Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 29th, 2010

[Neil Yeates]

Well, I think the dilemma the department has had is that when most people think of service standards, one of the key components is timeliness, in our case for processing an application. We've always had a dilemma that when you tell somebody it's going to take 32 months to process their application, they're not going to see that as a timely service standard, and we would fully understand that. So we have tended to stay in the world of processing times rather than putting that out as a service standard per se.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Right.

Mr. Ricard, in your department do you have any sympathy for the fact that, to a large degree, Citizenship and Immigration can't control when people take up their visas, or can't control the demand for skilled workers, or can't control a number of other things? They can open the door and sometimes people don't walk in. They can't control the demand for caregivers, etc. Did you take that into account in your audit?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Yes, we do realize the operational realities. For example, in one paragraph we refer to the fact that we've selected three entities, and we didn't compare the three entities for that reason. Every organization has a different legislative framework, different operation, different clients, different business.

So yes, we have to take that into consideration, and I would suppose, when the department sets their standards, they will take that into consideration. But in our opinion, they still have to come up with standards, and the department seems to agree with that.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Yeates, could you summarize for the committee what significant variables you don't have control over in the current situation?

[Neil Yeates]

Certainly.

Chair, probably the biggest single factor for us as a department on the permanent immigration side is that, by and large, we do not control intake in terms of the number of applications to our programs, whereas on the output side, our annual levels plan determines how many people we will actually admit.

With an open-ended application system, it means we may get wide variations in demand for different parts of our program. That may far exceed the number of applicants we are able to allow to come into the country in any given year. That's probably the single biggest factor.

However, there are others. There are issues in different parts of the world dealing with security clearances, for example, where that may be a very significant issue. Those cases go to the RCMP and to CSIS. Depending on their complexity, they may take quite some time to be reviewed before they would come back to us for further processing. We also deal with health issues. All immigrants require an immigrant medical exam, to be cleared medically before they can come here. Again, in different parts of the world that may take quite some time to actually be available.

Fourth, and this was referred to earlier, it is going to depend on the individuals and how quickly they respond. We may issue instructions to a client to go and get a medical. The client might not do it at all, or they may take six months to do it. We don't know. We might remind them after a period of time, and we might close their file after a period of time if they haven't followed up.

So all of those are the kinds of factors that affect how quickly we deal with processing.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

I have studied your global case management system, and it occurs to me it's more than major; this is a very, very significant transformation. Would you please describe the scope of this transformation and what it means to Citizenship and Immigration?

[Neil Yeates]

Thank you.

Chair, the global case management system is replacing a number of what we would call legacy systems. As members probably know, historically we have been a very paper-based system, in terms of the way we deal with files, and if you visit some of the missions around the world, you will see this enormous amount of paper, once you get inside the working part of the embassy.

GCMS is basically going to dramatically reduce the amount of paper that we need to deal with. It will allow us to shift workload seamlessly around the world, what we call our global network in Canada--missions around the world--and it will allow us to do that with a great deal of confidence that stuff is entered into our system only once, and then it can be accessed by users from around the world. We think the potential for efficiency gains there are huge, but they will also be more accurate. GCMS also allows us to do searches and things that we were not able to do before. To give an example, Chair, we're able to search common addresses. This is where we've come across residence fraud in citizenship applications. We've had 300 people claiming the same address. It was very, very difficult to make that kind of connection under all of the disparate systems we had before.

It's a very powerful system, from an information management point of view, but also very powerful from an individual case processing point of view, as was referenced earlier.

One other thing--

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We have to move on.

[Neil Yeates]

Okay.

One part of the case can be done in one part of the world and another in another part of the world. It's a big step forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

He's talking like Mr. Kenney.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Trudeau.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Merci, monsieur le président.

Something struck me, Mr. Yeates, in your presentation. You mentioned using more of Twitter and Facebook. I'm a huge user of social media myself, but as such, I and many employers and institutions have realized what a tremendous time waster it can be. I'm assuming that the use of Twitter and Facebook would be folded into the recommendations that CIC is working on to improve collection and analysis of feedback and complaints, rather than actual service delivery through Twitter.

[Neil Yeates]

Yes, that's the case, Mr. Chair.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

I just wanted to make sure.

I'd like to ask Mr. Ricard a question.

You said, in your case study on Haiti, that the department had indicated that thanks to special measures that were passed, Canada had taken in, as of April 1, 2010, over 2,100 Haitians, more than 200 of which were children. That means that between January 12, when disaster struck, and April 1, Canada had welcomed 2,100 Haitians.

Is that actually what you found? Are these applications Canada received and assessed pursuant to the special measures?

[Sylvain Ricard]

That is what we noted in our management of the file. In this case we wanted to show one of the measures the department had taken to adapt to a specific situation so as to improve service.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

I would certainly like to turn it over to Mr. Yeates, then, because anecdotally, I have a very large Haitian community in my riding. The response has been one of unmitigated frustration at the fact that other than putting a big “Haiti” on an envelope and sending it in to a special location, they haven't seen a lot of action.

Could you perhaps break down for me what those 2,100 Haitians...who were brought in through these special measures, in the period between January, February, March, and April?

[Neil Yeates]

Certainly we can do that, Chair.

There were different categories we were dealing with. Some of the cases that were in our system were before the earthquake and then after the earthquake, and then there were the Quebec special measures on top of that. We can speak to those different categories.

Madame Deschênes.

[Claudette Deschênes]

These were children that were to be adopted.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

These children's files were practically settled, almost 90% settled, right?

[Claudette Deschênes]

They were in the system and we were awaiting final authorization.

We really focused on cases that were already in the system. When those cases were dealt with, we then started working on others. In most of your ridings, people had not sent in applications. The first thing they had to do was therefore to obtain authorization from the Government of Quebec pursuant to the special program.

We only started receiving applications in the summer. Until October 29, we were receiving new applications. There are 1,137 people in the system including 167 for which documents were issued and 52 that settled in Canada.

Most of these applications only arrived in July, August and September. We are currently processing them, but the family class cases remain our priority. By definition, the cases from Quebec that were welcomed were not within the federal government's family class.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

I understand, but the figure you provided, in other words 2,100 Haitians since the disaster, dates back to April 1, 2010. These are not Haitians who applied because of the disaster, but rather Haitians who had applied well in advance of that. This figure of 2,100 is absolutely not as a result of the earthquake.

[Claudette Deschênes]

I disagree. We showed great flexibility in the way in which we processed these cases because of the earthquake. Indeed, these applications had been made before the earthquake, but the way in which they were processed and the risk profile attached to them were influenced by the earthquake.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

I will continue along in the same vein because I am wondering about the same thing. Out of 2,100 Haitians welcomed as of April 1, how many of them would have come either way, regardless of the earthquake? If this had been a normal year, how many of them would have been taken in usually?