Evidence of meeting #31 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was applications.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
There's a point of order. We'd better stop the clock here.
You have a point of order, sir?
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
9:20 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Maybe I could give a bit of an explanation of what affects processing times.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
I'm just telling you that in those posts that applicants are coming from, your department seems to be using a very heavy-handed approach in having people wait so long, especially in Nairobi. It's 92% and 114% and 73%. Why? If you know there is turbulence there, why are you not allocating extra staff?
9:25 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Mr. Karygiannis, I think you know that we have the staff that we have, and we also have a number of priorities in terms of family class, in terms of skilled workers, and in terms of provincial nominees, and we try to balance all of that.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Ms. Deschênes, what is more important than spouses and children?
9:25 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
The complexity of spouses and children changes according to where they're coming from. I think you know that, and some cases are more difficult in terms of needing interviews. In other cases, we can do without interviews. For some cases, there are more medical problems than in other places, so sometimes medicals--
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
You're trying to tell me that there are more medical problems in Nairobi than there are in Russia?
9:25 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
In Nairobi there's also the issue of correspondence and being able to reach people and getting people. A large number of people miss their interviews. We are trying.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
9:25 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Certainly in Nairobi, there was a period of time when the office, because of the situation in Nairobi, could not process cases, couldn't get out to do area trips. There was an incident that happened over that period of time. That caused some problems. You will remember that processing time is not only the time it takes to process the case, but it starts from the time the case arrives at a mission.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
What is happening in Kingston, Jamaica, where it goes from eight months to 14 months?
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
A 75% increase and a 50% increase. What happened in Kingston, Jamaica?
Okay, I'll give you Nairobi.
What happened in Kingston, Jamaica? I'll tell you what happened. They're black and you don't want them in.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
We're going to move on to Ms. Thi Lac.
A point of order, Mr. Young.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
Mr. Chair, I've sat on committees at Queen's Park, and on Parliament Hill here now for a year, and I find it so embarrassing when Mr. Karygiannis bullies and interrupts the people who come here to give us information. There is such a thing as common courtesy.
Thank you.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Mr. Chair, if I made a derogatory remark, allow me to apologize. Let me rephrase this. These are African--
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
On the point of order, I used the wrong word and I want to apologize to the department. However, I do want to point out to the department that these are African people who are coming in and maybe we should look at expediting this thing.
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
October 29th, 2009 / 9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Ladies, thank you for being here this morning to discuss processing times for the immigration applications you receive.
You referred to the action plan for faster immigration. You said that, since February 2008, more than 240,000 applications were received, that you have processed 100,000 of them, and that only 8,000 visas have been issued to skilled workers.
Did you really mean 8,000 visas out of 100,000 applications?
