Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 13th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 7 of Tuesday, April 13, 2010. We have two groupings today.

The first grouping will go from 3:30 until 4:30. Before us we have three groups, representatives from the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Legal Clinic, the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, and the Canada Employment and Immigration Union.

Good afternoon to you all. Welcome to the committee.

We are studying immigration application process wait times. That is the topic. The process is that each group will have up to 10 minutes to speak, and then members of the committee will ask questions in seven-minute rounds. Probably that's all we'll have time for, the seven-minute round.

We will proceed with Ms. Avvy Yao-Yao Go.

You're on the air. Thank you for coming.

[Avvy Yao-Yao Go, Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic]

Thank you very much.

My name is Avvy Go. I'm the clinic director of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, which is a clinic providing free legal services to low-income immigrants and refugees from the Toronto area's Chinese and Southeast Asian communities.

I had the honour of presenting previously on a number of occasions in front of this committee, and I would like to thank you for again providing me the opportunity to speak to you this afternoon. In my 10-minute presentation I will focus on family class sponsorship applications and the related agency applications.

I will begin with some general observations, followed by some comments about the delays we have seen as a clinic. Then I'll talk about what we think some of the causes are for the delays and our recommendations for change.

For more than a decade, family class immigrants have taken a back seat to other classes of immigration as the Canadian government took in more and more independent and business class immigrants to Canada.

With an ever-increasing number of people accepted under the temporary foreign workers program over the last two years, family class immigrants have to compete for processing resources with an even greater number of potential applicants. At the same time, restrictive legislative changes and arbitrary decision-making by immigration officers have made family reunification ever more difficult, if not impossible. Interestingly, while the minister of immigration is concerned enough about speeding up the refugee process to introduce legislative reform to the refugee determination system, the government does not appear to have the same sense of urgency around the unacceptably slow processing time for family class immigrants.

Delays in family class processing occur in both overseas and inland applications. With respect to overseas applications, the delays are particularly severe for Canadians who want to sponsor their parents and non-dependent children, whose cases can often take multiple years, sometimes as long as ten years, to process.

Even though the processing time of overseas spousal sponsorships is faster, delays can still happen, especially if the applications have initially been denied and have to be appealed to the Immigration Appeal Division, which could take years to complete. Also, there is no time limit imposed once the file is sent back to the visa office for reconsideration after a successful appeal.

With respect to inland spousal sponsorship applications, the application time after it has been transferred to the local office is, in our experience, about two and a half to three years. Within that period, the sponsored spouse is often not able to work and does not have any access to public health care, which could cause a huge financial burden on the family.

Then there are those applications that are submitted on H and C grounds by individuals who have close family ties in Canada and who are deemed ineligible to be sponsored. Assuming that their H and C cases are approved, it could take three to four years for the cases to be finalized.

To reduce wait time for family class and related H and C applications, we recommend the following.

First, resources in visa offices should be reallocated from processing temporary foreign workers and independent class immigrants to family class immigration applications, including those filed under H and C grounds.

Second, there should be increased resources for local CIC offices to process inland spousal sponsorship cases and agency cases.

Turning now to causes for delays, I'll focus on three particular areas.

First, we are extremely concerned about the proposed changes to the bad faith provision under the immigration and refugee protection regulations. Under the new proposal, section 4 of the regulations will be amended such that the mere fact that one of the purposes of the marriage was to acquire status under the act is sufficient to support a finding of bad faith. Parallel changes are also proposed for sponsorships of adopted children.

Even under the current system, it appears that many visa officers often deny family class and genuine family sponsorship cases because the officers see their role more as screening out undesirable immigrants than as facilitating family reunification.

There appears to be an unwritten presumption that all spousal sponsorship applications, particularly those from the global south, are bad faith unless proven otherwise. If the proposed regulation goes through, more genuine applications will be denied. With more refusals at the first instance, more cases will have to be appealed, which will then result in longer processing time for those who are in genuine relationships. So in our recommendation, we urge the government not to amend the bad faith clause of the regulations and to maintain the current two-pronged test.

Secondly, the financial requirement for sponsorship is also a factor causing delays. Because of this requirement, many low-income Canadians are barred from being reunited with their loved ones. While the sponsor can appeal the refusal on equitable grounds, the reunification will not take place until years after the application is first submitted, assuming the appeal is successful. We therefore recommend that the minimum income requirement, including the ban on sponsorship due to being a social assistance recipient, be removed.

Another barrier to family reunification is paragraph 117(9)(d) of the regulations, which bars Canadians from sponsoring non-declared family members. At our clinic we have seen many parents barred from bringing their children to Canada because of this provision. Dependent children are sometimes not declared in the original applications for various reasons. In the case of China, we have seen that many parents do not declare their children for fear of being penalized by the Chinese government for having violated the one-child policy. A number of paragraph 117(9)(d) cases came about simply because of bad advice given by immigration consultants, even though the inclusion of the dependent child would in fact not have affected the initial eligibility of the sponsor to become a landed immigrant.

Not only does the non-declaration result in the subsequent exclusion of the child from entering Canada, but it may actually lead to the removal of the sponsor based on grounds of misrepresentation. In our respectful view, the initial errors made by the sponsors simply do not justify the extremely harsh consequences that are being visited upon them while little is being done to penalize the consultants whose wrong advice was the cause of the non-declaration in the first place. We would therefore recommend that paragraph 117(9)(d) of the regs be repealed. Alternatively, we recommend that the Immigration Appeal Division be given the power to allow appeals on equitable grounds.

In conclusion, family reunification still is a core principle of Canadian immigration legislation. Reducing family class application wait times must become a priority for the Canadian government. This can only be achieved by investing adequate resources to process family class applications and introducing legislative amendments to remove all unreasonable and restrictive barriers to family class sponsorship.

Finally, I would like to end, since I have the floor here, by urging the committee to hold a public hearing into Bill C-11, because this is an issue that potentially will have an implication for the wait times for eventual family class members who are members of the refugee class as well.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. Go. You obviously know your material. Thank you very much for coming and giving us your comments and recommendations. I'm sure later members of the committee will have questions for you.

Ms.... Here's a guy of Irish descent trying to pronounce people's names. I'll try yours: Ms. Casipullai.

[Amy Casipullai, Coordinator, Policy and Public Education, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI)]

That's wonderful. I'm impressed.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Really? You have up to 10 minutes. Thank you for coming.

[Amy Casipullai]

Thank you.

First I'd like to thank the committee for inviting OCASI to present before you. OCASI is the umbrella organization for immigrant- and refugee-serving agencies in Ontario. As such, we don't work directly with immigrants and refugees, so what I'm bringing you today is based on the experience of our member agencies across the province, of which there are more than 200.

OCASI supports the recommendations made to you today by Avvy, by the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. We've worked very closely on a number of these concerns for many years.

Family reunification, or family class sponsorship, has been and continues to be one of the biggest priorities for our member agencies and for the communities they serve. I am sure the committee members would have noticed the shift in trends from family reunification more than 10 years ago, from around 60% of applications to, I would say, less than 30% now. That's something that has deeply troubled OCASI members across the province. As a country, we seem to have moved away from a commitment to permanent immigration to growing a vulnerable population of temporary migrant workers instead.

When the federal government introduced Bill C-50, the new selection mechanism, and increased funds to speed up processing these applications, OCASI was concerned at that time that it would be done at the cost of family class applications. We're not really sure how the department allocates resources internally, but we've actually seen a drop in the number of family class applications processed and an increase in the processing times.

The number of applications has not declined. In fact, as Canada's foreign-born population increases, we are likely going to see an increase in family sponsorship applications. This is taking up a lot of time for front-line settlement workers, for our member agencies. They have told us that their caseload is really heavy in two big areas: one is immigration applications; and the second is finding a job, and finding a job pretty much for the purposes of establishing enough income so that they are able to sponsor family members.

OCASI manages the settlement.org and etablissement.org websites—the premier resource for immigrants and refugees, as well as many other people who work with them. I looked at the statistics on the website last week. I looked at the discussion group, just to see what was happening. The highest activity is in the area of immigration. That was not surprising, but what was really troubling is that sponsoring family members as a broad category had one of the highest numbers of posts, topics, and questions. There were 8,053 topics or questions in just sponsorship alone, and 10,665 posts under that topic. I'm not sure what the traffic was like on the French side, which is only a few years old.

The next highest was employment, but employment had only 4,359 posts, less than half of what we get for sponsorship. We think this shows the amount of interest, the amount of concern we're seeing from people who use our website.

We are deeply troubled that we're seeing this shift in de-prioritizing family class applications at the same time we're seeing an increasing number of immigrants from countries with predominantly racialized populations, countries such as China, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and so on. We're also deeply concerned that the applications in the family refugee categories appear to be low priorities for the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.

So we are pleased that Minister Kenney talked recently about increasing the number of privately sponsored refugees and speeding up the refugee process in Canada, but it's regrettable that there isn't the same sense of urgency around the appallingly slow process for those trying to sponsor family members. Instead, what we have heard is a proposal to amend the IRPA regulations as they apply to spousal sponsorship, and one that might cause further problems and delays.

In that context, we are really pleased that this committee has taken up this topic for study.

The workers at our member agencies are finding that immigrants and refugees are increasingly seeking their help to navigate the delays in family class sponsorship. They have to wait three to four years or more, in many cases, to sponsor dependent children and parents.

The processing times for spousal sponsorship appear to be relatively fast when things go well. When things don't go well and the sponsorship is refused, it appears to take years to reunite with a spouse.

What front-line workers are seeing is the impact of that. The process is incredibly expensive for most applicants. They have to pay the processing fee and the right-of-landing fee, and then they have to find additional money to pay for DNA tests and to repeat the medical tests, because when the file is delayed, the tests expire and they have to redo them. For many, there's the additional cost and the burden of time to travel to the testing site and to the city where the Canadian visa post is located. In countries with limited travel infrastructure and restrictions on freedom of movement, family members face difficulties that cannot be solved by time or money. So in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, front-line workers increasingly see that their clients are having difficulties having the files processed.

In many cases, the sponsor simply gives up. Others have lived through the terrible experience of having a family member pass away while their file is still stuck in the system. Many have said that the wait and the uncertainty of not knowing when, if ever, they will see their loved ones makes it very difficult to cope. The uncertainty affects their mental and emotional health, and it has a significant economic impact.

Many applicants have found that while the processing time for sponsoring a spouse is relatively fast, sometimes the spouse is deemed inadmissible by the visa office for a variety of reasons, and appealing a rejected application takes several years. In the interim, the sponsor in Canada as well as the sponsored spouse have to deal with the mental, emotional, and social implications of having their relationship doubted and questioned by a Canadian visa office. They also have to invest a significant amount of time and resources in pursuing the sponsorship until they are reunited, which could happen several years later.

Community workers have noted that the delays create and exacerbate tensions between the spouses and family members. Many of the immigrants experiencing delays are from racialized communities, particularly those that are overrepresented among the working poor. They incur major debts to pay legal costs, to pay for telephone calls, and to travel overseas and back to see the separated family member. Community workers have also found that once the family is eventually reunited, they struggle with the estrangement between spouses and particularly between children and their parents.

We strongly recommend that the department increase resources allocated to processing these applications at both inland and overseas visa posts. We recommend that CIC also increase resources to process H and C applications to reduce the wait times and burden on these applicants.

I'd like to take a bit of time to refer to three other barriers that Avvy has already referred to. I'm going to kind of zip through them.

One of the things that community workers are noticing is that income is a huge barrier. According to IRPA, applicants have to meet the minimum income requirement. That's a burden for many of their clients who are overrepresented among the poor, including the working poor. They're the ones who are most often not able to sponsor family members. The majority of them are from racialized communities, and that's deeply troubling for OCASI. Many first sponsor a spouse and wait several years until their combined incomes are sufficient to sponsor a child or parents. It also presumes that they are able to leave their children or parents with another adult they can trust, and that's not always a possibility. The arrangement is fraught with difficulty and tension and it causes untold worry on both sides.

We recommend that the minimum income requirements, including the ban on sponsorship due to receipt of social assistance, should be removed from IRPA and its regulations.

We are also deeply concerned about the proposed changes to section 4 of the IRPA regulations on bad faith, again something the clinic already referred to. The change proposed would affect both sponsored spouses and adopted children. It could increase the forced separation of many families, increase processing times, and create delay.

As stated earlier, many genuine spousal sponsorship applications and sponsorship of adopted children are already being rejected by overseas visa offices. In many instances, there is a seeming bias against applicants for a variety of reasons on the part of the visa office.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have less than one minute, Ms. Casipullai.

[Amy Casipullai]

Thank you.

The proposed change could result in more genuine applications being rejected.

In conclusion, we strongly encourage you to consider holding public hearings on Bill C-11 because of the impact it can have. We believe it will only serve to increase more delays in the family class area.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you for your presentation.

We now have, from the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, Jeannette Meunier-McKay, the national president, and Wilfrid MacKinnon, all the way from Cape Breton, I'll bet you.

[Wilfrid MacKinnon, Local President, Citizenship and Immigration (Sydney), Canada Employment and Immigration Union]

All the way, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good show.

We also have Alan Lennon, who is the coordinator.

You have up to 10 minutes for the three of you to speak, or just one.

Ms. McKay.

[Jeannette Meunier-McKay, National President, Canada Employment and Immigration Union]

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Jeannette Meunier-McKay, and I am the national president of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, a component of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

Amongst our 20,000 members are the workers at the Sydney, Nova Scotia, case processing centre of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. With me, as Mr. Tilson said, I have Wilf MacKinnon, the president of our Sydney local and a worker in the case processing centre, and Alan Lennon, our staff coordinator.

The presentation I will make will be our view of the effects of the loss of jobs in Sydney on the Canadian public, and we'll be happy to answer questions after.

The Sydney CPC has two permanent lines of business: permanent resident cards and citizenship. There is also a pilot project called the foreign skilled worker centralized intake office. It is important to keep in mind that within the Sydney operation, many positions are filled by individuals who are acting in positions other than their substantive positions. So when, for example, people are let go from a mailroom, it may appear that they are being replaced, but they are being replaced by workers returning to their substantive positions and vacating higher-level positions. Therefore, it is critical to keep in mind the overall level of staffing in each of the Sydney lines of business and not be misled by a shell game of moving workers around in order to appear to have addressed critical staff shortages.

Within Citizenship, the centre processes applications for citizenship and applications for proof of citizenship. All applications for citizenship go first to the Sydney centre. The mail is received by clerical workers, who open, sort, and stream the mail to appropriate lines of production. Applications are checked by agents for completeness, signature, dates, documentation, residency requirements, and so on. Sometimes clients are contacted directly to ensure the completeness of the file.

Once Sydney is satisfied with the file, it is sent to a local CIC office, where testing is administered and citizenship oaths are administered and a new citizen receives their card. The above process can't occur until Citizenship in Sydney has done the work. Only then is the file returned to Sydney for archiving. The Citizenship mailroom staff is being reduced from 45 to seven, although it may be the case that individuals who are acting in other positions will be returning to the mailroom.

In any case, the reduction of staff at this initial stage will slow down the flow of applications for citizenship into production. In addition, 13 positions are being reduced in the unit that actually produces the citizenship cards. The result will be that permanent residents will have to wait longer to get their citizenship documents and therefore will have to wait longer to begin to reunite their families and to become full participants in Canada. Given that at present it takes 18 months to two years to process a citizenship application, it should be unacceptable to increase, and not decrease, the processing time.

For those who are granted permanent residency in Canada, they require a permanent resident card, which is the only acceptable proof of permanent resident status in Canada. Applications for such cards arrive in Sydney from various ports of entry as immigrants land in Canada and take up residency. They are initially processed through the PRC mailroom, where they are opened, sorted, and streamed. Electronic requests for cards are created and sent to Canada Bank Note, which produces the cards.

Permanent resident cards are typically valid for five years. Renewal applications go through the PRC mailroom and then to the agents, who review the application and residency requirements and, if all right, make the request for a new card. Without this card, permanent residents do not, for practical reasons, have status within Canada. Without it, they cannot apply for or renew social insurance number cards, provincial health services, and so on.

On average, 3,500 applications are received a week and, after several years of overtime and extra shifts, the inventory available at any given time in the centre is 25,000 to 30,000 applications for processing.

The cutbacks in the mailroom for the line of business from 15 to five are mirrored by a cut in the agent community from 36 to 20 or some other combination of cutbacks in the mailroom and in the agent community. The cutting of the staff complement means that any re-juggling of staff will not get around the obvious conclusion—lower production levels and longer waits for individuals needing this vital piece of identification.

The foreign skilled workers pilot project deals with applications within the economic class of immigrants. It is a program that was set up to allow prospective permanent residents access to faster processing if they can prove they have training and experience in any of the 38 targeted, high-demand occupations. According to the Toronto Star of March 29, 2010, there are 600,000 applicants in the system with waiting times of seven to eight years. To facilitate processing, an agent in Sydney reviews the application, and provides the applicant with either a negative assessment, effectively stopping the process, or a positive assessment, which allows the applicant the opportunity to make their case to an officer at a visa post overseas.

There are plans to let go 22 workers from this project. In addition, a significant number of the workers in this project are permanent employees of the other business lines in Sydney and are 'on loan' to this project. Obviously, if there are lay-offs in the other business lines, then there will be reason to return these individuals to their substantive positions compounding the effect of lay-offs to the foreign skilled workers section. If for some reason such staff are not returned, then the negative impact on the other business lines will be even more significant.

It is also worth noting that Sydney and Cape Breton have serious economic problems, and the jobs at the case processing centre contribute significantly to the economic lifeblood of the community. While we would not advocate job loss in any community in Canada, it seems unnecessary to focus the loss of jobs on the CIC in Sydney, given the area's economic history and situation. Clearly, the federal public service is in trouble across the country. The proposed freeze on departmental budgets means that costs, including staff, will have to be cut back to incorporate rising costs for departments. This will affect the level of public service available for Canadians. There is simply no way around that fact given the parameters laid out in the budget. However, increasing wait times for immigrants and permanent residents should not be a viable public policy initiative, even in times of belt tightening and federal deficits.

It is our belief that Sydney CPC should be staffed at a level appropriate to the immigration and citizenship workload it is expected to process. The present practice of understaffing and then relying on special allocations of money to hire contract workers to nibble at the backlogs, which nonetheless continue for years at unacceptably high levels, is simply inexcusable.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have less than a minute, Ms. McKay.

[Jeannette Meunier-McKay]

People immigrating to Canada, new Canadian citizens, and Canadian citizens in general should be entitled to prompt service from their government in providing the much needed permanent resident cards or citizenship cards or proofs of citizenship. They should not have to pay through cost-recovery fees for a service that is unacceptably and unnecessarily delayed. This is not the way to introduce new Canadians to our country.

There is no escape from what everyone knows: if you want to get the job done, you must provide the required resources. These cuts will ensure that the Sydney centre will not be able to get the job done.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you for coming and making your presentation to us.

Now each of the caucuses will have seven minutes to ask you questions and for you to give answers.

Mr. Eyking, welcome to the committee. You and Mr. Karygiannis are sharing seven minutes.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

No, Mr. Coderre.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Oh, Mr. Coderre, of course. Sorry for that.

We've started.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank the committee for having these witnesses here today.

I thank Ms. McKay for giving us this summary of how the cards are being processed, the time it takes, and the dire situation that's going to happen with these layoffs. I have two questions, and my first question is going to be to Mr. MacKinnon, because he came all the way down here from Cape Breton and he's here as a witness today.

In my last 10 years as an MP for the area, time and again I've seen ministers come to Cape Breton and recognize and appreciate the work that's being done down there in processing these cards. Mr. MacKinnon, can you give this committee a snapshot of how and why you're so successful in processing the cards?

My second question will be, back to Ms. McKay, with these valued employees in Cape Breton as a business model, wouldn't it be a benefit for the government to keep them on full-time, especially when there's not going to be any decrease in immigrants coming to this country?

[Wilfrid MacKinnon]

Mr. Eyking and the rest of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

As far as your question goes, CPC Sydney is proud to represent the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and we're proud to do the job we do. Year after year, by hook or by crook, through magic by our management team, we get the job done. We look after the potential citizens of this country and we look after the naturalized citizens of this country.

We did such a good job that when the permanent resident card centre was to be opened in 2002, Sydney was picked to be that pilot project because of the hard-work ethic of the people in Sydney and the job well done. The pilot project turned into a permanent line of business, and we're proud to be dealing with that segment of society as well.

Then when the department decided to take the foreign skilled workers initiative from our overseas offices and bring it to Canada, again because of the hard work and the commitment to a job well done by the employees of CPC Sydney, we were lucky enough to receive that pilot project.

Mr. Coderre was once our minister and came down to Sydney and took a tour of the facility. We showed that we do a very hard job. We do a very good job and we're proud of the job we do.

In some years we produce 400,000 cards to bring into the system, to try to nibble at the backlog, as Ms. McKay has alluded to. However, when you take our staff down to two people producing cards, that doesn't equate to 400,000 a year. We can't do it with two people producing the cards. We can't do it with 15 people trying to process 250,000 applications a year to bring to the production line.

We've proved time and time again that we are committed to the job, that we're proud to be members of Citizenship and Immigration, and we're proud to serve the people of Canada and the new citizens-to-be of Canada, and it's been proved by the two new lines of business that have been brought to Cape Breton, sir.

[Jeannette Meunier-McKay]

We've always maintained that the good business model is to have dependable staff, which creates continuity within the organization. When you bring in people on different projects where they're only in part-time or as a term, you lose that expertise when these people are gone. So we've always maintained that a good business model is more full-time indeterminate staff.

We just have to look at what's happening with the archives, for instance. I mentioned in my notes that once they come back to CPC, they go to archives in Sydney. There's no more staff in archives now, so they're just sitting there. If you lose your card today, they have to review the first application you made. They have to dig it out of the archives. There's nobody there managing the archives.

We've maintained that CPC Sydney has been grossly understaffed for many years, and we think it's time that stopped if we're serious about introducing immigrants to our country.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Monsieur Coderre, you have less than two minutes.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Mr. Chairman, as a former minister of immigration, I believe the services in Sydney are essential. Having been in a position to see the extraordinary work done by these men and women, I don't understand why the department wants to cut back on staff.

So I truly believe that we should take note of your wonderful job there.

It's a non-partisan issue. I think if we have some living proof that you are doing an amazing job, instead of cutting back on resources, we should make sure to maintain them. You have our full support.

Now, why is there such a difference? When we talk to the department, they say they are temporary; you're saying they are not. I think for the benefit of the committee we should explain why there's such a difference between what the department and the union are saying on that issue.

[Jeannette Meunier-McKay]

We go by the list of the membership we have. We can count them, and 83 terms were being let go. Then there are casual workers. Casual workers within the federal government are supposed to be there for only a certain number of days--I think now it's gone up to 90 days--so once they're done, they're done.

It's quite true that the department will argue that their term is over and that after the 90 days for casuals they can't rehire them, but we know that in various government departments they've used that casual term policy quite liberally: they hire them just before the end of the fiscal year for 90 days, and then they let them go for a week, and then they bring them back in the new fiscal year. That's been a known fact, and we know that is happening.

But where is the continuity in the processing? When you're in a constant mode of training, that again creates delays. These 83 terms who have been there for a while know the job. They could continue to do the job more effectively because they are fully trained, and you wouldn't be trying to bring somebody off the street. I'm not saying that bringing people off the street is not a good thing.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Ms. Meunier-McKay, what interests me isn't complicated.

First, this is an essential service and, second, there is a political priority. We have to issue permanent resident cards. There is a citizenship reality and there's also a skilled worker issue.

Do you think this is a disguised funding cut on the part of the minister or department? These people met with you and talked to you. If you are an essential service, complete all the evaluation cards and are doing a good job, what could they do to you? What do you think it is: a cut, a strategy?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Give a very quick answer, please, Ms. Meunier-McKay.