Good morning. I am pleased to be here this morning to share with you our views on immigration application process wait times, and to offer you a few suggestions of ways to reduce these wait times for applications under the family class or the investor class.
We understand that finding a balance between all priorities in immigration is difficult. We also understand that if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. Allocating resources, processing applications in an efficient way, assessing the risks involved, and respecting goals and targets—these are formidable challenges. We hope, however, that our suggestions can be put to use to alleviate the impact of long wait times, and we are happy to continue the discussion on those subjects.
Allow me first to touch on investors. As we indicated in our submissions, we strongly believe that if the government has determined that the investor class and the entrepreneur class are beneficial to Canada and should remain an option, immediate steps should be taken to ensure that CIC can process applications in a reasonable timeframe so that they make business sense for those willing to embark on the process. Long processing delays seriously undermine the viability of these programs. If who we want are the best and the brightest, we cannot make them wait around for years. They have other options; they will decide to invest in other countries, and this will be our loss.
We realize that investor files are complex. Applications typically contain a large number of documents, and the requirements to evaluate and assess the proof of funds and the value of business can be time-consuming. We suggest that applicants should be given the option of providing an expert report from an authorized third party, thus reducing the amount of work required by the officer. This model of delegating a portion of the examination to industry experts has been adopted by CIC in other areas, such as language testing.
We would also suggest that the assessment of the source of funds carried out by the ministère de l'Immigration et des Communautés culturelles, in those cases originating from Quebec, be taken into consideration and granted the evidentiary weight it deserves. Our analysis tells us that these cases should not take up officers' time unnecessarily.
It is the prerogative of the government to decide whether it supports one program or another. If the decision is to offer the program, in order for the program to be a viable option it must be implemented in such a way as to be transparent and efficient, with realistic targets and timelines. This is true for the investor program as much as it is for other categories such as family class, including applications for parents and grandparents.
I will now give the floor to my colleague Dianna Okun-Nachoff, who will discuss the issues regarding family class applications.