Evidence of meeting #7 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was applications.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I can't, but we probably could look at what we have.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
I would like to get an answer to that for the long term, because it's a very important and difficult situation. Thank you.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:10 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It is. We're still working on the other undertakings.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
I know, and I've written them all down.
Madame Deschênes, that concludes the seven-minute round. Before we start the five-minute round, I just want to get instructions from the committee. I'm sorry, we'll pause for a minute.
The next meeting is this Thursday, April 15, at 3:30 p.m. We're going to be meeting over at that new committee room on Queen Street. There is one witness. His name is Jim Williams, and he's the minister/counsellor for immigration from the Australian embassy. He's in Washington. He's responsible for immigration from North America and the Caribbean to Australia.
We put down two hours. I think the notices have already gone out for two hours. I'm asking the committee if we can end at 5 p.m. or earlier and allow the subcommittee to meet after 5 o'clock to discuss a couple of things.
There are no objections to that?
5:10 p.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
Thank you.
Ms. Deschênes, I want to go back to the Haiti file raised by my colleague Mr. St-Cyr.
There's currently one situation in the field. An outstanding job has been done on adoption: that worked very well. However, when it comes to reuniting families and bringing children from there to here, there is a major problem. What is happening at your end? This makes no sense! It was said that 160 permanent visas were issued. We're not talking about pathetic cases; this is being done on a case-by-case basis. In Montreal, they all come to see us; they go to one MP's office, then to another's.
So I'm asking that we be sensitive to the urgent nature of the situation because this makes no sense. The rainy season is starting and I've just received a report on the situation: it's major; it's total confusion. There will be other deaths. And then we'll have a situation on our hands. They haven't even finished moving the temporary camps.
What's the situation right now? I'm not talking about Quebec's agreement relative to the rest; I'm talking strictly from the viewpoint of mothers and fathers who want to get their children back. You've already taken measures concerning DNA, medical tests and so on, and that's fine. Now give some hope to those who are watching us—we're on television—because there is a situation right now in the field. We don't know what to tell them. In fact, we tell them we're working hard, but, in fact, we're not moving forward and things aren't working. Why?
5:15 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
We have a lot of resources that are entirely dedicated to this matter. We have made a commitment that, by the end of April, all cases that were part of the process will be finalized. If you have any new individual cases that you think will not be settled quickly enough, you can present them to our case management branch, which has organized a section to process those cases.
I want to clearly explain a specific problem. We knew that some children who were ready for adoption had no parents or relatives. However, there were a number of cases of children eligible for sponsorship who may possibly have a parent in Canada and whose other parent was perhaps still in Haiti at one point. We don't want to make a quick decision either. We can bring them to Canada, but we want to ensure we don't cause another problem by taking a child away from a parent.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
Ms. Deschênes, I know there are agreements, that there are divorce cases, that there is the situation of one parent who lives in one place and the other elsewhere, and that we don't want the child to become a victim in all that.
That said, there are a lot of cases in which the child needs to be saved. This isn't a situation where we must say to ourselves... We can simply say it's easier to send an adopted child to Canada than to reunite a family with Haitian children who are in a bad situation there.
5:15 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
That's not what I meant.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Denis Coderre Liberal Bourassa, QC
I'm not saying that's what you said. I'm not putting words in your mouth; let's understand each other on that.
In fact, people come to see us and tell us that their daughter or son is over there. What can I do? I understand that we can use your resources by asking you to speed up a particular case. It's like the matter of the ministerial permit: a ministerial permit can always be issued, but when too many are issued, that may be because the policy isn't working. So what can we do? What are you doing? What is the situation on the ground right now with regard to reunification for children in Canada?
5:20 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
If these are pre-existing cases, we will finalize them in the next two weeks. We will do our best as soon as possible. If they are new cases, the sponsor can make sure to complete the application. Normally we ask that this be done in Haiti. We want the person in Canada to do it and send it to us with as many documents as that person possesses. We reject no documents. We will review what we have and we'll start processing cases. We're going to negotiate with the sponsor or parent here to get as much information as possible.
5:20 p.m.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
You're indeed a committee regular. We can virtually give you a free pass.
5:20 p.m.
An hon. member
Oh, oh!
5:20 p.m.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
You said that by the end of April, all cases filed before the earthquake would be reviewed. So we are talking about approximately 3,000 applications.
5:20 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
We're talking about all the cases in the family reunification class. Here we're talking about children, spouses and parents. We want to make sure we finalize the cases that were already entered in the system.
We're also advancing the new cases entered in the system as fast as we can. We've also set very tight standards on the time necessary to process those cases so that we've made a final decision within three months at most, even for the new cases that arise.
5:20 p.m.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
It was said that you were going to speed up the processing of cases from Haiti. However, there has not been an increase in immigration volumes generally permitted here in Quebec and northeastern Canada. Perhaps we'll try to avoid increasing the number of applications that have to be processed during the year.
There are approximately 5,000 applications pending for Haiti: 3,000 are in the system and more than 2,000 were recently filed, I believe. Most of those 5,000 applications come from people who are in the family reunification class and who have filed an application from Haiti.
Knowing what you said, that it won't be first come, first served, and given that there are quotas that have to be met, or a maximum number of people who can enter the country, how can we make sure there won't be any systematic rejections in order to meet those quotas?
5:20 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
For cases from Haiti, we made the decision that we would not stop at any level. We're going to do everything we can as quickly as we can.
Once again, this concerns cases that fall into the family category. Some cases that I call “independent”, which are taken over by Quebec, are pending; these aren't the first cases that we process. We take all the cases of families, parents and grandparents and we want to transfer them all from Mississauga to our office in northern Port-au-Prince. Their priorities in Port-au-Prince are interviews, DNA tests and things like that.
We won't stop processing the applications at some point, saying that we have done enough.
5:20 p.m.
Bloc
Ève-Mary Thaï Thi Lac Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
All right.
I have one final question. We know that the appeal process for the rejected cases is very long. For the applications from Haiti, will there be a special process so that appeals are handled within shorter time frames, or will those people have to go through the same door as the one used for all appeal cases in the system?
5:20 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
For the moment, we have a second approach, as it were, to settling cases, one that we would not normally take.
Right now, we have not established a faster process for appeals. It's more the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada that handles claims cases in Canada so that a decision is taken more quickly, so that we can also process the applications of members of their families who would like to come to Canada.