Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 18th, 2011

[Les Linklater]

I wouldn't want to mislead you, so let's find the right number.

[Claudette Deschênes]

In 2010 I have an acceptance rate of 80% for investors.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

What would an acceptance rate of 80% work out to in terms of a number? For example, we have 27,000 in the backlog. I'm assuming you're not talking about 80% of that.

[Claudette Deschênes]

No. There were 18,000 processed, so it would be about 11,000 people approved through the investor category.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

If you could provide the actual numbers to the clerk, that would be great.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Yes.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Do you have an assessment of what the dollar value of potential investment would be, if the government were to give that stream a higher priority?

[Les Linklater]

It would depend on the mix between backlog cases and those that are being processed under ministerial instructions. The newer cases, the 700, represent investment amounts of $800,000 each, and those prior to ministerial instructions represent $400,000 each.

I think it's also important to recall that as the program is structured, most of that investment is financed through financial institutions in Canada working with the individual investors, who are actually putting up much less of their own capital but are financing the investment of either $400,000 or $800,000.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Sure. But any good businessmen would likely be doing that, would they not? They would take a percentage of their net value and would tap other additional finances.

[Les Linklater]

Right.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

The bottom line is that it's a significant number of investors, people who are relatively well off, who could be creating jobs.

[Les Linklater]

Yes.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

On the issue of dealing with the backlog of parents and grandparents, we know that in the next number of years that backlog is most likely going to continue to increase and get worse. Having said that, there was supposed to be an opportunity for those who were in the process of being sponsored to be allowed special arrangements for visiting visas. Is that not correct?

[Les Linklater]

Instructions have gone to the field on a number of occasions to reinforce the notion that potential parent and grandparent entrants should be given the maximum amount of time possible and multiple entry visas, if they apply for them. Recently we've made some changes in direction to the field, which Madame Deschênes can expand on, that provide guidance to officers around multiple entry visas and time length.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

My fear is we're getting far too many visiting visas from parents who are in the process that are being rejected. Is the department tracking that in any fashion whatsoever?

[Claudette Deschênes]

It was very hard to track in our former system. We're doing a better job now that we've got global case management to track that. We continue to work with the field to make sure acceptance rates for people who are in the sponsorship queue are being facilitated in terms of visitor visas.

There's a whole group of people, of course, who have not been sponsored, and the relatives have arrived in Canada by claiming refugee status or other means where there is a—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Not to be rude, but I want to continue. My concern is making sure that those who have a lengthy period of time to wait are provided with the opportunity to be able to visit Canada while they're being processed.

You're nodding yes. I think we all recognize how important that is.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Yes.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Do we have any sense of the approval rating for those visas? I'm thinking of countries such as the Philippines, India, where we know there's a huge uptake and long waiting times

[Claudette Deschênes]

We don't have historical data. We're starting to collect data and we're looking at that very closely.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to go back to basics a little bit. It's obvious that the number is growing and something needs to be done. You indicated earlier that one option the government might have for dealing with the backlog is to increase the number of people we admit annually.

I'm wondering how feasible that really is, given that there's an increasing number of new applications coming in all the time. In a previous presentation we were given figures of 43,885,000 hits for the website annually: 56% internationally, 44% from within Canada. One would assume a lot of those would be family reunification issues. That's 120,000 per day.

We can increase the applications, but if something is not done on the other end, I don't see how we can do it. We can't keep increasing the number of people we admit, because we can't take everybody on.

Would you care to comment on that?

[Les Linklater]

Regardless of the levels that are tabled in Parliament, I think managing the intake of applications is critical, to ensure that the number agreed upon is the number that are processed in a timely way so we can get away from this whole notion of backlogs.

Ultimately it comes down to ensuring that along the continuum the appropriate filters and controls are in place to ensure the desired outcome is facilitated by the inputs necessary to get there, regardless of overall levels.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

You can well appreciate the level of frustration the families have.

[Les Linklater]

Absolutely.