Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 29th, 2010

[Neil Yeates]

That's a very good question, and it is actually what we're looking at right now.

In our processing centre in Sydney, Nova Scotia, we do the initial intake for the federal skilled worker program. They do the front-end processing of all the cases to determine the initial eligibility.

We're now looking at whether we should be taking a certain type of those cases to final approval here in Canada in Sydney, rather than sending them back to the mission. If we do a bit of a triage by risk, that would allow us to sort cases in that way.

That's a very germane question, as we try to sort our way through our business in how we might reorganize the processing in our network around the world.

As committee members probably know, we are rolling out our new case management system, GCMS. It allows us to share the workload electronically and seamlessly around the world. Up to now, we've had to ship paper files around the world, which, as members can imagine, is very time consuming, expensive, and slow.

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

Our constituents have concerns about the fact that cases are not processed individually. Applicants are always the ones to provide information. Every time, they have to repeat their story. Of course, they have to wait, they have to call back, and then they have to start the whole process all over again. They never deal with the same agent twice. I know that the same thing happens within other large government organizations. Some of these organizations have tried to change their approach and give each agent a certain number of files to deal with.

Have you thought of adopting this type of approach, or do you feel that this is just simply not possible within a department?

[Neil Yeates]

Ms. Deschênes can probably answer that question.

[Claudette Deschênes, Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

If I understand correctly, you are referring to situations where you are calling with regard to a file, and then you have to call back three weeks later. You are finding that—

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

Whether it is someone from my office, a citizen or me—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We have to hurry because we're way over time here.

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

Every time I try to move a file forward, I have to leave a phone message or I send an email. Then I'm told that they will get back to me five days later. But if I have another question, I have to start the process all over again and tell my story again from the beginning. Isn't there a way of streamlining this system?

[Claudette Deschênes]

We are currently looking at the way we manage information, both on the member of Parliament side, as well as on the client side. One of the first things we want to do is to make things more systematic. One idea might be to send updates of files more regularly. In cases where the status of a file has not changed, this would still allow people to remain informed. It would reduce the number of cases.

We are also thinking of assigning certain specific groups of clients to certain units. This way, people would not have to tell their story over and over again.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

The question I have is, why are members of Parliament even involved in all this? Why do we and our staff have to become experts in immigration?

Mr. Trudeau just said that our job is to interface with our constituents. But more and more we're getting involved in files. Personally, I think that's a problem.

[Claudette Deschênes]

The department feels we would like to do something where you would not need to do as much. We'll need to start with baby steps and see where we go.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

“Baby steps”—it's a good movie.

Ms. Chow.

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

To the Auditor General's Office, are there any other departments, in your experience—I know you only surveyed three—where 90% of the government services delivered had no service standards? Do you recall?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Honestly, I don't know. As was just mentioned, we audited those three entities. Auditors without facts don't like to....

[Glenn Wheeler]

Mr. Chair, I would just add to Mr. Ricard's statement. In our audit, we did of course scope two other departments.

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

I saw that. What about other departments? In your experience, are there any other departments that don't have these kinds of service standards?

[Glenn Wheeler]

No. To echo what Mr. Ricard said, it was outside the scope of our work.

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

In the history of CIC, do they have service standards--not now, but say 20 years ago?

[Glenn Wheeler]

I can only respond to that by saying that, as we note in the chapter, the department historically has been using input data processing times and output data as a way to manage performance in the absence of service standards. As we stated in the chapter, to this point they've identified only four.

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

Traditionally, a service standard is not what's been established, right? So you're starting with four and you would do more next year.

How many files, on average, have been lost in CIC in the last year or two years? I asked this question under Standing Order 42 and got a response back that they don't know how many files are lost, because they're lost, or there isn't a loss. But my office had people saying they lost their files; they found them eventually.

Do you keep track of that? Do you have that number, and would you be able to provide it?

[Neil Yeates]

I don't have that number with me, no.

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

Would you be able to provide it to me in the future? Do you track it?

[Claudette Deschênes]

We don't track the number of files lost. Sometimes they're lost temporarily. From a perspective of global case management and an e-application future, that's where we want to go, so it would be in the system, and not a paper file, which—

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

Right. It's a problem.

[Claudette Deschênes]

As you visit some missions, it's a problem.

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

Let me just talk specifically about citizenship. The wait time seems to have grown fairly dramatically in the last few years. If the department thinks you've been away for more than the allotted period of time—you're supposed to be away within the three years out of five—they give you a questionnaire. Then if the questionnaire doesn't quite work, you go into this whole year and a half of discussion and appeal, whereas if applicants just waited for another three months to submit their citizenship files, they would have completely, 100%, qualified.

Common sense practice would say that if someone gave you a file for someone who is not quite qualified, give it another two months and they will qualify, instead of going through this long, involved process, wasting your time and their time. They then have to wait for a year and a half before this questionnaire is done. This means that by the time they put in the application for citizenship, and then by the time they get it, you're talking about three years. I've seen cases even longer. Do you have practices in place like that, just to smooth some of the process, so the customer service is delivered in a way that is efficient and effective?