand something about canada and it wasn't

00:05:48.640 until the internet um and and that individuals could go online and see that canadian immigration

00:05:56.160 was indeed colorblind if you will um and so information about canada became far more widely

00:06:03.040 available after 2000 and coincidentally in 2002 the immigration and refugee protection act came

00:06:10.560 into force in tune of that year which was the first change in in really the process of immigration

00:06:16.240 since the 70s and and was the first change after everyone all of a sudden became on what was going

00:06:23.680 online and started to understand and made what's made accessible and at the time the immigration

00:06:29.120 goals for canada um the the the target for immigration was split into basically three

00:06:35.600 main areas there was a compassionate um policy for refugees which has been in part of canada's

00:06:42.720 immigration since the 50s you know where we were accepting people from specific countries fleeing

00:06:47.600 war and terror um and so that's always been part of our system but it's a small part it's anywhere

00:06:55.520 from between five and ten percent of our total immigration intake um there's family reunification

00:07:01.920 we've always believed that parents and children should be together that husbands and wives should

00:07:06.640 be together that we shouldn't make an impediment to those people being together if one apart part

00:07:11.840 of them were in canada and other parts weren't um and there was a room for some parents and

00:07:17.040 and grandparents. At one time in the early 90s, we allowed brothers and sisters to sponsor,

00:07:23.180 but the demand outstripped the need or the capacity really fast. So that was only good

00:07:28.280 for a year or two. Oh, really? Yeah, the U.S. still has it, but they have a different way of

00:07:32.940 controlling their intake. So in the early 2000s, intake all of a sudden was based on refugees,

00:07:40.460 family, and then economic class, because by then people were starting to realize that with the

00:07:45.340 birth rate dropping. We had a demographic problem. I was actually, I don't mean to cut you off,

00:07:51.160 but I was actually going to ask you about that. So I did an episode a few weeks ago with

00:07:55.160 Liam DeBoer and Jim Lang. We're very educated in that topic. And one of the things that I did

00:08:01.520 kind of get from it was that the UN really did stress this about 10, 15 years ago, that Canada's

00:08:06.320 birth rate was declining fast. And one of the ways that they could try to counterbalance that

00:08:10.540 was immigration.

00:08:12.880 Exactly.

00:08:13.440 And, you know, the method has somewhat,

00:08:17.560 or the message has somewhat changed over the years.

00:08:20.060 In the 70s and 80s and 90s, you know, years I grew up in,

00:08:23.820 you know, the baby boomers were the big generation, 0.64

00:08:25.760 but they were the money-generating generation. 0.60

00:08:27.820 They were the workers.

00:08:28.740 They were, you know, the savers.

00:08:30.680 They were the funders of the massive capital expansion

00:08:33.940 in the 90s and 2000s.

00:08:37.000 But demographics were,

00:08:38.880 people weren't really paying much attention.

00:08:40.220 and you heard about japan where all of a sudden the people were getting older and there weren't

00:08:44.140 enough young people but it was kind of like eh um it became more of a place of mind in the in the

00:08:50.780 2000s as more as the one thing you can understand is you're gonna you're gonna know how many 20

00:08:56.460 year olds you're gonna have because they were born in you know 20 years ago you know you can't

00:09:01.100 argue with demographics you know only massive famine or disasters can change the world's

00:09:07.180 demographic picture and most countries in the world were in a positive demographic mode and

00:09:13.020 and only the repercussions that started happening in japan in the 90s and 2000s started to say wait 0.82

00:09:17.980 a minute what if we don't have enough young people to pay for the old people um and in

00:09:23.100 from about 2010 on the message sort of was coming out saying well immigration can't cure demographics

00:09:29.820 strange enough that's changed in the 2020s where there's canada became one of the first examples

00:09:35.340 of a country that was adjusting to the demographic problems because of the policies they enacted in

00:09:41.180 2000. And so the economic policies that we adopted in 2000 under the ERPA said, we want people with

00:09:48.600 skills to come to Canada. So roughly 60% to 70% of our whole immigration intake since ERPA came in

00:09:55.900 has been economic. And economic said, you had to have skills. You had to have money. There was a

00:10:04.660 financial component said if you want to immigrate to canada put in your application tell us about

00:10:08.420 your education tell us about your language skills and if you could get out on a point

00:10:12.820 system a 67 out of 100 we would invite you okay um and you could come to canada and bring your

00:10:19.460 skills and and by the way there was always a financial component that said you also had to

00:10:23.860 have something called you had to meet a low income cutoff so you and your family could come to canada

00:10:28.420 with money you know and it made sense at the time um and the people coming we just said look we're

00:10:34.260 giving you points for your age and by the way you got more points if you were under 50 okay

00:10:41.780 that was some recognition of the demographic problem but you also got points for having a

00:10:45.620 better education you get points for having good work experience and language okay initially

00:10:51.940 language wasn't thought to be so good so 2002 there wasn't even a language test but that came

00:10:56.740 in about 2005 and now people had to have a good language to be able to fit in better because

00:11:01.540 because having a good language meant

00:11:02.820 you could get a better job when you came here.

00:11:05.140 And this all seemed to be working until they realized

00:11:08.560 that with the same time around 2000

00:11:10.720 is when the internet really expanded

00:11:13.200 and smartphones started,

00:11:14.800 well, maybe smartphones are a little bit later,

00:11:17.260 but I know I went through the time period

00:11:18.600 where I started working before there were fax machines, okay?

00:11:21.880 And I was in the corporate world

00:11:23.060 and we finally got the email in like 1993 or something

00:11:28.060 like 1993 or something or whatever uh and you had to get a 60-minute disk in the internet just to

00:11:34.700 access it right you get a 60-minute free trial remembers yeah and we all remember the dial-up

00:11:39.900 dial up your modem um and the sounds that made but this became much different with with the

00:11:46.620 world wide web and and the whole internet thing just after we brought in erp up so we we put in

00:11:51.420 this policy that said let's bring in skilled workers based on a point system of up to 100

00:11:56.060 points and if you got 67 points or more you had you you were going to be processed you just had

00:12:02.700 to wait in line because we're all everybody's fair it's first in first out waited in line well

00:12:07.580 by around 2004 2005 the government realized that the widespread knowledge about canada

00:12:14.620 and the point system all of a sudden was creating a demand because we couldn't handle all of the

00:12:19.660 people coming in you know we knew that we only have limited resources in terms of health care

00:12:25.020 and all of this just to it you couldn't simply open the gates wide you know and let a million

00:12:30.380 people a year come in to a population of 20 million yeah we didn't we couldn't adjust so

00:12:36.140 we started having um we had to have a system that that worked on it and we found out in about 2007

00:12:43.180 that the the wait times were starting to move into the years two years three years four years five

00:12:48.380 years from somebody applying from outside canada and people started asking questions well how do

00:12:53.740 we know that the skills they're bringing in then are what we want today so that was purely just

00:12:58.220 a volume thing that was just a volume thing generated by massive understanding of the system

00:13:04.300 um something also happened where in 2006 consultants immigration consultants became

00:13:09.820 legal you know and they turned out to be a remarkably powerful marketing agent for immigrants

00:13:15.500 to come to canada you made your living as an immigration consultant in those years you might

00:13:19.980 have had uh you traveled overseas to to provide seminars and and to explain to people what coming

00:13:25.740 to canada meant and and then you you could help them with their immigration paperwork you know

00:13:30.060 which is part of the legal process um and and so you could that's how you made a living and for

00:13:35.340 many of them you brought in people from overseas now as communications and and in and smartphones

00:13:41.340 became more apparent and we started to get tools like video conferencing and then zoom or skype

00:13:47.420 in the early days you didn't have to travel so much but the market was still overseas

00:13:52.540 well by 2008 the government realized we have too many people you know we have too many people in

00:13:57.820 the queue they're going to be waiting forever um and and they they they then started saying wait a

00:14:04.220 minute we're only going to accept 40 different uh occupational groups but they didn't say how many

00:14:10.540 so as an example we needed community college teachers to our expanding community college

00:14:14.860 system and we probably had a shortage of 200 but and when they put them in as a category

00:14:20.220 enterprising agents went out there and recruited 20 000 well they all went into the queue okay oh

00:14:26.620 my goodness the next year the government decided oh wait a minute we better put a limit on the

00:14:31.660 number of people we're inviting um but they didn't know how to manage the system and it got worse

00:14:37.980 so we ended up with a backlog of of hundreds of thousands of people in the queue for skilled

00:14:42.780 workers we're still bringing in family class and we're accepting refugees but just in terms of

00:14:47.660 skilled workers yeah we're not talking economic class these are the people we want well the 0.99

00:14:52.860 problem really then started where they said we can't afford to have people waiting two eight

00:14:57.420 or nine thousand uh eight or nine years to come into canada um and people would wait they sent

00:15:03.900 out a survey to all of the people in the queue saying hey we'll give you back your money okay

00:15:07.980 if you want to withdraw your file well 98 of them didn't withdraw their file even if they've been

00:15:13.180 waiting they made a plan as people do right um and these people by the way they were a good deal

00:15:19.260 these are people who we didn't have to pay the cost of their birth we didn't have to pay the

00:15:24.220 cost of maintaining them as children of educating them of gaining their work experience we didn't

00:15:30.620 have to pay any of those costs their home countries did we just took them you know ready

00:15:35.500 made ready to contribute to the canadian economy that's an interesting way of looking at it it's

00:15:39.500 almost like an assembly line you they did all the assembly and now we have the tool we had the

00:15:43.980 finished product without having to pay any of the costs of the assembly line and and the parts

00:15:49.500 development and all that stuff people forget about that when they talk about immigrants coming to

00:15:53.820 canada and can they work right away all right well they they come as an at they they're bringing

00:15:58.540 their it they used to bring their physical assets to come and come and you know till the the fields

00:16:04.380 and the farmers in saskatchewan and the prairies and you know 100 years ago you know they brought

00:16:08.940 their their physical skills now they're bringing their intellectual skills from they've learned in

00:16:13.260 schools and and work experience to canada to help enrich our country well the government then did

00:16:19.900 something which to me i think was completely un canadian in 2010 they announced that they were

00:16:26.540 going to cancel 150 000 files in the queue because they couldn't handle them so this is like saying

00:16:34.380 You know, the hockey score, you're winning 6-0 in the third period with a minute to go,

00:16:37.860 and the referee says, okay, low score wins.

00:16:40.560 All right? 0.91

00:16:41.100 To me, this was entirely un-Canadian, but they did it. 0.95

00:16:44.680 Okay? 0.96

00:16:44.880 Yeah.

00:16:45.620 Immigration Department has a lot of power.

00:16:48.100 They then came along with a system in 2014, which they borrowed from Australia and New

00:16:52.840 Zealand, called the Express Entry System, because they couldn't control the intake.

00:16:57.480 So they instead went to a system that said, okay, tell us all about yourself.

00:17:02.300 Send us a profile.

00:17:03.380 It's free.

00:17:04.380 We want to know about your education, your language, you know, your work experience, all those factors.

00:17:10.600 All you have to do is prove your education experience by getting an independent assessment of your education.

00:17:16.680 No more worrying about was this a valid degree from India or from, you know, Germany or wherever.

00:17:23.320 And the other thing you have to do is prove your language skills.

00:17:26.100 Do a language test, all right, and tell us what your French and English language abilities are.

00:17:30.740 and with that we would then assess you points okay but you're not this is not an application

00:17:38.660 it's free you're just going into a pool we now the immigration department we can manage the target

00:17:45.560 of immigration better by selecting only the numbers we want to select so this is this is

00:17:53.080 the lottery system that you're talking about it's a lot it's a lottery system except it's a lottery

00:17:57.660 system based not on the cost of the lottery but on your your points they're called uh crs points

00:18:03.660 and you got points again for length same as the 67 points out of 100 you know they kept that for

00:18:09.260 one category but they also said if you come to canada as a student or as an um a worker and

00:18:15.740 you work in canada for a year you could also now go into the pool okay you didn't have to have 67

00:18:21.500 points you just went into the pool because you had one year valid canadian work experience it's

00:18:26.780 called canada experience class they started that around 2005 to keep students in the country

00:18:31.900 you know who were graduating and then had to leave before they could apply

00:18:35.260 we said well why waste all their time in canada so they brought in the canada experience class

00:18:39.740 they brought in and they also had the federal skilled worker class which was the 67 points

00:18:44.460 and federal skilled trades people who had a trade certification could come in under those three

00:18:49.420 streams and as of 2014 but the way they set their points okay um this way they could control intake

00:18:56.300 we all were skeptical but but they said if if you put in your profile and if we select you

00:19:02.460 we will process you in six months you know so that meant you didn't have to wait around for

00:19:06.860 years and years and years and they didn't have this massive queue and guess what it worked you

00:19:12.300 know they were able to process that number of files every six months you know as for people

00:19:16.540 coming in but the way they chose the points led to where we are now this is sort of like that seems

00:19:21.900 like quite the transition though going from the queue to a lottery and in your opinion you're

00:19:27.900 saying that that actually worked it it was good it did work because because now they could control

00:19:32.060 the intake okay you can set up your production facility and immigration is a production you know

00:19:37.100 it's a facility that produces eight million widgets a year which is meaning an immigration

00:19:42.460 benefit and it handles eight million or more applications a year so you got to have a factory

00:19:48.060 all right and and so the system now is able to say we know what our demand will be you know the

00:19:54.220 demand for spousals was about the same every year the demand for refugees was up and down but

00:19:59.340 overall about the same um but now the skilled workers which are 65 of our whole intake

00:20:05.820 we could actually control that demand but you know it came by saying what are the rules people need

00:20:12.620 to know the rules before you come so how do you get points well the immigration department is made

00:20:19.660 up of young you know the processing and most of the department is made up of young university

00:20:25.740 educated bilingual individuals so the express entry profile that you had to meet was really

00:20:33.340 close to that so they gave a lot of points if you were under 30. by the way if you're over 30 and

00:20:40.300 closer to 40 or 45 forget about it you weren't coming you couldn't get enough points okay um

00:20:46.140 they also said if you're bilingual um even more than than having a job in canada the language 0.97

00:20:52.540 benefit was seemed to be more important we always disagreed with that and we've been proven right

00:20:56.860 over the years so when they set up express entry you started bringing in young people who were

00:21:01.580 university educated you got more points if you were educated in canada more points if you worked

00:21:07.260 in canada then and more points if you were under 30. okay so from 2014 on those are the kind of

00:21:14.700 people that that we were bringing in uh to canada um along with everyone else but it took you know

00:21:22.380 you put in your profile it took a few months before you got accepted then once i mean if you

00:21:26.620 were selected then it took two or three months to apply and then six months to process so in the in

00:21:32.460 the shoes of the person that's immigrating does that is that a better process from their end too

00:21:36.300 like i know it worked better for us as canadians and from the government and immigration as a whole

00:21:40.300 but from their perspective was that easier to get into the country i get i don't know if easier is

00:21:45.340 the best word but well it was easy just because you know in order to get the points because

00:21:50.140 as soon as they started selecting people and the score was out of a thousand but you know there are

00:21:55.100 some ways to get extra points if you had a job in canada at the time you got 600 points you know the

00:22:00.860 pass mark the selection levels were like 440 points okay so you knew if you actually had a

00:22:06.860 valid job in canada and you you met the language standard you met the education standard you had to

00:22:11.740 have at least high school um and you met the education standard and you could prove all of

00:22:16.300 that and you worked had one year work experience if you got over 450 points you were in well if

00:22:21.820 somebody in canada offered you a job and you were is a valid job offering in a skilled trade not a

00:22:26.860 a low skill you got 600 points well you know a cook anybody getting a job in canada was was on

00:22:33.740 on the fast track to permanent residency and why not they're working they're paying taxes okay

00:22:39.120 that's what you want this was going fine and the past mark was staying relatively stable

00:22:44.200 um until covid um covid really kicked the crap out of the system and and understanding the

00:22:54.200 problems in the system you've got a government department that is not state-of-the-art by any

00:22:57.880 means by the way their it systems are not state-of-the-art um they proved it with the phoenix

00:23:02.440 pay system you know most government departments you don't look to the government for leadership

00:23:07.240 in technology you know their processing systems were average at best and when covid came unlike

00:23:13.480 any other country in the world canada shut down its immigration system on march 20th of 2020

00:23:18.520 and then when they shut it down they had a hundred and um well they had 65 visa posts

00:23:23.720 doing immigration they had 110 visa application centers which were private businesses helping

00:23:30.200 many countries do the intake including canada us uk these application centers would take your

00:23:37.640 application and make sure it was mailed to the right place and it was complete they didn't do

00:23:41.960 any decision making but you know mostly for visitors and these millions and millions millions

00:23:46.600 of travelers all over the world it was helping them with with all of that um and they had about

00:23:52.200 four major processing centers in canada including edmonton ottawa sydney nova scotia um all of those

00:24:00.520 centers were processing all of these applications well they sent everybody home in canada they went

00:24:05.480 home literally out of their offices ottawa was a ghost town um they in all the visa posts they

00:24:12.360 brought every canadian home and they sent all of the locally engaged staff home and all of the visa

00:24:18.200 application centers shut down so there was nothing absolutely nothing happening for 2020 finally um

00:24:25.640 they started um to open some processes for people who had you know when vaccines finally came in in

00:24:32.360 2021 we all remember i don't know if you had a vaccine i know i had a vaccine and they asked me

00:24:37.800 if i had any side effects and i said well yeah it's a side effect that most people have but but

00:24:42.840 but nobody talks about they said what's that i said i was smiling i couldn't stop smiling

00:24:48.440 because now i knew i was going to live you know i'm an older guy and i have my health issues

00:24:53.640 i i can have my first vaccine i started smiling a lot more and and so did everybody it gave you

00:24:59.400 that peace of mind right yeah yeah yeah but then with immigration they started to allow people in

00:25:03.880 who had been vaccinated, you know, or who could prove, you know, we had to go through tests to

00:25:08.240 prove you wore a mask all the time and you proved you had no, no health problems. You started letting

00:25:12.580 some people in. So the system really could handle all the, you know, even though the system was

00:25:17.660 broken, it could handle the minimum demand. But then in July, I'm sorry, in September of 2021,

00:25:25.380 they opened the flood, they just opened the doors and they said, okay, vaccines are widely available.

00:25:29.740 if you've been vaccinated, you can come.

00:25:32.160 Well, the numbers of applications they've got just blew everybody away.

00:25:35.620 The economy, as you know, recovered much faster than we all expected.

00:25:39.200 And along came the whole process of people who want,

00:25:43.220 or the pent-up demand of people wanting to visit family,

00:25:46.640 the demands for people, for workers to handle on the tourism industry,

00:25:51.760 all of those people, they couldn't handle the intake now.

00:25:55.080 Companies could hire again all of a sudden

00:25:56.720 because the economy was going gangbusters again.

00:25:59.160 Well, and I feel like, Phil, like everyone was moving at a speed of 200% than they normally would after we finally got these lockdowns lifted.

00:26:08.000 So everything that would normally move at 100% is now moving at 200%.

00:26:11.820 The problem is the creaky old processing system and the number of people working from home who, when the immigration first shut down, they started, they told their people, look, you can work from home.

00:26:23.900 Well, after three months, they realized, no, you can't, because none of your computers are rated for the Privacy Act, because there are privacy restrictions. 0.79

00:26:32.660 So the government said, wait, we'll get you laptops to all of their visa officers working from home.

00:26:38.460 Well, the procurement department also didn't have anybody in it, and they couldn't supply laptops.

00:26:44.580 So then they said to people, go out and buy your own laptops.

00:26:47.840 and all of these employees, many of whom were victims of the Phoenix problem where they couldn't

00:26:54.200 even pay people, said, I'm not spending my own money hoping to get it back. So the system took

00:27:00.180 a long time to adjust. And people were all working from home and they couldn't even handle files.

00:27:07.120 And yet this intake started coming in. And the first thing that happened, of course, was the

00:27:11.120 backlogs just boom and blossomed. They just exploded. So everybody in the department is

00:27:17.460 thinking oh my god what do we do how do we do this and you know i mean i took part in several

00:27:21.920 discussions about how they could simplify certain processes to get to get the processing times down

00:27:27.240 to make it easier like why worry about certain things when you there was never a problem you

00:27:31.540 know um and and so the floodgates in effect opened they made it easier for people to get

00:27:38.280 into canada this they brought in a new program for students that said look you know we kept

00:27:43.580 wondering showing us proof of how much money you had forget all that just deposit you know twenty

00:27:50.060 thousand or fifty thousand dollars into an account in canada and have the bank pay your student every

00:27:55.340 month so they don't spend it all on on wine women and song the first day okay you know students will

00:28:00.780 do and run out of food you know but so make sure you've got that and we'll prove back they're

00:28:06.300 taking loans on on property and businesses and things like that just to be able to dump that

00:28:11.100 money into those accounts i had heard you speak about that previously on a other episode yeah

00:28:16.300 yeah and then to make matters even worse um the express entry system which was the past mark was

00:28:22.220 around 460 450 at the time well nobody was coming right and and in 2020 we didn't hit our targets we

00:28:30.220 we missed most of the targets because nobody could physically get here so in in 2021 when the whole

00:28:35.580 everything opened up again and in early 2022 they realized we're not going to make our targets um

00:28:41.500 well what they did was said they got had a whole lot of people in the pool well they dropped the

00:28:45.580 pass mark down from 460 down to 70. no they didn't and and they took everybody in there they were

00:28:52.780 all people who were qualified they're all people ready to come but they took them down to 70 and

00:28:57.100 even that didn't do it so they came in with a special program called the temporary to permanent

00:29:01.740 resident pathway, which said, if you've graduated from a Canadian university and you now are

00:29:07.560 working anywhere, even at McDonald's, you can qualify. File your application over the next

00:29:14.340 three months. Well, boy, did they get applications. I was just going to say, they probably got more

00:29:19.280 applications than they've ever seen before. Right. And the other side of it was they also

00:29:24.000 knew that we just didn't have enough temporary people working in Canada to meet the demand of

00:29:29.080 of the agricultural industry, of the restaurant industry.

00:29:33.400 So they started saying, in the past, if you were a high-skilled person,

00:29:37.600 if you were a student, you couldn't bring your wife to Canada and your kids.

00:29:41.380 That wasn't allowed.

00:29:43.080 And if you've got a work permit, you could only work 40 hours a week maximum.

00:29:48.000 Well, at first they said, for all students, you can now work,

00:29:50.480 I mean, you can only work 20 hours a week, I'm sorry.

00:29:53.060 Well, they said to all the students,

00:29:53.920 you can now work as many hours a week as you want.

00:29:56.940 Okay?

00:29:57.460 Well, there's not even a cap at 40.

00:29:58.760 it's overtime whatever you can yeah and and yeah take a full-time job and attend school while you

00:30:04.280 can um then they said oh and by the way bring your wife and and kids um and they can all get work

00:30:10.680 permits and you know so 2021 and 2022 that all happened 2022 you know what happened in february

00:30:18.440 when russia attacked ukraine we then facilitated 300 000 ukrainians coming to canada giving them

00:30:24.600 work permits instead of waiting for them to claim refugee status in a camp overseas let them come

00:30:29.320 to canada as long as they can work let them work okay yep so now all of those people are coming in

00:30:34.520 temporarily with work permits and agents around the world took a look at canada and said oh my

00:30:40.920 goodness by the way if you come to canada on a work permit or if you come to canada to study

00:30:48.120 get your one-year degree you get a one-year work permit you're going to be a permanent resident

00:30:52.520 because look at the points you get for that because that's what the system was giving them

00:30:56.280 all right which is going to be much higher than the 70. yeah and the 70 now sure and then it went

00:31:02.220 to 420 you know and then it went to 450 but then in 2023 it went to 480 and to 500 because so many

00:31:11.200 people here but we were bringing in instead of 60,000 students a year we were bringing in 300,000

00:31:17.340 students a year we were bringing in lots of temporary foreign workers um because with open

00:31:22.620 work permits never mind uh the lmia process which has always been a small part of the program and

00:31:29.020 and agents around the world were going out to farmers in india saying hey send your kids to

00:31:33.020 canada all they have to do is go to school for eight months they can work full-time while they're

00:31:36.780 in school then they get a work permit they're making forty thousand dollars a year and they'll

00:31:40.540 be a permanent resident and you know you're gonna live like a like a raj in a rajah in india a

00:31:46.940 maharaja you know um in india um instead of on your six acres of farmland um and and this was

00:31:55.340 the program was sold like crazy because there's a huge marketing arm who said this is okay this is

00:32:00.860 the way things work and that's created the biggest problem we now have which is too many temporary

00:32:05.980 residents in canada correct me if i'm wrong rental costs and i'll i'll let you get back to talking

00:32:13.180 about the rental costs because that's actually going to lead me into a couple of the questions

00:32:15.820 i have for you with some of the news the new changes but that seems like a lot of mismanagement

00:32:22.140 not so much that it's it's a problem or that somebody did something directly wrong

00:32:26.300 it seems like just mismanagement like oh like the backs against the wall we got to make a solution

00:32:31.260 let's just do whatever works for the time being and then we'll change it down the road

00:32:35.420 yeah you're exactly right it was mismanagement but it wasn't by mismanagement by the politicians

00:32:40.460 i get it yeah because the politicians don't understand immigration anyway they don't know

00:32:44.220 enough they get many politicians in their their mps and their offices get nothing but immigration

00:32:49.900 clients coming in but it's always about little problems about with the system and people don't

00:32:54.700 understand the system most of them a few of them if any even the ones who are lawyers don't

00:33:00.220 understand how the immigration system worked immigration is a talking point for politicians

00:33:04.380 and it begins and ends there in my opinion yeah so unfortunately um what what was happening was

00:33:12.780 the bureaucrats in charge of the department and you have to understand

00:33:17.180 that the people in charge of the immigration department value independence and independent

00:33:22.540 decision-making above all else they don't like it when a minister comes along and tells them what to

00:33:28.780 do they would rather just like all of us we'd rather manage our own careers in our own business

00:33:34.700 right and they believe they are qualified to manage their business because they understand

00:33:38.620 They're actually senior executives in a massive corporation, if you will.

00:33:42.840 And they don't want someone being elected who doesn't know anything coming in telling them what to do.

00:33:48.200 So what happens?

00:33:49.580 They really like the fact that immigration ministers change every year.

00:33:54.660 It's a junior ministry.

00:33:57.100 It's a ministry where politicians and the minister themselves cannot affect individual cases.

00:34:03.800 In the 2000s, people forget, we had two immigration ministers who had to resign because they

00:34:09.080 interceded, they tried to intercede for their clients, you know, to get them visas or something,

00:34:14.740 or their staff did. And that was it. They were out, okay? So there's only been one minister of

00:34:20.960 immigration who lasted more than a few years who actually was starting to make decisions. That was

00:34:25.740 Jason Kenney, okay? He could actually form opinions, understand the system, and tell them

00:34:31.060 what to do. Since then, no minister has been able to do that. Some of them are good at making

00:34:36.640 decisions. Mark Miller could make all the decisions, but the department tells them what

00:34:41.220 the decisions are. The department, you know, the politicians bring them problems. The department

00:34:46.600 tells them how the system is going to answer their problems. Well, in those 2021, 2022, 2023,

00:34:54.300 the people in charge and the people at the top, they knew how many students were coming in every

00:34:58.780 day they knew how many temporary foreign workers were coming in every day and they just lost sight

00:35:04.500 of the bigger picture they completely they were yeah they were tied up in problems of the processing

00:35:10.020 system being broken down you know in the and and none of the people being in their offices to work

00:35:15.500 and you know you can make excuses for them but ultimately they're the ones responsible and it

00:35:20.040 didn't matter which party was in power the same thing would have happened um and and those same

00:35:25.660 people are never held accountable because as soon as someone might want to the ministers change

00:35:32.060 you know we've had seven immigration ministers i think since 2020 including one who was here for

00:35:37.100 a month you know i mean now we have a minute immigration minister and there's enough to be

00:35:42.620 said about her um but they're the the those people were never held accountable and now we're dealing

00:35:49.420 with that as a massive problem first we had you know they've done a good job they've actually done

00:35:53.820 all the things necessary to reduce the number of temporary residents and in fact they're going to

00:35:58.700 go too far and they have gone too far and so we've got certain areas of the immigration system now 0.68

00:36:04.380 that are suffering badly um entrepreneurs if you can imagine people come to canada they come with

00:36:09.980 money they start a business they invest in that business they hire canadians small entrepreneurs

00:36:14.780 which are the heart and soul of our employment structure many of them from for the last two

00:36:20.540 years have had no path to permanent residence at all and entrepreneurs who come to canada set up

00:36:25.180 a business are in canada have have hired people five ten twenty people there is no path to

00:36:31.900 permanent residence for them that seems backwards because what you just said was that they're coming

00:36:37.260 into the country creating business helping the economy that's what builds an economy is well

00:36:42.700 is creating business how many jobs have you created who runs who runs the department senior

00:36:49.420 civil servants who are not entrepreneurs who in fact may well be populated and and whatever your

00:36:58.220 politics it's quite quite understandable that their their particular politics do not lend

00:37:03.820 themselves towards entrepreneurial endeavors they're looking for system fixes not entrepreneurs

00:37:10.620 plus you have a problem where an inefficient system is subject to fraud and there is fraud

00:37:16.540 in the entrepreneurial system just like there's fraud in in spouse you know false marriages and

00:37:21.820 and other parts in the refugee system we learned about that recently allegedly there's stuff going 0.65

00:37:28.620 on with some of the students and fraud and and so for sure there's always fraud from any in any

00:37:34.220 program but the business immigration program typically the senior management of the department

00:37:38.940 does not like entrepreneurs they just don't like them we had a federal investor program that was

00:37:43.500 was canceled in 2014 and 20,000 files were canceled.

00:37:48.860 We've had entrepreneur programs.

00:37:50.300 We just had the worst program in the world, 1.00

00:37:52.360 the startup visa program.

00:37:54.360 If you can imagine, this program started

00:37:57.040 to give the minister talking points

00:37:58.620 on business immigration because he was in California

00:38:02.500 and he saw all these signs about entrepreneurs

00:38:04.980 and Steve Jobs was the hero of the day.

00:38:08.820 And what they did was they set up a program

00:38:10.960 called the startup visa program to bring in innovators okay they wanted the next steve jobs

00:38:17.140 to create the next apple of course if steve jobs would have applied to canada in those days he

00:38:22.240 wouldn't have been admitted because he had a criminal record and he was a druggie okay um

00:38:26.820 but they set up this program and they set it up as a pilot program and after five years five years

00:38:34.020 we were bringing in self-employed not a good program at all an investor program where you

00:38:39.000 just gave money. Yeah, they weren't perfect programs, but we're bringing in somewhere between

00:38:42.820 10,000 and 20,000 entrepreneurs a year. They set up this pilot program, and after five years,

00:38:48.620 they had issued 75 permanent resident cards. Okay, 75. I was at a session where we had,

00:38:58.480 under the Conference Board of Canada, and we hosted a session, and the lady was saying,

00:39:02.780 after five years, the pilot program is over. And I said, so you're canceling it, right? Because it

00:39:08.520 hasn't worked she says oh no we're making it a permanent program and we thought what and what

00:39:15.100 they did was they relaxed the intake rules so with the pat the points going up in the express

00:39:22.280 entry system where people if they're over 40 can't get in because this is what was happening

00:39:26.900 now they said hey if you can start a business if you have an innovative idea come to canada

00:39:31.140 we know that you'll fail but even if you fail you'll still be a permanent resident and by the

00:39:36.180 way, if you have that idea and apply, you don't even have to come to Canada before you're a

00:39:40.060 permanent resident. You can start this. Well, guess what happened with the marketing arm of

00:39:45.300 the immigration profession? They just took that program and started to run with it. And to the

00:39:51.740 point where this past January, there were, well, when they cut down on the immigration levels at

00:39:58.280 end of 2024 okay and then again in at 2025 that program had a waiting list of 40 000 people now

00:40:07.400 that's you know husbands wives and children right 40 000 people you know what the quota 0.84

00:40:14.200 was set for them for this year what's that 500.

00:40:21.000 so if you're in waiting if you're waiting and you filed your permanent resident application

00:40:26.680 and you're 40 000 we're taking 500 that means you have an 80 year wait

00:40:34.520 now to make it even worse they said some of the people in that 40 000 we were going to we're

00:40:39.960 going to give preference to because they've got higher funding from a venture capital

00:40:44.840 firm or an angel investor you know there's money invested in them we're going to give

00:40:49.720 them priority and we're going to move them all to the front of the line there's still

00:40:53.560 like 10 000 of them okay and they're at the front of the line of a target of 500 oh and the 500 also

00:41:01.240 includes athletes entertainers and other self-employed artists you know that's all in line

00:41:08.200 okay so guess what that program they stopped all the intake this year and we have people stranded

00:41:14.280 here entrepreneurs running businesses because some of them succeeded they're running businesses i

00:41:19.400 I mean, the program highlights a couple of major benefits.

00:41:23.060 I think Skip the Dishes is one program that was started by entrepreneurs.

00:41:27.680 Applyboard, you know, who helped people find study permits all over the world.

00:41:32.000 They were one of the beneficiaries.

00:41:33.720 But there are very few innovative programs because 90% fail anyway.

00:41:37.480 That's just fact of life.

00:41:39.580 So now we're in the situation where we have all of these problems.

00:41:43.200 And the situation, the government has already reacted to most of them.

00:41:47.760 But people have been hurt.

00:41:49.400 And the tide is starting to turn, I believe.

00:41:52.460 And we have some symptoms of that.

00:41:54.040 But this is sort of like a really compendium of the way the system has gotten into the trouble that it's in.

00:42:01.820 Well, it paints the perfect picture as to what's actually going on now and what changes are being implemented and why.

00:42:09.400 And that's some of the questions that I will ask you.

00:42:11.820 And I love the fact that you not only just schooled me on how the system got this way,

00:42:16.720 but you also said something very predominant here my friend and maybe it's just predominant

00:42:21.280 in my own frontal lobe but it literally is we don't understand most canadians don't understand

00:42:26.800 how the system got this way and they're easy to throw stones at things that those aren't your

00:42:31.840 targets your targets seem to be it's a lot of mismanagement well i could just so people don't

00:42:38.080 think that i'm just somebody who's spouting off a theory um i should give you some credentials um

00:42:43.920 I spent 30 years in the corporate world, including working in a major international corporation in sales and marketing, strategic planning, and troubleshooting.

00:42:54.660 At one point, I was assigned by my company to go in different countries in the world who were not performing and to help them redo themselves, if you will.

00:43:03.100 That's just part of the skill set that I have.

00:43:05.780 But now I've got into immigration, it's now 26 years, 27 years that I've been doing this,

00:43:12.460 but I wasn't just practicing immigration.

00:43:15.220 I also volunteered and got into the Consultants Association.

00:43:18.600 I was president of that group during some very tumultuous times, and I had to work with

00:43:22.800 the government, and I met with government people many times.

00:43:26.360 And then as we had a fight over better regulation, we set up a brand new regulate.

00:43:30.960 We had a revolt, and I was the first CEO of the regulatory body.

00:43:35.040 and i was i worked with government people and many hard-working conscientious people um and

00:43:42.560 and having to practice and work that closely with the government you do get to understand

00:43:46.880 something and being what i would call i like to think of myself as a strategic thinker

00:43:52.160 okay and i subscribe to some other strategic thinkers like peter zaihan if you know him and

00:43:56.640 others um they're you know you you fall into that path it is it's not a special skill it's not to

00:44:02.480 to put myself above anything but when you're used to thinking about these issues you start looking

00:44:06.880 at all of the problems like from a big picture standpoint um and and you gain some experience

00:44:12.000 that way and god knows prediction is you know prediction is never um um you can't predict

00:44:19.040 that's the bottom line but you can you can certainly look back and say okay these are the

00:44:23.600 major factors that contributed so that's where the the thing the things i'm telling you that's

00:44:27.520 where that comes from just to give you a bit of of credibility which if you want to include in this

00:44:33.280 in this video or cut it you can do that you know you don't need to know this is staying in for sure

00:44:38.400 for any audience that hasn't seen a previous episode yet they they now got their re-schooling

00:44:42.400 on who phil is and why he's so educated in this uh field but phil so you're saying you can't predict

00:44:47.920 the future right so we're not gonna we're not gonna lay out a track and i'm not gonna ask

00:44:51.280 questions that lead to okay what's gonna happen here but what i can ask you and maybe you can

00:44:56.320 at least give me an idea of a path that's being laid out whether it's going to follow through or

00:45:00.640 not there's new changes coming right there's been some new um it seems like this year they've done

00:45:05.920 a lot of work trying to fix some of the problems and and make new avenues um can you explain to

00:45:12.160 our audience and myself exactly what is being changed here um in terms of over the past couple

00:45:17.360 weeks and months well again and to link it back to what we've been talking about the the express entry

00:45:21.840 system which is you know they can change cat parts of the express entry system award points

00:45:27.360 for different features whatever so it's very flexible but up until 2023 um it was based on

00:45:35.440 we want young people highly educated bilingual you know with work experience in canada educating

00:45:40.800 canada that's what the system was well when they got the numbers in for 2023 out of the the target

00:45:46.800 for skilled workers which is like i said 65 of of our immigration intake um 80 of them were 23 years

00:45:56.160 of age so now we're bringing in people who have gone to school graduated had a work experience

00:46:03.280 maybe at a mcdonald's or somewhere um and those are the people that we're actually we're changing

00:46:10.240 the makeup of canada to match those people and even people in the department could recognize

00:46:17.600 that that's you know that's not it the the idea for immigration is canada is a mosaic

00:46:23.120 you know we're not a melting pot we we love our all our festivals from all the different

00:46:26.960 countries we want you know as irish canadians we like to call ourselves irish canadians

00:46:31.520 as you know whatever yeah we like hyphenated canadians you know i mean we like a mosaic

00:46:37.360 and and most people in canada like that because it links them to their past and in a new country

00:46:42.560 which we call ourselves is you know it's hard to do that culturally um so that it links you to your

00:46:48.400 past and and gives you a sense of place so so we're a mosaic well what ircc was doing was changing

00:46:55.680 canada to become a a knowledge elite okay from a mosaic well mosaics are made up of all kinds of

00:47:03.440 people you know they're made up of the hard-working italians who came in the 50s and the portuguese

00:47:08.560 and you know opened the bakeries and opened the construction companies who are now you know third

00:47:14.000 fourth generation canadians doing extremely well um you know that's the hard-working people that

00:47:20.080 come in and we were we you know we we actually actually you could see the effects of that form

00:47:26.240 of immigration to the in the point where last year canada had the highest percentage of university

00:47:31.120 graduates of any country in the world and really i didn't even know that fact yes and and by a

00:47:38.240 long shot and in fact um that if you're a parent you're so proud when your kids go to university

00:47:44.400 and get a degree and all this stuff but what it really says is we have too many of those people

00:47:51.280 so i was gonna say as a canadian i'm proud of uh of canadians being educated but yeah but you know

00:47:56.800 there's another side of that coin it's it's a bit like if you ever read hitchhiker's guide

00:48:00.960 to the galaxy you know everybody's in marketing all right i don't know if you well anybody who's

00:48:06.960 a fan of hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy will know that story and you know what happened to

00:48:10.640 those marketing people i'm limited at best with my my science my uh science fiction okay well they

00:48:16.160 they eventually had to decide on it they all got banned to one planet and they all had to

00:48:20.720 then they all had to get together and work out what currency to use and most importantly what

00:48:24.960 color it was and they chose leaves so they used up all the leaves on the planet which ruined the

00:48:30.560 environment and destroyed the planet anyway um but but that's trouble is we we became they were

00:48:37.360 allowing in that picture that type of a canadian of a canadian mosaic they were they were hurting

00:48:43.200 the mosaic if you will so in they started to change the express entry system to the point where

00:48:49.440 we we all used to be in one pool okay and yes you had a section for federal skilled workers and a

00:48:55.280 section for skilled trades people and when they would take the people from the top of the pool

00:49:00.080 which is what they do they take every two weeks they would take people from the top of the pool

00:49:03.680 you know you would get the pass mark would be a little lower if you were a trades person

00:49:08.320 because we needed more trades people by then well they came in in 2023 and they said wait

00:49:13.600 a minute we're going to have some we're going to make different sections of the pool because by

00:49:18.160 the way we need medical professionals we don't need more people with a one-year diploma in marketing

00:49:24.640 with one-year work experience we have you know the pass mark for those people is up to 540.

00:49:30.720 by the way um you didn't get 600 points for a job anymore uh they took away the 600 points

00:49:36.160 and gave you 50 points for a job they gave you 200 points if you were an executive but then a year

00:49:41.040 and a half ago that's what a lot of entrepreneurs would use to become a permanent resident well a

00:49:45.360 a year and a half ago they took away the 200 points because there was some fraud in the system

00:49:49.340 somewhere and they they they can't fine-tune anything the immigration department manages

00:49:56.160 the immigration system the way somebody is playing a piano with mitts on okay yeah you might recognize

00:50:02.980 the tune but it's not going to be very precise right um and from like i said i put myself back

00:50:08.860 in the shoes of somebody who's immigrating to canada this must be the most confusing process

00:50:14.800 yeah it i mean understanding it is confusing but then i'm getting knowing the motivation so they

00:50:20.400 there was a sea change that said hey hey we got too many people coming in temporarily and b

00:50:25.440 they're not the right kind of people that we're meeting permanently okay and and some of it was

00:50:30.560 happenstance 300 000 ukrainian refugees 100 000 almost iranians you know who are allowed to stay

00:50:36.800 in the country because of what's been going on in iran and you know these sort of things those

00:50:40.720 are big numbers all right but in terms of the permanent residence side what they've been doing

00:50:45.760 now is they've been they've really moved that category along to the point where the biggest

00:50:52.000 province ontario which has the you know that you you have the federal government selecting under

00:50:56.640 the express entry system but almost half of the economic uh about 40 percent of the economic class

00:51:02.720 is also allocated to each province the theory being they can select people that they need

00:51:09.200 specifically and it works you know um and they they're sort of linked all right and the provinces

00:51:15.520 some of them have been hit and miss with regards to who they've been selecting and the federal

00:51:19.200 government shut down several of the provincial nomination programs because of really weird

00:51:25.440 practices and so they've all had to adjust over the years all right um when erpa came in there

00:51:30.160 was no pnp programs but you know they started coming in after that but anyway that's a learning

00:51:34.960 curve that takes years to learn but now they have their what the changes that are now coming

00:51:40.640 is instead of this one big pool you're now getting several small sections of the pool

00:51:47.460 um that's over the last two years and finally they've come to the point where they said okay

00:51:53.760 we have now we now know broadly speaking who we need in canada if you want to get in the pool you

00:51:59.880 have to be one of those people in those sections you just can't even get in the pool if you're not

00:52:04.800 all right okay now there's two major well i should say two levels have changed the ontario

00:52:10.380 government which is got the biggest allocation of the provinces and some other of the provinces

00:52:15.700 are now changing their process to favor certain um categories of employment so medical people okay

00:52:25.460 um there was a time transport but then we got too many truck drivers so they canceled that one

00:52:31.180 there's a category for um sorry my my age things get a little fuzzy but they've got four or five

00:52:42.200 main categories that if you're in those categories you get the extra points that means you're going

00:52:47.600 to get selected first so now the system is really fine-tuning it itself and they can change it from

00:52:54.520 one year to the next okay like i said and when they originally started doing these categories

00:52:59.660 truck drivers and transport workers were one of them because we had a shortage after two years of

00:53:04.780 that they said no no we got enough now so they no longer get preferential treatment they've closed

00:53:10.040 that that silo if you will and and they're the medical one will go on for the next couple of

00:53:15.540 years oh teachers now we have a shortage of teachers again um executives there's one for

00:53:21.680 executives in corporations because you could be the president of of exxon in canada who's been

00:53:27.680 you know transferred here for 10 years you couldn't become a permanent resident because you

00:53:31.900 were you were definitely not in your 30s okay and you got no age points because you were over 40

00:53:37.280 that makes sense you know well now there's a separate category for senior managers and you

00:53:42.540 can you can go into the express entry information it's all available on the website and you can do

00:53:47.700 that ontario has now changed its entire program they used to give categories like if you got a

00:53:54.060 master's degree, you're in. If you've got a PhD, you're in. We were in a meeting with the

00:54:00.540 officials from the Ontario government last fall, and they were complaining. They said, look,

00:54:05.540 we're bringing in master's people and PhDs who have no hope of getting a job. I mean,

00:54:09.880 what good is a master's in Egyptian hieroglyphics? You know, you might need one,

00:54:14.400 and we're letting in everybody that has one. Okay. Well, it looks like they're even,

00:54:19.980 and maybe I'm wrong here, but the research that I've done, they're offering 15 points

00:54:23.640 to candidates making $40 or an hour or more.

00:54:26.720 Well, that's the second thing they were doing, okay?

00:54:28.980 They used to say that, by the way, every job in Canada,

00:54:32.380 there's somebody, do you know what an NOC is?

00:54:35.660 No, no, explain to me.

00:54:36.760 Okay.

00:54:37.240 I might, but...

00:54:37.880 So every single job in Canada is categorized

00:54:40.520 under the National Occupation Code.

00:54:43.000 Okay, yes, yes.

00:54:44.140 It's a code, and it tells you what the average rate of pay is

00:54:48.000 across the country, what the highest, what the range of pay is.

00:54:51.500 it tells you what the job main job duties are specific job duties it lists all the titles of

00:54:56.320 jobs do you want to go in look up noc and you can look up your own job title and see what anybody

00:55:01.760 else in canada is making and earning and and they track all of this and in the labor force statistics

00:55:07.520 we have good statistics in there um so what they're now saying is they used to say that in

00:55:14.880 order to get a work permit in canada you had to to get and you had to be paid the median wage

00:55:20.000 in other words not the lowest or the highest you had to be paid the median wage so everybody out

00:55:24.960 there who's been saying you know that the temporary foreign worker program depresses wages just doesn't

00:55:30.720 understand when you're working in a a restaurant or a factory and you have to be paid the average

00:55:38.880 wage you're making more than half the people in the store or in the factory how does that and

00:55:45.360 And what employer would pay you more than they would pay a Canadian when they don't have to pay anything to recruit you?

00:55:51.260 I mean, to recruit a Canadian.

00:55:53.040 When you're recruiting internationally, there are all kinds of costs, fees, advertising, government fees, recruiter's fees.

00:56:01.000 You know, it opens itself up to international recruiters who get paid by the employee to go to Dubai and to go to Saudi Arabia.

00:56:10.360 I'm a simpleton, and I caught on to that as well.

00:56:12.880 I've never understood that argument.

00:56:14.060 I don't know why people think that that's a thing.

00:56:16.160 It doesn't even seem logical.

00:56:17.940 Well, it also goes along with there is a bias amongst employers. 0.56

00:56:21.660 Once they hire temporary foreign workers whose life depends on going to work and keeping their job,

00:56:28.160 so they show up for work compared to a 17-year-old who decides to call in and say, 0.92

00:56:33.540 I got a football game today and I'm not coming to work. 1.00

00:56:36.320 Yeah, some Canadian Nepo baby or something, right? 1.00

00:56:38.720 Well, and we know that kids are like that, but so are some other people like that. 1.00

00:56:42.260 So employers like temporary foreign workers, but you still have to prove that you tried to hire the Canadians first. 0.98

00:56:48.320 Anyway, so now what they're saying and what they were saying is if you had to have one of those jobs,

00:56:54.560 but now what they're saying is we actually don't care what you were making in your previous employment,

00:57:01.180 and we don't care what your employer pays you in Canada now.

00:57:04.240 If the NOC average wage is above the Canadian median wage, you're going to get extra points.

00:57:09.820 so let's say the average canadian median wage is 50 000 a year yeah if you're paid under that

00:57:16.620 you're going to lose some points in your selection if you're if no not if you're paid that if your

00:57:22.620 job says you should be paid that according to the national statistics all right then you know if

00:57:28.920 i mean there's a big difference if you're a um a kosher butcher in toronto the average median

00:57:35.560 wage is $35 an hour. If you're a kosher butcher in Halifax, it's $24 an hour. Don't ask me why,

00:57:41.800 it's just, that's what the statistics show. So if you're a kosher butcher and you want to apply 0.95

00:57:46.980 for permanent residence, you have the same skills, same person, same age, same everything,

00:57:50.420 you get fewer points than the guy in Ontario. Well, now you'll get the same points because

00:57:55.580 the median wage is, you're above the median wage, okay? Well, they're also probably going

00:58:00.920 to get the same points because there's a penalty on Toronto now apparently as well.

00:58:04.380 Yeah, there is for, I mean, for a lot of these kinds of options.

00:58:09.780 So if you take a look at, A, the occupation itself is going to give you extra points.

00:58:15.880 They've now said, I don't care if you got your degree from Canada or from Uzbekistan or from Denmark.

00:58:24.480 Everybody with an equivalent degree gets the same points.

00:58:28.260 You get no points for Canadian education.

00:58:31.220 all right you get limited points for canadian work experience the work experience has to be at the

00:58:36.180 higher wage okay it has to be more than one year i mean you know that's that's where you get the

00:58:42.580 points now ontario has added some additional changes by the way the federal express entry

00:58:47.620 program they've already announced changes that will be happening they just haven't taken effect

00:58:52.100 yet that's much big that's much bigger than just the ontario one but ontario themselves have also

00:58:57.140 said that every person coming and expecting to be nominated as a skilled worker in Ontario

00:59:03.560 must have a job offer from a approved employer. So the first step in getting permanent residence

00:59:12.440 through Ontario is you have to have a job offer from an Ontario employer who has registered with

00:59:17.380 the province, has gone through the hoops and shown they're eligible. The only one exception

00:59:23.000 to that is if you're a physician, a doctor, you don't need a job offer. And now, I mean,

00:59:29.560 that's because we have such a shortage of doctors. If you're a doctor and you scream on the side of

00:59:34.320 the street, I need work, you'll be hired by the time you're even done this. And to be honest with

00:59:38.980 you, just as a little aside, this is a natural, a benefit of the immigration system that says 0.84

00:59:47.120 these people can come to canada work that flies in the face of 70 years of 60 years sorry of the

00:59:54.640 doctors protecting their own okay because the doctors since medicare came in in saskatchewan

01:00:00.620 in 1961 doctors associations across the country have tried to protect their own

01:00:06.460 by making these standards to become a doctor much higher in effect non-terror non-trade barriers or

01:00:12.720 whatever non-immigration barriers um just to protect them themselves um and and they they

01:00:19.360 because the saskatchewan government at the time broke the monopoly of the doctors by bringing in

01:00:25.040 foreign doctors mostly from england south africa other commonwealth countries that spoke english

01:00:30.640 they brought them in and they they broke the doctor's strike okay i know because as a young

01:00:36.160 person my mother dragged me downtown saskatoon with a sign to protest against the doctors okay

01:00:41.040 right? It tells you where my politics were, but I was in Saskatchewan, all right?

01:00:45.420 Hey, it sounds like you've been on the ground floor for a lot of this, my friend, and it's

01:00:50.360 probably why you have such a good experience and a hell of a vast amount of knowledge on this.

01:00:57.060 And it's funny because my last question was actually about the physician exception,

01:01:00.560 and you just answered it. You're beating me to all my questions here. I only have to ask one.

01:01:04.940 You must have read my mind, and that's scary.

01:01:09.280 well phil i'm actually a fan like i said i i love the previous episodes that you've done with the

01:01:14.160 guys i i feel like the knowledge that i have about immigration um this comes from you you and

01:01:21.200 near rosenberg you guys have done a a great job not only teaching me but i think anybody who's

01:01:25.240 watched this uh it's a little bit more clarification out of these conversations right yeah it's easy

01:01:30.040 like i said to throw stones at things that you don't understand well they the part that that

01:01:35.940 maybe we could close on is what's going to happen next okay so fundamentally the I believe the the

01:01:42.500 tide is turning we now know that yes too many temporary residents caused rents to increase for

01:01:47.920 students and everybody else we've seen the outcome of having fewer students and fewer temporary

01:01:52.940 foreign workers where rents are now the landlords are just suffering the impact of immigration on

01:01:58.620 housing was a myth look at what's happened we've got fewer immigrants but the housing market in

01:02:04.060 Toronto and Vancouver are just in the, you know, absolutely down, mortgage rates are far more

01:02:08.280 important than immigration. Government policies or lending practices are far more important than

01:02:14.800 immigration. So those myths are gone. We're starting to see shortages of workers in certain

01:02:21.340 areas of the country where we have them for sure because of demographics. Something like 50,000

01:02:26.960 more people leave the workforce every year because they're getting old, like me. They're baby boomers.

01:02:33.540 the last of the baby boomers will be retiring or will hit 65 in in 2030 all right and that's the 0.87

01:02:40.460 biggest generation there are twice as many baby boomers as there are new generation was it gen

01:02:45.600 y not the late zero to 20 right now there's twice as many baby boomers as there were then 0.97

01:02:50.940 so who's going to take their jobs we're so far past we're so far past all of these different

01:02:55.500 names for these new generations i i think i've actually reached that point where i'm like

01:02:59.300 nah i don't care that's the youth so we're gonna see just call them again i believe we'll see a

01:03:03.460 turning point about immigration you know the only wild card is there's all the crazies out there 0.98

01:03:08.020 that hate immigrants and are racist and bigots you know they've had enough fuel that's part one 0.97

01:03:13.780 for you for years i used to tell everybody up until about 10 years ago i said i'm like i've 0.98

01:03:18.200 grown up in canada my whole life i've never actually i don't think i've ever actually seen

01:03:21.180 real racism i can't say that anymore i've seen it over the past 10 years it's slowly developed i

01:03:26.260 i felt like it was just insensitive things 10 years ago and now it's just welcome to the

01:03:31.300 the world of social media you know i mean it gave people a bit but so that's part that's one thing

01:03:36.980 that's happening we're also going to see the economy as it continues to grow a lot of the

01:03:41.300 numbers will come in per capita gdp has now gone up a lot because we have fewer people and the

01:03:45.380 economy's still growing okay so that one statistic that was being used to beat everybody over the

01:03:50.500 head with so we're going to see immigration as long as we can recover from the bigotry and the

01:03:54.820 hatred that's out there you know we're going to see immigration become more positive but there are

01:04:00.340 a couple of major things to worry about what's happened in the us in the last month um i believe

01:04:08.500 has the potential to cause a massive influx of refugees into canada not from americans who want

01:04:15.300 to leave we get we get more of those now than ever but it's still small numbers but the us had a 0.96

01:04:21.300 system called temporary protected status it's the same as what we've done for the ukrainians coming

01:04:26.180 to canada they're not refugees they're not permanent residents if they find a canadian

01:04:30.740 to marry and it's a good genuine marriage they can become a permanent resident if they if they

01:04:35.460 qualify through the express entry system they can use an oral but most of them you know they're here 0.99

01:04:39.940 so that when the war ends they can go back to ukraine yeah it's a safe haven for you as long 0.95

01:04:45.860 as you like we're here to help and when you can go back home we'll do everything we can to get you

01:04:49.620 you back there safely. Well, the U.S. has a million people like that under something called

01:04:54.360 temporary protected status. And it's from several different countries. They've done it for countries

01:04:59.380 that had earthquakes. They've done it for, you know, the standard countries we all expect.

01:05:05.140 Trump has ended temporary protected status for most of them. And the case went to the Supreme

01:05:11.440 Court in June, and the Supreme Court agreed with Trump. And the work permits of all of those people

01:05:18.660 were on work permits, and you heard the stories maybe from Springfield, Ohio, where the city was,

01:05:24.140 you know, it's a Rust Belt city. It's grown by 20% in the last 10 years, mostly because of Haitian

01:05:28.740 workers working in the garment, in the industries, in the lower skilled areas in Cleveland, 0.88

01:05:35.880 I mean, in Springfield, and that's across the U.S. There are 300,000 Haitians in the U.S. right now.

01:05:42.980 Their work permits expired last Friday, and today the law comes into effect that they can be

01:05:48.640 deported. Well, these are French-speaking Haitians who've been working and living in the United 1.00

01:05:54.980 States. Guess where a whole lot of their cousins are? In Quebec. Canada. And Canada has something

01:06:04.360 called the Safe Third Country Agreement, which only applies to the U.S. It says if you didn't

01:06:09.980 claim asylum in the U.S., which is refugee status, then you can't come to Canada and claim it. We

01:06:14.800 turn you right around at the border okay unless you have a family member in canada or you're under

01:06:20.480 18 okay we'll take those people you can claim at the port of entry all right well trump has also

01:06:27.920 shut down the asylum system in the us the only people now who they will process asylum claims

01:06:34.000 from are white south africans of all the world not really only people they will process asylum

01:06:40.160 So, what you've got is a range of legal issues trying to fight the decisions of Trump's executive orders, including people from countries like Sudan, etc., from Hong Kong, other places, and they're wending their way through the courts, but there's no guarantee the Supreme Court won't simply say no to them.

01:07:01.780 all right and there's challenges that said that they didn't really have the authority to to do

01:07:07.200 this that uh kirstie noem the the department of uh homeland security but she didn't have the

01:07:13.380 authority to cancel these well the supreme church already said they do but as of this week it's

01:07:21.340 illegal to employ any of those people in the united states and without the ability now the

01:07:27.080 the head of the new head of mark whatever his name is head of the homeland security said that

01:07:32.520 well these people could have claimed any other way they could have become naturalized americans just

01:07:37.240 like all other people do well the answer is no they can't even if they marry an american which

01:07:44.440 is one way to become a u.s citizen we've all seen the green card movies which are

01:07:48.920 light on fact but you can marry an american citizen even if you were illegal in the u.s as

01:07:53.000 long as you didn't enter illegally you could have stayed there 10 years marrying an american citizen

01:07:57.080 same thing in Canada now they just changed the rules last spring to say if

01:08:02.480 you marry an American and you want to file for a green card you must file in

01:08:06.680 your home country and you must leave and go to an interview in your home country 0.88

01:08:11.060 well you tell me which Sudanese is gonna go to his home country or which Iranian 0.86

01:08:16.900 or which Haitian or which Hong Kongese if they're gonna go home I mean and and 0.71

01:08:22.940 most of these people are ladies and gentlemen are here because their feet

01:08:26.000 they fear going there and yeah they are and where are they going to go all right and if you read

01:08:32.600 some recent article in global mail well a lot of them are thinking about canada now the question

01:08:37.200 canada has to decide and it's up to the immigration department to say if they come to the border and

01:08:42.300 say i'm you know i'm afraid um the u.s is going to deport me either to my home country or to a third

01:08:48.840 country which canada would never accept u.s can belt depart me to el salvador or somewhere like

01:08:53.980 that they'll deport me um would would you know can i i want to claim refugee status is canada

01:09:00.460 going to say to them and i can't claim asylum okay is canada going to say you're you're not

01:09:05.580 subject to the third country act we will accept you or not if they say yes then the numbers are

01:09:12.460 just going to go through the roof if they say no you can bet there'll be bus loads of lawyers at

01:09:18.140 every port of entry willing to file class action suits on behalf of all these people

01:09:22.220 so this is something which over the next year to two years i believe is going to inform canadian

01:09:29.140 opinion on immigration because it's going to give ammunition to those we don't want to have

01:09:34.520 ammunition it could cause some sort of crisis between quebec and canada because if the majority

01:09:41.520 go to quebec the last time this happened that's what happened as well you know we had all these

01:09:46.680 people coming across the border in in quebec um and the quebec government having to pay the bills

01:09:51.660 while the federal government stepped up, they're going to have to step up again. But anyway,

01:09:56.060 that's my big fear about what's going to happen next. You know, they're getting a temporary

01:10:00.340 residence stuff under control. It's under control. They're getting the, bringing in the right people

01:10:04.300 to support Canadian economy under control. I was actually, the more that you're talking about this,

01:10:11.100 the more I see, you know, for last year, I was always saying to people when they started talking

01:10:15.260 about the Americans, and I said, I think they're just trying to figure themselves out. I always 0.98

01:10:18.700 try to give them the benefit of the doubt right even though i some of the stuff is just horrendous

01:10:23.040 and now where we are in july the end of july 2026 i just see nothing but a disaster down there and

01:10:30.880 unfortunately canada is preying the price for a lot of it yes you're right and you know unfortunately

01:10:37.180 we can't and we can't care about all these people that trump's thrown out of the u.s we can't put a

01:10:41.520 tariff on them to not you know to limit their spread you know um we're in we're in a tough spot

01:10:47.640 with with the us and all those things but that's a whole other area um you know in this in this 0.86

01:10:52.680 case i think we have to keep our our mind about us and you know knowing that we have an immigration

01:10:58.380 system that is creaking along on technology that is we wanted to we want them to bring their it

01:11:03.880 systems up to the 20th century you know um they're getting there but nobody's any faith that you know

01:11:09.980 we we deal with these by the way the simple process of filing an application we now do that

01:11:15.340 through electronic online portals

01:11:17.760 for all different categories,

01:11:19.640 there isn't a day goes by that,

01:11:22.280 I'm on discussion groups, that these portals don't crash.

01:11:26.160 And sometimes-

01:11:27.000 I wasn't saying it to our team,

01:11:28.760 just even with uploading and things that we do

01:11:30.400 with the TPL local tours and stuff,

01:11:32.100 I'd like the more and more,

01:11:34.160 the more weeks go by, the more I realize

01:11:36.100 Canada's internet is going to implode on itself.

01:11:39.540 Well, and all of this, you know,

01:11:41.400 if you have a deadline,

01:11:42.420 because lots of immigration programs have deadlines,

01:11:44.540 must file before would you believe it's midnight greenwich time okay just to be confusing if you

01:11:51.580 file in ontario if you file after 5 p.m you're out of status but you're you're trying to get the

01:11:57.820 paperwork together and maybe you're too you're trying to file three days in advance and the

01:12:01.580 portal goes down you know we live with these things every single day um and anyway those are

01:12:08.780 some of the things that you're you're you're hearing about we have other issues but they're

01:12:13.180 technical issues which only immigration providers would would understand that that happened within

01:12:18.940 the system with ai and false decisions and all that but anyway we have a lot of trouble um

01:12:24.780 hopefully uh you know it'll still carry on we have a great country here and um those of us in

01:12:31.660 the profession believe we're we're blessed because we can help you know canada grow properly and

01:12:37.500 bring in the right people to make sure the country stays where it is we it's it's a gift that's you

01:12:43.180 know we're all very heavily regulated um and i think that's part of the the the benefit why many

01:12:50.540 of us keep going okay um people need help with the systems and you know the government it prides

01:12:58.060 itself on saying you can use our systems you don't need anybody's help you don't need a lawyer or

01:13:01.260 a consultant you can do all this yourself well we get a whole lot of business from people who do that

01:13:06.140 and fail yeah and just like everything i think people thought they'd become their own real estate

01:13:11.500 agent there for a while too right and some of them convinced themselves and maybe they got through one

01:13:15.180 of those deals but no you you need an agent you need a lawyer you need help we're only one person

01:13:21.020 right so yeah so anyway you did it again you you you taught us all about uh what we need to know

01:13:27.900 about immigration and the change is coming and where the future may end up and hopefully the

01:13:33.660 next time that we talk and we do a check-in with you things have gotten themselves a little bit

01:13:38.060 more smooth some of the mismanagements have started to get themselves managed and the track

01:13:42.780 is laid forward in a positive direction and we keep canada moving well we we have to hope that

01:13:48.300 and expect that because the other thing that i'll talk like an old guy now is there are going to be

01:13:54.140 new problems and we need all our energy and resources and experience to deal with those

01:13:59.340 new problems we can't be continually dealing with the old problems but you know history is

01:14:05.740 has a way of teaching us that problems will always occur we just have to keep improving the systems

01:14:11.580 and and try to make the problems easier to manage going forward and try to hurt as few people as we

01:14:16.940 possibly can phil we'll leave it on that note because that was prolific and fruitful and i feel

01:14:23.340 like the audience should be left with that my friend thank you so much again thank you just

01:14:28.060 stick around for one second we'll make sure our producer is good everybody in the tpl atmosphere

01:14:34.140 check out tplmedia.ca for your national podcast coverage or check out tplmedia.ca

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True Patriot Love - July 30, 2026

Immigration Updates & Changes ft Phil Mooney

Episode Stats

Transcript