Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I call the meeting to order.

Good morning, everyone. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number eight. It's December 3, 2013. This meeting is televised.

We're meeting, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), to study temporary resident visas for visitors.

Mr. Cash has a comment.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm wondering if we might have unanimous consent to extend the meeting for the full schedule of two hours.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Is there unanimous consent?

[An hon. member]

Mr. Chair, most of us have other meetings.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

There's no consent, Mr. Cash, so unfortunately we can't do that.

What I'm suggesting is that we will divide the time in half. Already we're late, so we'll probably have the first group stop at 12:20.

Madam Clerk, what are you suggesting for the time that the speakers have?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Julie Lalande Prud'homme]

They have eight minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Eight minutes each?

[The Clerk]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

That will leave approximately one round of questions. We will limit the times for questions. The first speaker would be from the Conservatives. They would have four minutes. The second speaker would be from the NDP. They would have five minutes. The third speaker would be from the Liberals. They would have three minutes. Then the fourth speaker would be from the Conservatives. They would have another four minutes. That's what I'm proposing, unless someone feels very strongly about that.

We will start with the meeting. We have three presenters.

We have the Canadian Airports Council, Daniel-Robert Gooch, who is the president. Good morning to you, sir. We have Betsy R. Kane, who is an immigration lawyer. We have the famous Richard Kurland, who has been here many times before, who is a policy analyst and also a lawyer.

We will start off with Mr. Kurland. You have eight minutes, sir.

[Richard Kurland, Policy Analyst and Lawyer, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I feel a deep honour and pleasure at being here today.

In 2012, some 206,000 people were refused temporary resident visas. Likely more than half of the 206,000 individuals fully merited a refusal based on a lack of documentation accompanying the TRV application or on having insufficient ties to home country or an absence of employment or ties to education. You can't blame the visa officers for at least 50% of those refusals. It was the right thing to do in the appropriate TRV applications.

My focus today is on 35,000 to 40,000 people who would constitute borderline cases of refusal. That's in one year.

As members of Parliament fully know, TRV refusals affect the working capacity of the MP office system. What I'm recommending today is consideration of a review, by a review officer who would take in refused temporary resident visa applications and would have the authority to send back for redetermination or to approve a TRV application, and importantly would be allowed to request, for a finite visit to Canada of 90 days' or less duration, something that already exists and is contemplated in our statute: a sponsorship bond or cash bond payable by credit card.

Here are the benefits. The costs will follow.

The benefits are that for some cases related to urgency, such as a funeral, or a wedding, the problem is that the existence of that function or event cannot be verified in a timely manner by our overseas personnel, and people are wrongly refused during a difficult period in their lives. Certain countries present low risk for refugee claims, and because our government has adjusted the refugee determination system to strip out delay, when contrasted with the situation five years and ten years ago, the potential for refugee claims is no longer a practical risk in the assessment of a TRV application.

What is at stake is whether or not the person will comply with the terms and conditions and return home at the end of their visit in Canada.

What is wrong with Canadian families providing affidavits and a credit card performance bond to guarantee the departure of their relation within a visit of 90 days or less? Over time, calculate the entries and exits from the system. My guess is that you will see compliance in extremely high numbers. If over time there is a compliance issue, percolate the bond amount upward or downward.

In terms of the costs, I would recommend what this committee decided in connection with the biometric provisions of a recent upgrade to our immigration rules, whereby the fees for biometrics were not subject to the User Fees Act and not subject to section 19.1 of the Financial Administration Act. This system can be entirely user pay. Our technology, our immigration computer system in which we've invested over $1 billion can readily and easily allow for an upload in PDF form of the required documentation, including payment for these revision cases. The revision officer need never see the individuals.

So we have a need. We have the technology. We have the will, and certainly we should provide relief to 30,000 to 40,000 people a year. There is a way to do this, and I'm hoping that this may be a consideration in the near future.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Kane, you are next. Thank you for coming. You have up to eight minutes.

[Betsy Kane, Lawyer, Capelle Kane Immigration Lawyers, As an Individual]

I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear before you today.

I would say generally that I think the visitor visa system in Canada is working well. I reviewed the testimony that was presented to this committee in advance and I want to highlight some of the issues that I saw from the testimony and also to comment on my colleagues' testimony this morning.

It always has struck me that with the TRV application, CIC is not transparent and forthcoming as to what is required to get over the hurdle of a TRV application. The CIC website gives guidance as to what is involved in a letter of invitation, but there is no form, no template, as there is for every other type of application or submission to CIC.

One of my recommendations is that CIC develop a thorough and complete form that is PDF fillable and can be uploaded within the system setting out all of the details for a letter of invitation.

As lawyers, we often get requests to prepare these letters of invitation on behalf of Canadian hosts. When we explain to clients the amount of documentation and information that should go in those letters of invitation, clients often balk and say that they think it's another cash grab by lawyers. But to do a proper letter of invitation and to prepare the proper comprehensive supporting documentation that's required, a lot of thought has to go into the process.

One of my recommendations today is that CIC look to improving their transparency and create two new forms to accompany the TRV application. One would be an actual letter of invitation that sets out all the information that CIC is looking for to assess these applications, as well as the accompanying documents that may or must be included, such as tax returns, proof of status in Canada, proof of family in Canada, proof of assets in Canada.

The other thing which I think, from looking at our peer countries, would be helpful for CIC is there is such a thing as getting an undertaking or a sponsorship from those family members in Canada, similar to the undertaking and sponsorship agreement that we have for family class applicants. Of course, it would be a much shorter and simpler form. The person would be sponsoring or undertaking to support, in the same way that Mr. Kurland recommended affidavits of support or proof of support, whether it be by credit card or bond or whatever. We would have actual forms and a way to streamline the information into our system such that CIC would have a complete picture and would not have to re-review and potentially approve 48% of second-time applications.

Another practical matter that is not visible for someone assessing the TRV application process is that many times Canadian hosts are not prepared to disclose their financial and business information to their family members directly. What happens, when you give a letter of invitation, is that you are giving it to your family member in India, who must include it with their application or upload it. Many times Canadian hosts do not feel comfortable.

The way to get around this situation to date is to potentially get a copy or proof of the application that has been filed, with a number, and advise the immigration office or the visa office by submission or letter saying, “My cousin is coming, and I want to support his application by showing you my T4 slips for the last three years.” The person may not want to show his cousin his T4 slips, because that may result in some other family issues or simply a loss of privacy.

From an online point of view, having the sponsor log in to the CIC account and upload their sponsorship and upload their letter of invitation and upload as an attachment their notices of assessment, their proof of finances, their bank statements, their proof of property, and their profile, if you will, that will be accompanying this application, would be very helpful.

Now that all TRV applications are an online application and can be done via the VAC, the visa application centre, or online, there should be a way to have a separate portal for sponsors, just as there are separate portals for lawyers to go to in order to augment these applications.

This is where I see us being able to improve our TRV application process, in the case of family sponsorships or in family-related visits.

One of the things I've been asked to discuss is whether it is practical and effective to introduce a full appeal mechanism. The answer, in my opinion, is no.

Our current appeal mechanism is already bogged down with delays and is under-resourced at the immigration appeal division and the refugee appeal division at the Immigration and Refugee Board. I do not think adding to that bureaucracy will assist.

The U.K. had a family class appeal mechanism with a full appeal, and it has been terminated as of June 2013. Obviously it wasn't working; otherwise they would have maintained that appeal process.

The other thing I've been asked to discuss is the way CIC communicates its refusal letters. We all are tired of seeing those boilerplate letters, which are completely useless. We all know that the only real way to find out why the visa was refused is to either do an access to information request or to go to our members of Parliament. If CIC were more transparent on the front end and either had a larger boilerplate letter or had the opportunity to put in a few lines similar to what they're already putting in the GCMS, at least the applicant would have knowledge as to why they were refused and would stop burdening members of Parliament with requests just to verify why they were refused.

In the United States there is no appeal mechanism; you simply have to reapply, just as here in Canada. The only difference between the United States and Canada is that the United States actually presumes you to be an immigrant, while Canada allows you to have the dual intent.

New Zealand, for example, has the opportunity for a sponsor to come forth and sponsor a temporary resident visa. There are limited appeals, it appears, in New Zealand.

Australia has an appeal mechanism, which appears to be highly cumbersome and quite expensive. From my calculations, it costs about $1,600 to lodge an appeal in Australia, and the processing times can run anywhere from 90 days to 18 months to resolve the issue. That is not going to address the immediate issues for people looking to come to Canada temporarily.

Generally, I find the TRV process in Canada to be working.

The other area of concern is business immigration and TRVs that are refused on the business side. I don't have time to speak to that subject, but some of the same issues that we see for families also present in business cases. This is also hurting Canadian economic development.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you for your presentation, Ms. Kane.

Mr. Gooch.

[Daniel-Robert Gooch, President, Canadian Airports Council]

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee,

thank you for this opportunity to provide some comments on the policies and procedures around the provision of Temporary Resident Visas, or tourist visas.

I am Daniel-Robert Gooch, president of the Canadian Airports Council.

The CAC represents 46 members who operate airports throughout the country, including most of the major airports that you will be familiar with. They actually handle about 95% of our passenger traffic.

At Canada's airports we have come to realize over the past few years that visas have a tremendous, but perhaps underappreciated, impact not just on aviation but also on Canada's trade and tourism dependent economy. They impact Canada's competitiveness as a tourism destination, but also the attractiveness of our international airport hubs for connecting traffic, which I'll speak to a little bit later, the viability of potential new international routes, and the capacity, traffic volume, and competition on existing routes, both international and domestic.

Visas are increasingly relevant to our aviation sector because, as David Goldstein outlined last week, some of our biggest opportunities for both tourism and trade are with countries whose residents require a visa to visit Canada.

l want to briefly be clear on a couple of points. At the Canadian Airports Council we appreciate that visas do play an important role in Canadian security and controlling who comes to Canada. There are countries with tremendous tourism potential for Canada from which we currently require visas, countries like Brazil, China, Mexico, Turkey, and India. Of course, we would love to see visa-free travel from these countries, but we recognize that visa requirements are in place for valid reasons.

There is a balance involved. We believe the right balance is in place, but that through greater use of technology and taking advantage of international best practices we can be a little bit more precise in facilitating trade and tourism without sacrificing security, and in a fiscally conservative manner.

It also is important for us to note that we do see progress being made today. One hundred and thirty visa application centres are being opened, bringing visa services closer to applicants and helping to reduce application errors in important markets like China. We now have 10-year multiple entry visas, and visa requirements were just lifted for the Czech Republic.

The electronic travel authorization, ETA, requirement, a little bit different from temporary resident visas but just as relevant to us, we understand will be coming into effect in 2015. It will require new steps for visitors from countries that currently require no visa today. This is a concern of course. That ETAs be low cost and low hassle is imperative to soften their impact on travel demand, but they also represent an opportunity if we can use ETAs as an intermediate screening tool that can allow for formal visa requirements to be lifted from some lower-risk markets.

There are still ample opportunities for improvement when it comes to visas. The application process today is cumbersome, as my learned colleagues have outlined. It asks for a lot of information; is paper based in many cases; requires a traveller in many cases to surrender their passport, and I'll speak to this; and may entail long-distance travel for interviews, if they have to take place in person. Delays are an issue, particularly for business travellers. Business travel often needs to be arranged within days, not weeks or months. That's the speed in which business operates. We like to say that a visa delayed is essentially a visa denied, particularly when it comes to business travel. Surrendering of passports can be a non-starter, especially for frequent travellers.

As a result, we hear stories from foreign airlines, governments, and travellers themselves about how visas are impacting business and leisure travel, and our reputation abroad. l personally encountered this recently when l tried to help a friend of mine, who is a public elementary school teacher, come to Canada to visit our country for a week from Turkey. While he was able to very quickly get visas to visit the U.S. and the European Union, and he spent two weeks in the United States this summer, the process took months for Canada and his passport was held by Canadian officials while he waited. My colleague, Ms. Kane, spoke rather eloquently to a lot of the experiences we had in trying to get this to happen. Ultimately it didn't go through. I'm not going to expand on what she and Mr. Kurland had to say, but I do want to speak a little bit about the surrendering of the passport.

We have been advised by officials at the Department of Citizenship and Immigration that if the visa application is originated online, a passport is only required for issuance of the visa upon approval, whereas apparently at visa application centres they are surrendered immediately, which can mean that a person is without a passport for a month or two months. Apparently the official has some discretion, but this is not information that is going to be known to an applicant in a foreign country. It wasn't really known by me.

Surrendering a passport for weeks, as I mentioned, is a non-starter for frequent travellers. It's all rather inconsistent and confusing, and it can leave a really negative impression of Canada with the individuals we want to come here, have a great time, and hopefully come back. Travellers will choose other markets, and instead of Canada those other markets will get the economic benefits and jobs that result from the increased tourism and trade opportunities.

Anecdotes, of course, are not indicative of the bigger picture, but surely there are ways we could be doing this better.

You heard from the Tourism Industry Association of Canada last week. They recently issued a report that talks about the impact of visa restrictions on travel. They estimate that it negatively impacts inbound visits by up to 30% in markets for which a visa is required. That means there would be about 250,000 fewer visitors a year, from Brazil, China, India, and Mexico alone. Considering that the average long-haul visitor spends nearly $1,600, this would mean an additional $375 million in foreign spending in Canada from just these four countries, if we can improve things on the visa front.

We believe there are ways to improve visa processing. Improvements should include increased reliance on electronic visa application processing and issuance. Australia is often held up as a country that we could work to emulate. We'd like to see procedures that allow applicants to keep their documents regardless of the application method, and improved foreign language services. It all goes to better communication, as Ms. Kane spoke to as well.

We also should consider taking a different approach to potential visitors who have been screened by other countries.Visitors should be able to transfer Canadian visas to a new passport, for example. While we appreciate that Canada evaluates potential visitors to our country based on different risk factors from other countries—and we're not going to get into whether those risk factors are right or not; that's not our area of expertise—a visa or permanent residency, or long-term residency—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have one minute, sir.

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

—to the United States or the European Union demonstrates a certain amount of pre-screening. We think that should be a consideration for a less complicated entry into Canada.

As an example, does it make sense to treat a Chinese student studying at Harvard, who would like to visit Montreal for a weekend, with the same process we would apply to a potential visitor who has never travelled outside of his country? I think not.

I also want to talk about the transit without visa program. It's a program that allows travellers from certain Asian countries and cities, who are visiting the United States on certain airlines, to transit through Canada without a visa. The program has been successful, and there have been very few abuses or violations of the program, but there's a lot of room for its improvement.

Travellers connecting through Canada may not seem like they're a direct benefit to Canada and our economy, but they make viable international routes that may not otherwise be viable. On existing routes, they grow demand, which can grow capacity and competition. New routes bring more capacity and competition, which brings more travellers—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm sorry sir, we have to move on.

It's the time limit of the votes. You can blame our whips for doing this.

Mr. Menegakis has up to four minutes.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing before us today.

Let me also apologize. We have no choice when there are votes; our time in the committee gets somewhat shortened.

Mr. Gooch, I wonder if I could start with you, sir.

It is evident that your organization has similar interests to the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, which appeared before us last week. In their testimony, they explained that the visa application centres have greatly improved the visa system, especially in markets like the one you mentioned frequently in your presentation, Brazil.

Would you agree with that, sir?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

We would.

It's still playing itself out, but certainly these application centres are bringing the visa application process closer to our potential tourists, potential travellers. I also understand that they're serving as a bit of a check and balance against the applications themselves. Individuals sometimes don't fill out the applications properly, or information is missing. Language can be a complicating factor. We understand that the visa application centres are doing a lot to help fix an application before it goes in and is denied for reasons that could be easily fixed.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

There's a 25% increase in international travel demand.

Can you share with us what you think Canada could do to stay competitive, specifically in regard to the visa process?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

I think there should be increased reliance on electronic measures, as David spoke to last week. I haven't experienced the Australian system, but I understand that it's much more user friendly. If the visa application centres are proving to be as useful as we believe they are, we should continue that.

We should also be looking at segmenting travellers in different ways. I spoke to someone who's been allowed into the United States for four years to study. They probably represent a lower risk if they're coming to Canada for a weekend. We need to look at people in different ways.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

TIAC also mentioned things like ETA, the electronic travel authorization, and getting things into the airport infrastructure electronically. Things like the transit without visa are very beneficial.

Can you expand on some airport infrastructure systems that will greatly improve our Canadian travel system?

[Daniel-Robert Gooch]

Transit without visa is a great program. It's very limited in places today. There are other countries in Europe where people going from points east to points west do not require a visa to travel through an airport as they might if they were planning to stay. We currently do. We have a short list of places where you can transit through Canada without a visa. They have a short list of countries where you can't. It's been a good program. There have been very few abuses of the program or problems with it.

We're working actively with the government to expand it, but there's a lot of room for expansion. The program is currently limited to certain places in Asia for travellers going to the United States. Expanding in China could open up new routes, because it's restricted to certain cities. Ultimately, the goal is to have it international so we can take advantage of traffic between places like Brazil and Japan. If you're going from Asia to Latin America, or vice versa, you pretty much have to go through North America, so it's us or the Americans. If we can do things right, we can capture that market, and that would be a huge benefit for airports and air carriage.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Madame Blanchette-Lamothe.