Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely. Right now, the number of refusals coming out and the types of refusals just do not make sense. You are playing with people's lives in deciding their immigration applications, and we can't do that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, when a refusal rate.... Sorry, I'm hearing a big echo.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay. When a refusal rate goes up.... I've seen statistics on refusal rates going from 30% or 40% up to 60%, which is untenable.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  When refusal rates go up like that, it's untenable. We certainly need to take a further look at the system before we implement it throughout immigration.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely. We're supposed to follow a first-come, first-served situation. It becomes really unfair when people are waiting for three years for an application to be decided, and then new people come in and their applications are decided in a few months.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Improvements in processing times? Not currently. Currently, everything is backlogged. I think the improvement in being online is an improvement from before.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One is the standards for the criteria with regard to how officers are evaluating overseas applications for a temporary resident. There is too much discretion. There are not enough standard operating guidelines for the workers. The second one—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think it would be good, if they had any power. They would certainly have to have a large capacity to be an ombudsman. Right now, I think most MPs are sort of acting in that role. People are going to MPs to ask them to speak on it. I certainly think as long as there's enough—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely. We have the mechanism of the temporary resident permits right now to allow people to right their status. The problem is that right now, to apply for temporary resident permits, it's two to three years or more—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely. We have a ready and available labour force in Canada. Many people who are out of status are out of status because of issues in the system. It took too long—for example, over six months—for a work permit to be evaluated in Canada. When the Conservative governmen

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, it would. Immigration levels need to be raised in accordance with labour shortages. We are in competition right now with the rest of the world for labour. It's not just for high-skilled labour, but what the government says is low-skilled. It's across the board. If we don't i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely. Right now, we have some very stringent timelines. For example, you have only 90 days to restore your status. Some people didn't get their decisions back, or they may have submitted something and it was returned after 90 days, so it made it impossible for them to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Was that question directed to me?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As a country, we have essentially had policies to encourage international students to come to study in our country and for them to get permanent residence. They are the ideal immigrants. As international students, they are young, have a high level of education and are integrated

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I agree. This is where you shouldn't have officers process at visa posts. You should have teams in Canada, who are much more equipped to deal with different situations from around the world.