Good morning, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee.
As my colleague mentioned, most years CIC receives many more applications than can be processed. And this has resulted in a large backlog of parents and grandparents sponsored as part of the family class.
Under the action plan for faster family reunification, we are now in a position to tackle the backlog of applications. The two-year pause on new sponsorship applications will provide us the necessary time to process applications while preventing a backlog from continuing to grow. With the increase in parent and grandparent admissions next year, this will help us do this sooner. As Les mentioned, in 2012 we plan to admit 25,000 parents and grandparents.
I am pleased to report today that we will begin work to reduce the backlog right away. I will explain how we plan to do this in a moment. First please allow me to backtrack for a moment.
When CIC first receives an application for processing, we must verify whether it is completed properly and that all the information is up to date. Sometimes the information on the form is incomplete and we find that the applicant forgot to attach the necessary documentation.
But, given that the backlog contains applications that are as old as seven years or more, what we find most often is that the applicant's personal circumstances have changed. Many people have since changed their address without notifying us; they get married or divorced; or they have since moved on and no longer wish to submit their application. Anyone of these factors can further prolong the time required to process an application. But a lot of our time can be spent just trying to locate an applicant.
Once we manage to contact them, we notify the applicant that we are in the process of completing their application. They are given 180 days to provide us with the necessary information or outstanding document--for example, their birth certificate. It is only at that time, once we receive all of the missing and updated information, that we can actually begin to process their application.
To overcome this hurdle and meet our admission target of 25,000 parents and grandparents next year, we will soon begin a letter campaign to obtain the information needed to complete applications in the backlog. Later this month we will begin to mail out letters to 24,000 individuals who represent the oldest applications in the backlog. In addition to providing us with missing and updated information, CIC will strongly recommend to applicants that they provide up front the documents and fees we normally request later in the process, such as the police certificate from the country of origin and the right of permanent residence fee.
In order to provide reasonable processing times in the future, we must first reduce and eliminate the backlog of applications. We would like to make our way through the backlog of parents and grandparents as quickly as possible. This letter campaign will enable us to process applications in the parents and grandparents backlog much faster than normal. We want to improve wait times and results for parents and grandparents, as well as their family members who sponsor them in Canada. With the introduction of the action plan, we are well on our way to achieving this goal. We are actually printing these form letters now.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We are now ready to take any questions that honourable members may have.