Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 15th, 2011

[Rénald Gilbert]

It's 85% abroad and about 15% in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Are there parts that are dealt with abroad that might be more appropriately dealt with in Canada?

[Rénald Gilbert]

I don't know about the complete application, but certainly part of the process can be done in Canada, possibly more efficiently. We're talking about, for instance, file creation.

With regard to making a decision, the people who are the best fit for making a decision are those who know the clientele better. Very often, what we find out...actually, we find that out in almost every single—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I understand that. It's just that some countries have a more centralized form of process than Canada's. It would be useful if you would have any recommendations to the committee as to what portions could be perhaps more centralized.

[Rénald Gilbert]

I'm not sure that I could make a comment in this forum here. One thing I could say with regard to the experience of other countries is that Australia, for instance, centralized a lot of their processing, and now they are in the reverse process of decentralizing. So depending on when you get the information, it makes a difference between the two....

Some parts of processes could be done onshore, as they say in Australia, and some offshore. Australia, for instance, takes sponsorships abroad; they don't take them inland. We do the reverse. Which one is more efficient? I probably still think that it is more efficient here, because we have a better place in Canada to assess the sponsorship of the person residing here.

I'm not sure I have a recommendation that I would be able to make. Both the centralized and the decentralized, depending on the process, have their advantages and disadvantages.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Can any of the other witnesses comment on this centralization of applications?

[Sidney Frank]

Mr. Chair, you mentioned this earlier: how do we get knowledge of particular cultures? If we're dealing with a particular country where there is fraud, where we know there's fraud, and where we've identified fraud, it's important to have that local knowledge of the culture to make decisions on cases.

There are certain types of caseloads from countries with rule of law, countries where the risks are not very great, and if you're looking at centralizing decision-making, it would be those types of caseloads from those types of countries where you could possibly do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

I want to thank members for allowing me to ask so many questions this morning.

Mr. Trudeau.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

To return to something that sort of caught my eye, when I deal with cases in my riding where people come to ask me why it's taking so long for their parents to come over, one of the things they're always frustrated by is the inability to actually get their parents to come over even on visitor visas. It's not nearly as common as some of the members think, or else my riding is being unfairly targeted, which I don't think.

Could you talk a little bit about what percentage of parents and grandparents waiting to be brought over are granted temporary visitor visas, what percentage of those who actually request it...?

[Rénald Gilbert]

The only thing we have is the stats of people who have applied. That's about 50%. The majority have approvals, but we don't have stats that allow us to do that.... We'd probably need to pull several hundred cases and do an assessment out of that. We don't have it statistically, because when somebody comes to visit, we don't record them as parents or grandparents. There is no record of that taken.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Is this something that's going to be fixed with the new case management system? Would you be able to monitor that?

[Rénald Gilbert]

I don't think so. I don't think we have a record of reasons for visiting--visiting children, coming to the casino.... We don't have those subcategories for visas.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

But you should be able to know if someone is applying for a visitor visa and they're already in the system as waiting to come over, obviously. It's on those cases, just specifically, when people are rejected for visitor visas, that one of the most common check marks--and we've all seen the form--is that “we're not sure you'll return back at the end of your visa”. Also, when you've already indicated you want to come over and settle permanently because you're being sponsored, well, that's a big X against someone who's coming over to visit.

[David Manicom]

I'd put it a little bit the other way. We have the largest family class program in the world. We issue visitor visas to parents who are in process all the time; it's absolutely routine. As a matter of fact, if they're in process, they've generally already demonstrated that they have the financial capability to sponsor, so our officers issue five-year multiple entry visas to a lot of these cases.

Now, a lot of individuals are also refused. Normally, they're refused where the ties are very weak in the home country and the immigrant in Canada is not yet very well established and is probably not financially capable of sponsoring. There, you have a tricky call on the part of the visa officer, and some of those are refused.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I think Mr. Wrzesnewskyj wanted to ask a question.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

I'd just like to get a last question in.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Sure.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

The principle of immigration is to bring people over to work and to serve our country in general. That's one of our goals. We're trying to improve Canada by improving the lives of Canadians here or from elsewhere.

Why is it important to bring over parents and grandparents of immigrants? We're still allowing 11,000 in, which is a significant number. What do people say is the need to have their parents and grandparents come over?

[Rénald Gilbert]

I think you are probably as well placed as me to hear what people say with regard to that.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Well, how do you justify it?

[Rénald Gilbert]

We're one of the very few countries that do that. Australia has a quota of 200 next year or something like that, so we are in a different situation.

The rationale that we hear most often is more for humanitarian reasons than for any other reason.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Has the minister's office ever communicated with you in the setting of these targets about the New Delhi or the Beijing consular sections?

[Rénald Gilbert]

No.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Okay.

I referenced earlier that the targets or the quota--