Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 4th, 2013

[Robert Orr]

In terms of putting an actual price tag on it, I don't think we're able to do that. I don't think our costing models are sufficiently sophisticated to break it down to that level.

Clearly, though, we do spend a significantly greater amount of time on applications where there might be fraud involved, or on applications that are complicated for any number of reasons. There is going to be a variance, yes. Whether it's going to be weeks or months, on any application we simply don't have that much time, so we'd have to make a decision much faster than that.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Is more than one person usually involved in a particular application that's deemed to be fraudulent or raises a red flag, or is it a single point person from A to B?

[Robert Orr]

If there is fraud involved, there probably would be more than one person involved, but not necessarily. It would depend a little bit on the office and what the capacity of that office is. In many offices around the world we now have officers who specialize in fraud and are dealing with program integrity, so they would certainly be involved in those sorts of applications.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

If something is not deemed to be fraudulent, because sometimes people will make a mistake, what's the most common mistake you would see, just offhand? It's something that could be corrected if someone knew they misrepresented themselves but not on purpose—accidentally. Do you have an idea of what that most common thing would be?

[Les Linklater]

Misspellings or dates for where they travelled in the past.... People forget they were in the States a year ago or two years ago—things like that.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. James.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Orr, the analysts prepare questions for members of the committee, and there's one question that jumps out, which I'd like to ask of you. It's a two-part question.

The question is that in the United Kingdom, the Home Office U.K. Border Agency is responsible for the appeal mechanism that is in place for family visitors who want to visit qualifying family members in the U.K. There's a cost to submit an appeal, and the decision is made by an immigration judge.

The two-part question is this. Has CIC looked at this model of an appeal mechanism—in other words, do you have any comments about it? Secondly, if the department has looked at it, could you state the advantages and disadvantages of the U.K. system relative to Canada?

[Les Linklater]

Yes, we have looked at appeal mechanisms in both the U.K. and Australia. In terms of their applicability in the Canadian context, based on our review and conversations with our colleagues, we find that these processes are expensive, time-consuming, and not responsive to the timeliness of a decision based on an event like a wedding or a funeral. I think in the Australian case it takes about 250 days for the appeal to be heard, and in the U.K., it also takes an extensive period of time. In the Australian case, it costs $1,400 to lodge an appeal, and that fee is returned only if the appeal board overturns the visa officer's decision. So it is not a process that's entered into lightly.

When we look at the costs and the fee implications of such a structure, and we look at the Canadian context, we've determined that about 4% of all refused applicants apply again within 14 days of the initial refusal of their application. More often than not, they provide additional information that was missing on the first application, and in 48% of those cases, a visa is issued. There can be instances where an individual failed to provide sufficient information for the officer to make a well-founded decision, and they come back within two weeks and the officer, or a different officer, is able to come to a different conclusion based on that new information.

The application fee for a new visitor visa is $75. When we look at the fee required for an appeal mechanism, the User Fees Act would apply. We would have to do very detailed costings. We have class D estimates, but at the end of the day we would have to consult and determine what the fee would be. It would be an additional administrative burden, and from our perspective, the simple fact that an individual can reapply or seek a temporary resident permit in exceptional circumstances seems to be a more viable option.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Madame Groguhé.

We're into the second round now.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to begin by thanking the two witnesses for joining us.

My question is about security requirement checks. When someone applies for a temporary visa, how are the checks carried out and by whom?

[Les Linklater]

We work in partnership with the Canada Border Services Agency, which is in charge of coordinating all the checks our officers refer to it.

Initially, the Citizenship and Immigration Canada officers on the ground decide whether we can approve an application in a specific region of the country or whether the application needs to be referred to CBSA, so that the agency can conduct additional checks and get the Royal Canadian Mounted Police involved. CBSA coordinates all the information provided by officers in charge of security and issues a recommendation to the visa officer on the ground.

I don't know whether Mr. Orr wants to add anything.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

How long do those checks take, on average? I know that you operate on a case-by-case basis, but could we get an idea of how long the checks take?

[Les Linklater]

In general cases with no particular issues, we expect a response from the agency within one to two weeks.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

That affects people who are sponsored for permanent residency. Are the same principles used in such cases for additional security checks?

[Les Linklater]

Yes, the same indicators are used. We transmit information on temporary and permanent residents, but security services carry out all the required work.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Okay.

My next question is about TRV applications and the discretionary powers of Citizenship and Immigration Canada officers.

What kind of power do officers have? How is that power regulated? Are there any internal measures in place? What kind of regulations are we talking about?

[Robert Orr]

Thank you for the question.

A number of things would be in place to direct these officers. First of all, they are very highly trained before they go into the field. They would have a very good understanding of what the parameters are in which to operate. Second, they would be clearly managed and supervised in a very proactive way. With that there would be monitoring of some decisions and so on, to make sure that the decisions are appropriately made. The third thing I would add is that there are active quality assurance measures in place as well. We would be randomly looking at a series of applications to ensure that decisions are made appropriately. If someone is going way off, it becomes clear very rapidly.

I am very confident that these officers are very clear on what their mandate is and that they apply the instructions very appropriately.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Okay.

You were talking about case-by-case consideration. I have a very specific example of a TRV application. This was a case of family reunification—so the process involved sponsorship. The applicants wanted to sponsor a child. Since the child was very young at the time, the applicants wanted him to be here, in Canada, before they would continue the process of applying for a permanent resident visa for that child. When the officers considered the TRV application for the child, they automatically checked a box to indicate that there was a risk that the child would not go back to his country.

How can case-by-case consideration lead to that kind of a situation? How can we prevent this type of situation from happening?

[Robert Orr]

I'm hesitant to respond to any specific situation, because obviously I do not know the full picture and do not know all the factors that the visa officer would have considered.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

The situation was remedied, but it did happen. That is what I wanted to point out.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We're way over time.

Go ahead, sir.

[Robert Orr]

The point is that there can be something as well. Someone can be coming with the intent of coming permanently in the longer term, but come on a temporary basis as well—what we would call dual intent. In those situations, in fact, our record is very high. The acceptance rates of that sort of application is, worldwide, about 87%, which is even higher than our normal visitor visa acceptance rate.

These officers are very conscious that people can have the idea of coming on a temporary basis but also on a permanent basis. Family reunification remains a core piece of the Immigration Act and of what we are trying to achieve.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the officials for being here again with us today.

Clearly, there's a lot of interest from people who want to come to Canada. We know that. We see it from the number of hits on the website. We all hear in our constituency offices from families, and so forth.

I want to set the record straight on what has happened and lead up to a question.

We have welcomed a growing number of visitors, foreign workers, and international students over the last seven years. In fact, in 2012 Canada issued a record 1,000,000 visitor visas—that's a 40% increase since 2004—and a record 100,000 international student visas, an increase of 60% since 2004. These individuals play an important role in fostering Canadian economic development through tourism, trade, commerce, and educational research activities. We are in somewhat of a competitive situation with other countries in the world in attracting the brightest to come to our country.

How will raising the fees on a temporary resident application affect our competitiveness in attracting these visitors?