Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Sept. 29th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 2, Thursday, September 29, 2011. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this is a briefing session on the Department of Citizenship and Immigration.

We have two guests this morning, two witnesses from the ministry: Mr. Linklater, who is the assistant deputy minister, strategic and program policy; and Ms. Edlund, who is the associate deputy minister of operations. Welcome to the committee.

I understand that slides are being distributed to members.

Good morning to you. Thank you for coming. There are two ways of doing this. One is that committee members interrupt you as you proceed and ask questions or we wait until the end of your presentation and they make notes on issues that they wish.... I prefer the latter or we may never hear all of your presentation.

So I'm going to ask committee members if they have questions of these witnesses that they make notes and they ask them at the end of their presentation, which I expect will take half an hour to 45 minutes.

You may proceed, Mr. Linklater. Welcome, and thank you again.

[Les Linklater, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic and Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It is a pleasure for us to be here today, to give you an overview of our operations and provide some background on our activities and policies at the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. Our presentation contains 12 or so slides and will take 30 to 40 minutes.

There is a lot of material here, so we will make sure we leave time for questions at the end.

Before we go into the detail of the slide presentation—and I apologize that it was a table drop—let me say that I think it will be useful reference material for committee members as we see a lot of you over the course of the next few months, and it will help situate some of the challenges and opportunities the department has.

On the opening slide we have the historical overview of immigration levels to Canada. These are the permanent admissions to Canada for the last 100 years or more, looking at some of the trends we have seen.

The spikes on the far left-hand side are really about immigration to western Canada in the early part of the last century. The big dip is World War II and the depression. Following that are a couple of spikes, notably post-war, but there is the Hungarian uprising—that one spike in the middle of the page—the Czech uprising further on, and the Indo-Chinese movement in the early seventies. More recently, since the early part of this century, we have the highest level of sustained immigration to Canada historically, whereby we have welcomed traditionally between 225,000 to 250,000, and now between 250,000 and 265,000 immigrants to Canada every year.

There are three broad streams of permanent immigration to Canada. The first is the economic movement, with a number of subclasses, including federal and provincial programming. There is family reunification—spouses, dependent children, partners, as well as parents and grandparents. Finally, there is the class of refugees and protected persons.

Given the various streams and subcomponents within these three broad categories, setting a levels plan is a challenge for the minister as he tables his report every year before November 1, in that we need to find the right balance between the various priorities that many stakeholders and other groups have and the government's priorities for immigration—more recently, ensuring that our economic needs are supported through permanent migration as well as temporary migration.

I think as well it's interesting to note that there is a considerable temporary movement to Canada. This includes temporary foreign workers, international students, and also individuals who seek admission as simple tourists or business visitors, many of whom require a visa from Canada. This requires our officers overseas to make more than a million decisions every year. My colleague, Ms. Edlund, will get into that a little later on.

One of the key elements, which I would reinforce this morning, is that in setting the levels plan—and we hear media reports or other commentary about caps on certain parts of the program—it's important to understand that what we're talking about is providing a levels plan that balances the various components I've mentioned, and that we are quite limited, in any given year, in the number of immigrants we can bring in. Striking the right balance is our challenge. Effectively, all streams within the levels plan have certain limits, as we look at meeting the trade-offs and the balances across streams.

More generally, historically the program has not had intake controls. We introduced some in 2008 with C-50 that have proven to be quite effective. But as you can imagine, without intake controls, backlogs accumulate, as the pipe is only so big. If we have a levels plan of 240,000 to 265,000 admissions in any given year and applications far outstrip that number, backlogs are inevitable and then lead to processing time delays and concerns, and likely to representations to your offices.

With that, perhaps we can get into the substance of the presentation. I'll ask Dawn to take you through slide 2, which is an overview of our operations.

[Dawn Edlund, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

On slide 2 you'll see what we have in terms of a global footprint in the full gamut of places where CIC delivers services. In a nutshell, we have seven regions that we work out of: the centralized processing region, the international region, and five domestic regions.

We have 46 points of service in Canada and more than 90 overseas with different types of offices overseas. Some are full service. Some are liaison and reporting. Some of them have more limited lines of business attached to them.

If you go down the left-hand column on the far left of the page, in terms of what we do with our medical program, we have medical officers who evaluate immigration medical exams, and they're stationed in various locations in the world and in Ottawa. We have a very large processing centre in Ottawa. They do over 500,000 immigration medical exams every year. So when Les and I talk to you today, all our lines of business have very high volumes. It's not just two or three or five. We're always in the tens of thousands, if not the hundreds of thousands.

On the right-hand side of the page, just to let you know if you weren't already aware of this, back in 2003 the government made a decision to split the immigration program between two different departments. So we have Citizenship and Immigration Canada, where Les and I work, and now there's also the Canada Border Services Agency.

The Canada Border Services Agency looks after the enforcement and intelligence side of what we do under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. They're responsible for the border services offices at the ports of entry. They have responsibility for the sections of the act that are the really nasty security inadmissibility sections: 34, 35, and 37. So there's a division between what we do under the act, and our clients actually move between the two organizations depending on what's happening with them on any given day. There's a very close collaboration between CIC and the Canada Border Services Agency, but we do have different distinct areas of responsibility.

The last thing I would say before leaving this page--and this is not on your page, so don't look for it.... One of the things that you need to realize about Citizenship and Immigration Canada in our global footprint is that we're pushing very hard on developing a service innovation, our modernization agenda. We are not going to be continuing to deliver services in the same way in the same places as we have always traditionally done.

As one of the three pillars of that modernization agenda, we look at risk management. Do we have some types of decision-making that don't need specialized place-based knowledge, that can be done in a number of different locations? Can we move that work around? Maybe one office is a little less busy than another. Can we move some of that low-risk work to that office to fill up their time while the office where the application was actually filed can do other work?

The second pillar is looking at our workload management. How do we do the work and where do we do the work? There are going to be a lot of changes, and there have already been a lot of changes about how we do this, so we're looking at things such as centralized intake of applications, centralized file opening procedures, and then the files are transferred to officers in a decision-ready state or an interview-ready state so they can focus on the task at hand of doing those types of work.

Lastly, for our workforce, we want to have an interesting environment for them to work in. We want to take the routine, mundane stuff out of their hair so that they can focus on work where their expertise is brought to bear and where they can do quality assurance work to ensure that we're doing the right things. This has all been greatly facilitated by the global case management system, which some of you may have heard about.

GCMS has been a long time coming, but as of the end of March this year it is now installed in all our overseas operations, which makes a huge difference. We now have one processing system that everybody inputs into, and now we can move work around electronically instead of physically shifting boxes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Edlund, Mr. Linklater, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I've had a request from the committee members to change the rules, which we do from time to time, and the chairman is always here to serve the committee. I always do as the committee asks. The committee would prefer that the time be made more concise and that you perhaps talk for 20 minutes. The clock is running as I speak actually. That would give the committee members more time to ask you specific questions on matters of their interest.

If you have a 45-minute presentation, could you pick out the areas that you think might be of major importance to us?

Sorry to change the rules on you like that in the middle of your presentation.

[Dawn Edlund]

No, that's fine.

If I could just give one example before we move on to how we're leveraging the network, in China, for our temporary resident visa applications, there's a very high volume of business. What we're doing now, working in collaboration with visa application centres, is that every day, when people apply at the visa application centre, it's uploaded to Ottawa. We then create the file electronically so that every single morning, Beijing has 2,000 files created for them when they walk in the door, and they can start making decisions immediately. So that's the kind of leveraging we're talking about in using the system and using GCMS.

[Les Linklater]

Just picking up on that, on slide 3 there are, as I mentioned, three broad streams for permanent migration. There are also three broad streams for admission to Canada: as a temporary resident, as a permanent resident, or as someone looking for Canada's protection.

This slide gives an overview of the components of the temporary program, including temporary foreign workers, international students, and tourist, business visitors.

One point I would make on the temporary foreign worker program is that the program has grown exponentially in the last couple of years, driven in large part, I would say, by the conclusion of bilateral youth exchange agreements whereby Canada and another country agree that youth should have opportunities to travel and work in each others' countries. Those programs have grown by about 30,000 in the last couple of years, with continuing plans to expand. These are led by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, with support from CIC as the department responsible for issuing the appropriate documentation.

So when we look at the overall stock and flow of temporary foreign workers, there are very distinct segregations. There are the high-skilled workers who come in attached to an employer with a labour market opinion approved by our colleagues at Human Resources and Skills Development. There are those who, subject to Canadian economic interests or bilateral agreements, are allowed forward as temporary foreign workers without a labour market opinion from HRSDC. There is another component of live-in caregivers who do have access to a pathway for permanent residence, one of the few low-skilled occupations that does have such a pathway within federal programming. There's also the seasonal agricultural workers program, where farm workers come from Mexico, Guatemala, and Commonwealth Caribbean countries, and have been doing so since the early 1960s, to perform seasonal agricultural work, primarily in Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec. It's a program that works very well, given the cooperation of sending governments, in that we have about an 80% return rate. Year after year people come, work the summer in Canada, and then go back to their home country for the winter.

On foreign students, there's quite a large push by not only the federal government but also provincial governments to raise the number of international students coming to Canada within a given period of time, and we have seen some success in the last number of years with those numbers growing to reach about 100,000 students entering Canada last year.

In terms of visitor visas....

[Dawn Edlund]

We do have, obviously, a list of countries where visitor visas are required for individuals, and many others where folks don't need a visitor visa to come to Canada. What happens in that set of circumstances, for people who do require a temporary resident visa, is they make the application overseas, now sometimes through those visa application centres, and the screening is done overseas to ensure that we have medical and admissibility screening, etc., in place and that the person is a bona fide visitor, that they actually will return to their country of origin at the end of their period of authorized stay. So that's the visa that gets printed and put in people's passports.

But the final decision on admission, visa requirement or not, is made by a border services officer at the port of entry, where they will also engage in an examination and go through the information they have available to them as to that admission decision for people to come into Canada.

[Les Linklater]

Turning to the permanent stream, and in particular the economic streams of immigration, we work very closely with provinces and territories on economic immigration. There are a number of streams and substreams, particularly the federal skilled worker program, the Canadian experience class, and business immigration. The provinces, under bilateral agreements that we have with them, have grown what we call provincial nominee programs over the course of the last few years, and Quebec, by virtue of the Canada-Quebec accord, has authority for selection of immigrants destined to the province, although federal admissibility criteria apply in all cases.

Skilled workers form one area in which we have effectively used intake controls to manage backlogs and to make significant progress with backlog reduction by using an occupational filter. Now, with a numerical cap under the third set of ministerial instructions from June 2010, we have been able to cut the backlog of skilled workers waiting to come to Canada by more than 50% since 2008, and we will continue to eliminate that backlog in the next couple of years.

With respect to family class, Canadian citizens and permanent residents over 18 are allowed to sponsor their close family members to come to Canada. For partners, spouses, and dependent children under 22, there are no numerical limits. It is a completely demand-driven substream of the family class, where all applications are processed on demand. In fact, we are moving towards a service standard where approximately 80% of those cases will be processed within 12 months.

[Dawn Edlund]

End to end.

[Les Linklater]

Yes, end to end.

Canada is also unique in that we allow citizens and permanent residents to sponsor parents and grandparents. Very few grandparents apply, but we now have a backlog of 165,000 parent and grandparent applications waiting to be processed. Within the levels planned, admissions in that category have historically been in the range of about 15,000 to 20,000. One of the key issues we're looking at now is how to manage the growth of that backlog in a way that's going to allow us to improve processing times and to speed up family reunification.

In respect of refugee protection, Canada, like many other industrial countries, resettles refugees referred to us from overseas by the United Nations, and as part of the Balanced Refugee Reform Act, which received royal assent in 2010. We are increasing the number of government-assisted refugees we are resettling in Canada beginning this year and ramping up for next year and 2013. We provide income support and destine folks to communities outside many of the major centres, although we don't exclude major centres. We also work with private sponsors who are able to sponsor refugees from overseas who need Canada's protection. We also provide status to individuals who seek asylum from within Canada. Those numbers have been fairly stable at just over 20,000 last year, and we expect them to remain so this year, largely as a result of the use of visa policy and the imposition of the visa on Mexico and the Czech Republic, which were our top two source countries in 2008 and 2009.

We also have an agreement with the United States, the safe third country agreement, which allows us to co-manage refugee flows across our land border. We find this an effective way to ensure that people are not abusing either country's system and that the country where they arrive first is the country in which they have to make their refugee claim. The interpretation of that agreement is restricted to arrivals at land ports of entry. It doesn't apply to airports or irregular arrivals outside ports of entry. Again, that's something we would want to look at going forward.

[Dawn Edlund]

We have been bringing to Canada 240,000 to 265,000 people a year for the last several years. What we like to do is have people move down the path towards becoming citizens. We have a very high take-up rate among our permanent residents. About 85% of people who come as permanent residents eventually apply to become citizens of Canada. It's part of our programming, and it's part of our settlement and multiculturalism work to have folks flow through from immigrants to citizens.

[Les Linklater]

On slide 7, we've provided you with a copy of the immigration levels plan for 2011. This is what we're working toward this calendar year.

We also talk a bit about the inadmissibility provisions under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, whereby all permanent immigrants are screened for health, criminality, and security. In rare instances, in working with our partners, in particular, CSIS, CBSA, the RCMP, and the Public Health Agency, refusals may result from that screening.

In regard to slide 8, Dawn has already spoken a bit about settlement programming and how we use this model to channel folks towards naturalization and Canadian citizenship. There's a fairly complex network of service delivery here. Under the Canada-Quebec accord, we provide a grant to that province for services to immigrants. With B.C. and Manitoba we enter into a contribution agreement each year, whereby the two provinces also administer settlement services with federal funding. And in the rest of the country we work with the provincial governments to varying degrees to deliver services, often through what we call service provider organizations, many of whom have long-standing experience dealing with immigrants and refugees on the ground.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I know you have a few slides left, but I'm wondering if you could wind up.

[Les Linklater]

Yes.

Dawn has already spoken about citizenship, the process for which is outlined on slide 9.

As for slide 10, the multiculturalism program was brought to CIC in a machinery change in 2008. As Dawn mentioned, we really see this as an extension of the immigration continuum, while understanding at the same time how multiculturalism reinforces the notions of citizenship and shared citizenship, which reflect all Canadians and not just immigrants and other newcomers to Canada. Here we are looking at Canada growing increasingly diverse based on current trends. We've given you some statistics and visuals here to represent that. But again, one of the key priorities we are working on within the department is ensuring that the multiculturalism program is responding to the needs of all Canadians and not just the immigrant communities'.

Slide 11 concerns partnerships. I think that's a theme you've picked up through our conversation this morning. Whether it's with our security partners, provinces and territories, HRSDC, Heritage Canada, the private sector, as well as the service provider, non-profit sector, there's very little that we do in isolation where we don't engage, either through necessity or by choice, to ensure improved outcomes in partnerships.

[Dawn Edlund]

The last slide, to finish and open up for your questions, gives you statistics of what we managed to do in 2010. On the top left side, under the levels plan, are the numbers of permanent residents we brought in to Canada. You will be aware that we actually exceeded our range last year and ended up with just over 280,000 permanent residents. A lot of that increase was a result of the operational planning. Early in 2010 we had our offices work double time to push as many cases as we could into the system, because as we were rolling out the global case management system, we wanted to have the inventory pushed as far forward as we could in case there were any kind of a glitch and we became stuck. In the end, there wasn't a glitch and we ended up with 280,000.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Do you have any final comments?

[Dawn Edlund]

No, that's it. We're ready for questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You've done very well to go through the slides after we changed the rules.

I want to thank you. This is a great report. I know committee members will keep it for future reference to better understand the operation of your ministry. Thank you very much.

The first questioner is Mr. Weston.

You have up to seven minutes, Mr. Weston.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

What a fascinating look at immigration this is. Wonderful report. Thank you for the range of data and the wealth of information you gave us in such a short amount of time.

For instance, you told us that a million decisions were made every year, that 100,000 students come to Canada to study. You said that you cut the application backlog by 50% and that we have a take-up rate of 85%. Those are quite the statistics. I want to commend your department. I think that we, as Canadians, should be proud of all you have accomplished.

My first question has to do with students. You said Canada welcomes 100,000 students a year. Has there been an analysis of the economic impact of welcoming so many students to Canada?

[Les Linklater]

We have seen a few studies carried out by organizations like the Conference Board. Those studies provide figures on the impact international students have on Canada's economy. I can't list them off the top of my head, but it is well-known that provincial and territorial institutions see international students not only as a source of funding, but also as a source of diversity that helps build trade ties. Ultimately, these students are also seen as potential immigrants to Canada.

In fact, these people who come to Canada speak one official language or the other, and they obtain a Canadian diploma, allowing them entry into Canada's economy and labour market without jumping through the hoops of foreign credential recognition—a challenge we are still working to address.

From the institution's perspective, the diversity that these students bring to campuses across the country is also an advantage.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

We also benefit when they go back to their home countries. Could you tell us more about the study you mentioned?

You said there was a double teaming in the first part of the year, Ms. Edlund. Could you explain what you did and what can be done going forward to produce these kinds of results again?

[Dawn Edlund]

We were waiting for the international rollout of our new computer system, the Global Case Management System. We refer to it as GCMS. So we instructed our staff overseas to work as hard as possible on permanent residence applications, to push harder and harder to move applications along. We set up numerous temporary services. We hired a lot of additional staff overseas to review applications. And we made that investment to ensure we would meet our targets, just in case of a problem with the system following its rollout outside Canada. We also made some changes. I mentioned what we did in Beijing, for example, with visitor visas.

More and more, we initiate the first part of the process here in Canada: we set up the files, which means they are complete and contain all the documents required to make a decision once the file is transferred overseas. And because the file is complete and all the necessary documentation is there, it is sometimes, if not often, possible to move forward without an interview.

So from a risk management perspective, we always strive to minimize contact with our clients. If there is no issue in terms of risk, we can rely on the documentation and move forward without an interview. And people can get the temporary or permanent visa they applied for.

As you can see, we are always trying to do better, which is part of our vision to keep this momentum going.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Excuse me, could you pause and stop the clock for a minute?

You still have a couple of minutes left, but you gave an undertaking to Mr. Weston to produce a report on foreign students.

[Les Linklater]

Mr. Chair, we can review the literature and the information we have around the studies that have been done, largely by the private sector, on the benefits of international immigration to Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Yes. I guess you gave that undertaking to Mr. Weston. What I'm saying is if you've got that information, you can send it to the clerk--