Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 11th, 2010

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

I will be brief. Do you acknowledge the fact that—and all the immigration lawyers in Montreal will tell you this—that if someone speaks neither French nor English, their file will be opened in English? They will not be asked if they want to proceed in French or English. You know that this is the case, Mr. Minister.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

No, the department's position and, I believe, the position of the IRB is that applicants are entitled to choose the language of proceedings, as Mr. Bolanos Blanco did.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. St-Cyr, that's it. You can let him finish, but you are finished.

Madam Chow.

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

Thank you.

I have three questions in three different areas.

We know that hard-working Canadians expect effective, fast, and fair immigration services. The system right now is not fair, is not fast, and is not effective. Let me give you an example.

Recently I was watching the Canadian Olympic hockey game in a bar. I ran into a Canadian surgeon working at the Sick Kids hospital, a wonderful young man. He tells me that he sponsored his wife starting on November 15, 2007. The wife has an MBA, a master's degree from Georgetown, and is totally qualified to work. After 27 months. Anu, the wife, is still waiting for her landed immigrant status. As a result, she can't work, she can't get OHIP, and she is stuck. The Canadian doctor was saying, “I am so fed up with waiting. Why does it take so long for my wife to get landed immigrant status?”

I looked up the Buffalo visa office wait time. It is supposed to be 1.2 years, one year in general, and this one is over two and a half years, almost three years. I then looked up a lot of my constituents from southern China via Hong Kong; the average wait time is four and a half years. I looked up New Delhi. The average wait time is 6.74 years. That's close to 7 years. Nairobi is four years; Islamabad in general is 11 years. My gosh, this is.... In general, these are the wait times.

In this specific case, I'm talking about a family class application. If you are trying to sponsor your father and mother, it takes a long time. I'm really focusing on wait times for family class applicants, not for skilled workers, because I know Bill C-50 and we don't need to revisit that. It is really the family class applicants--the spouses, the parents, and the children--who end up waiting for years and years. I looked at the supplementary estimates (C) and I looked at the main estimates. There is really no initiative, no program, to decrease the wait times.

Last year, you may recall, I asked you about the computer program. Yes, you put in $31 million for a computer program that is supposed to be working this year.

What are we doing? What is your department doing to lower the wait times for family class applicants so that they don't have to wait so long to reunite with their loved ones?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you. I acknowledge, that's one of the top concerns of newcomers. People raise it with me all the time, as I'm sure they have with all of my predecessors.

You know, Madam Chow, that over the course of 10 or 15 years we saw a huge growth in the overall inventory, and that included family class. The department is constantly looking at ways to administer these programs more efficiently to accelerate processing times. For example, 80% of spousal sponsorship applications are dealt with in less than a year. So if this chap has been waiting for two and a half years, please make a representation to me, and I'll look at that particular case.

I can point out that we've made progress on parents and grandparents. In 2006 it was taking 60 to 80 months. It is now taking 56 months in 2009. I know for many families that is still far too long, but it is moving in the right direction.

I know that we have, for instance, made some progress in Nairobi with respect to family class applications. We've been reducing the wait times and the backlog there.

I would say, though, that globally the challenge we have is that there are more people who want to come to Canada, by several orders of magnitude, than we can process in a period of time. We have the highest relative level of immigration in the developed world, at 0.8% of our population—up to 265,000 in our planning range. And yet, according to the international survey on migration done by Gallup last year, there are over 40 million people who would like to immigrate to Canada. So we receive more applications for the family class categories than we can welcome to Canada in any given year, given the practical limitations we have both on processing applications and on integrating individuals to Canada.

Essentially, more and more people make applications for the number of positions that are available. That is why over a period of time the backlogs have developed.

As you know, there are some regional problems or challenges. For example, you have raised Hong Kong in southern China. As I mentioned to you in my last appearance, we have faced a wave--

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

I remember that.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

—of fraudulent applications in spousal sponsorship, and that takes the agents' time, because they have to sort through these things. They know that there are people making false applications, so it takes them a substantial—

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

Surely not half of them?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Half of the spousal sponsorships in the Hong Kong office are being rejected.

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

I know; 52% get turned down.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

That's right. So they take more time, and it slows everything else down.

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

Let me go to a slightly different topic, back to the budget; I should focus on the budget.

Supplementary estimates (C) has a category of $388,000 for the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. I don't know whether this Institute for Canadian Citizenship recommended that collecting hockey cards should be in the citizenship guide but not gay rights or gay marriage or gay history. Did the institute recommend putting equal families for gays and lesbians in the citizenship guide? If not.... It's $388,000, a lot of money.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

We can always count on you, Ms. Chow, to be just about the only member of the committee who actually asks us questions about the estimates. I commend you for that.

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

Well, I've read them.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

The answer is that the Institute for Canadian Citizenship is a project that was created by Her Excellency the former Governor General Clarkson and Mr. Ralston Saul upon their departure from Rideau Hall. A previous government decided to maintain a convention or practice whereby departing governors general can establish a special project focused on a national issue, in this case citizenship. I know that we included the Institute for Canadian Citizenship as one of the members of the blue ribbon panel to provide input on Discover Canada.

We received submissions from dozens of organizations and individuals, including the institute, on hundreds of issues. I can't recall off the top of my head what they recommended, but I think the remarks of the CIC were that they were very pleased with the outcome of Discover Canada.

As I've said publicly, if they or anyone else would have suggestions for future revisions on the guide, I'd be more than willing to consider those for any future revisions.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Let me say on that issue that in A Look at Canada—the previous guide, which is just now being phased out—there was zero content at all on gay and lesbian Canadians. If all you knew about Canada came from A Look at Canada, you wouldn't know there were gay and lesbian Canadians.

We rectified that in Discover Canada. We highlighted a gay role model, Mark Tewkesbury, as a prominent advocate for gay and lesbian Canadians.

There wasn't a section on marriage at all of any kind, regardless of how it is defined, in the previous document.

Having said that, since the publication of the guide we have received some constructive suggestions from a number of organizations—you've mentioned one—and we will give them very serious consideration. But I am not at this point going to start prejudging the outcome of it.

If you have suggestions as well, Ms. Chow, we would be willing to receive them, although I would counsel everyone that this cannot end up being a thousand-page document. We cannot include every possible issue, but if there are reasonable ways to insert different issues that people think should be included in the document to present a full depiction of Canada, I am all ears.

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

But what I--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thanks to you both.

I'm sorry, Ms. Chow, your time is up.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I cannot believe Ms. Chow is complaining about the time she had. This is, like, unbelievable how much time--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Let's move along, Mr. Dykstra.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Minister, you come here a lot, and you're always very open and straightforward. You do a lot of work within the context of your responsibilities across the country.

I thought it relevant to see if there were in fact any announcements that you might like to make today about your department's commitment to transparency and open government.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Can we have some order?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Minister.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I would point out to my friends in the opposition that five members on one side are getting as much time as one member on the other side, so I think this is a reasonable question.

I am proud to announce that starting today our ministry will now post its most requested statistics on a quarterly basis on our website.

We are demonstrating our commitment to transparency and open government by ensuring that our most requested data is up to date, easily accessible, and posted in a timely manner. This will ensure that anyone who would like this data can access it free whenever they would like to. The statistics provide current information on the immigration and citizenship processes, such as how many economic-class and family-class applications have been proceeded with in the previous quarter of the year.

So Ms. Chow's research will be rendered even more convenient.

The information also includes operational data on, for example, citizenship statistics, application processing times, and inventories. CIC is also offering public access to a free CD with more detailed statistical information.

Let me add one point, Mr. Chairman, to highlight our commitment to open government. Immigration Canada receives the most requests of any government department under the Access to Information Act—more than double the number of requests received by the next-highest-ranked federal department. So we have a huge volume of ATI requests. But our compliance rate is over 95%. This demonstrates our commitment to transparency and client service. By virtue of our sharing this information proactively on a regular basis, Canadians will have the information they need readily available. I think that demonstrates our commitment to transparency.