Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 5th, 2007

[Janet Siddall]

If I may, we try to track the calls coming in to the call centre, and it would appear that the number of inquiries specifically related to loss of citizenship moved from something like 20 or 30 a day to over 100 a day. It's in the very early stages, but there's some indication that more people have become aware of the situation because of the publicity campaign.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

I wanted to ask a question about the Taylor case. I know the department has decided to appeal the decision of the Federal Court, the Martineau decision. I wonder if you could remind us of the reasons why the government has decided to proceed with that appeal.

[Janet Siddall]

The main reason the government has decided to proceed with that appeal is that we believe there were errors in law related to Judge Martineau's decision. So it goes beyond the specifics of Mr. Joe Taylor, and in fact goes beyond the issue of just citizenship legislation. Of those areas, there is a retroactive application of the charter, and there also is the issue of a determination of Canadian citizenship as a status before the first Canadian Citizenship Act.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Those are the key reasons for proceeding with the appeal. Do you have any sense of the timing of the appeal? Do you know if there's been a date set yet, or anything like that, about when it's likely to be heard?

[Janet Siddall]

No, I'm sorry, I don't have any information on that.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Do you know if the government or the department has considered dropping the appeal, given the issues that have arisen around the lost Canadians and the issues directly affecting people like Mr. Taylor, who aren't addressed by the recommendations the minister put forward?

[Janet Siddall]

As the issue is before the court, I really can't comment on that. I'm sorry.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

I appreciate that the folks on the front line have a tough job; they have to abide by the legislation that's in place, work with the regulations that have been promulgated. I suspect that they're often the ones who bump into the problems first, in terms of people applying or people calling in. Is there a system in place that tracks the kinds of problems or categorizes the kinds of problems, and then works them through the system in terms of how they might be addressed by regulations or if there's been a consistent answer, sort of a quality assurance kind of process within the department? If so, can you talk about how something like that might work its way up to a policy recommendation, or even a recommendation for a legislative change? Is there anything that direct that would work right from the front line up to the minister's desk?

[Clark Goodman]

I'll respond to that, Mr. Chair.

There's no reporting mechanism in place to track an individual case if it falls in the category A, B, or C. We have a quality assurance program in place to review our files to make sure we are doing a good job, but in terms of reporting on a type of case and following up, no. I will say that our quality assurance program informs us when we see something that needs fixing: if we were having errors on an application form, for example, how we could use quality assurance to improve the file, and things like that.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Has that changed now with the concern around lost Canadians? You just gave us the statistics around the call centre, so it seems as though somebody is watching now specifically for those kinds of cases. Is that a change in the way the department deals with those kinds of issues?

[Janet Siddall]

I can respond to that, Mr. Chair.

Since we set up the dedicated lines, we have asked the call agents at the call centre to track the types of inquiries. This cannot be done by an electronic system; it is done as a manual count, so that we get an idea of the kinds of calls, concerns, and types of circumstances people are calling about.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

That's just a paper they would hand in at the end of the day, or something like that—that kind of system? Is there a reason why it can't be handled by the computer system you work with?

[Janet Siddall]

My understanding, and I would have to get confirmation on this from people with more technical expertise than I have, is that we are updating our automatic voice response system at the call centre; it is definitely not state of the art. The new system would be more integrated into tracking the cases through the call centre as they move throughout the rest of our system. I don't know that we'll have that capability, but I would certainly hope we could try to build in the capability whereby we could electronically track those kinds of questions.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Are the case managers, the people who actually work on cases, ever involved in a discussion of difficulties with the regulations or difficulties with the legislation? Would they ever be part of that kind of conversation, from their experience as front line workers in the department?

[Janet Siddall]

At the level of the case workers, I would have to say no.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Where would that kind of thing begin?

[Janet Siddall]

Those discussions would begin in the policy sector of the department, at a more senior level.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Might they put something out for discussion more broadly than that, or does that—

[Janet Siddall]

We have a policy committee in the department to which new issues, policy initiatives, or programs are brought for discussion as they are being formulated.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Is that policy committee in the department, and based here in Ottawa?

[Janet Siddall]

Correct.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

And it's made up of managers from various aspects of? Who participates in it?

[Janet Siddall]

In our policy committee? It's people who work in the policy sector, as well as those of us who are working in the operations sector. it tends to be at a director or a director general level.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Okay.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you very much.

We'll move over to Mr. Devolin.