Thank you.
Yes, I had a very instructive visit to two of our largest source countries and three of our largest visa and immigration offices, in Islamabad, New Delhi, and Chandigarh. I had a chance to meet with and get a new appreciation for the hard work and professionalism of our visa officers abroad and to review very closely their operations. I was very encouraged to see service innovations being adopted by some of those missions.
In one example, in the past year our Indian operations have adopted a business express service for the employees of businesses that have operations in Canada. They can register with our immigration bureau through the agency of our trade promotion offices to have their employees receive express service, which means that those who qualify are getting a business visa turnaround within 24 to 48 hours, typically, with a 100% approval rate. That's one of the many innovations we see in the field.
Obviously, we're facing many challenges in that region. I, like every member of this committee and every member of the House, register the frustration of many applicants and the difficulty that their relatives and friends have in obtaining visitor visas. That's particularly acute, of course, for applicants from Punjab out of the Chandigarh visa office. I am pleased to note that the approval rate for short-term visas out of Chandigarh has increased from 32% three years ago to 44% last year. As well, I believe they're making very reasonable efforts towards seeing a continued improvement in that situation.
One of the problems I encountered there that I think is one of the reasons for the relatively high rejection rate is a very high incidence of documentary fraud. That is the result of a network of unscrupulous and unregistered so-called immigration consultants and a related network of document vendors.
Our visa officers are encountering, in those two missions, literally thousands of applications with false declarations that are supported by counterfeit documents, by everything from drivers' licences and false university transcripts to job offers, funeral notices, and marriage certificates. There is the whole range of documents.
This is a very, very serious concern. Our department has taken steps to help combat this kind of fraud by developing certain expertise, but it really requires cooperation, in my judgment, with the local officials. We need the local officials in places such as that to investigate and prosecute document vendors and fraudulent consultants who are giving people bad advice and, quite frankly, exploiting them. They are trading on the good name of Canada to take large sums of money with a promise that they will give these people access to Canada. Very frequently, they end up actually injuring the interests of their clients by counselling them or by filling out false declarations and providing them with false documents. This, of course, causes the applicants, if they're found to have done this, to be rendered inadmissible for an application for the subsequent two years.
I raised these issues with the chief minister of Punjab. I was very encouraged that he gave us an immediate undertaking to assign a special police task force to work with our consulate in Chandigarh to identify, combat, and prosecute these fraudsters. I'm informed, very encouragingly, that he and his officials have followed up with this. We are also taking steps to—