Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the standing committee.
I am Thomas Tam, from SUCCESS, which is a multicultural organization that serves new immigrants in British Columbia. We serve over 180,000 people through over 20 offices in greater Vancouver and Fort St. John--that's in northern B.C.--and through our three overseas offices in China, Korea, and Taiwan.
The focus of my presentation here today is on how to deal with the application backlog that has accumulated over the previous years. I will address four major aspects.
First is administrative measures. Canada has a public consultation process on how many immigrants should be accepted into the country per year and what classes of immigrants will be accepted and in what quantity. SUCCESS supports ongoing government consultation.
As for the implementation, capping intake quotas for a specific period of time or adjusting them to meet changing labour market demand for economic class applicants is a reasonable way to stabilize and rebalance the system. We also support capping the number of applications. However, the backlog in family class applications has not been effectively addressed. The existing long waiting time of seven to ten years is totally unacceptable.
I think the government's latest intention to apply the same administrative measure by capping the quota on parents and grandparents should be more carefully examined, with more consultation with ethnic communities. Family unification is an important issue in Asian cultures. Given that the Asia-Pacific is and will be the main source of immigrants into the future, that is where we as service providers in ethnic communities have heard the most complaints.
There are economic reasons for most Asian immigrant families to sponsor parents and grandparents to immigrate to Canada. They take care of the young and the domestic affairs of the household while both adult immigrants, driven by economic necessity, are often hard at work re-establishing themselves in the host country. We agree with the minister that we need to calibrate those limits based on our economic needs. My opinion is that maintaining an overall annual target of 1% of Canada’s total population while being flexible about the parents and grandparents would make a good policy.
As a matter of fact, Canada's ability to compete for skilled immigrants from some Asian countries also hinges on this preparedness and flexibility to accept the parents or grandparents down the road. A group of child psychiatrists and psychologists working with immigrant families at Richmond Hospital in B.C. is drawing increasing attention among the allied professions to the “satellite baby” syndrome. Satellite babies are infants or preschoolers who are sent to a parent's country of origin to be raised for a period of time by other family members. This type of separation has far-reaching mental health implications for the child and family, and it eventually affects the greater community, including the school system. Satellite babies are one of the sad situations caused by parent and grandparent backlogs.
As for the flexibility and efficiency in the system, I notice that there are significant variances in processing time for family class applications across different CIC visa offices and different regions, which is not happening with the economic class applications. I believe that CIC knows its own statistics. The action plan for faster immigration is not happening fast enough. The unwanted and unwelcome variances for family class applications across CIC visa offices in all continental regions must be eliminated. A global central processing system inside Canada should be considered.
The third area is about fairness and transparency. In light of the action plan for faster immigration, a consistent application service standard across the board is required in dealing with backlogs and moving on to the future. A consistent service standard for each class of applicant will ensure efficiency, accountability, and a sense of fairness and open process for all applicants across the world.
Finally, in terms of the outcome evidence, drawing a baseline, setting a benchmark, establishing a worldwide service standard, posting the objective evidence publicly on the CIC's website, and delivering annual reports to Parliament, we will stand up to the measure of public accountability and provide evidence of achievements in addressing the backlogs and meeting the preset immigration targets per year. I believe the people of Canada want to see that progress is being made by the government to close the gap and achieve the goals. I expect this government will continue to do just that with vigour and openness for all to see.
Honourable members of the standing committee, I respectfully submit my testimony for your deliberation.
Thank you.