Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 29th, 2007

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

I would suggest my officials have been very supportive of the changes to the Citizenship Act we've been proposing. And in terms of the position on the undocumented workers and how this would be recognizing those who are already here, it would most definitely send a very strong signal around the world that if you want to get into Canada, do it illegally. As a member of a government that has been very aggressive in our crackdown on law and order, I think that kind of move would be viewed as contradictory to our overall value system.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Madam Faille, please, and then Madam Chow.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have some questions about the $8.4 million that have been transferred to Foreign Affairs. It says that this money is supposed to be to support department staff working in overseas offices.

Could you give some more details about the kind of work that will be done overseas. Is this in order to reduce the backlog in applications? Perhaps you could tell the committee if the backlog, applications that have not been dealt with, has increased since the last time you appeared.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

The vast majority of our applicants make their applications overseas at one of our missions, at one of our visa application centres right around the world. We have some 90-odd offices around the world. And we operate those as a tenant of the Department of Foreign Affairs. So we're on their premises. The money we are providing, that we are transferring to them, is for our operations overseas, and 85% of our applications, both temporary and permanent, come from overseas. We actually do processing there. This money is to pay DFAIT to pay our people and to pay our rent and our operations there.

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

Could you provide us with the detailed list, office by office, the breakdown of the $8.4 million, that is?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

We could get that from Foreign Affairs.

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

Does that also include more resources in offices like Nairobi, for example?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

That is something quite different.

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

Does that include possible additional resources, to answer calls to these offices, among other things?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

These are capital funds.

I am sorry, it is both.

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

Has processing time in these offices improved since the last time you appeared before this committee?

[Claudette Deschênes, Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

We have done some things, like moving officers from one place to another or reclassifying some positions so that they can make decisions. For example, we got another position in Manila and placed two Canadian officers in Delhi. I cannot tell you in detail if processing time has improved. But I can tell you that, with more temporary workers, we have been able to keep the backlog from increasing.

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

Each time we examine the supplementary estimates, I always ask for a table of waiting times for processing, the number of Canadian staff overseas, and the costs of each mission. That kind of information would help us to understand in detail what is going on in the missions.

There is a report that provides the details of processing delays in each of the missions. We are told that waiting times are getting longer, and that in some offices, like Nairobi, service is nowhere near adequate. We have an office in Haiti too; when we call, they just hang up on us. We are told that each time we call to ask for information on behalf of Canadians, it holds up their work by three months.

We can sense the frustration that these overseas employees have with their workload. I want to know how the department is dealing with it. If you have some kind of answer for us, please go ahead. Afterwards, I may well have other questions.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

The time it takes to process people does vary from location to location. In some locations there may be a sudden increase in the number of people who are applying to come to Canada. Under IRPA, we are obliged to process anyone who presents themselves, so we have no control over the incoming volume whatsoever.

That said, I think it's important to place the backlog in context. Just a few years ago, as many of the committee members will remember, there were 50,000 people who were in the line, who had made application to come to Canada, and we were accepting around 200,000 people a year in the permanent class.

When we took over as a government less than two years ago, that number had ballooned to 800,000. While we're now accepting records of around 250,000 per year, that's still a three-and-a-half-year backlog, and resources have been capped during that time. So the challenge is getting at the backlog and getting to these people who have made application.

We have taken a number of steps to expedite the process to streamline operations. One of the key things is the emphasis on temporary foreign workers. That number has grown very significantly over the last few years as we tried to meet the labour market needs. We still have the same finite amount of resources to apply, so we're having to work smarter.

The result of that is that, in total, of all permanent residents, in terms of the number of months to process, in 80% of the cases it has actually declined. In 2005, it was 52 months. We now have it down to 45 months. So that's considerable progress with the same limited resources. I'm very pleased that we've been able to do that.

That's not to say we're satisfied, because we're not. We look forward to making this even better.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Madame Faille. We'll have to catch you on the next round.

Ms. Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Madam Minister, this is along the same line, about the $8.3 million transfer to DFAIT.

In 2002, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, according to public accounts in Canada, collected about $353.6 million in user fees from immigrants, including, I see here, $89 million from temporary resident visas, $45 million from ordinary Canadians trying to sponsor and bring their parents and spouses into Canada under the family class, about $77.8 million in landing fees, and $99 million from skilled workers. So, in total, it's a lot of money: $353.6 million.

Why won't you put all these funds into the supplementary estimates under the immigration program—for example, to clear the 800,000 potential immigrants who are now backlogged and to hire more staff to support the missions overseas through DFAIT?

We remember that in the 1990s those departments were cut by something like 45% by the previous government, so there are dramatically fewer visa offices, whether offices or staff. It's a desperate situation. Why wouldn't you take that money and transfer it so there are lower wait times?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

That would be a nice solution if we could do it.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Why can't you?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

The finances of the Government of Canada in that regard don't operate like private business, nor do departments. Under parliamentary rules, all the fees we take in for processing and for applications go into the general revenue fund. Then we have to make our submissions, such as through this process of supplementary estimates and the budgets, to get what we feel we need to operate. We're competing with all the other departments for those same funds that are in general revenue. We don't get to raise money on our own and apply it to our own programs.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I thought in the passport division that all the money we get from passports we then spend on getting people their passports faster.

I learned of an act that was passed on March 31, 2004, called the User Fees Act, that basically said, in the spirit of accountability and transparency, there would be performance standards published and the act would be followed. So you would either lower the fees or drop the fees or take the fees to make sure the services are delivered as quickly, as efficiently, and as streamlined as possible.

I would think that's common sense. So why wouldn't the department do that kind of work or voluntarily follow that User Fees Act?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Coming from business, that has been a frustration of mine personally, because that's my approach--set up a new product line and make it self-financing.

The deputy can explain the technical reasons behind this, but it is government policy that these things go into general revenue.

[Richard Fadden, Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

You're quite right that Passport Canada is allowed to retain fees. Parliament set it up as a special operating agency. For any department or agency to have that happen requires legislation, which by and large, I should say, the central agencies do not favour because it would reduce the amount available for distribution as general revenue. But you're right, Passport Canada has a special rule.

In respect of the User Fees Act, it only comes into play in a department like CIC if the department moves to increase fees. We are now before the courts on a number of cases relating to whether or not we're charging too much for our fees, so until the courts take a position on this, it's difficult for us to say a great deal about it and it's difficult to for us to change the fees.

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

I might mention one of the challenges that occurs when we set fees, let's say for an application. CIC incurs certain expenses, obviously, but we work on many things in partnership with other departments--CBSA, for example, and the RCMP in doing security checks and fingerprint checks and those sorts of things, and the Department of Foreign Affairs for our rent, which is a general overhead. The fees are applied to a broad range. We're not self-sufficient in the provision of those services.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I would think that if there are more fees, more funds can then go to the RCMP and CSIS; then the security check would be a lot faster. Right now it's backlogged. You wait for the security clearance, and then your medical clearance has expired. Then you have to do it again, back and forth. It wastes your department's time and the poor immigrant's time, and it just goes into a vicious cycle.

Can that fee be used for immigrant settlement services, whether it's foreign credentials--

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

No.