Evidence of meeting #113 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was funding.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
How many staff process applications for permanent residency, let's say for live-in caregivers?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
While we separate out some of our budget lines that way, our staff, again, tend to be multi-faceted, so they process different things at different times of the year depending on volume and that sort of thing.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Okay. How many total staff are allocated to process, let's say, all lines of permanent residency?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
We would be happy to provide that information. I don't have it at my fingertips.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I don't have the exact breakdown at my fingertips. I'd be happy to provide that afterwards. Again, our staff, particularly overseas—
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Just for time, Ms. Morgan. The assertion was made that 160 staff is a modest amount. I'm trying to contextualize that particular characterization.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
By way of comparison, in the business line of immigrant and refugee selection and integration, our planned full-time equivalence for 2018-19 is 2,701. That is for immigrant and refugee selection and integration.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Thank you.
In the estimates, there is a line.... There is $350,000, a grant for migration policy development. What third parties are involved in this, and how much money is going to each of them, and what is it?
Acting Chief Financial Officer, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
The migration policy development program is a grant program that funds various partners in the area of international migration policy development and research. The final tally, if you will, of all the partners that will be funded in 2018-19 has not yet been finalized. That's an ongoing budget amount that we have.
I can give you a sense of what was—
Conservative
Acting Chief Financial Officer, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Last year, as an example, we funded organizations such as the International Organization for Migration, the Migration Policy Institute, International Catholic Migration, UNHCR—
Conservative
Acting Chief Financial Officer, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Those organizations advance key Canadian priorities in terms of migrants and refugees and also allow the partnering with key international organizations.
Conservative
Acting Chief Financial Officer, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It's research and policy advice.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
—our relationships with these organizations are very useful to us. We—
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
—get from them important analytical information about other trends in the world that might affect our programs and about what other countries are doing. They engage in conversation and discussion with other countries that bring people together on these issues globally.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
I need to end it there.
As the chair, I would like to clarify something that I was trying to get from Ms. Rempel's questioning that kind of went over my head. I want to make sure we get this right. The government side might not like this.
We have a backlog of privately sponsored refugees right now of 43,250—about that, is what you said. That's in the system; 18,000 for this year, 19,000 for next year. That's 37,000, which means 5,000 that are in the system now still won't get in under these levels until 2020. You will be receiving applications in those three years, I'm assuming, from Canadians who want to sponsor. Do I have this correct?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Yes, Mr. Chair.
This program has been very enthusiastically subscribed by Canadian organizations, and we have an inventory [Technical difficulty—Editor] applications that it will take a number of years for us to process. We have capped the applications for sponsorship agreement holders in this year in order to ensure that we don't get too many applications, so that we can process the applications that we have. There's a balance between taking new applications and processing what's already there.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Rob Oliphant
I just think the public needs to know this, because I have people in my riding—groups, churches, mosques, and synagogues that want to bring people in—and it's difficult. I think our committee is going to need to figure that one out.
Thank you for that questioning.