Official Languages committee  In general, Chair, I provide suggestions to the clerk in terms of what I think need to be objectives every year, based in part on what the minister is asked to do. And that feeds into a process with the clerk. The clerk provides any additional feedback or input that he or she thi

Official Languages committee  No.

Official Languages committee  I gave that as an example, Chair. It's one of the tools that's used. Certainly this year we now have our report card from the commissioner's office, so that's another piece of information that could be fed into that process.

Official Languages committee  I couldn't say. That's not for me to decide. I don't know. It may be one factor among many. I think the challenge for deputy ministers is that there are many things we try to do at the same time. There are many balls in the air, and we do the best job we can. But it's a challeng

Official Languages committee  We will certainly do our best. We'll be tabling a response, I believe, in March, when it's due. But yes, we take it very seriously, certainly, and we'll do as good a job as we can.

Official Languages committee  It's a challenge. As members probably know, we're working quite hard with minority community organizations and provinces and territories, in terms of both specific recruitment activities and settlement and integration services, because part of the challenge is keeping people in c

Official Languages committee  Sure. I'll ask Les to speak to that, because Les is chairing that process.

Official Languages committee  I can start off, Chair. Yes, we have taken an initial look at it. We've looked at the recommendations. Quite a number of them apply to CIC. We'll be looking at those quite carefully as we build our own plans going into next year and the following years. We think there are a num

Official Languages committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting me and my colleagues to speak with you today. Mr. Chair, CIC strives to reach beyond its Official Languages Act obligations to ensure that both official languages groups feel respected across Canada. This applies to official languages groups wi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure. I can add that we are about 50% complete in our rollout to the missions around the world. We are on track to complete it by March 31, so we're pleased with the progress that's being made. We have been using GCMS for a while in our citizenship program applications. It's gi

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can just add very briefly, Chair, that the IRB has begun a consultation process on a new set of rules. New job descriptions are being written for the new decision-makers at the refugee protection division. We in CIC are hiring additional staff to work our way through the backlo

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We are now for some streams. We're using it for students and temporary foreign workers here in Canada. Those applications are available online now. We're starting to process those applications now using scanned documents and the online application form. That is where we want to g

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have 35 lines of business, so that remains to be seen, but we will take on the ones that are going to have the biggest impact in terms of processing time.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Biometrics, which is essentially the collection of fingerprint data and digital photographs, often using facial recognition software, is a very powerful identifier of identity, and it's very difficult to fool a biometric system. You may have seen some of the cases in the media

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly. Just very recently—in fact I believe the changes come into force this week, on Wednesday, December 1—we have doubled the investment amounts and net asset worth amounts for the immigrant investor program. The investment amount is increasing from $400,000 to $800,000 a