Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 10th, 2009

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

He is on China's most wanted list.

It was simply because I, as minister, will not break the law, and it would be contrary to the law for me to instruct officials to do so.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Minister, I'm sorry, did your department award him a work permit under your stewardship, yes or no?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

An officer at our Vegreville operations centre who had the authority to make such decisions did award the work permit. Based on his analysis of the facts in the application, he felt that he had no option but to do so. And as minister—

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

So the department did award him--

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

--I cannot override such decisions on the part of our officials when they have delegated authority.

Would you like to add anything to this to clarify it?

[Richard Fadden]

I would simply add that under the current regulations, if a person under a removal order applies for a work permit and meets the conditions, neither the minister nor the official has any leeway either. If the conditions and the regulations are met, the permit must be issued.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

There are thousands of Chinese folks here who are about to be deported. They have families in Canada. I can give you numerous examples of my constituents who are married and have children, and their wives have not been able to work. Are they not eligible to get work permits?

This individual who is on China's most wanted list gets a work permit, but the other people who are eligible to get work permits to support their families don't get work permits.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Depending on the specific facts in the application they make, they should in principle be eligible for a work permit. If a person is in Canada under a stay of deportation, according to the regulations they are eligible to receive a work permit. The officers are required to make that assessment objectively. They can't do so prejudicially and say, “I don't like this character. He seems a bit dodgy or unpopular. I'm therefore going to use my personal discretion, against the regulations, to deny him a work visa.” That's simply not allowed.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Karygiannis.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I have one final question.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You don't have another question.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to continue on the matter of the backlog and Bill C-50. At the end of my last remarks, I explained that, in Bill C-50, the chapter on immigration that was passed—which can be called the immigration reform—enables the minister to issue instructions on classes of immigrants that are to be prioritized. So people who are further back in the line will be brought to the front of the line. Obviously, if I take the application of a person who is at the end of the line and move it to the front, it will be processed sooner, but the line will remain just as long.

How do you explain why the number of pending files has declined, whereas all Bill C-50 made it possible to do was to take people from further back in the line and process their files on a priority basis?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. St-Cyr, under the new act, we must not accept immigration applications from skilled foreign workers if they don't fall into the 38 priority categories. That means that we can finally reduce, control the number of applications. We used to receive an infinite number of applications, but our processing capacity...

Pardon me, I'm going to continue in English.

In theory, we had an infinite number of applications that we had an obligation to process, but we had a finite number of people we could accept in a given year. Consequently, the inventory kept growing and growing. Under Bill C-50 we now have the capacity to limit the number of applications that are made, and that's why the inventory is coming down.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

So you don't necessarily process the files more quickly; there are simply fewer of them in the system.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Except that people who file their applications after last February are—

They're in an inventory that we process more quickly, in accordance with the action plan. They can now get a decision in between six and twelve months. For those who made their applications prior to that, we are devoting 70% of our resources to processing them. We hope that will begin to go more quickly.

Finally, those who don't qualify for the 38 categories can apply to come to Canada under the provincial nomination or temporary foreign worker programs, and both of those inventories move more quickly than the skilled foreign worker inventory.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

All right.

In your presentation and in response to a question, you also talked about multiculturalism. In Quebec, all political parties advocate interculturalism rather than Canadian multiculturalism. The Bloc Québécois has even introduced a bill on this matter, under which Quebec would be able to opt out of Canada's Multiculturalism Act and have its own immigrant integration model, which is more proactive.

Immigrants who go through the Quebec system are currently getting a double message: the Quebec government tells them that it is counting on them to fit into the common culture, and that it is inviting them to join in and enrich Quebec culture, whereas the federal government talks to them about multiculturalism and invites them to promote their differences, on the sole condition that they abide by the law.

Would you be open to the possibility of at least considering the option of having a different integration policy in Quebec and allowing the Quebec government to send a single message to its newcomers?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. St-Cyr, that's already the case. Under the Canada-Quebec Accord on Immigration, Quebec, in practice, already has responsibility for integrating newcomers. We moreover provide it with funding for that purpose.

Quebec has very effective programs in this field. It already has its own integration approach. As I already said, under the federal government's multiculturalism program, increasing emphasis is being place on integration. We have to put the accent on social cohesion, on the values and history that we have in common. At the same time, however, we have to keep an open mind toward cultural diversity. This approach doesn't necessarily entail any contradictions.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Chow, please.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I will be submitting motions regarding the estimates when we finish the discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Maybe before we start we could discuss that point. On the questioning of the minister, Mr. Karygiannis has something--a point of privilege. How much longer does the committee want to go--until a quarter to? Are we in agreement with that?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Otherwise we'll run out of time.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Thank you.

Back to the question of the backlog, I notice that refugee spending is actually $10 million less. The planned spending was $85.5 million; it's now $75.4 million. And the claims waiting for decision have dramatically increased; it's 38% more than a year before. So you now have 42,000 claims according to your performance report, 42,000 refugee claimants waiting for a long time, some over a year, two years—a third of them have to wait over a year. Yet in terms of number of staff, you've dropped your staff from 1,000 to 928; it's 97 fewer staff members than the year before. So you have less staff. The cost per claim has gone up from $2,491 to $4,938 within three years. So the cost per claim has gone up dramatically. The claims waiting for a decision have gone up 38%. You're spending less. You have less staff, 97 fewer staff members. That doesn't make sense, because isn't the goal to shorten the wait list for these refugee claimants? Whether you agree or don't agree, they shouldn't be waiting for a long period of time. Your department is actually going in the wrong direction, and if you look at the chart, it just keeps going up—the wait list, claimants waiting. The chart has been going up and up. I looked at the chart and it didn't make sense, and in the meantime the costs have gone up.

So there's something really wrong there. And putting aside refugees, the Immigration Appeal Board is not doing much better. The number of appeals waiting for a decision has also increased by 9,600, and again the wait times have gone up. So I can imagine an overseas husband and wife waiting to come in—they were turned down, they appealed, 39% of them are over a year. That's a long wait for an appeal, probably two years now. That wife might have a baby overseas by now, right, so they're separated for two years. So this doesn't look right and doesn't seem right, and it's not as if you don't have the money. You're just not spending it.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Madam Chow, obviously I share your concern about the waiting list for processing of refugee applicants. Obviously one factor here has been the need for more members of the IRB, and I'm taking action in that respect. I've recently made the largest one-day appointment of commissioners to the IRB, and as I mentioned, I anticipate that in the very near future they'll be operating at near full complement with respect to the number of members.

As it relates to their actual detailed operations, I would direct you to the chairman of the IRB to respond to how they are allocating their resources in terms of staff and how they prioritize the processing of claims and appeals.

Clearly part of the problem is the large number of false claimants who are, I would submit, abusing our in-country refugee determination system. This is a very serious problem. I would note, for instance, that last year we received something in the order of 13,000 in-country refugee claims from Mexican citizens, 90% of which are being rejected by the IRB.

So, yes, we need a full complement of IRB judges. We will have that very soon. The IRB needs to administer its resources creatively, but also we need to ensure that we can more expeditiously deal with in-country claimants, particularly from countries where the overwhelming share of those claimants are found to be false claimants. They are clogging up the system, prolonging the waiting times, and making it more difficult for legitimate in-country refugee claimants to get a decision. I invite ideas from the committee on how we can address that very serious problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Finished?

You are finished, because it says five minutes on this clock right here.