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.