While I appreciate where Mr. Karygiannis is trying to go here in terms of assisting those in another country in a very unstable and insecure environment, at the same time, if you look at his motion, “the government should deport no one to Sri Lanka until a safe environment exists there”, we have no determination as to what “safe environment” means. We don't know whether that would be tomorrow, we don't know whether that would be in a year, we don't know whether that would be in fifty years. There's no determination and qualification or quantification, quite frankly, of what that actually means.
Certainly we want to make sure we reiterate our concerns for the victims and the families that have been involved in the conflict that has arisen there. When we have these issues, they aren't just with one country and one country alone. They deal with a number of countries. When a serious conflict is occurring that directly affects or impacts Canadian citizens or permanent residents or their relatives, the ministry responds with a very humane and flexible approach. They have, within the existing IRPA and regulations, the ability to take family reunification, for one. They're able to ensure that is put forward in a much quicker manner and that families are reunited quickly.
We don't need special measures to deal with this conflict, because in fact we already have appropriate legislation, the regulatory authority, to deal with these, because it is an exceptional circumstance. This country is in exceptional circumstance in terms of what's happening there. We can process applications on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. We're well equipped to operate within the existing operations to process priority cases that we see and hear about. We have visa officers who will continue to issue temporary resident visas to any applicant who meets requirements of the IRPA.
Whether this committee wants to pass a motion that suggests this, we cannot, as a committee, act outside of the legislation. We cannot act outside of the regulations. We can pass motions that suggest we do that, but the motion in itself is not going to be able to allow the minister or, quite frankly, ministry officials to act outside of the current legislation within the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
Ms. Chow was wondering about numbers. As of September 2008, Colombo issued over 3,200 permanent resident visas in all categories, including approximately 1,200 visas to persons in the family class, which included spouses, children, and parents. The approval rate for family class cases is 91%, so we are certainly ensuring that in this case we are doing everything we can with respect to family reunification.
As of the end of September 2008, the mission in Colombo had processed 80% of its spousal cases within 13 months.