Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 5th, 2007

[Janet Siddall]

In operational procedures, if you're referring to the particular case that I believe you're referring to, if there are matters before the court, there are times when we cannot respond to specific questions put to us by a client. In those cases, we're unable to respond.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Do you think that maybe the deputy minister should put pen on paper and say, “Mr. Karygiannis, thank you for your e-mail, but I could not respond to this case because it's in front of the courts”? We're not talking about a particular individual, we're talking about a deputy minister. An e-mail was sent to the deputy minister, copying him and actually asking him about the frustration that people out there are facing.

[Janet Siddall]

In terms of what we have done, obviously our deputy minister cannot be apprised of all the details of the cases. When we get specific inquiries put to the deputy minister, we bring them into my sector and into the unit that Mr. Goodman manages, so that we can provide a substantive response to members of Parliament.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Again, an acknowledgement from the deputy minister should have sufficed. I got it, and when I looked into the case, I see that he has responded to other e-mails. However, I don't think not responding to a member of Parliament for over three weeks is something that is proper or in accordance with your guidelines as you laid them out in your operational timelines.

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

You have thirty seconds.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

In the last go-round when the minister was here and she put the act forward, was this something she conceived, or was it something conceived by you, under her specific instructions? Was the proposal that she had something proposed by the minister or by the department?

[Janet Siddall]

The minister provided a description of the amendments that she would like to introduce as a bill in Parliament in the fall, and that information in her speech has been posted on the CIC website. The bill will undergo the regular parliamentary process. In the meantime, our role here is to apply the current act as it is written.

As a public servant, I'm afraid it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the substance of the minister's proposals.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you.

Madame Faille.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I would like to thank you for coming to the Committee.

The advertising that has been done on this question, relating to citizenship, has been fairly limited. Can you explain the campaign? Are other initiatives going to be undertaken? Frankly, I do not think that everyone has seen the advertising. There was an article by Mr. De Grandpré in La Presse that talked about this. Did you only publish the information once? What method is used for disseminating the information, specifically for the people affected by the laws before the 1977 Act?

I was looking at the information in the kit. For people born before 1977, it is fairly limited. The problem cases that are coming to our attention date from a long time ago. They are older people, people born in 1929 or 1946 or 1952. I would like to know what the objective of the campaign was. If you have not received a lot of calls, could it be because the information seems to relate to people born after 1977?

So could you explain the initiatives and the campaign in detail?

[Clark Goodman]

The media campaign was run in national dailies and weeklies, with an emphasis on the border areas. The public notice will promote the website and the dedicated phone number to answer questions about citizenship issues.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Was that only done once, or were there several initiatives associated with it?

[Clark Goodman]

I don't know how many times they were published.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Can you provide the Committee with the details of the communications campaign: what media the information was published in, the type of advertising used, and the cost of the campaign?

[Clark Goodman]

Certainly.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Some cases of people who learn that they have lost their citizenship are quite complex. For example, a person who applies for proof of citizenship gets the answer that his or her father should not have been given citizenship and there was an error. So there is a domino effect. These people are older and are making their applications now. One of those people is a man who will be 65 years old in July. These people are worried because they want to know whether they will get their benefits.

So I would like to know what concrete measures are being taken by the Department to review these cases. I know of the case of a man born in 1939 who has lived in the United States since 1974 and who is coming back to live in Canada with his entire family. He has always received his CN pension, his government of Quebec pension and his federal government pension. And then today he was told that there was an error and he should not have been a Canadian citizen. What happens in this case? At present, his health care application is being delayed because he is not able to provide proof of citizenship. What are people who find themselves in that kind of situation being told? What is the response time, how long do they have to wait for this situation to be resolved?

[Clark Goodman]

In cases like this where benefits could be in jeopardy, I encourage the person to contact our office. We have also sent letters to the provinces and territories explaining this unique situation and asking them to contact us if they have any questions about someone's benefits.

On the individual case you mentioned, without more facts I can't comment on it.

[Janet Siddall]

We would really appreciate it if members of Parliament who hear of individuals who have concerns about their citizenship status would please bring them forward to us at our call centre. We have a special line to our case processing centre for members of Parliament. We would very much like to contact these people and help them resolve their issues. We have agreements. We have had exchanges with the provinces asking them not to suspend anyone's benefits based on citizenship without first contacting us so we can work it through with them.

I should note that many benefits provided by the provinces are based on residency rather than citizenship, so sometimes there is that confusion. We are often able to help resolve those issues with the provincial authorities or our federal government departments that provide benefits like old age benefits.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

The reason why I am asking the question is that quite recently, this week, a complaint about a case from my office was made publicly. The political staffer in the Minister's office tried to contact the person to solve the problem. We also undertook to contact Sydney directly to get information. What happened was that the information we got from the two sources was not the same. You will understand that because the person in question was 81 years old it is quite unacceptable for the person to be getting conflicting information.

As well, we are talking about an arbitrary process and we are told that the Minister will make a decision. What kinds of precedents will be created? In fact, we expect that it will be done transparently, but at present we are seeing that this is not possible.

I simply wanted to draw a few situations to your attention. We do want to cooperate, but the information is contradictory.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Thank you.

Yes, I wonder if you could table with the committee the agreements you have with the provinces and the department.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Chair, if I might add, and all related documents.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Andrew Telegdi]

Okay. The communications you have, we'd like to have that for the committee.

We'll go on to Mr. Siksay.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank the folks from the department for being here yet again. I appreciate you making the trip and coming in today. Again, I have to apologize. I have to go over to speak on Bill C-57 in the House at some point, so I'll have to leave the committee. It seems to me I'm always leaving when you folks are here, and it's certainly not something I choose to do. I'd rather be here.

I do have one question. Ms. Siddall, in your opening remarks you mentioned that you had seen an increase in the number of calls since the advertising campaign had been undertaken. Do you have any statistics yet on that, or any sense of what change that has made?

[Janet Siddall]

I'm going to turn that over to Clark, who is my person who tracks these things for me.

[Clark Goodman]

I'm just looking for the right number to give you.

The total number of inquiries about potential loss of citizenship received at the CIC call centre between January 26 and May 31, 2007, was 2,565, which is approximately 0.22%, or less than one-quarter of 1%, of calls that were received by the call centre. Of these 2,565 calls, 2,460 people had their citizenship confirmed. Of the remaining 105, 26 were invited to submit an application for a discretionary grant; 13 were identified as permanent residents; 10 were counselled to submit a permanent residence application; and the rest are under study.

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

Do you have any sense of the increase since the advertising campaign?