Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 13th, 2010

[Claudette Deschênes]

Yes, and I do, too—

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

I'm talking about spouses.

[Claudette Deschênes]

—but I didn't double-check that part, so I don't want to say the information we were given at the first was incorrect.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Okay. I have a last question.

Because it takes so long to sponsor your father and mother especially, there had been a pilot project where you allowed grandparents and parents to come in, to do a multiple-entry visa, so they could visit Canada while the sponsorship is happening, and in the meantime maybe they could take care of the grandkids so that the father and mother could both work, which is a win-win for everybody.

Is that something that we should encourage more? Is that an area that you would like to encourage? What do you think of this program?

[Claudette Deschênes]

It's certainly an area that we are encouraging. The last time I was here I took a note to sort of say I wanted to follow up to really see how often it was being used. If it was being used in some missions more than others, we would want to make sure that there was some consistency of looking at that, because we think it's the right way to do it.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

It's the right way, okay. Great. Because what I've seen is that there are parents—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Very quickly, please, Ms. Chow.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

—who try to come to Canada and they can't get a visitor visa because they are not allowed to visit while their application is going on.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Right.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Dykstra.

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

Ms. Wong is going to be taking this round.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Thank you. Thank you for coming back to us again.

My questions are generated because of the previous panels. One of the panellists revealed the fact that the delay for some was because some information was incorrect, and the incorrect information was given because of advice from bad consultants.

Do you think this might be one of the reasons? If the information is incorrect, you have to send it back, and then if they get additional information and it is not actually certified, they will be back in the loop again.

So am I right to say that the assistance of bad or ghost consultants actually delays all of the processes?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Anybody helping who's not giving good advice will delay the process, so certainly we are doing a significant amount of work to make sure that the consultants and the lawyers who support these applications have the training and the knowledge.

From another perspective, we're also encouraging people so that if you don't need a lawyer or consultant...we're trying to get as much good information out there so that when applicants do apply, they provide us with all the information so we can process more quickly.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Another challenge brought to my attention is fraud. I visited Hong Kong. I visited Beijing on my own time and with my own resources, and the colleagues there actually showed me proof that there has been a lot of fraud for certificates, even for wedding pictures. For your due diligence, you have to make sure that people don't marry for convenience. Has that also been a challenge to you?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Certainly in terms of processing times, there are some places where there is additional fraud or documents are harder to come by. In terms of countries that don't have the same types of documents, for example, that we have in Canada, it's more complex to process the case.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Another question is about wait times again. Now, very often, when you say about wait times, it is always how many people are waiting, and then the processing time is the time when you first submit your application to the time you finally get a visa.

Am I right to assume that the more people who are applying, the more challenging it will be for your department to process all these applications?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Well, certainly from an immigration perspective, we talked before about how the number of applications we process each year is dependent on the levels exercise. If we get a lot more applications than the number we said we would take every year, then those people wait in line until we get to actively process them. If they wait six months, that six months is added to the normal processing time. So yes, it would mean that next year it's a lot longer.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

The problem is not that you are not doing a good job; it's that we are too popular, in a sense, that Canada has become such a popular country for people to come to.

Going back to human resources in your department, in the previous panel there was a lot of discussion about temporary people coming in and being asked to work because we wanted to speed up some of the processes. How do you make strategic use of temporary additional human resources in our Canada-based processing centres? How are decisions made to allocate extra funding?

[Claudette Deschênes]

The basic funding we have is based on permanent money we have. The number of employees we have is based on the amount of money we have, and we have to balance our budget. Every year when we get, let's say, four or five months into the year, we may be able to identify additional money, in which case we'll think about what our highest priority is in terms of trying to clear a line of business or get things processed a little faster. Then we will say we can hire so many people temporarily, either on a casual basis or on term.

Certainly on the citizenship business line we'd like to keep it as short as possible, so that's what we've done. Sometimes we're able to go to a central agency, Treasury Board or Finance, and get some money for a year or two, in which case we will apply it to some work.

In the longer term, we have to find ways to modernize so that we can do more work with the same resources. We could maybe apply risk in a different way or we could move resources, because there are resources sitting somewhere that could do some of that work. That's the work we're doing right now.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have a whole minute.

[Alice Wong, Conservative, Richmond, BC]

Okay. Rick or Terence, do you have a question?

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

One of the people who were here before testifying before the committee talked about how people who come from China may not declare that they have dependent children because they're concerned about being punished because of the one-child policy. How often have you seen that happen? What do you hear from the front lines? What have you come across? How likely is that to happen? What should the government do about it?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I can't say how often I've seen it for China. We have seen it. Certainly we recognize that sometimes for a multitude of reasons people will tell us they don't have a dependant or they have only one dependant.

We have a case management branch at Citizenship and Immigration, which is working very closely on this, to understand the real reason they have done this, because most of the cases we're concerned about are refugees. Normally, if you indicate that you have dependants, they have to pass the medicals and security and so on before you yourself can be landed.

We have a mechanism in place to look at individual cases in which someone might not have declared an individual as their dependant. Although the act and regulations say these people can no longer be sponsored, we are dealing with them case by case and making assessments.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

So you can't quantify that.