This is really important. There is the potential for governments to outsource the work of the public service where they don't need to. That's not what this is, in my view. The contracts that have been issued in this specific instance were designed to help us implement a new digital approach to processing applications to expand the capacity of the department, but also to help the department grow its capacity so it could implement the system in the long term on the back end of its design.
We're starting to see new features already roll out, like the digital application process for citizenship and now permanent residency. Case trackers are coming where people can get an update on the status of their case for certain immigration streams on their phones rather than having to call IRCC. We've digitized so many records during the pandemic as a result of the centre we've opened in Cape Breton to help bring paper-based applications into the system. This will eventually allow us, in an office that is having a slow day, to pick up the slack and process files that are somewhere else in the global network.
This is common-sense stuff.