Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 18th, 2010

[Claudette Deschênes]

It is always possible to try to do more. I think that we have been very successful in what we have done. After all, up until last week, there were no direct international flights. That means that every time a document was issued for a departure from Port-au-Prince, these people had their travel paid by the Canadian taxpayer. When I think about the number issued in the two months following the earthquake...

I would remind you that all the officers' houses were assigned to the mission. There was no access to the mission. We still have officers living three or four to a house. There is still only one interview room. When I think about the number of visas that have been issued... More visas were issued for Haiti during the two months after the earthquake than in a usual two-month period. In addition to all the individual efforts to bring people home, we currently have 42 officers and LES, locally engaged staff, working on this file. In normal times, Haiti has 19.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

Thank you very much.

I would like to obtain more details about the priorities and priority order, which you referred to at the end of your presentation.

When the Quebec program was announced in Quebec, the minister publicly confirmed that she had been given assurances that Ottawa would give priority to these applications and process them rapidly. Now, based on my experience—I have been the critic for citizenship and immigration for more than two years now—I know that this is a department with many priorities. Many people are processed on a priority basis. Essentially, the problem is that when everybody is given priority, no one has priority.

In rereading your text, I see that your highest priority will remain members of the immediate family—namely, people who submitted an application under the federal family reunification program—as well as urgent and exceptional cases. Other members of the family class will constitute your second priority—and here we are already going down in the order of priority. This is followed by applicants who meet the requirements of the special measures established by the Government of Quebec. In my opinion, the priority level is starting to get low.

I understand that, up until now, there have not yet been any applications from the Government of Quebec, but when this starts happening, will you change the priority level in order to quickly process the applications for people with nominee certificates under the Quebec program?

Could you give us a ballpark figure as to how long the wait time will be for people under the federal government program, in other words, how long will it take to do the security and medical checks?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I want to be very clear. Our top priority is to reunite the immediate families and the other families. To a large extent, this also represents Quebec's cases, because the majority of cases dealt with in our Haiti office were cases going to Quebec.

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

You said that the priority remains the members of the immediate family. Am I to understand that this includes people who applied through the federal government family reunification program as well as those who applied through the Quebec program and who met the federal requirements?

[Claudette Deschênes]

That is correct.

These are spouses or children, they are our top priority. Parents and grandparents are given second priority. The third priority comprises those individuals who are eligible under a special relief measure, or any other humanitarian or compassionate case which does not meet the criteria of the "family" category.

Usually, only a certain number of parents and grandparents are sent in each mission. The other files are waiting in Mississauga. No one from Haiti who has been affected by the earthquake has had to wait.

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

Indeed, the cases who are at the end of the queue are those pertaining to applicants under the Quebec program whose situation goes beyond the traditional definition of family. The Quebec government program broadened this definition to include uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. These people will be farther on down the line. I know that you prefer to talk about priority cases, but those cases that are not viewed as being priority cases are farther down the queue.

[Claudette Deschênes]

They may be further down the line, but qualified and independent applicants are even farther down the line than they are because we may not have time to process their applications given that our priority is to process applications for those people who have relationships with Canadians or permanent residents in Canada.

Our other priority is to process the applications of those individuals for whom we already have a file in Vegreville. These are refugees, for example. We want to ensure that they can be reunited with their families as quickly as possible. Those cases are even more urgent, as far as we are concerned.

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

I would like to address another issue with you, because it is something that myself and my Bloc Québécois colleagues often have to deal with in our offices. I am talking about temporary visas for actual temporary visitors to Quebec. We have seen examples of late, for instance, with the case of a woman who wanted to bring her sister from Haiti, I believe, because she was suffering from cancer and her sister was in bad shape. If that person were to come here, they could help each other out for two or three months.

There was also a person in my riding who went down to Haiti in order to bring her grandmother back to Canada, but she does not necessarily want to live here, what with our winter and all. She simply wants to come for a few months in order to pull herself together a bit. In many cases, such applications are turned down. These people would need some temporary assistance before returning to Haiti and contributing to its reconstruction.

What are you doing in that regard?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Our mission in Haiti is attempting to assess such cases. Keep in mind that many people are showing up at the door. We are trying to find those whose cases we can process, despite the fact that we have no well-established office. The call centre can also be of some assistance. With regard to information, as an MP, you know how to contact the department in order to provide us with some information.

Needless to say, not all applications are made in good faith, which is why we must study their cases and determine whether they want to come as temporary visitors. We carefully look at each case and take into account people's individual circumstances.

I will remind you that, prior to the earthquake, we had to reject 40% of applications made in Port-au-Prince for reasons of questionable intent.

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

In general, with regard to the issuance of foreign or tourist visas—which does not really apply in this case—applications are often rejected on the grounds that the applicants do not have any ties to their country given that they do not own enough real estate, for example. There have been cases where people were not issued visas because they had no real property. How could they? They were hit by an earthquake! All that is left is a concrete bloc in the back of the yard.

Have you instructed your officials to exercise some discretion? It might so happen that people with ties to Haiti want to return to their country even though they have lost their homes in the earthquake.

[Claudette Deschênes]

First of all, I would like to assure you that our officials understand the situation because they have experienced it themselves. Second, we want there to be some flexibility. Things are greatly facilitated in cases where sponsors are involved.

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

If someone does not want to—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

No, the time is up, Monsieur.

Welcome to the committee, Ms. Mathyssen. On behalf of the New Democratic Party, you have up to seven minutes for questions.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you very much. I'm not sure I'll take that long.

Thank you for your presentation. My question has to do with a compelling case we just heard about this morning. It's not an adoptive case, but it's the case of Aline François who was recognized as a refugee in August of 2009. She and her mother are in Canada, presumably because she was the target of street gangs and was granted refugee status.

Unfortunately, she was unable to bring her two children, a girl aged 13 and a boy aged 12. They were left with a friend. Since the earthquake they haven't been able to attend school. They haven't been able to even leave the house because there are criminal gangs in the streets. In fact, they are living in a tent.

The mother is very upset, obviously very concerned about the welfare of her children. She's been trying to get them to Canada. She's worried about the little boy being attacked, her little girl being sexually abused. So apparently this morning the children were given an appointment at the Canadian embassy. They thought they were going to be able to join their mother in Canada, but their request was refused.

The concern, of course, is why would these children be excluded? We're allowing adopted children in. Why not the children of a Haitian Canadian? I know you're working with UNICEF, so is there any way to involve UNICEF in looking out for these children until they can be repatriated with their mother? I understand the infrastructure problems, but these are minor children and we're very concerned. Their mother is frantic.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Mr. Chairman, as you know, it's a little difficult for me to deal with a specific case. I certainly will take that information and go back and look at it.

Certainly, we are trying to reunite people where there are those types of things. I don't know the specifics of the case, so I'll have to get that from you and then we can follow up.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I would be very grateful if you could, because we're very worried on behalf of these children and their mum.

Madame, you mentioned the cost of bringing the evacuees to Canada. Is the cost of the evacuation a roadblock in terms of our humanitarian aid? Is it becoming an extremely difficult consideration? I know it's expensive and I know there are great demands on international aid, but I'm wondering if this is something you're encountering.

[Claudette Deschênes]

No, at this moment, I think the department has the money it needs to do what it needs to do. Certainly, we're hoping we're going to be able to reconstruct more quickly and that type of thing. We've set up an office in Ottawa that will help us to do what we need to do.

When I was talking about the cost, I was talking about no commercial flights out of Haiti at the time, which meant that if anybody was coming out, that was being paid for by the Canadian government. So obviously we were trying to deal with people who had been in Haiti at the time of the quake and were citizens or permanent residents.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay.

In terms of our ability to function on the ground, I know the offices were destroyed, and it's very difficult. Is there any anticipation from CIC or anyone connected with those offices as to how quickly we can bridge that gap in terms of providing full service?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I think we have bridged the gap in terms of the priority movement that we want to deal with, by opening in Santo Domingo and in Canada the offices that will do all the front end and back end...and where the office will really be focusing on interviews where an interview is required.

The normal staff complement in Haiti is 19. Right now we have 26, and we continue to send temporary duty officers to support, and so on.

One of the issues, of course, is that processing becomes a little more complex when you don't have documents. As we move into new caseloads, we anticipate that we will not have documents. A lot of the work we're doing presently is with sponsors in Canada to try to get as much of the information as possible, so we're really inundated; we're pushing the envelope.

We have systems set up where we have been able to extend recently expired medicals so people don't have to redo medicals.

I have to say, as a movement, this is the first time we've put in so many additional resources to try to deal with this issue.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

That's very reassuring. It must be very difficult for the duty officers on the ground, given the conditions they're encountering.

This must have been a profound learning experience. What, if any, protocols, changes, or things have been learned from this that we could make use of in situations elsewhere?

[Claudette Deschênes]

We always learn from some of these situations.

Everybody always laughs at me, but we are about to roll out a global case management system that will permit us to move work to where people are, as opposed to moving staff to where the work is. We're quite excited about that, so part of what the office in Canada is doing right now is trying to leverage some of that.

One of the first things we've ever done is use text messaging to contact people in Haiti to get them into the mission as required. One of our biggest challenges still is to deal with the people who shouldn't be at the door, so we can more easily and more quickly deal with the people we want to deal with. That again is why one of the instructions we have out there is, “Please don't go to the mission unless you've been asked to do that”. We're dealing with the sponsors a lot in Canada on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

Mr. Dykstra.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, to both of you, for being here today.

Obviously as a country, the work we're doing there, certainly in combination with our ministry, has required a lot of effort. I'm sure it has caused some consternation along the way. But, certainly, we are moving forward, and I just want to compliment both of you, and all of our officials working on this file, for the tremendous effort you've put forward. It certainly is making a difference.

I have a number of questions, so I'll try to be brief. One of the questions I have follows up on a couple of questions the folks on the other side had asked.

The Quebec government announced its own program to expedite the entry into Canada of siblings and others who are not part of the federal government's family class. Since that announcement, how many applications from that new class has the Quebec government asked the ministry to expedite?

[Claudette Deschênes]

At this moment in time, none of the special measures cases has been referred to the Canadian government.