Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 6th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Wong.

Mr. Calandra.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

Earlier you talked about the visa requirements with respect to the Czech and Mexican nationals, but I want to take it from a bit of a different angle with respect to what some of the factors are that the department considers when reviewing whether a visa should be imposed or removed from a particular country.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Just let me clarify that. Under IRPA, all foreign nationals require visas to come to Canada. That's the default statutory provision. There are special exemptions granted to a certain number of countries. Of the roughly 200 sovereign states in the world, we require visas of, I think, 143 countries. So we require the nationals of roughly three-quarters of the countries in the world to obtain temporary resident visas to visit us in Canada.

The criteria for visa exemption include a number of objective criteria, one of which is the visa rejection rate.

I'm just trying to figure out whether this is confidential.

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, Vaughan, ON]

Don't worry, we won't say anything.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

The standard benchmark, for instance, is a visa rejection rate of less than 4% for at least three years. Another thing we look at is the evidence of the tendency for nationals of a particular country to overstay or to make asylum claims. Another factor is the security of passports or travel documents of a foreign country, and issues such as criminality. If there's a really high level of, say, organized crime, that would be a concern.

There are over 20 criteria, but those are some of the principal ones we consider. And when we do a visa exemption we send a team in to do a risk assessment. They review all of those criteria and they make a report. But when we see a particular country....

Let me be clear about the Mexican situation. We were receiving more asylum claims from that particular country than from any other country for which we have postwar immigration. Since we began receiving asylum claimants, we've received more from Mexico than from anywhere else. That begged the question that if we were not to impose a visa on Mexico, given those facts, then why should we have a visa on any other country? It really got to the point where....

And I remind the committee, for instance, that the previous government--and this is not a criticism, it's a fact--gave the then-Czechoslovakia visa exemption in the mid-1990s. Two years later the government reimposed visa requirements on the Czech Republic after we had received 1,000 asylum claimants. This government granted the Czech Republic a visa exemption in the fall of 2007, and reimposed visa requirements this summer, after we had received 3,000 asylum claimants. So in that sense we are far more patient in trying to work with our foreign partners to deal with these issues than has been the case in the past. If anything, in my judgment we should be criticized for having been so patient.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Thank you. I also wanted to touch quickly on the response. I was speaking to some friends of mine from the Filipino community, and they are obviously very concerned with what has happened back home. There's a lot of concern in that community. I wonder if you might discreetly touch on some of the actions that your department made, following the--

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I know that we all share our concern and our sympathies for those affected by Typhoon Ketsana. As you know, our busiest mission in the world now in terms of total processing is the Canadian immigration mission at our embassy in Manila. Unfortunately, I understand that mission was shut down for a couple of days because of the flooding. The locally engaged staff couldn't make it in many cases, so our operations were hindered. I think we're now getting back to full capacity to process in the Manila mission.

I announced last week that we will prioritize processing for family reunification applications and temporary resident visa applications for those individuals who have been directly and significantly affected by the weather event in the Philippines.

Do you want to comment on that any further, Claudette?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Anyone can either contact the call centre, the CPC in Vegreville, or the mission, and if they can demonstrate that they've been seriously affected by the typhoon, we will do all that is possible to expedite processing.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a quick question, and hopefully the answer will be as quick and as succinct, Minister.

How many citizenship judges positions are there in British Columbia, and how many are currently vacant?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I want to give a succinct answer, but I'll have to get back to you. I think, however, from memory, there are about six positions in B.C. I believe we have four or five of those filled. I think there's one, maybe two part-time positions that are still vacant.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Minister, I'd be surprised if you didn't know the numbers. In fact, it's quite correct that there are five full-time positions and one part-time position. My understanding is that four of those were vacant for the longest period of time. In fact, some of those may have been filled recently. That is a decision made by your office.

You've referred to other parts of the citizenship and immigration system as being broken. Those were the words you used. You said there are legislative knots. You blamed minority government. In this particular case, it's a simple decision made by your office. There were judges in place who expressed to your office their willingness to continue in their positions until such time as those positions were filled with someone you appointed. Yet notwithstanding that, you had a situation in British Columbia where thousands upon thousands of Canadians-in-waiting, instead of celebrating their new citizenship, were waiting for the ceremony. Who is responsible for the fact that four of those positions were vacant? In fact, in one case, it was vacant for over a year.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Chair, I've moved quickly on appointments in general. I should point out that it's not exclusively in my power; I can recommend them to the cabinet. However, there is a process that we've adopted as well for pre-screening of applicants for appointment to the citizenship commission. That takes time. When I came into this ministry, my recollection was that we had a shortage of qualified, pre-screened candidates ready for appointment in British Columbia. I have no reason to maintain vacancies if we have qualified candidates to appoint.

I talked about this issue with Chief Judge Springate of the commission when I became minister. He assured me that the commission had contingency operations in place, including bringing in itinerant judges from other parts of the country to do services. I regret that Judge Gibault had to carry so much burden for so long in B.C. because we didn't have an inventory of pre-screened candidates. But we've moved quickly to fill up the appointments, with the exception of one part-time position.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Minister, you've mentioned a number of judges by name, so it seems quite clear that you are familiar with the situation, yet you're saying there is a process. Well, there was also an opportunity to continue with existing judges.

You know, if you're intimately aware of the responsibilities of your office, that one of those responsibilities is to appoint judges so that thousands of these Canadians-in-waiting do not get frustrated. This is a huge life decision. They've made it and they've passed all the requirements. All they were waiting for was the ceremony, yet your office has not made that decision.

Now, I see you're trying to push the responsibility onto process once again, but this isn't a complicated process. Judges have stated that they were willing to continue in their positions, even on a monthly basis, to make sure that we wouldn't end up with a backlog of tens of thousands of people.

The same situation actually happened in my part of the country, in Etobicoke. For seven months there wasn't a judge available. Once again, the judge was willing to continue in her capacity. Thousands of Canadians-in-waiting were denied a ceremony to confirm their citizenship. In this particular case, I don't think you can shift responsibility. Who is responsible?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I don't recall, Mr. Chairman, being aware of any requests to extend terms. I stand to be corrected, but I think when a citizenship judge seeks an extension of term, that would be a dialogue they would have with the chief judge, in this case Judge Springate, who is responsible for the administration of the commission and the assignments of all of the judges.

Sometimes Mr. Springate will recommend to me that I thank someone for their service and that they no longer continue. Sometimes he'll recommend an extension of their appointment or a reappointment as citizenship judge. Generally speaking, I accept the advice I'm given.

I can't comment on particular cases. I'd be happy to look into them, but I was assured by the commission that they were able to continue with the important work they do in terms of the ceremonies in British Columbia during the period when there was a shortage of judges.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Ms. Grewal.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Minister, can you please comment on the progress that we're making in decreasing the immigration backlog?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you.

As I mentioned in my opening statement, Mr. Chairman, we have had considerable success with respect to the action plan for faster immigration in the federal skilled worker category, more commonly known as the points system. Since we made the action plan operational last November, about 10 months ago, we have seen the backlog in the federal skilled worker category go from 635,000 cases to 435,000 cases. That's a reduction of about 32%.

That's actually a phenomenal achievement, and I'd like to give praise where it belongs: to our departmental officials, who have worked very hard over the past year to manage this new program while also dealing with the applications that were received prior to February of 2008, which don't fall within the action plan. They've also been continuing to process a large number of those files.

So we've seen a one-third reduction in the federal skilled worker category. While we have seen improvements in processing times for family class sponsorship applications—for instance, processing times have gone down considerably in the last three years in that regard—we have not seen a reduction in the inventory in that category. Also, as you know, in the refugee asylum category we've seen a substantial increase, and we're now dealing with 60,000 asylum claims.

It depends on the category, but overall, the mainstream economic stream of immigration to Canada, the federal skilled worker program, has seen a massive improvement. We expect to continue to see that.

One other point is that people who applied under that program since February of last year are getting decisions on their application for permanent residency in less than a year, which is a radical improvement over the four to five years it was taking prior to the action plan.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

I would like to give the rest of my time, Mr. Chair, to Mr. Young.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Everybody has a lot of time today.

Mr. Young.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Minister, I have a couple of questions that come directly from my constituency office in my riding of Oakville. The first is a concern expressed to me by a constituent who is a Christian from Pakistan concerned about the treatment of applications for visa and immigration to Canada for Christians. What have you done to ensure that applications from Christians in Pakistan are treated fairly?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

That's an interesting question, Mr. Chairman. Those concerns have been raised directly with me in my meetings with the Pakistani Christian community in Canada as well as by the Ahmadiyya community and Sikh Canadians who have relatives in Pakistan. All of these constitute religious minority communities in Pakistan. That's one of the reasons I went to Islamabad with the first mission in which I visited abroad upon becoming minister, and I raised with the Prime Minister, the foreign minister and minorities' affairs minister in Pakistan our concern about the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities.

I also reinforced with our immigration officials in Islamabad the importance of ensuring absolutely fair treatment for these communities. There is a concern, for instance, Mr. Chairman, that the Pakistani government documents and passports indicate someone's confession, and that can be a flag of concern. People want to make sure they're getting fairly treated.

I have done everything I think we reasonably can to underscore the importance of this issue. As a government, we have talked to those communities, and we have, for instance, made a significant contribution of $33 million for relief of the Swat valley refugees. Many of those include Christians from the Swat valley who were facing violence from the Pakistani Taliban. Our parliamentary colleagues, John Weston and Tim Uppal both visited Islamabad and also the Swat valley, in the case of Mr. Uppal, to raise their concerns about the treatment of these religious minorities.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Do I have more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Yes.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

The other question is an administrative matter, Minister. In the GTA, there is currently only one office to which people can go to collect their permanent residency cards. Oakville is at least an hour's drive from 25 St. Clair Avenue West, and when they get there, some of the lineups are pretty long. They end up getting parking tickets, and it takes the better part of half a day to go there. It's a little bit unfair administratively. I wonder whether there is anything proposed to address the need for an additional processing centre in the GTA.