Evidence of meeting #39 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was applications.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON
Thank you very much.
Thank you to our guests.
One of the concerns that many people had following the earthquake was that we would have a rapid response. There was the immediate concern, of course, of the children, and there was Operation Stork. But there was also a considerable backlog that existed prior to the earthquake, as many people know.
There was obviously a need to have parallel streams, in a sense. On the one hand, it was to clear up the backlog, for obvious reasons; that has to do with people not being able to envision sending people back, and to give people peace of mind for the backlog that had existed before the earthquake for those from Haiti who were trying to get status here.
Since that time, as we've heard, there has obviously been a concern around those who have applied because of the earthquake. Now, on top of that, we have what has happened in terms of the cholera epidemic. I'm hearing certainly from people here—and I know from colleagues in Montreal and other places—that there is a concern from the community in general that there needs to be an extension of some of the responses that happened immediately after the earthquake.
So for my question, could we just go through the backlog that pre-existed and the numbers on where that's at, if you have them? What are we doing to extend the special provisions? Has there been any request to the minister to have those special provisions extended?
Also, I apologize for being late, as you might have already covered this, but could you just tell us what kind of backlog we are dealing with since the earthquake? And is there anything new in terms of the request as a result of the cholera epidemic?
4:05 p.m.
Director General, International Region, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I can answer the first part, and I'll let Claudette answer the rest.
4:05 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I was going to do the opposite--
4:05 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
4:05 p.m.
Director General, International Region, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I took the easy question first.
If we're talking about the family class applications that were in the backlog as of January 12, of the 1,700 people who made their applications at that point, there are still 12 people who have an application in process.
For those who applied between January and April, they have all been processed. Of those who applied in May, 97% have been finalized; in June, 96%; in July, 94%; and in August, 90%. Essentially, people who have an application currently in the process are people who applied since September. So the closer we get, the larger the number is with regard to, again, the family class. I'm talking about the family class because that's where we concentrate all our efforts.
4:10 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
On the question of cholera and so on, I think the Canadian government has responded in terms of support in Haiti, with over $7 million in support on that. Right now, we think, when we look at the sponsorships that have been coming in.... Again, we've been focused on people who had family members in Canada and on trying to reunite families. The numbers of sponsorships that are coming in are very low. We've managed to clear the initial request and desire for people to come. We continue to apply significant additional resources to what was there initially.
We have 23 decision-makers doing work on the Haiti and Santo Domingo sort of workload as opposed to six before the earthquake. We continue to have those resources. So we continue to process them as quickly as they come in. We've changed the 12-week thing just because we didn't find it efficient: we were running after numbers as opposed to finalizing cases. But on average, cases are getting processed within four months, which I think is quite a success.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON
Just on the issue following the cholera epidemic...but then that's something that is fluid, obviously. Are there, as there were after the earthquake, connections between the department and the community that...? In other words, are we going out to the community and engaging with them directly to ensure they are aware that there is still opportunity for people to sponsor at this point?
4:10 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I don't think we're doing it in the proactive way that we did right after the earthquake, but certainly, for example, in Montreal and CIC Ottawa we continue to work very closely with the communities.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON
Has that come up at all in terms of an approach to do what had been done after the earthquake? When I was talking to Minister Cannon right after the earthquake, one of the things I said was not to wait, to go out, and many others said the same. Some of that was put into place. Has that discussion happened at all to maybe contemplate doing that again?
4:10 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I think there's certainly been discussion about making sure, as the anniversary comes up and that type of thing, but right now I think we're seeing efforts on the cholera and so on in Haiti, not necessarily about people immigrating or coming to Canada.
4:10 p.m.
NDP
Paul Dewar NDP Ottawa Centre, ON
I think it's something for two reasons. We know a lot of people here were able to help as a diaspora community, often just being able to send resources, money, to people, but also there were concerns that came to their attention that we wouldn't normally be able to hear. Sometimes we'll hear it in our constituency offices, but people just don't know where to go. One of the key aspects of the follow-up after the earthquake was to have government resources imbedded, if you will, in the community. I say that not just because of the immigration facet, but also in terms of ensuring that everyone is able to share information, and I think that's critical. So, yes, it's not all immigration for sure, but it's related.
4:10 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Certainly, on the immigration side, there were a number of people from Haitian backgrounds who work in the public service who came to the department at the beginning and so on, and that sort of network still exists. So we would expect, if they're hearing something from their community, that they would be feeding that back because they know exactly where to come in the department to give us that.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Alice Wong Conservative Richmond, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for coming to our committee again. I have several questions.
First of all, I'd like to focus on the permanent residence visas. Since the earthquake, how many Haitians have been issued permanent residence visas to come to Canada?
4:10 p.m.
Director General, International Region, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
The number of visas we issued, I would say—
December 15th, 2010 / 4:10 p.m.
Director General, International Region, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
—since January 1—that's the date I have, very close to the earthquake itself—we've issued 3,080 visas so far. That's in all categories, but the vast majority are family class.
4:15 p.m.
Director General, International Region, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
We issued slightly over 2,000 last year, so although we were not really functional for the first two months after the earthquake, it's about 54% more than we issued last year. I think those are the numbers we had.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Alice Wong Conservative Richmond, BC
Thank you.
Also, there has been criticism that the Haiti special measures that were implemented by your office, the CIC, did not do enough. For example, they say that we have not expanded the definition of who can be sponsored as a member of the family class. How do you respond to such criticisms?
4:15 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
What we did for Haiti we've never done for any other country, so I think we did respond in a very credible way. I think we did demonstrate as much flexibility as we could. We had to take into account the movement out of Haiti, which is sometimes not without risk in terms of marriage fraud or convenience fraud and so on. But I think we did quite well in terms of the acceptance rate. We gave instructions to the mission to be as flexible as possible, to think about the bigger picture, to look at people who had been actually affected directly by the earthquake. I'm personally proud of what we did on the Haiti file.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Alice Wong Conservative Richmond, BC
What about the definition of family members, for example? Have we expanded it for the special measures?
