Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is in cases in which they have applied for family reunification. Under this class, they will consult with CIC to determine whether we can reach a conclusion on the case before removing them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the biggest factor in relation to your question on why it takes that amount of time is purely the volume of business we do as a department. Each year we get about 17,000 application in the spousal reunification class alone. It's been roughly 17,000 over the last two to three years, or in that ballpark--17,000 to 18,000.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Potentially, depending on the specific circumstances of the case. It depends.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For most cases, for most of the applications received, it takes five to six months to complete the process.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the reason we do it in that order, as we do in the processing of any application, is that there are a lot of requests for screening, just in the nature of the business that we do, so there's a demand on the system. Our approach to processing applications is to determine whether we have a valid application before us before we go to the time and effort of doing the subsequent in-depth security and medical screening, because to do that for an invalid application would be using resources that could be better devoted to other matters.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  On the same terms and conditions.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Correct.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. That would be a fair conclusion.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  My understanding is that most cases are completed within five to six months. Spousal inland applications are completed in that timeframe. There will always be exceptions to that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can come back and confirm those statistics for you. I'd be happy to send statistics back to this committee. But my understanding is that it takes five to six months to complete the processing of most applications.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I will be most happy to follow up with them following the meeting.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Having it a matter of policy instead of using the--

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is an issue for which we'll want to go back to study the policy implications of making that kind of change.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are policy implications and the process implications of doing this. I can't sit here today and tell you that it would be a no-brainer to do this. My experience as a policy analyst tells me that you ought to do your due diligence before you make final decisions. What I can indicate to you today is that it is a suggestion we will take back and give consideration to.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think at the point at which the decision was taken to use the flexibilities within the regulations to make this change through joint consultations, it was determined that 60 days seemed to be a reasonable amount of time, so as not to leave it completely open-ended but to provide sufficient time to make a decision in most cases.