Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 15th, 2011

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

I would just point out, Chair, that this is a study on wait times, not fees.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

It's well taken.

Mr. Shory, perhaps you could proceed.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you for the comment from my colleague, but absolutely the fee and wait times are in the same part.

Let me get back to the wait time that my friend is interested in. The wait time, under this government, for the skilled worker category is now less than one year, not six years or plus.

Having said all of that, as the majority of the south Asian community in Calgary lives in my riding, I would like to ask my question, and address it to Mr. Manicom.

Mr. Manicom, I understand that in tackling wait times, we must make smart decisions, and we must make the decisions that are in the best interest of Canada. I would like to ask you what sort of problems you see specifically in your region that can account for prolonged applicant wait times.

[David Manicom]

Generally speaking, long wait times are not the result of processing admissions. Long wait times are generated when the volume of applications received is larger than the targets we are permitted to issue. That is for the overwhelming majority of wait times at missions abroad.

It is certainly true that, in addition to that, a certain number of applications have fraudulent documentation on them and generate additional processing time, and particularly in the parents and grandparents category, medical complications, particularly active tuberculosis, can lead to significant processing times.

Those I think are the smaller element of processing delay, the larger one being the difference between application intake and these targets.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Talking about the numbers, last year Canada welcomed a record number of newcomers, which is more than from the last 50 or 55 years. Of course, you and your counterparts had a lot to do with that. I'd like to thank you for that once again.

We understand that the overseas network has its own operational targets within the immigration level plans. Did your admissions, specifically Delhi's admissions, exceed these targets? If yes, why and how?

[David Manicom]

We issued 102% of our visa target. Most of the overage was due to achieving 109% of the target for priority family class spouses, where our policy globally is to process as many as we can and as fast as we can, so as not to keep immediate family members apart.

Aside from our family class priority program, we met our target at 100.1% or 100.2%, if memory serves.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Is it fair to say that the track this government has recently taken is bringing positive results and the timely processing of applications, specifically in skilled workers?

[David Manicom]

I think that's perhaps a question for my minister, sir.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Okay.

Anyone can answer this question. What do you think government should do more to make the program more efficient and effective?

[Rénald Gilbert]

I would say the challenge of the current government and any government is to make the program as simple as possible. It's definitely an issue. To have a certain amount of control over the intake of applications has a major impact. That's certainly what we see with the last skilled worker program that has a cap on the number of applications received.

Besides that, it would be up to the government of the day to decide that having simple programs is the key thing.

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Talking about the cap, if I understand it correctly, with the skilled workers category, recently there was a cap in specific categories.

As Mr. Manicom mentioned, they have exceeded the target last year. If they exceed or finish their target or the capped target within time or before time, would you be able to address the family stream if there are more than what you assigned for coming here?

[Rénald Gilbert]

My colleague described the work that they do at the mission, where a significant part of the work has to do with temporary resident visas. It has a huge impact on our capacity to make decisions and to issue immigrant visas. In 2010 we had some capacity to do it, because there were fewer visitors who came in 2009. There's always a lag time between visa issuance and arrival in Canada. For instance, almost all the immigrants who are going to arrive today, February 15, received their visa in 2010, not this year. They received it last year.

Could we do more? It depends partly on resources. Resources are definitely an issue, but the targets have by far the most impact on processing time. With regard to priority cases for spouses and minor children, there's no target per se. It's an estimate. The estimate depends on the number of applications we receive, so a lot of the overshoot of the target last year was due to a higher number of spouse applications.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Shory.

I have a couple of questions for Mr. Gilbert.

Does one of these three missions have greater wait times than the others?

[Rénald Gilbert]

The wait time is slightly different in each of our 60-odd missions. The processing time for priority spouses is shortest in Beijing. The longest is probably in Nairobi. It does vary from place to place, but it's not....

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I understand that. But I get impressions from questions that are asked by my colleagues that some areas are more difficult than others. I think it's important for the committee to know if Nairobi, say, is a problem. If the other missions are a problem, we need to know that, because there may be something the government can do.

You mentioned that resources may be an issue. There may be other issues.

[Rénald Gilbert]

Yes, resources is one of the issues. With regard to spouse processing, it definitely is the case. Other issues have to do with a spike of applications in other categories, such as students or visitors. Our programs are fairly simple and what we call “intake control” has a major impact as well.

We try to even it out as much as we can. We sent additional resources to Nairobi last year, but those resources were taken from other missions, so it evened out at some point between missions. Some places are going to get shorter and some will get longer.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Yes.

With respect to granting visas...and this is with respect to each of these three missions, and Nairobi, I suppose, is another one. What percentage of visitors in each year, where visas are granted, don't return?

[Rénald Gilbert]

Well, we—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

The reason I ask is that members of Parliament are often asked about getting a mother or sister over. One of the favourite responses is that, well, they're worried that they're not going to go home.

Is there a problem in some of these missions?

[Rénald Gilbert]

We don't have exit control, so we don't know the number of people who don't return. We know those who claim refugee status, or who ask to stay on humanitarian grounds. The number is significant if you look at the number of refugee claims. Many of them came with visas that we issued. Every day a visa is going to be issued in one of those three missions. Some will remain in Canada and claim refugee status who were originally supposed to be coming to visit family members.

Do we have exact data? No, because we don't have exit control. But every day we get notice of a person who came to visit a sister and on arrival claimed refugee status. It happens every day at almost every mission.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Oliphant.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here and for the work you do.

I have a couple of questions around targets. I have trouble with the use of the word “target”, because usually a target is something for which you're going from zero to try to achieve, and you're actually working the other way. You're actually working with an inventory that you're trying to limit, so I would actually call it a “quota”, not a target.

When I worked in business we wanted to produce so much steel. That was our target. When I was a pastor in a church and wanted to bring in so many people and so much money, that was a target. This isn't a target. This is actually a quota.

So I'm interested in knowing, following up on Mr. Manicom's remarks, what role you play in setting the government's targets, and what role the inventories you maintain play in setting the targets that the government uses.

[Rénald Gilbert]

If I could, I will start just by saying that on the government target in general our role is largely consultation. Also, it is our duty to say whether we can do it or not. Because even if we are asked to do 10 times more or even to do twice as many skilled workers, I would tell my minister, “Sorry, but even if you want to, I can't.” So part of our role is to say what's feasible and what's not.

When it has been determined on the policy side that we will accept so many people in Canada, our role on the operations side is really to make sure that it does happen. It's also to divide between missions...the role of actually setting targets between missions is largely operational, so it is with us because it needs to be modified a number of times during the year. For instance, we've already done it twice since the beginning of the year. There is always minor tweaking here and there, but let's say our mission in Abidjan was closed for a number of weeks. Then Abidjan will not issue all those visas, so we have to make sure that other offices compensate for that.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

In Beijing for 2011 the target is 2,650 parents and grandparents, in New Delhi it's 2,500, and in Manila it's 800. Do those numbers relate to your inventory or do they relate to a political target in Canada?

[Rénald Gilbert]

It can't be political; they don't even know, I think, how we split it, so unless they receive the same documents that you do on the political side.... It is largely what we have in inventory with regard to all those categories. Where there is a target, we look at the inventory, at what is already in the pipeline. We look at how old that is, at how many are close to visa issuance, if I could say it that way.

Those are key things in determining if a mission can do it. Also, resource-wise, can we do it? Most of the categories are that way.

For some others, it's an estimate, or even if we don't have the cases in the inventory, we try to estimate where they will happen. That would be the case for spousal cases, or in the case, let's say, of provincial nominees or Quebec cases, where we may not have all the cases in the inventory at the beginning of the year. But we know that every year we receive so many from, let's say, Romania. Well, we know approximately how many Romanian cases we're going to have--