Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 31st, 2012

[Neil Yeates]

Yes. Everybody, in terms of the like-minded countries we work with, is really in a similar situation to us. We have in place, as has been noted, our global case management system. Australia is in the process of finalizing such a system.

We actually met with these countries just a few weeks ago. We had a good discussion with them on where they are at. New Zealand is in the process of developing a system. The U.S. has set the objective of moving to an entirely paperless regime, which is a very ambitious objective, but in many ways a very noble one, because paper is in some ways the bane of our existence. If we could move to fully electronic applications, I think it would speed up the processing really quite dramatically, and reduce errors, and so on.

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

What happens if for some reason one visa office loses personnel or even closes? Does this enable us to continue almost in an uninterrupted way the processing of applications from that area that was served?

[Neil Yeates]

Yes, absolutely.

Essentially, that's what we are doing. From time to time we may get a bottleneck at a particular mission or in a part of our processing network, and it allows us to shift that work to another part of the network. We've been doing that since the introduction of GCMS.

More broadly, what it's meant is that we're repatriating more of the work back to Canada. We're sorting it out more on a risk basis and basically maintaining the high-risk work in the missions overseas, where you need that local knowledge and local contact. But in many of the missions overseas, a significant proportion of the work in fact is quite low risk, and much of that work can be done in Canada. It's much less expensive to do the work in Canada than it is to do it anywhere overseas.

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

Are there any places in the world right now you can point to where there has been a particular benefit, where we've had to curtail missions and the GCMS program has helped us manage?

[Neil Yeates]

Yes. I can maybe give two examples of that. Sometimes international circumstances develop that require us to in fact leave a particular country. That has been the case in Syria recently. GCMS allows us to do that processing from alternative locations. We're actually using video-conferencing now to do interviews with refugee claimants. That's not something we could have done in the past.

Then, where we have a very low-risk movement.... We are closing the immigration section in Tokyo. There is virtually no permanent immigration from Japan to Canada these days, and there hasn't been for a long time. It's mostly a student movement, a worker movement, very low risk, and with a very high approval rate. We can do that work elsewhere, and that's what we're doing.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Weston.

That concludes our time. We will vote on the supplementary estimates.

First, Mr. Yeates, Madam Deschênes, Mr. Manchanda, and Ms. Tapley, I want to thank you for coming today and answering the questions of the committee. We've appreciated your assistance on a wide variety of topics.

You are excused. Thank you very much for coming.

Members of the committee, we will now vote. It will be very simple. It's the adopting and reporting of the supplementary estimates (A) 2012-13.

Shall vote 1a, under Citizenship and Immigration, carry?

CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

Department

Vote 1a—Operating expenditures..........$9,179,674

(Vote 1a agreed to on division)

Shall I report the supplementary estimates (A) to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[An hon. member]

On division.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I will do so on Monday afternoon.

Unless there's anything else, we will adjourn this meeting until next Tuesday, at 3:30 p.m., and we'll see what happens then.

Thank you.