Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 10th, 2011

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

Feel free to write to me and I'll look into it.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Monsieur St-Cyr.

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

I want to ask Mr. Gilbert a question. I want to get back to an earlier question of mine, since I was interrupted.

Out of all the QSCs sent to various missions for processing, what percentage were refused for safety reasons and what percentage for health reasons?

[Rénald Gilbert]

I can't give you this information because the system we have been using up until now keeps track of refusals but not necessarily of the reasons behind them. The new system that is just about ready—it should be up and running next week—will enable us to keep track of the reasons behind refusals.

We will be able to determine whether the refusal was related to criminal, safety, medical or other issues. In many cases, another reason is provided. For instance, a family member might refuse to undergo a medical examination or applicants might decide to change their destination. There are several possible reasons, but the current system called CAIPS does not keep track of them. The only way to do so, is to manually process a very large case sample and to figure out what...

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

Based on your experience or on the feedback from people on site, do you have any idea of the percentage? Are we talking about a quarter, three quarters or half?

[Rénald Gilbert]

Medical issues are certainly cited most often, while safety is less of a factor. In Moscow's case, for instance, there are a lot of concerns regarding organized crime. In certain countries, the risk of crime is higher than in other countries. Some countries don't have a solid justice system, which helps us find out whether a person has a criminal record. In other countries, it's just the opposite.

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

Okay.

I want to get back to the topic of Moscow. We will continue our surreal discussion, in which my words are first translated into English to then be transcribed in French.

In your presentation, you talked about immigrants who are investors, and the number of applications by investors processed by Quebec. You said that processing time for investors selected by Quebec is the shortest of any province. It is 32 months, whereas the average is 43 months. However, we obviously have to factor into this the period of time during which the Government of Quebec makes its selection. When the two periods are added, the processing times are somewhat equal and perhaps even longer in Quebec's case.

We have often heard the same comment from immigrants who have gone through the system. I often get the same comment from immigration lawyers or consultants. Recently, Canadian Bar Association representatives confirmed this to the committee. They said that they have the impression that the same work is being done twice. In other words, the Government of Quebec checks the source of funds, confirms that the funds were acquired properly, that they are not the result of criminal activity, that they do exist, that applicants do have those funds at their disposal and that their application is valid. We are told that the same verifications are done at the federal level, while the only thing that remains to be done, in reality, is a security check.

Are you aware of this problem? What measures have been taken to avoid a situation where the work done by the Government of Quebec is done over again?

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

I am very aware of this situation and I served for four years in Paris. I understand very well the work done by Quebec. The selection is done by Quebec, and that's why the processing time is shorter than it is for federal cases. However, health, safety and criminal considerations are a federal concern. The source of funds, organized crime and safety are our responsibility, and Russia is struggling with those. We must review those documents so that we can make a safe decision. We do not re-do the work, we do not check the selection—that does not interest us—but we do look into where the funds come from and other safety issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you. The time has expired.

Mr. Uppal, you have up to five minutes, sir.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, witnesses, for being here on video conference from Moscow.

You mentioned something interesting in your opening statement. You talked about the fact that visas issued to refugees nearly doubled in 2010. You also mentioned the challenges you have. There are lengthy background checks. You mentioned before that there is concern with fraud, as there is in many other parts of the world, and you even have to go on-site sometimes. With those challenges, the fact that they were doubled...and still you said that the processing times for most refugees were reduced significantly.

Can you expand on the steps you've taken to improve processing times of these applications?

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

In 2010 we had various challenges, in terms of Olympics and so forth. I don't think there was as much time to go on these area checks. Selection of refugees is not done in the Moscow area. A lot of it is in Tajikistan or Uzbekistan. So going there and planning these trips is rather time-consuming. We've been doing that more recently, and we definitely have been getting more referrals from the UNHCR. We also have to assume that there are probably more Afghans, because a lot of them are Afghans who have left Afghanistan and are in difficult situations in these other countries, and UNHCR is trying to resettle them. So it's part of our mandate, and we have been going on area trips and we have been doing interviews to try to keep up with this demand.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

And in keeping up with that demand, you're saying that your processing times have been reduced significantly as well. What are the steps you've taken causing them to come down?

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

It's because for our refugees there's almost a 100% interview rate, so if we're not doing the interviews, then we're not processing. In the months that go by during which we don't do interviews, we're not really making selection decisions. We've done quite a few area trips in the last six or eight months, so that has helped us speed up the selection process.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Thank you.

In general, do you think that if the intake of applications were reduced, that would help eliminate the immigration backlogs?

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

Well, I guess if you had fewer applications to process, then the answer would be yes, you would have less work to do.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

I thought so.

I'm going to share my time with Mrs. Grewal.

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

Thank you.

In your presentations you were talking about fraud. Fraud is a variable that increases processing times.

What strategies have you found most effective in reducing the impact of fraud on your operations? Could you please both let us know about that?

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

Fraud is a very difficult aspect of our work, and especially in a very large country. If you're working in a physically smaller country, maybe it's a bit easier to go and do some site visits. We have challenges, for sure, for this particular reason.

We have dedicated staff, both Canada-based staff and locally engaged. We're trying to learn from fraud detection. We're trying to do verifications with companies. We're trying to work with like-minded countries. We're trying to collect information as much as we can to try to detect fraud in education certificates, employment certificates—all aspects of it—as much as we can, and trying to learn from the past as well.

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

To what extent do you work with the local enforcement agents to address third-party involvement, such as by unscrupulous immigration consultants?

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

Do you mean work with Russian officials?

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

Yes.

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

To be honest, we don't do a lot of work with Russian officials on this type of issue. I think that would be rather challenging. We want to be very careful with the sharing of personal and private information, so we're very careful with that aspect of it as well. I think a lot of our clientele have founded or unfounded insecurities, perhaps, with the local officials. So we want to be very careful with what we're sharing.

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

I see.

And how much impact does corruption have on processing times?

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

It definitely has an impact, and we have no real way of knowing how much we're actually detecting. But sometimes we feel that there's something that doesn't make sense in the application, or we have concerns with a particular letter, or we get a “poison pen”, or we get other information. We feel that it is our responsibility to the greatest extent possible to try to detect it and find out whether it's accurate and what we can do about it.

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

What steps have you taken to improve the processing times for permanent residents and to streamline the operations for temporary resident applications?