Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, we think this will provide an excellent opportunity for employers to be able to access high-skilled workers who meet their labour market requirements. The intention of the program is to actually have an expedited process. From the time we receive a completed applicatio

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, perhaps I can just begin my remarks by indicating that the Immigration and Refugee Board is responsible for undertaking its own measures. This was not an undertaking of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration in terms of actually looking at measures to achieve ce

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In terms of the new 10-year passport, I can advise that since it came into effect, which was July 2013, some 2.4 million 10-year passports have been issued. In total in 2013-14 five million passports were issued.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, the number of e-passports, since they became available in July, is 2.4 million.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The bulk of the funding in grants and contributions is for settlement programming. Some $900 million in total is for settlement services that we provide through the settlement organizations across Canada. Those provide programming to facilitate the integration of newcomers to Can

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In total it's about $900 million nationally. Of that amount, $300 million is allocated to Quebec, and the balance is to other provinces. The funding amounts, or the allocations, are really determined on the basis of the number of newcomers, the number of people settling. There is

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The electronic travel authorization is not a new phenomenon. Certainly the United States has already been operating with their electronic travel authorization, as has the Government of Australia, and I think a number of other jurisdictions. It will require people who are coming

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, if I may on behalf of the minister, I would just indicate that in fact we are investing internally. It's a question of staffing positions. A lot of this processing requires people, and we have launched very significant staffing processes. In fact, we're already bringin

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I will just complete that, Mr. Chair. It takes time to staff positions. A lot of the workload requires resources in terms of being able to process at the same time that we are trying to re-engineer our processes to make sure they are efficient as possible. As the minister menti

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Maybe I'll just jump in here as well. They do have access to super visas that would actually allow them to come into Canada. We are prepared and ready to facilitate super visas for family members to come to Canada. We're also prepared for extensions to the visas of people who are

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Perhaps I can begin by saying that our department is processing more international students than ever before. From the period of 2006 to 2012, the number of applications increased from 155,000 to almost 228,000. In 2012, over 145,000 study permit applications were processed overs

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The commitment that the government made to parents and grandparents was to admit 50,000 over a two-year period. At this point in time, our indications on where we are to date are that we are on track to meeting 50,000 over that two-year period. As I say, you have to look at it

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I responded earlier, the commitment is to 50,000 over two years, and we are confident that certainly the number of admissions in 2013 will lead to a 50,000 commitment over that two-year period.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We'll have to get back to you, Mr. Chair, with the 2002 numbers. We don't have that information with us, but we'd be happy to provide that feedback to the committee after we leave the meeting.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not aware of that.