Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 31st, 2018

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Could the staff advise on whether or not the consultation process with the caregivers has been completed?

[Marta Morgan]

The consultation process is currently under way. We have undertaken a number of consultations with 125 relevant stakeholders. We've had calls and invitations for written submissions.

Certainly, if there's any more information that the committee or it members wish to provide us on caregivers, we would be happy to receive it. Our formal consultation process is largely complete, given the number of people we have already met with.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

When do you expect an announcement to be made?

[Marta Morgan]

I can't give an exact time on that. We are actively looking at this. The government has been very clear about maintaining pathways. We really need to review the programs and take into advisement all of the input we've received.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

How many caregivers were rejected within the last year under the medical inadmissibility provision?

[Marta Morgan]

I do not have that data at hand. I would be happy to see if it's available. If we have that breakdown, I would be happy to table it with the committee.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I would ask for that information to be tabled at the committee, then.

I'm interested in knowing exactly how many people who would otherwise qualify were rejected, most recently within the last 12 months, under the new rules, and where, as a result of the long time in processing, if they make a new application under the new rules, whether it be in H and C or in the other stream, one or more of their children would have aged out. Can you provide that information to the committee, please?

[Marta Morgan]

Yes, we would be happy to provide that information to the committee.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

How many international students have become permanent residents since the changes to the express entry program?

[Marta Morgan]

Since the changes to the express entry program, the proportion of individuals invited to become permanent residents has increased substantially. It's now in the range of between 30% and 35%, I believe, of the total draw. I don't have the exact figure since the change at my fingertips, but there has been a significant increase since the changes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I wonder if you can provide that information, with the exact number, to the committee, and I would like to have it broken down by country of origin. Then, aside from how many people have been invited to submit an application, who has been successful with the PR application, and how does that compare with the previous year?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you, Ms. Kwan.

We're now going to enter the third round, and we'll go back to seven-minute rounds.

We'll begin with Mr. Whalen.

Before we do that, I want to remind the committee of this. You may not know it, but there are officials from the IRB, Immigration and Refugee Board, in the gallery. Should you have questions that you feel are not departmental questions but rather IRB questions, they are willing to answer them. The deputy also has that information.

Mr. Whalen, you have seven minutes.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

That was a timely intervention, Mr. Chair, because my next question is around the long-term planning for the finances of the IRB and managing their volume of work for irregular border crossings. It seems last year there was certainly a very high number with Manitoba and Quebec. This year it looks to be the.... It's questionable as to what will happen with Nigerian immigration on the Quebec border, but all expectations are that there'll be a large number.

At a certain point in time, what's considered irregular and unusual will become normal and expected. I want to get a sense, in terms of reviewing the estimates, of how solid we are on the numbers and the amount of support that's being given to the IRB this year. At what point in time will this not be extraordinary funding, but will just become part and parcel of the annual funding envelope for the IRB?

If you could explain to the committee members the process of migration of moving from special funding to part of the overall general annual envelope, that would be helpful for us.

[Marta Morgan]

In this budget, budget 2018, the government allocated $74 million over two years for the IRB to enable faster decision-making on asylum claims. As the minister noted, this will enable decisions on an additional 17,000 claims and enable the IRB to add 64 new decision-makers.

I think that any decisions regarding future funding would be taken in future budgets. Clearly, there is a recognition that the number of asylum claimants continues to be high this year, and the IRB is a critical part of the asylum system in terms of providing fair and efficient processing of those claims. This is something that would need to be considered in future budgets.

The existing budget includes $74 million over two years for that purpose.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I guess a follow-up question to that would be, are these positions for two-year contract positions? Is it expected they will be permanent full-time positions but, with a general churn, an overall turnover of employment within the IRB, that a sufficient number of positions will be eliminated after two years? Maybe that's something we've asked in previous other contexts, but in the budgetary context, I think it's more important.

[Marta Morgan]

Mr. Chair, I would ask for a representative from the IRB to answer that question, as they are actively in the process of staffing these positions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I welcome you to the table again.

[Thomas Vulpe, Assistant Deputy Chairperson, Refugee Protection Division, Immigration and Refugee Board]

I'm Thomas Vulpe. I'm the acting deputy chair for the refugee protection division.

The positions that are being hired for presently to fulfill the budget funding envelope are term positions only.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I guess I'll turn the question back to you.

At what point in time, then, will you make decisions? What's the framework under which you'll make decisions about requesting that these temporary positions become full-time positions? Is there a threshold number of backlogs at which you will come back to us and say, “We need this $77 million over two years to continue indefinitely into the future”?

[Thomas Vulpe]

The IRB is in discussions with the department on our long-term funding requirements, given the levels of intake and referral of claims to the board. These are ongoing discussions at the present time. As I say, we're hiring for two-year terms based on the funding envelope that we have been provided. Certainly we continue to express the needs of the board in terms of funding to meet the full intake of refugee claims.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Are you saying, then, that you're already at the point where you feel that these need to be full-time positions, or are you waiting to see what happens this summer?

[Thomas Vulpe]

Whether we think they're full-time or not is mostly a question of proper stewardship in terms of only hiring term persons with temporary funding. At the present time, we're hiring with temporary funding and filling the term positions.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Maybe I'll try to ask that question another way, because I've asked it four times now. What's the overall framework under which you would make a determination that you need this funding to be long-term? Is there a threshold or a backlog, or are we already there? It's a question that the opposition has asked, and I'm also interested in knowing. We're asking to approve estimates for temporary funding, but we're starting to get to the point where we want to understand whether or not it's a permanent need. That's a legitimate question, and that's five times now.

[Marta Morgan]

We continue to work with the IRB to determine the ongoing needs of the organization in light of the ongoing trends in asylum claimants. Clearly, within the last year, there has been a significant increase in the number of asylum claims. That's why the budget provided two years of funding, and we continue to assess the needs going forward. They will be considered as part of ongoing government decision-making processes, including next year's budget. We are working very closely with the IRB on assessing what the needs are, and the whole asylum system, given the large increase in volumes that we have seen over the past year.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay, I'll ask again.

What's the framework under which these decisions are being made? As parliamentarians, when we see you guys at estimates (A), estimates (B), and estimates (C) asking for additional changes as money, it's difficult for us to understand the logic behind the requests if we don't understand the framework in which the request is being made. It seems to me that there must be a tipping point at some point in time, when the backlog will render the need for these positions to be permanent, and it's a question that's come up not just today, but almost every time we've had the IRB here.

I'd just like to understand the framework and the thresholds at which the need is considered permanent.