Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 1st, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. McLuckie, for your presentation. There will be some questions from the committee.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I notice that the target for 2011 for family class reunification in Taipei—this is from the ATIP document we became aware of a couple of weeks ago—has a total of five. The numbers in 2010 for three-quarters of the family reunification, parents and grandparents, was 20. There is no backlog.

Do you expect there's going to be a significant drop down to five? Why would you set a target at five when last year the numbers were higher? Does it decrease the appearance of the overall numbers the department produces on that particular category? What is the thinking? It doesn't seem to match what the requirement was last year.

[Sean McLuckie]

If I may, I would first of all clarify that I believe the numbers to which you refer are preliminary targets; they've already been adjusted up to 30, for example. As has been mentioned in the prior testimonies, targets are adjusted throughout the year.

Having said that, of the parents and grandparents, last year we finalized our target of 80 cases. This year we don't have that many clients and inventory. At the present time it looks as though the notion of 30 targets will be what we can achieve.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

My next question is to Mr. Gilbert.

It appears that the target isn't that far off and there is movement to make adjustments. Your official has said there's a good chance these quotas that were set by your department in this January document will be adjusted.

I raise the issue of Warsaw, which also had a target for parental and grandparental reunification of only five. The numbers of parents and grandparents, in 2009, for instance, was 158. There's real concern that the number of five was perhaps pulled out of the air to once again just plug a number in.

Since your last appearance here, have you adjusted the numbers for parents and grandparents who would like to be reunified with their families in Canada, from five to a number that more closely reflects what's happened in the past?

[Rénald Gilbert]

We don't base targets on what has happened in the past. We look at the applications we have in the inventory, what stage they are at, and how old the applications are from a particular country.

For instance, in the case of Warsaw, we don't have any applications that are older than 2009. In other countries, we have over 10,000 applications from before 2009. We try to concentrate mostly on the older inventory.

That being said, in the case of Warsaw, we had many applications that were far advanced in the process and we didn't want them to have to redo their medical. The last time we changed the information was January 31—we do that about 10 times a year—and the current target in Warsaw is 60.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, just to remind you, we're in Taipei.

But go ahead, it's your dime.

[Rénald Gilbert]

If I could add one thing, there was no overall target. Those 55 were taken away from somewhere else.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Gilbert.

You just referenced a document you have in front of you, which is the revised targets as of January 31. Could you please table that with the committee so we could all have access to that?

[Rénald Gilbert]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We have a problem. Where's our man?

Stop the clock for a moment.

Are we having a break, or what's going on?

[An hon. member]

Our witness has gone.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Well, we'll have to go with Mr. Gilbert. I don't know where our witness in Taiwan has gone.

Start the clock again, please.

It's never dull in this committee.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Our witness from Taipei has left us. So perhaps we'll continue on with Warsaw, because it was of tremendous concern to many Polish Canadians.

We also had a tremendous concern when it came to the target of 25 that was set for Kiev.

Could you tell us what the readjustment has been for parents and grandparents for 2011 out of Kiev?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Dykstra on a point of order.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I understand Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's request on this issue, but we have people here on video from Taipei. Could we not stick to the topic at hand so that we could move things forward?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You know, it's a valid point of order, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj. If you want to get Warsaw in here, we'll get them in another day. These witnesses are prepared to talk about Taipei. They're not here prepared to talk about Warsaw.

I think it's a fair point of order, so please stick to Taipei.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Absolutely. I hadn't realized that the witness had come back.

Since he is back with us, in regard to Taipei, Taipei has a highly skilled workforce. It is a highly developed economy. It seems that they could provide the types of immigrants that Canada would especially want, yet we've seen a significant drop in the number of applications.

Is there anything that your office could be doing to encourage some of the numbers toward what they were as recently as two years ago?

[Sean McLuckie]

In terms of the immigrant applications, there's been a long-standing decline. If you look at the numbers out of Taipei--or at least from Taiwan--in the mid- to late-1990s, it was around 12,000 or 13,000 immigrants a year. This has, as you mentioned, declined significantly and steadily. This in part reflects the increased confidence in the economy and opportunities here in Taiwan.

The Taiwanese have also been looking elsewhere. They've been looking to the mainland. They've had a measure of relaxed ties; there are over a million Taiwanese actually doing business on the mainland at the present time.

The movement, in terms of its interest in Canada, and the push factors that drive it and the pull factors that bring it to Canada, is in flux. Whether more could be done to attract them to Canada, I am not entirely sure. The opportunities for most Taiwanese are actually quite good in Taiwan in terms of the skilled worker movement.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have 30 seconds.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Does this mean that you'll be looking at decreasing the staffing levels and the resources that you have at your disposal in Taipei?

[Sean McLuckie]

In effect that has actually already occurred. The cuts that happened in December went beyond the actual cuts required, let's say, just on the visa waiver itself. They reflected a decline in the investor applications and the skilled worker applications that have been coming out of Taiwan.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. McLuckie.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I was interrupted during my last speech by a pseudo-point of order, I hope you'll be flexible and allow me to continue with my question for Mr. Gilbert, as it concerns Nairobi.

We were talking about the differences between centralizing and decentralizing applications processing. I understand his explanation that expertise is developing in the field, locally. However, couldn't we consider that, if we had more missions for the same geographic area, we would have more specific expertise? He cited the example of China, but the fact remains that, from a geographical standpoint, it's a single country. There are regional variations, as in any country, but the fact remains that the situation is the same. It also seems to me that Somalia, Rwanda and other countries served by the mission can present completely different worlds.

If we had even more missions focused to a greater degree on certain countries, wouldn't we develop more specific expertise?

[Rénald Gilbert]

You're right. In an ideal world, we would have more points of service and more local information. What is difficult, however, is that, for a functional office, we need a sufficiently large critical mass. In a number of places, in Nairobi, for example, if we applied the rule that we should have a specific minimum number of officers, we would have five offices with one and a half officers each. It's very difficult to do that, of course. In many cases, we nevertheless keep two officers. Currently in Taiwan, we shouldn't have as many employees; there should be one or two fewer. However, we become less effective as soon as we fall below a certain threshold.

That's essentially the justification, the reason why we want to move certain administrative classes to Canada. That could also give us flexibility when there are sudden increases or decreases, as quite often happens.

For example, Sean noted that, over the years, Taiwan has had a constant decline in the number of applications. However, all it takes is for a few warships to arrive from continental China off the coast of Taipei for the number of applications to suddenly explode. We have previously seen that in the case of Taiwan.

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

With regard to Taipei, you mentioned in your presentation that 320 federal investor cases had been finalized. The document submitted to us refers to 187 applications in Taipei. So that means that the number of cases you finalized is much larger than the number of applications received from investors. Is that correct?