Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 26th, 2013

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Would you like to weigh in on that, Ms. McKinney?

[Carol McKinney]

I would, because in Chandigarh we can see a continuing rise in our acceptance rate with the introduction of the visa application centres. We feel, as Catherine Bailey was saying, that this is because the information is more available, with our checklists, and the visa application centres are able to assist the clients in providing complete documentation.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

When someone is rejected, are they told the reasons for being rejected, and are those reasons general or specific in nature?

[Angela Gawel]

I can answer that.

When a client's application is refused, we issue a written letter. We have generally a checklist letter on which we check off the reasons for the refusal. There may be one; there may be a few. They are specific reasons, and they are given to applicants so that they have a written explanation of the reason for refusal.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Of the approximately 15% who are rejected, how many would you say are rejected because they just haven't bothered to provide comprehensive information on such things as income or travel history?

[Angela Gawel]

We don't keep records on cases of the reasons for individual refusals, so I don't have statistics for you on individual percentages of the reasons.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

One of the things we've heard, and the stories have come up on several occasions, is that when a failed applicant is rejected, they run and tell, through some contact, their MP that they have been to the U.S. several times and have respected the terms of that country's visa program, but when we look into their application, none of that information is provided.

Do you have any statistics or even an educated guess on that rejection?

[Angela Gawel]

Rejections of...?

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

They're telling us they've been to the U.S. several times and they've respected the terms of their visa, but when we look into their application, none of that info is provided.

[Angela Gawel]

It would be, as Ms. Bailey said, up to the applicant to provide the information to us. As she said, the onus is on the applicants to provide all the information in support of their application. Certainly travel history is something a visa officer would take into consideration.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Does their failure on their first application affect their new application when additional info is provided?

[Angela Gawel]

Applicants who fail the first time around always have the option to reapply and to provide additional information in support of their application. Any new information is taken into consideration when the officer assesses that new application, yes.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay. So of the 15% who are rejected and reapply with additional info, how many are eventually accepted?

[Angela Gawel]

I don't believe we have stats on that. I don't have them with me. We could verify whether we can get that to you.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you. If you can, I would appreciate it if you could do that through the clerk.

Just to finish off, I want to say a big thank you to the folks on the ground, particularly in Chandigarh and Manila. It's not an easy job you have, but you're our front-line workers there and I appreciate all that you and your staff do every day, day in and day out, working on this very important file for Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Thank you very much.

I'm done, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, sir.

Go ahead, Mr. Cash.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to be here today. I'd like to echo my colleague's opening remarks by saying that, especially for those of you who are working in the Philippines under incredibly difficult circumstances, we wish you all the best, and we hope staff is well and safe, and as well through you, we wish to offer our sincere condolences to the people of the Philippines on this incredible tragedy that has beset the country.

As you can imagine, we have a very large, dynamic Filipino community in Canada that is anxious about news, news about their families, and also very anxious about the new regulations that the Canadian government has offered to deal with this extraordinary situation.

I'd like to ask our friends from Manila, first of all, if you could say what impact the typhoon has had generally on your operations, and if indeed you have had an increase in applications for temporary visitor visas in the aftermath of the typhoon.

[Catherine Bailey]

I am going to pass the microphone over to my colleague, Ms. Patricia Nicoll, to answer most of that.

I'd like to make one comment about the typhoon, which is that we were extremely fortunate in that the typhoon went south of Manila and north of Cebu City, between two large urban centres. So it could have been very much worse. Of course, it was still a terrible situation, but we are fortunate to a certain extent.

Now I'll turn it over to Patricia to talk about what we've been doing over the past couple of weeks.

[Patricia Nicoll]

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your remarks and encouragement about the work we're doing here after the typhoon.

As you mentioned, CIC has introduced special measures to prioritize applicants who have been significantly and personally affected by the typhoon. We have proactively in this office gone into our records of active cases and found addresses and reached out to individuals, either permanent resident or temporary resident applicants, in order to prioritize their applications if they are from an affected area.

We've noticed an approximate, but this is quite rough.... We think we've got about a 15% increase in temporary resident applications, but we can't say that's specifically a result of the typhoon. However, we have noticed an increase.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

You did mention the difficulty vis-à-vis communication in normal times. How on earth is communication being executed now?

[Patricia Nicoll]

We have found that we are able to communicate by telephone, fortunately, now that it's two weeks after the event. There are communications opening up, particularly phone lines.

We have used texting, phone, and email to communicate.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

With the added volume, as it were, have the processing times for all types of applications therefore been affected?

[Patricia Nicoll]

We have been prioritizing, as I say, cases of people who are directly and personally affected. In addition, we were fortunate to have already had four temporary duty officers assigned to Manila. When the typhoon struck, we already had extra resources in place. We've been able to leverage resources that we have here in order to move cases forward without dramatically affecting processing times on any one line of business.

[Catherine Bailey]

If I could add to that, during this period, the staff in the office have been working extremely hard. Filipinos are very loyal to their comrades, and they feel very much for people affected by the typhoon, so they've been devoting many, many hours of work to this. I think at the moment our processing times are actually improving, rather than diminishing, because of the devotion of every member of the team working on this crisis.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Just to confirm, then, you've received additional resources to deal with this extraordinary circumstance.