Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 10th, 2011

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

Let me speak to the matter of temporary residents.

We have definitely streamlined this processing in various ways. We're working very closely with our service providers to make sure that the applications come in as complete as possible. We've done some training with our staff, to try to make the notes shorter or more concise and to gather the information more quickly. There are steps around the office, the little processing steps to make sure the files move smoothly.

We work in a building that wasn't exactly designed for our type of work and we're on several floors, so there are some physical challenges. We're working within those and trying to move things along as well.

Headquarters has also been quite generous and has given us additional funding to hire temporary staff, who help with the clerical work.

On the permanent resident side, we do a lot of the same types of things, such as trying to find steps in the process that can be shortened without risking program integrity, just to speed things along.

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

The rest of my time, Mr. Chair, I'll pass on to Mrs. Wong.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, both of you, for being our witnesses.

My question is addressed to Kiev. We understand from your presentation that your mission manages a very large inventory of applications, looking after so many countries. So what actually are the measures and initiatives adopted by your mission to increase efficiency in managing the inventories? And also, how does your mission prioritize which applications to process first?

[Thomas Richter]

For Moscow or for Kiev?

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

For Kiev.

[Thomas Richter]

Our territory comprises only Ukraine, so we don't really have a vast territory. Family class processing is priority number one. When the files come in weekly, there's almost a battle between officers to deal with the files, so there are actually no files awaiting processing. For skilled worker cases, I have dealt with those over the last several years myself, especially the Bill C-50 cases, simply because there is a high degree of misrepresentation of employment experience. Again, the inventory there is 20 cases awaiting assessment. All the other cases are at various stages along the processing stream. It's monitoring the bring-forward dates to ensure that the files don't just disappear into a void and keeping on top of them. So the inventory is actually decreasing literally daily as we issue visas, simply because we're finalizing more cases than new cases come in. So we're well on track to meeting our targets this year, and I suspect we won't have any difficulty meeting our targets in future years.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Sigurdson, Mr. Richter, and Monsieur Gilbert. Our time has expired.

I want to thank the three of you for appearing with us today and giving us your views on these two areas.

Thank you very much.

[Thomas Richter]

Thank you.

[Kathleen Sigurdson]

Good-bye.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We will now suspend to go in camera. We have committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]