Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 1st, 2011

[Michael Boekhoven]

I can only speak for Nairobi.

I don't know if my colleague wants to address it from an international region perspective or not.

No? Okay.

For Nairobi, then, certainly a proportion of the processing is, as you say, empty time. It's sitting, not being actively pursued. However, that proportion of time is much less. Although I haven't quantified it, per se, since my arrival here I get the impression that a lot of it has to do with the infrastructure, with the communications of cases here.

I can't adequately describe in a brief response the difficulties that we have in contacting our clients. The phone doesn't work; although they have mobiles, and mobile phones continue good penetration into the market, they're not reliable, and people don't always have access to them.

The mail does not always work. People may have access to an e-mail address, but they only infrequently check it because they don't have daily access to computers.

It's a huge problem, and we've gone to the stage of trying to contact our clients directly. We try to contact their sponsors directly, we contact stakeholders in the application, wherever they may be. I've even used the services of members of Parliament to assist me in establishing contact with applicants. So that's part of the problem.

Another part of the problem is the complexity of the cases. Cases are legally complex, they're procedurally complex, and that slows processing as well.

Fraud is an issue here. If we have to send a document--

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

Unless I'm mistaken, you're reviewing those examples. That's not quantified, at least in the case of Nairobi. There aren't any studies or analyses that you could submit to parliamentarians that would explain to us how much time is represented by waiting and legal analysis.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have 30 seconds.

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

Is that done on an international scale?

[Rénald Gilbert]

I don't think we can provide you with a model like what you're describing. However, based on the measures that have been taken elsewhere, on average, a file is in someone's hands for a little more than two hours. There is of course downtime during that period.

The longest waiting period during processing is at the start of the process, even before we start. For example, in the case of sponsored refugees, the inventory consists of nearly 8,000 persons, whereas the objective is 700. We're obviously processing the oldest cases right now, not the recently arrived cases. We can't do that according to the set objective.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Monsieur Gilbert.

Ms. Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

My question is really to our director, Mr. Gilbert. Eighteen countries is huge, in terms of Nairobi being one office. What kind of regional benefits would you get from one country with one office serving 18 countries?

As well, do you have a staffing formula that is connected to the targets? If, for example, the targets in Nairobi are 6,580 this year and it has 12 staff, given all the inherent problems, is it comparable to other offices that have similar numbers but fewer challenges?

On top of that, I noticed they do internal, which I support; they process the temporary visas for visitors, whereas New Delhi and Beijing, for example, have an Indian company that processes them all.

If you calculate that, how do you come to decide that the Nairobi office would have 12 staff and 33 locally engaged staff? How do you make that staffing decision, based on the inherent problems that we have heard, serving 18 countries?

[Rénald Gilbert]

First, I should point out that the company you refer to in India and China is the same that we are using in Nairobi.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Oh, I see. And Mexico, etc., they're the same?

[Rénald Gilbert]

Mexico is a different one, but this is the same as in Delhi. They don't process cases, as you suggest. They essentially courier, the company that they are using—

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I understand that. They do intake.

[Rénald Gilbert]

Okay.

Yes, we do have a formula, that each decision-maker makes an average of 860 decisions on permanent residents a year. That varies a lot from country to country. Nairobi is one place where each decision-maker makes fewer decisions, and for this reason we're providing more officers per case than we do, let's say, in a place like Delhi.

The reason for that is the variety of caseloads that you describe. That's why essentially we have to, if possible, add staff. Nairobi is the only place where we added staff last year. We added two decision-makers, plus six locally engaged. We'll add as well this year, in order to compensate for the fact that they can't be as productive for a variety of reasons.

One reason that hasn't been pointed out so far is that they're often on the road. If you go to the refugee camp, let's say you pack up all your kit, you drive there, you're there for three days, you come back; essentially you're losing time during that period of time. You have to retype your notes. There are things like that that have to happen. That's with regard to the formula, if I may.

If I compare it to other missions, the same number of staff, let's say in Manila, would produce more, as I described. We try to match that the best we can. But in terms of the 18 countries, many of those countries none of you here has ever heard of. It's an island where.... We have three countries where nobody has ever applied. Essentially, we have five countries, really, where we have a lot of applications, which was described by Michael a bit earlier. None of them really has a critical mass to create a new office.

One option we're looking at is actually to create one in Ethiopia. It's a space issue. Significant investments have to be done within the embassy, and when we want to increase our presence we always have to take that into account. We need a place, a physical plant, where we can add staff.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Yes.

I noticed that you have created some initiatives: up-front file triage, looking at getting temporary resources, etc. There's this whole computer-based processing now, at least centrally. When do you think that would arrive at your Nairobi office?

[Rénald Gilbert]

Since late last fall, all the files for, let's say, priority family class cases are created in Canada. So whenever Nairobi starts to process them, the input of the cases has already been done. We've done that for every mission. Some will benefit more than others, and that's certainly the case for Nairobi.

Those types of initiatives are happening as well more globally, if I can say. In order to have, as much as we can, all the work that can be done in Canada done in Canada.... That's an example; since the application is here, we can input the data, and it's being done in our office in Sydney. We work on a two shifts type of thing. That's one thing.

Second, Nairobi has changed some of their processes, as you described. They issued twice as many visas for priority cases than they did the previous year. It went from 700 to 1,400, and we're aiming at 1,700 next year. So the long processing time that we have now we certainly hope is going to be cut quite drastically this calendar year.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Thank you.

If the file is created in Canada, with all the MPs phoning occasionally because of the backlog, your office in Nairobi probably may not have the facilities to deal with these kind of requests.

Have you considered having it centralized in Canada so that you would then obtain the information from the Nairobi office in one shot with 10 cases from 10 MPs rather than each MP calling the Nairobi office separately? Wouldn't that actually help streamline the process?

[Rénald Gilbert]

We do have a centralized process, as you know.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I do know that, yes.

[Rénald Gilbert]

There is a service in Ottawa that is used by members of Parliament to ask for information on cases. They have access to the same information as Nairobi, actually. So the information you're getting from the ministerial services centrally in Ottawa is essentially the same as you would get from Nairobi.

It does happen that questions are asked of both different offices. We do prefer when it's done in Canada, mainly because in order to answer from Nairobi we're taking resources away from processing to answer the questions.

With the global case management system, we have more information available now for new cases. Today we're implementing it in Hong Kong, which means that we'll have only five or six offices in the whole world where we will not have GCMS.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Chow.

Ms. Grewal.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Boekhoven, thank you very much for your time. Certainly your job is not an easy one, but thank you very much for all you do on behalf of Canada and Canadians.

In your opening statement, you said that the regional insecurities make it difficult to complete your job successfully and in a timely manner. Can you please tell us in detail what kind of regional insecurities affect the region? In what ways does that affect your work at the mission? Would you also please tell us how it impacts the application processing time?

[Michael Boekhoven]

Thank you for that.

It's a large question. I can go individually down the list, but a couple of examples will suffice.

Somalia is acknowledged globally as being a failed state. Civil documentation has not been available from Somalia for at least 10 years. The passport is readily available from vendors throughout Nairobi, if you would like to have yourself designated as a Somali national.

That's an extreme example, to be sure. Nevertheless, there are others.

The Congo, as you know, has undergone recently a very severe civil conflict. Gross violations of human rights continue. The United Nations released a report--I think it was late last year--outlining a massive violation of human rights in eastern Congo that had occurred in the previous four or five months or something like that.

Rwanda underwent its genocide. Burundi had something that was remarkably similar.

Those are the types of insecurities we talk about. Unfortunately, the democratic institutions, the various political processes that have been chosen are still being tested; although there are elections, they are fraught. Even in those areas where you would expect a little more stability, there's still an awful lot of insecurity that's quite evident.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

In your area of operation, fraudulent documentation is quite common among economic class applicants. This could include false bank documents, educational documents, and employment letters. What steps have you taken to overcome these issues? Could you also tell us what documents you rely on? I'm looking for that type of information.

[Michael Boekhoven]

What we've done to address the challenges...[Technical difficulty--Editor]. Let me say from the outset that the challenges we face in this area are much less with the...[Technical difficulty--Editor]...movement.

The movement from Mauritius, which is the main source of our federal skilled workers--not the sole source, but the main source--is relatively straightforward and has a very adequate civil infrastructure. Where we find challenges is mostly in the family class, and occasionally with the refugees. With refugees, we don't normally get a good corpus of documentation to review. For those applicants, we rely almost exclusively on interviews to try to tease out their stories.

For the family class, however, we rely extensively on civil documentation. Sometimes we have difficulties with certain issuing offices. We recently were assigned an incremental resource, an anti-fraud officer. One of the Canada Border Services Agency officers was assigned. The position came in around 2008. That is exclusively looking at fraud and anti-fraud measures. That officer has undertaken extensive regional travel to learn the state of civil documentation and to establish partnerships with the authorities that issue civil documents throughout the region. That work is still under way. With 18 countries, it is quite a lot.

We use those partnerships to verify documents where necessary. We have a bit of a database we are starting on problematic offices. We tend to see fraud focused in certain areas. We're focusing on documentation in those areas.

Those are a few of the measures we take to address fraud.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Could you also tell us to date how many files you have in your mission from all over those 18 countries? Do you have a number?

[Michael Boekhoven]

I don't have a firm statistic. I know that we're processing somewhere around 12,000 applications for permanent residence. That's the total in our inventory for all stages of process.