Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Collacott, I appreciate the fact that you would like to have a face-to-face interview with the prospective immigrant.
My concern comes from two areas. One is that many of the immigration officers who go overseas are transferred from location to location on a posting of anywhere from three to five years. Generally, a person does not really have an in-depth understanding of the local culture and local environment until he's been there for more than a few years. How is that immigration officer going to be able to detect in the person who is seeking entry to Canada with regard to his admissibility...?
Secondly, in the evaluation of skills, there are certain soft skills. Let's say you're a lathe operator, a glass grinder, or a lens grinder. Without actually physically observing these skills in the immigration process, you can't really determine that. Our process right now rests on the fact that we're looking at credentials, but as you know, India, China, and many of those places do not have those credentials. I recently addressed this issue with immigration officers in Delhi, Chandigarh, and Beijing.
I would like to hear your comments on that, the face-to-face, speaking to one of the better tools to evaluate immigrants.