Evidence of meeting #6 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was backlog.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Good afternoon. This is meeting number six of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration on Thursday, October 27. The meeting this afternoon is televised.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), this is a study of the immigration application backlogs in light of the action plan for faster immigration.
We have three sets of guests. I think the first person isn't here yet, but we'll start, and we hope he will arrive soon.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Mr. Chair, we were initially supposed to be having other witnesses come before the committee this morning. I wonder if we could be provided with an explanation as to why those witnesses are not coming and when we can anticipate they will be coming.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
That's a good question, sir.
We had an e-mail from.... He's called the senior adviser. I don't want to spend too much time on this. I'll try to give you as concise an answer as possible, but I don't want to get into a lengthy discussion because I don't want to take time away from these witnesses.
We got an e-mail from a fellow by the name of François Harvey, who is the senior advisor, parliamentary affairs. He sent an e-mail to the clerk and said: Due to unforeseen circumstances, CIC officials, including Immigration Program Managers from missions in New Delhi, Manila and Chandigarh, will unfortunately not be able to appear before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration tomorrow.
That was the message. Unfortunately, that was received late in the morning yesterday. There wasn't enough time to arrange for other witnesses, so unfortunately we had to cancel the first hour.
Representations have been made to Mr. Harvey as to when these witnesses will be able to appear, and at this point he hasn't responded.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Mr. Chair, if I may, I do find it is highly disrespectful in terms of the manner in which this has unfolded. The committee would be doing a service, I would ultimately argue, to send a strong message. These are civil servants and I would have expected them to make a presentation.
If it's in order, Mr. Chairperson, I would like to move that the immigration officials from Manila, New Delhi, and Chandigarh be asked to provide an explanation as to why they were not able to present before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
My concern is that when you make a motion such as that, we could conceivably get into debate. We have an hour to deal with these three sets of witnesses.
The subcommittee is meeting at one o'clock, if you wish to discuss it then, but honestly, I don't want to take time away from these witnesses.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
That sounds fair. I'll raise it then.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Thank you, sir.
We have three witnesses. The first is Warren Creates.
I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, sir. You're an immigration lawyer.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Thank you.
We have with us Ms. Katrina Parker, who I believe is also a lawyer; Ali Mokhtari, with CanPars Immigration Services Inc.; and Michael Atkinson, who is the president of the Canadian Construction Association.
As I understand it, Ms. Parker and Mr. Mokhtari, the two of you are somehow connected--
Ali Mokhtari CanPars Immigration Services Inc., As an Individual
We'll be splitting our time.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
Mr. Creates, you will have up to eight minutes to make a presentation.
Mr. Atkinson, you will also have up to eight minutes, after which time we'll have questions and comments.
Mr. Creates, you may go first. Thank you for coming in this morning, sir.
Immigration Lawyer, As an Individual
Thank you for having me. It's always a great honour and part of our responsibility as Canadians, I think, to have a chance to speak to parliamentary committees. I've had the great privilege of doing this several times before today, so it's nice that your clerk and your committee asked me to return.
Today I'll speak from the point of view of the private sector, obviously, and the interests of my client base. I've been practising for 26 years. I'm a specialist certified by the Law Society of Upper Canada in the three areas of immigration, citizenship, and refugees. If members of your committee want to ask me questions on any of those three parts of Canada's program, I'd be happy to field them.
I'd say that 50% of my practice is corporate immigration, which includes, of course, a very heavy emphasis on work permits, temporary status, business visitors, and NAFTA cases, but that also often logically leads matters of permanent resident status and then citizenship for those who want it.
The other 50%, of course, is made up of individuals and family members who are prosecuting their own cases or trying to reunite with family members. Some of your committee members might have interests that relate to corporate immigration, the transfer of executives, for example, or other things, and some of your committee members or their constituents may have questions or concerns about family reunification, which I know is a big concern for most of you.
One of the four messages I wish to deliver today is that the greatest concern of our clients is processing time. They haven't seen that shrink; they've seen it increase. There seems to be nothing any of us can do about that. Obviously, it takes resources.
There's obviously more screening taking place, and there's greater interest in security and fraud these days than there ever has been, and that's a good thing. I'm not demeaning it at all. They need to pay particular attention to those parts of the immigration program and they need to collaborate with other agencies outside the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. The bottom line, of course, is that the processing time is getting longer, due in part to the backlog, but also because of the scrutiny that each of these cases now receives.
I think there is some value in considering differential processing fees, as the Americans do. I don't see why we haven't been more serious about evaluating the opportunity, because immigration is often thought of as a challenge, but many of us at this table and beyond view it more as an opportunity than as a challenge.
I think there will be greater opportunity if you can get the talent we need into Canada. There's a consensus, I think, on the need to have talent in Canada. The foreign worker program is now producing about 190,000 temporary foreign workers, which is a staggering number, but that's symptomatic, I think, of our economy and the need to have temporary foreign workers fill gaps in the labour market.
So why not have higher processing fees, since there seems to be an inelastic demand for immigration and so on, and there's a growing cost associated with it? The idea might be unpopular, but any of us who have studied economics will clearly see that if your costs go up and demand doesn't go down, then there is inelastic demand, which is what we have in our immigration program.
My clients would not be against the raising of processing fees provided they got reasonable and fair service in a reasonable period of time. Many of those clients, I think, would be prepared to pay higher fees if it meant expedited processing such as exists in the United States. I think it's something we should be talking about and considering here and beyond.
The very public debate in the last couple of years has been about conditional permanent resident status for members of the family class, or what we call FC1 cases, which are marriages, common-law spouses, and conjugal partner applications. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with imposing a conditional visa on such applications. It will, I think, facilitate the genuine ones, and will be a barrier for those that are not genuine, that are fraudulent.
Not all marriages work out, obviously, including those in Canada, so there's going to need to be flexibility on how officers report conditional permanent resident status when the immigrants are no longer together after a period of, let's say, two years. I don't think it should be more than two years. I think two years is the right amount of time. There needs to be flexibility to accommodate those marriages that just genuinely don't work out.
The courts have been very good at adjudicating disputes involving family law cases, so why can't the Immigration and Refugee Board do the same thing? I see no reason why they can't have that jurisdiction and that expertise. They do it already.
What may be the final point I have has to do with the possibility of cutting immigration during periods of economic recession. As we all know, Canada has done very well compared to other countries during these economic times. Economics is cycles. Our economies are in a cycle. What the immigration program does I think very well for our country is invest in the future of our demography. Economic cycles are short term, and for permanent resident status leading to citizenship, I think cutting immigration levels is short-sighted. I'm not a supporter of that. Unless for temporary foreign workers, it could be done there....
The balance that exists now in our immigration program is probably as good as it has ever been, and as I said, I've been doing this for 26 years. I don't have any issue whatsoever with the balance that's there now in all the streams of immigration: the economic immigration, the family reunification, the temporary foreign worker, the refugee, the humanitarian and compassionate grounds, and so on, all of the various different elements that together make up the 280,000 visas, let's say, that were issued last year. I don't object to it. I think it's as good as anyone could make it.
I think our program is excellent overall, and I think we should be concerned about fine-tuning it to make it better. There's no heaven on earth, but I think there are opportunities that haven't been properly or fully explored.
A related point has to do with educating Canadians—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Tilson
I have to stick to the rules in this place, unfortunately. I know you have a lot of important things to say. Perhaps they'll come out in questions.
Lawyer, As an Individual
Thank you for having us and also for having me. It is a first for me, so I will start right away because I only have four minutes--
Lawyer, As an Individual
Excellent.
I'm a lawyer and have been working exclusively in immigration for the last 12 years. I've been working alongside Mr. Mokhtari for the last three years. I've been dealing on a daily basis with hundreds of federal skilled worker applications. Most of these applications represent general practitioners and medical specialists.
Overall, we have about 515 applicants and files that we've submitted between February 2, 2008, and June of 2010, which is under the first list of ministerial instructions. It's important to underline that out of the first set of ministerial instructions, these applicants were told that their applications would be processed in 12 months maximum. That was very clear on all the acknowledgments of receipts that were received by our applicants at the time. Only 4.47% got processed under this promised date. My colleague will address this issue a bit more in detail.
Then came along the second set of ministerial instructions, which represented 29 jobs. What is very crucial to underline is that out of this first set and second set, we found 18 professions that were exactly the same on both lists. So we're a bit concerned by how Citizenship and Immigration Canada replied to every one of our applicants, as follows: “Because the second set of ministerial instructions reflects Canada's current market needs, federal skilled worker applications under this set of ministerial instructions, effective as of June 26, 2010, are processed on a priority basis, and we are responding to the most urgent labour market needs first”.
That to us is a bit of a concern. As I said, we are representing medical practitioners. How is being a doctor before 2010 and after 2010 different? How do they not meet the same urgent market needs? We have a specific case that Mr. Mokhtari will address.
Before I conclude, I would like to bring to your attention the fact that we'd sent several correspondences and inquiries to the ministry. We got two separate correspondences, actually one day apart, in May 2011, where again we were told: “It is important to note that applications are processed in the order in which they are received. Procedural fairness dictates that it is not possible to process one person's application ahead of those who have applied before them”.
How can this statement be made in May of 2011 when it is a well-known fact that applications are not being processed on a first come, first served basis? It's a bit of a contradiction on that issue.
I think it's more than time to get back to supporting Canada's reputation as an immigrant-welcoming country.
I'll leave the rest to Mr. Mokhtari.
Thank you.
CanPars Immigration Services Inc., As an Individual
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here to talk about such an important issue.
My name is Ali Mokhtari. I'm a member of the Iranian Tehran Bar Association as a lawyer in Iran. I've also been a certified immigration consultant in Canada for the last four years. I also run a company called Canpars Immigration Services, offering immigration services to a huge number of people.
I represent hundreds of clients in different federal programs and have submitted 514 federal skilled worker completed applications within the first ministerial instruction since 2008. Up to now, only 23 of these 514 applications have been processed--or 4.4%. When it comes to the Damascus office it is even worse, because I have 506 completed applications filed in that visa office, and only 15 of them have been processed. That is just 2.9% of the total files I submitted.
Another point is that it is not only about the Damascus office and it's not about Iranians. Sometimes Mr. Kenney talks about Iranian files.In an interview I remember, he mentioned that it's because of security background checks or whatever. It's not about that. Those processed were done so in a timely manner within the timeframe he offered--between six and 12 months--and also, after the first ministerial instruction, I filed around 250 files, and more than 10% of them got processed within a 12-month period.
The other thing I want to mention is that they didn't process any file in the Damascus office with the AOR date of March 2 and later. You cannot find a single file with the AOR date of March 2 or after that has been processed.
I also have 144 GPs among those first ministerial instruction applications that were never processed and are on the shelves of the Damascus office. I want to mention a very interesting comparison between two cases. I have a brother and sister from the same family with the same educational background and experience. They are both doctors. The sister applied on February 6, 2009, and she received her medical papers on February 17, 2010. The brother applied on September 15, 2009, and he is still waiting to have his file processed.
I have all the documents here. I have a list of all my clients. As you can see, it's 12 pages long. For all these, the blue means they have been processed, so it's only 2.9%.
The other issue I want to raise--
Conservative