Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 29th, 2010

[Neil Yeates]

Historically the acceptance rate at the IRB has been around 42%.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Thank you.

It interests me, though, that of 7,000 accepted and identified as refugees, we have more than half that number of family members brought over. That's obviously a very significant number, and a path where, in many cases, one person who comes to Canada is trying to bring over their family that is in a similar situation.

Thank you for clarifying that the immigration stream is entirely independent of the refugee stream. I think that's something that is important to have on record here.

I'll pass it for now. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In your statement, you touched on accomplishments over the past few years and indicated what is coming in future. Among other things, you referred to the refugee issue. You mentioned that this Parliament had adopted the Balanced Refugee Reform Act in March 2010, a matter in which this committee was actively involved. There was, in fact, unanimous consensus on the issue.

I remember very well all the work that had been ongoing for a long time. I gathered that the department had been working on the issue for a very long time. You had informed us, during your various appearances before this committee, of the ideas that you intended to present. We were entitled to some rather detailed briefings. The department was really prepared and we could see where it was heading.

The House is currently examining Bill C-49. We have not seen anything about this bill and we have yet to have any briefings that are as detailed as those we were given previously. I know that you cannot discuss the political aspect. The minister will answer questions on that issue.

What prompted the department to say that, yes, Parliament needs to adopt this bill and provide for these special measures for people who arrive in groups?

[Neil Yeates]

Mr. Chair, I will start to answer the question, but perhaps Mr. Linklater could help me later on.

I think the key issue, Chair, has been whether the government, whether Parliament, is concerned about the way people might arrive in Canada to claim asylum, particularly with the involvement of human smugglers and traffickers. The information we have is that people are paying a lot of money to be trafficked to Canada, and I think the government is very concerned about that, and therefore that turned attention to how one might respond to that. There is a variety of ways of doing that, including the appointing of a special envoy; doing a lot of work with countries in the region; and working with UNHCR, the IOM--the International Organization for Migration--and the international community writ large. But one of the factors that has been raised is to what extent Canada's system is seen as what is called a “pull factor”, which makes it, if you like, vulnerable to these kinds of activities.

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

Is this type of activity a very recent problem?

[Neil Yeates]

It's hard to say. Certainly marine arrivals have been unusual. They've happened before. There were the Chinese boat arrivals in 1999, I believe. It's not that common, but it has happened from time to time.

The worry is that you start to create an incentive for those things to happen and you get a real wave of those occurrences. That is what has happened in Australia; hundreds of boats have arrived on the coast of Australia.

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

Currently, with respect to the 7,204 in 2009... We do not yet have the figure for 2010, however—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Monsieur St-Cyr, there's a certain generality when we're talking about this. Bill C-49 isn't in this report. It's being dealt with by a legislative committee. We've let you go on a little bit more, but I think it's inappropriate at this time.

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

If you had listened to my question, you would realize that I am speaking specifically to the information on page 13 of the Citizenship and Immigration Report, namely, the number of protected individuals who entered Canada in 2009. There were 7,204 of them.

What I would like to know is the percentage of people who arrived individually, either by car or by plane, at the border, and then made an application. What percentage of people arrived in a group, either by boat or bus, or by any other means? It would be good if the committee could see how the situation is developing and be informed about what changed in 2009 and 2010. What magnitude are we talking about?

[Neil Yeates]

Mr. Chair, it is very difficult to say.

We don't really know. Certainly we would know about something like a big ship arrival. We didn't have any of those occurrences in 2009. To what extent we were dealing with organized arrivals it's very difficult to tell, but we know they go on. We have had experiences where a significant number of people have claimed asylum status off a single flight. To what extent there was collusion amongst people on that flight, we really don't know.

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

Have you tried, in the past, to see if this was... Do you not know the answer because you never tried to find out, or is it simply because you haven't managed to show or find out what it was?

[Neil Yeates]

It is a very difficult movement and set of issues to get a handle on. We work with the RCMP and CSIS on measures designed to combat trafficking and human smuggling, but this is a very difficult group to go after. We try to work through those agencies with other countries to get local law enforcement cooperation, and so on.

We've been dealing with some of those issues with respect to refugee claimants from Hungary. Members may have seen that there were some arrests in the Hamilton area. A trafficking ring was uncovered and charges have been laid. There has been good cooperation with the Government of Hungary in that case. So that kind of work continues to go on. It's very difficult to quantify, because it's hard to get your fingers on it.

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

On the same page in the report, although this is repeated in several places... Protected persons in Canada are those who come here and apply for refugee status. As for dependents abroad, that would be the family of these individuals who comes here later on to join them.

We could consider that the total number of these individuals who arrive alone or who are accompanied by their family remains constant. For example, if a family of four arrives here by boat or a single person arrives by boat and then sends for the three members of his or her family, that works out to being the same thing. Would I be correct in saying that?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You're over time, so I'll go to Ms. Chow.

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

I see that under the family class the parents and grandparents are still stuck at the 13,000 level. That's a steep drop from 10 to 15 years ago, when the total number of family class applicants accounted for almost half of the people coming into Canada. Now it's about a quarter, so it's a much smaller number. In the meantime, there is a huge backlog. Maybe you can let me know what the backlog is for parents.

I just know that to sponsor a parent from Beijing, it takes five years; from New Delhi, it's six years; from Accra, it's eight years; and it's three years before your sponsorship application is even reviewed. So it's just huge. I can't see how, with the 13,000 to 17,000 range for parents and grandparents, you'll ever deal with that backlog. Wait times will never get smaller; they'll just grow.

Am I wrong?

[Neil Yeates]

That is one of the dilemmas we have in the immigration program. The number of applications for parents and grandparents is about 145,000. That's a large number.

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

That's per year, right?

[Neil Yeates]

That's what we have now, so we have about 10 years' worth in our current backlog of applications for parents and grandparents. I mentioned the federal skilled workers earlier, where we add 640,000. So that is our dilemma. We have large numbers of applications trying to get through a very small—if I can put it this way—levels plan tube.

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

Why not expand the little hole that you're letting people through? With that backlog, it's going to take forever. I can just see this going from five to eight years. Two years from now, we could be sitting here with a 10-year wait.

What would be the plan?

[Neil Yeates]

There are three options. First, there's the status quo: we just keep going. And you're quite right, processing times will probably continue to lengthen, given the demand.

Second, the government could look at a larger immigration target overall. We're at this range of 240,000 to 265,000. However, there are a lot of implications there—the number of people Canada can settle, the effect on our whole support system of health and social services, the effect on education, and so on. So that needs pretty careful consideration.

Third, there are trade-offs between the different components of our existing plans. You could rebalance the system and decide to do more of one and less of another. And that's what we've been doing a bit at the margin.

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

People from Beijing, Canadians, have been here for 10 years and they want their parents to come--they're having a baby and they want a grandparent to babysit, or there are any number of reasons. Maybe they want to live with their parents; they have very traditional family values. They point to the fact that if you sponsor a father or a mother from Paris, you wait a year or two, but if it's someone from Beijing, it's five years plus. They say that's unfair. They say each visa office has a target, and the target number is not balanced, based on the number of applications.

Why one year in Paris and five years in Beijing? I can't answer their question. It's a basic violation of their human rights, they think. They see it that way.

How would one answer that question? How do you set these targets?

[Neil Yeates]

Fundamentally, we are wrestling with the number of applications at each mission. And missions are given specific targets in terms of their “share” of the overall target. So if there are a lot more applications in one mission, they're going to develop more of a queue.

This is where GCMS can help us. Historically, it's been very difficult. Our new global case management system allows us to do the casework in different parts of our network. It gives us the opportunity to equalize the processing time around the network.

Claudette, do you have anything further on the missions?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Basically, the global case management system will permit us to deal with some of that issue. But at the end of the day, it depends on the number of applications and the type of application.

Paris is probably not a great example. A lot of the Paris cases are destined for Quebec, and we have certain obligations toward the Quebec government. That's why they'd probably be processed a little faster.

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

Do you have an estimate of the number of non-status residents? They've been called undocumented workers or people with a precarious status, i.e., people who have gone underground. Do you have an estimate of how many there are? There have been estimates of 200,000. Some say there are 100,000. Who knows, because they are underground?

Are you concerned about this trend? Since 1957, every 15 years or so, there is an administrative review that allows some of them to get status in Canada, whether on humanitarian grounds or in some other way. We haven't done one for almost 20 years. With all these temporary foreign workers and failed refugee claimants out there, the number of people who have gone underground is probably growing. Is that a concern of the department?