Public Accounts committee  We think it's optimum that people be processed within less than a year. Given everything that's involved, we think it's what we should be aiming for. If you can excuse our somewhat arcane language, we would prefer to have no backlog and only a working inventory of cases. It's wha

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much, Chair. It was evident, and I think the Auditor General agrees with this, that we needed some mechanism to limit the intake of applications. Canada is a very popular destination for immigrants. Members may have seen the Gallup poll in the fall that indicated

Public Accounts committee  Yes. So what that leads us to is then refining a second set of instructions and at the same time tackling the backlog. For the inventory we have of new applications, we are processing those, about 80% of them in seven months. Our target had been six to 12 months, so we think we b

Public Accounts committee  Yes. Rough numbers: we had about 641,000 applications in the pre-instruction backlog. We're down to 400,000 now. That's quite a bit more than we had thought. Then in terms of the new intake, we're at about, as of the end of December last year, 129,000 new applications.

Public Accounts committee  Actually, we would like to make our way through the backlog as quickly as possible. We are sensitive to the time people are spending waiting. We are concerned about that. At various times we have asked if people wanted to maintain their application or simply to receive a refund.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, I can start off, Chair. We are implementing a new case management system this spring. It's a system that's long been in gestation, so we're very pleased that it is finally moving forward. It's called the global case management system. We have great expectations that it's

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, I can start to answer that. We've started in CIC a process of releasing data quarterly to make it public. The first quarter for this year will be going out I believe next week. We're putting all of that information onto our website every three months. That's someth

Public Accounts committee  I'm told that yes is the short answer to that.

Public Accounts committee  In a general way, yes. We are concerned about the length of the processing times. There is, of course, the option of having temporary foreign workers fill a very immediate need, and there are also the provincial nominee programs the Auditor General noted....

Public Accounts committee  Certainly. As the member would know, Mr. Chair, we did implement the first set of ministerial instructions with a view to having a more focused and targeted approach to the selection of foreign workers. We're currently working on developing a second set of ministerial instruction

Public Accounts committee  Well, one always hesitates to judge satisfying the Auditor General. She will decide that herself.

Public Accounts committee  We are very much taken with the importance of making sure that we effectively align the intake with job market needs. As you say—we would agree—that needs to be done in a timely way. So that is the system we're trying to get to. We have a significant backlog to deal with in the m

Public Accounts committee  Good morning, Mr. Chairman and thank you, Madam and gentlemen. My name is Neil Yeates, and I am Deputy Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. I am joined by Les Linklater, Assistant Deputy Minister of Strategic Policy and Programs, and Claudette Deschênes, Assistant Depu