Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 1st, 2011

[Sean McLuckie]

Yes, that's correct.

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

Do you expect to maintain this rate in order to further reduce investor wait times?

[Sean McLuckie]

Wait times are minimal for investors. We may have to lower the targets. That's been done in the past.

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

Of that number, 23 applications come from Quebec's immigrant investor program. I believe that the 320 applications finalized were solely under the federal component. In 2010, how many applications did you process that at been processed by the Government of Quebec and subsequently referred back to you?

[Sean McLuckie]

In 2010, we approved 21 applications, whereas we had received 38.

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

In the case of the federal program, you processed more applications than you received, whereas in the case of the Quebec program, you processed fewer applications than you received. What's the explanation for that difference?

[Sean McLuckie]

It's just a question of receipt of applications. We stopped receiving federal investor applications in June, I believe. The Quebec investor applications continued to arrive until August or September. In fact, the people decided to file their applications in Quebec, not elsewhere.

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

So you process applications from previous years. I understand there isn't necessarily a connection between the two.

We communicate with the people working for Quebec's immigrant investor program, and they often tell us that people have the perception they're being asked to do the same thing twice. In the past, we asked the Government of Quebec to do more work verifying the legitimacy and source of funds. Nothing was being done at the time. Now a validation is done. If my memory serves me, 98% of applications from Quebec are ultimately accepted. However, those same people tell us that, when their application is submitted to the federal government, the entire process has to be started over again, that is to say the source of funds is verified again and they are questioned once again about the entire file in a different form, which takes a lot of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have 30 seconds.

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

The clients and the people they work with have the impression they're being asked the same thing twice. What efforts are being made to avoid this kind of situation?

[Sean McLuckie]

I would say that doesn't often happen now. There are of course some situations where that occurs, but Quebec officers generally do a good job and the applications we receive contain the information we need. I would say we don't very often request any new information.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Davies, welcome back.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have some questions.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Yes, I do.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have up to seven minutes.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

I'm sorry I didn't hear the presentations, but I have just been reading through the presentation given by Sean McLuckie.

I want to begin my questions by asking about the targets for the parent and grandparent class.

You mentioned in your comments “a reduction in the levels allocated to Taipei for 2011”. My understanding is that for parents, it's gone down to five—that's the projected number--from 80 applications, I think it is.

So we're down to, supposedly, only five applications, but I note that you also say in your remarks that “processing times in this category are expected to grow”. I'm just curious as to what that means, given that we're going down to five.

I have two questions: one, why is it going down to five; and two, why, then, would the processing times be expected to grow, and how long will that processing time be?

[Sean McLuckie]

The first answer is that the notional target of five was immediately modified to reflect what we actually have in inventory. Having said that, new applications still come in. At the present time what we have in inventory at any stage of process of the FC4 cases is 24 cases. That amounts to a little bit over 30 individuals, maybe 32, 33. So depending on how many actually apply through the rest of the year, they may or may not have their cases processed. But the fact is that for at least a few of them, they will get processed this year. If you compare it to previous years....

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Go ahead.

[Sean McLuckie]

Compared to some previous years, the statistics are a bit deceiving. The processing times for our FC movement have actually been generally pretty good. Again, we've been processing more than have been coming in.

Do you remember when I said—maybe you weren't here—the applications in the mid and late 1990s were 12,000 to 13,000 Taiwanese a year? These people have already sponsored their parents. With the declining number of people who are applying in recent years, a declining number are sponsoring their parents.

So to be honest, yes, this year, immediately, some cases won't get processed, but this is nothing comparable. It is not a disaster. We're talking maybe a year.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

I'm still not clear, though, how the number five was established. There used to be, I believe, 80 who were approved, so how we got down to five, and how that number is selected, is just not clear. It seems incredibly low. Again, it's just not clear to me how, if we're dealing with such a low number, if that's what it ends up being, the processing time would actually increase, unless you're saying that staff resources are going to other classes or other elements of the program.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Monsieur Gilbert.

[Rénald Gilbert]

I think I should answer this question. I am the one who picks the targets; it's not Sean.

We reduced it in order to give it to other missions that had applications where processing was longer, in order to reduce the processing time where it was longer and where we had larger inventory. For instance, we have increased significantly the target for China. Part of it came from Taiwan. What we hope is that it will reduce the processing time in China, where we have a far larger number than we have in Taipei, and far older applications. In Taipei we have the applications, as Sean described, that are processing very recently. They just submitted the applications. We still have a lot of applications for parents and grandparents: 1,700, 1,800 in China. That is why we do transfer target space from one mission to the next, in order to help the other mission.

The processing time is going to get longer in Taiwan because their target is lower, and it's going to get shorter in China because we increased the target. There is a match between the two.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Could you say how many applications there are now--that are either in process or sitting in a stack somewhere--from Taiwan for parents?

[Rénald Gilbert]

For Taiwan, parents and grandparents, as of December 31 there were 37 people, so that's probably about 10 or 12 families.