Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 26th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Ms. Mathyssen, thank you.

Mr. Eglinski.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Minister, for being here.

I just want to correct a couple of things. I believe the lowest level of humanitarian and compassionate class intake in the last 15 years was in 2002, which was under the Liberal government. The lowest rate of family class immigration was in 1998 under the Liberal government.

Mr. Minister, you mentioned the entry/exit initiative, which is another commitment with the U.S. through the perimeter security and economic competitiveness action plan.

Could you please elaborate on why this is an important initiative?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Absolutely.

As you know, our government has been committed to opening markets around the world. We've been improving visa services around the world. We have lifted visas for countries like the Czech Republic and Chile even in my time as minister. We are liberalizing our border regime with Europe, with Asia, and with Latin America to bring more visitors here. It's essential that we have a reliable and predictable border with our principal economic partner, the United States. That's why we have the beyond the border action plan and the perimeter security action plan, which is a major focus for my department, for Steven Blaney's public safety department, and for the government as a whole.

We want to facilitate travel in the wake of 9/11 and in the wake of all the threats we know are out there, as well as facilitate the trade and investment that need to accompany travel. That is why the exit/entry regime we've started to put in place is absolutely important so that an entry into the United States is recognized and registered electronically with us in Canada. We are in one economic unit united by NAFTA in North America. That is why electronic travel authorization is so important, because the U.S. has had it for some time. It makes no sense for them to be seeing this basic data about legitimate travellers coming from Europe, for example, while we don't see that data. All the measures we're taking in today's estimates and in recent budgets to implement the beyond the border action plan are bringing us closer to the United States while ensuring that people, goods and services move safely between our two countries.

[Jim Eglinski, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you.

I see in the estimates that there's an increase of $52 million for Passport Canada.

Can you explain if this was due to changes in the planned volume of passports issued as well as adjustments to the passport business plan? The Canadian passport is a beacon of pride around the world, and I'm always proud to travel with my passport. Are you able to tell the committee how many Canadian passports there are out there and whether this number has increased or decreased?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Sure.

I'll leave it to my colleagues to give us the exact number of passports that are out there, because I don't think I have that at my fingertips.

Let me pay tribute to the service that this department gives across many programs, but especially in the passport office. It is fast and it is reliable. When people need passports on an urgent basis, they can pay a bit more and get them even on weekends. I think my colleagues provide extraordinary service. It has only improved, as have the integrity measures around the passport office, which are particularly important in this era when we're trying to stop Canadian travellers from going abroad to join jihadist groups.

There are 22.9 million passports out there in the hands of Canadians, and 63% of the population now has a passport. This is extraordinary, because only a decade ago, before 9/11, I think it was around 20%. We've seen these numbers grow, and they are extremely important.

I'd also like to pay tribute to the fact that this department has improved its performance on every front. We talked about private sponsorship for refugees. Syria and Iraq are very complicated.

I was in Winnipeg in the office that handles privately sponsored refugee applications, and there were three applications in the in-basket. All the others had been processed and sent back out into our international network for final approval. We are moving quickly and we are giving better service under express entry and under family reunification to refugees across the board.

We also, you will have noted, are not having a discussion about lapsing funds from our department, because last year the amount spent corresponded very closely to the amount budgeted. That is a very hard challenge to meet. I'd like to pay tribute to the deputy minister and associate deputy minister in particular, as well as to the whole team, for pulling off that feat.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Aspin.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Minister and officials, for appearing this morning.

As you mentioned in your remarks, Passport Canada was transferred to CIC from Foreign Affairs in July 2013, almost two years ago. Can you please give this committee an update on how this transition is going?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Yes, I think it's going extremely well. The service has remained good and even has improved. The highlight since that time has been the very large number of e-passports issued. You've all seen that new passport with the different images of Canada on every page, which help to reinforce that sense of citizenship and identity even when we travel. Service standards are high. I mentioned that the number of channels through which passports can be received is greater than ever. The number of points of service across the country is greater than ever, and we're preparing to grow it even more through Service Canada.

It's the integrity measures that I think we are most proud of: measures to ensure that the Canadian passport can't be forged, can't be tampered with, can't be reused; measures to ensure that those abroad carrying a Canadian passport are beyond suspicion of affiliation with terrorist groups. That relates to our recent revocation and cancellation measures under the steps we will be taking soon to amend the Canadian passport order.

It has been a very prolific period for the Canadian passport office but one where service standards have only improved. I think there's a synergy between that office, which has to work so hard on issues of fraud and issues of integrity, with the other programs that we offer. We have the same issues with the Canadian permanent resident card. We have the same issues with citizenship, where we need to ensure that residency requirements and other requirements of the program have been met. We have the same—different but related—issues for the family reunification program where there are serious issues of fraud and even human smuggling, and we're able to pool our resources in CIC to look at trends in fraud and misrepresentation, to share views with our allies around the world, and to make sure that we're protecting the integrity of all Canada's immigration and passport programs.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Another program that was transferred in 2013 is the international experience Canada, or IEC program. This program is creating valuable skills development opportunities for those who use it. Can you tell us how IEC works and how many agreements we currently have?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Yes, thanks very much.

It started way back in 1951 with Germany and now we have 32 countries around the world that have agreements with us to allow young people 18 to 35 years of age to come to Canada and work, and allow Canadians to work abroad in those countries in the same numbers. The goal is exchange. The goal is introducing young people from abroad to Canada and young Canadians to almost three dozen countries around the world. It has been very highly appreciated. In 2015 the quotas are close to 70,000: 68,890. We have some very strong programs with countries like France, Ireland, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, New Zealand—a very large program for the size of New Zealand—and in some of those cases we have reciprocity. Our challenge now is to entice more Canadians to go abroad. I invite all of you around the table to remind your constituents that they have the opportunity to get a work permit to have not only a travel experience but also a work experience in any one of these 32 countries. There's a lot of unsubscribed space there.

The program also reinforces one of the new trends in Canadian immigration over the last 10 years that I think is exciting and is helping us ensure immigrants adapt to Canada and succeed in Canada faster. We are recruiting more and more immigrants from people who are already here, who have studied here. There are 340,000 international students in Canada now. Those who complete diplomas or degrees get a work permit. We recruit more and more of our immigrants from that population, as we do from the temporary foreign worker population, especially this year when in the wake of our reform, many of those people want to transition from temporary to permanent status. This international experience Canada pool of close to 70,000 young people who want to come here, who get an experience of Canada, get interested in Canada and often go to far-flung parts of Canada can become our future immigrants.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Madame Blanchette-Lamothe, you have two minutes for a question and answer.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to ask a brief question about the processing of citizenship files.

Earlier, you spoke about your Bill C-24, which concerns reforms to citizenship among other things. When you presented your citizenship reform measures, you said that this would lead to considerable reductions in the time needed to process files, and that was about a year ago. Now we are in mid-2015. Last year, the average processing time for routine files was 25 months and for non-routine files, that time was 35 months. This year the time frames are 23 and 36 months respectively.

Is this reduction of approximately two months in processing times the significant reduction you had promised us? May we expect more improvement in that regard? How do you explain that after one year, things are still stagnant in this area? Do you find it acceptable that it still takes two to three years to process these applications? Do you intend to reduce the wait times further? What more are you going to do to keep your promise?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

I am going to have to contradict the figures on our website.

Those figures concern the most complex applications we have received in years, and they require additional documentation on residency. There were thousands of cases involving residency, and the possibility that people who claimed to have resided in Canada for three years had not really done so.

If we set aside these complex cases, we see that there has been considerable improvement in processing times for citizenship applications. More than a quarter million applications were processed last year. This year, the processing rate and the progress in this area is very rapid. A new citizenship application submitted this year—as of now, for instance—will be processed in a time period that goes far beyond our expectations and is closer to a one-year processing time.

When we went forward with Bill C-24, we promised that the processing time for new applications would be 12 months or less as of the beginning of 2016. We are already getting close to that objective.

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

When we consult the Internet...

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We're going to have to conclude, Mr. Minister, unless you have a final comment. We're way over time.

Thank you.

We're just getting into some interesting areas. I'm sure in the next round Ms. Biguzs will solve all of our questions.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll conclude by thanking all of you for your interest and your work on citizenship and immigration and for the studies that you've done recently. I think citizenship and immigration programs do fully reflect the progress we have made in recent years.

There is a legacy of complicated applications that are taking multiple years to be processed. That legacy group is declining. New applications are moving much faster. We've set the objective of one year or less for new applications by early 2016. We're getting very close to that goal already, right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

These are difficult issues. I thank you for giving us your time this morning and talking about these many items. Thank you very much.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We will suspend.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We will reconvene.

We have less than an hour to proceed and we have with us the department representatives to answer questions or make statements about some of the issues that the committee has.

We have Anita Biguzs, who is the deputy minister; Wilma Vreeswijk, who is the associate deputy minister; and Tony Matson, who is assistant deputy minister and chief financial officer.

Good morning to all of you.

Then, of course, there is Mr. Orr, the assistant deputy minister of operations, who has been here forever, it seems.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. I apologize.

We have Catrina Tapley, who is the assistant deputy minister of strategic and program policy.

Thank you, Ms. Tapley, for appearing before the committee this morning.

We have a list, and Mr. Aspin is first.

[Jay Aspin, Conservative, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, officials.

As you may know, this committee is currently conducting a study on promoting economic prosperity through settlement services. We've already heard from various settlement organizations about the thorough and helpful services they provide. Could you please tell me if mission staff promote settlement services to new immigrants?

[Anita Biguzs, Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Chair, thank you very much for the question.

Indeed, under our settlement services program we have in fact started to promote more actively and to put resources into pre-arrival settlement services. It has been certainly identified through various studies and evaluations that there is a benefit to newcomers to actually provide services before newcomers come to Canada so that they know what to expect when they arrive in Canada. That helps them with a sense of job prospects, counselling services, communities, the life of communities in Canada, things like weather, and all sorts of things to help equip and prepare people. There are also issues around foreign credential recognition.

So, in fact, we do, and our mission staff abroad engage very fully, in addition to the work that they do in reviewing applications for newcomers coming to Canada, with the key part of their work making sure that newcomers are prepared in terms of what they can expect. In fact, we are allocating resources under our settlement services budget to pre-arrival services. We do that through our own mission staff abroad. We also use the International Organization for Migration, which is a very experienced organization that has been operating in the field for many years and, through the International Organization for Migration, they do provide services on our behalf as well in terms of providing some of those pre-arrival services to help equip newcomers to Canada.

I will ask my colleague Catrina Tapley if she would like to add anything to that.

[Catrina Tapley, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic and Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you.

Just to add quickly, this year we anticipate that we will spend close to $24 million on pre-arrival services, which is a significant increase over what we've spent in the past.

We ran a call for proposals for overseas services. In addition to those services that are provided which the deputy minister mentioned, including the Canadian immigrant integration program, CIIP, we're also looking at enhancing that with a number of other service providers and to expand what we have overseas.

To come back to your first question, absolutely, our mission staff promote these services, promote what's available on our website, as well as the in-person services that are there.

We feel that we have some good evaluation results from those who have come through some of the services, certainly through the Canadian immigrant integration program, CIIP, where we find that within a year, 75% of those skilled immigrants who come through the program are not only finding work, but finding work within their occupation or within the field for which they are trained.