Evidence of meeting #34 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was standards.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Sylvain Ricard  Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Neil Yeates  Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Glenn Wheeler  Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Claudette Deschênes  Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

4:25 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Claudette Deschênes

I cannot answer that. We were trying to process files within a 12-week period. In normal circumstances, the processing times would be far longer than 12 weeks. We process these cases very quickly. I would need a mathematical algorithm to provide you with a figure, but I know that these people would not be in Canada today had it not been for the effort we made.

4:25 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

How many cases do you process within a typical year?

4:25 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Claudette Deschênes

I don't know, but I will check.

4:25 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

Very well, you can send in the information. The idea is to see how many would have come to Canada during that three-month period, or quarter.

I would like to get back to the Quebec program. If I understand correctly, the explanation for the low number of arrivals is that applications came in to Ottawa relatively late in the process and that dealing with these applications is not one of the department's priorities.

4:25 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Claudette Deschênes

Processing these applications is not the first priority. We are currently processing these applications as quickly as possible. Our priority has always been known to be the family class. These cases do not fit within that category.

4:25 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

The family class includes people who would already have submitted an application for family reunification before the earthquake as well as those who applied later under the federal program.

4:25 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Claudette Deschênes

Exactly, according to the definition of family class for Quebec and Canada.

4:25 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

From what you are saying, it would have been strategically better for individuals wanting to be reunited with their family in Quebec over that period to have applied directly under the federal program rather than under the Quebec program.

4:25 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Claudette Deschênes

Even if an application was under the Quebec program, it would have been processed immediately had it met the federal program standards.

4:25 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

I understand. The Quebec program was broader, more generous. But let us assume that someone was eligible under the federal program. If that person had opted for the Quebec program, it would have slowed down the application.

4:25 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Claudette Deschênes

No. Either way, the Government of Quebec had to meet with the individual. If the application met the standards defined under the federal program, it would have been processed expeditiously. One of the problems posed by these cases is that much time passed between the assessment done by Quebec and the moment when applications were sent in by families. These delays have not helped, but there was nothing we could have done without a formal application.

4:25 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

You are saying that applications under the federal family reunification program were processed as a higher priority than those under the special Quebec program.

Were these applications from outside Quebec, or were they Quebec-based applications made pursuant to the federal program? Did Mr. Linklater tell you anything about that?

4:25 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Claudette Deschênes

All applications that meet the criteria for sponsoring a relative, be they from Quebec or any other province, are processed urgently by the federal government.

4:25 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

Very well, that is the answer. Even though there is a special program for Quebec, you have two categories. You prioritize applications which meet your program standards, but surplus applications coming from Quebec end up lower down on the list.

4:25 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Claudette Deschênes

Yes. Do not forget that the Ottawa office receives assistance from the offices in Port-au-Prince, Santo Domingo and our officers here. We currently still have far more resources processing Haiti-based applications.

4:25 p.m.

Bloc

Thierry St-Cyr Bloc Jeanne-Le Ber, QC

Very well.

4:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you, Monsieur St-Cyr.

You know, we started roughly at twenty minutes to. I'm going to give Dr. Wong five minutes.

4:25 p.m.

Conservative

Alice Wong Conservative Richmond, BC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of you for being here, because then you answer some of the questions.

I visited Beijing, Hong Kong, and Manila. I had lengthy meetings with our CIC officials on site and listened to their challenges, because we're always asked why it takes so long for processing from those places.

Incomplete applications are definitely one of the challenges. Also some of the places are in far-off islands or vast areas. It's very difficult to have them even come back to the offices. There are also the challenges of documentation because of fraud. That has probably made it even more complicated.

There are also cases where the applicant overseas actually really doesn't want to come yet. For some, the husbands, whose wives are working here, don't seem to want to come that fast. That is another challenge, that they will take time; they don't even want to respond yet.

There is also the medical examination. That's why some of our officials, for student visas, actually advise the students to take the medical exam anyway during the process, so they don't have to wait too long to come back.

My question is, what other major initiatives are you working on where we can anticipate seeing client improvements over the next few years?

You did mention quite a bit about the global case management system, but you didn't quite finish on that. So I'll ask you, Mr. Yeates, to comment further on that. In one case, we caught 28 marriage applications from the same small village in China. That's probably one of the things.

4:30 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Neil Yeates

Thank you, Chair.

I can elaborate a bit further on some of the other things we're doing.

We've noted that we did publish a service declaration this spring. We also published the first set of service standards on exemptions for labour market opinions, on family class sponsorships, new permanent resident cards, and grants and contributions. So those are in place now, and we're monitoring those and will be reporting on those shortly.

We've also put in place e-mail feedback forms in each of the missions and on our website. We have redone the website. We did receive feedback from clients indicating that it was difficult to find correct information on the website, so we have redone it and updated it, and we'll continue to do that on an ongoing basis.

We also continue, in some of our specialized business lines, to seek very direct feedback from the people we are working with.

So we've basically broadened the scope of how we interact and bring information in from clients. I mentioned the broader survey we'll be doing later on this year.

On GCMS, Chair, as has been noted, the capability of the system does allow us to identify common addresses, the common use of consultants, say in mailing addresses; there is the issue of ghost consultants, which is a big issue around the world. That can be triggered when we see the use of a common mailing address. When that starts to appear a lot, you know people are using a consultant, whether that's declared or not. So the new system does have a lot of that kind of capacity, and it's really improving our fraud detection and prevention.

As has been noted, in some countries around the world, relationships of convenience, marriages of convenience, as they're called, false documentation--all those kinds of things are kind of endemic to what goes on in some of those countries. The information system is very helpful in making that much more readily obvious.

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

Alice Wong Conservative Richmond, BC

Those are some of the—

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

You have less than a minute, Dr. Wong.

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

Alice Wong Conservative Richmond, BC

So those are more in the short run, but what about the longer term, all these initiatives? Right now, we know there are loopholes and challenges, but what about a longer-term impact?

4:30 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Neil Yeates

Over the longer term, as I noted earlier, GCMS will allow us to shift our workload around our network and sort out the most efficient way to do each step in the process and what is the local value added that we would have from a mission versus what might be done centrally here in Canada, in a very efficient way with very significant economies of scale.

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

Thank you.

That's it. Our time has expired.

Monsieur Ricard, Mr. Wheeler, thank you for coming and giving your thoughts on the Auditor General's report. Pass on our best wishes, and we look forward to seeing her at another time.

Thank you very much.

This committee will suspend for a few moments.

4:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative David Tilson

We're going to start again.

This is the annual report to Parliament on immigration. We have the same officials that were here with the Auditor General.

Mr. Yeates, do you have a few opening comments to make?