Feb. 18, 2006. 01:00 AM
ALLAN THOMPSON [Source: Toronto Star Newspaper]

Canada’s new citizenship and immigration minister, Monte Solberg, has a choice to make. Solberg will have to decide if he wants to be just the minister of immigration, or if he also wants to be the minister for immigrants. There is an important distinction.

For the most part, Canada’s immigration ministers in recent years have concerned themselves almost exclusively with immigration policy, the intake of newcomers each year, how Canada will select those people, who gets in and who does not: our drive to attract the best and the brightest.

On the face of it, that would seem to be the primary responsibility of the minister of the Crown heading up the immigration department. But too often, ministers — with some coaching from their bureaucrats — have steered away from also being the minister responsible for the immigrants themselves.

As a result, it sometimes seems as if there is virtually no culture of client service in the immigration department. It doesn’t matter how long we make people wait or how agonizing it can be to get updated information on an immigration application. Many who have applied to sponsor family members or who are immigration applicants themselves can attest to the frustration of trying to use the immigration department’s telephone information line or the online e-client status service. Frankly, the immigration department often doesn’t communicate well and it is immigrants or would-be immigrants who suffer the consequences.

Some immigration officials operate on the assumption that it doesn’t really matter if people have to wait for years to get a reply from Canada. This country reserves the right to pick and choose who gets in and when. How long people wait in the queue is not our concern, these officials say. In fact, in some parts of the world providing better service would simply be a magnet for more applications, some would argue. So red tape becomes a mechanism for controlling the flow of applicants.

A minister who feels a responsibility to immigrants might well ask: is this the best way to run an immigration program? Have we ever thought of doing things differently?

And an immigration minister more concerned about the immigrants themselves would also demand to know how the government plans to resolve the conundrum of the growing immigrant underclass, a class populated by those for whom the Canadian dream has become a nightmare. For years now we have been confronted by the problem of immigrants who cannot work in their chosen fields in Canada or fail to break through into the workforce, despite their best efforts. That is because our immigration policy focuses on intake, not on integration. A minister who also feels a responsibility to immigrants would make it a priority — perhaps the top priority — to resolve the credential recognition and integration dilemma.

Solberg worked as a broadcaster for nearly 20 years before jumping into politics in 1993 as one of the original Reform MPs. He has no background in the immigration field and joked with reporters after his appointment that he hadn’t exactly been “pining” for the post. As one of only three cabinet ministers from Alberta, Solberg is also the first western Canadian in a generation to find himself in charge of the immigration portfolio. (Winnipeg’s Lloyd Axworthy held the post in 1980 and Saskatoon’s Otto Lang served in 1970).

And as an MP from rural Alberta, Solberg is the first immigration minister in a long time who does not hail from a major urban centre. While some would argue that puts him out of touch with the concerns of Canada’s major immigrant communities, it also gives him the latitude to act without any hint of favouritism.

Solberg comes to this portfolio with a clean slate. His party platform talked about getting tough on failed immigrants who have been languishing in the deportation stream. But the policy document also placed immigration firmly in the realm of building Canada’s communities. The Tories promised to cut by half the $975 landing fee charged to new immigrants and pledged to create an agency to speed assessment and recognition of credentials.

Solberg should act quickly on both promises and take up other challenges to prove that he is both the minister of immigration and of immigrants.