Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's an excellent question. In fact, PNP, the provincial nominee programs, have been a success across the country. They've received a significant number of applications, there have been a lot of approvals, and provincial governments are on board with them because of the direct

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The first thing I would say is that we have to realize that with the target level we've established, immigration is essentially a zero-sum game. If we process more in one category, then we have to process less in another. I think our balance in immigration is probably correct ove

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sure.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's a huge issue, obviously, in generating the backlogs we face today. Bill C-50 was again very innovative. The minister took a bold step to give himself some control over the ability to accept applications. But that, moving forward, is only addressing essentially economic immig

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think you raised an absolutely critical issue, that is, the burden the government and the bureaucrats in the department face is one that simply cannot be met with existing resources and with the existing targets.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The U.S. has an interesting approach, as I think we all know. Essentially they stockpile or warehouse all of their applications and establish a priority processing list based on a strict quota broken down country by country for most of their immigration categories. The exception

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, certainly. For most of the other U.S. immigration programs there's a strict priority processing: get a ticket, get a number, and get in line, by country, and eventually your number will come up. It creates huge differentials in processing. For example, with the Philippines

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm sorry if I'm running a little long.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you. We have opportunities for new ideas. Recent experience with the federal cap of 700 applications in the investor category would seem to indicate that reducing supply by itself is not a useful tool for curtailing demand. As we know, all 700 applications were filled in o

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Tilson. Good morning. Thank you for the invitation to the Canadian Migration Institute to address immigration application backlogs in light of the action plan for faster immigration. The Canadian Migration Institute was incorporated in 2007 to provide a