Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Sept. 27th, 2018

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

—which I will take advantage of copiously in the next few weeks.

The other trend that we've been hearing more of and getting more casework on is reports of abuse of international student visas. Schools might be set up, or something that would be deemed to be a school, and then student visas are issued to the school. People who are entering the country through this are going on to other areas of employment, essentially, working under the table.

Has your department been tasked with examining this?

[Matt de Vlieger]

Not to my knowledge, not specifically. Certainly, looking at the growing student volumes, we work a lot with the accreditation bodies of university and college communities, and provinces and territories. We certainly have a lot of engagement with them. But to my knowledge there has not been any specific direction on that point.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Okay.

I wanted to pick up on some of the questions that both of my colleagues asked with regard to processing and wait times. One of the things that I've noticed over the course of my parliamentary career, and certainly in the last couple of years, is that the.... I wish there was a day when MPs didn't have to do casework because it would be wonderful if it just happened so wonderfully and smoothly within your department.

I'm wondering what the average response time to MP case inquiries is today versus this time last year.

[Mark Giralt]

I don't have that information with me.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Would you be able to table that with the committee?

[Matt de Vlieger]

We can follow up with the information, both about our call centre largely out of Montreal, but also the MP call line.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

One of the recommendations that came out of a study that we did earlier this year with regard to best practices on resettlement and integration for a specific cohort of refugees was related to family reunification. In looking at best practices for people to integrate into the Canadian social and economic fabric after they've been resettled in Canada, one of the things that came out was family reunification specific to the Yazidi community. We have many cases on my desk where we're being told that the wait times are 30-plus months for potential family reunification for genocide survivors.

Has the government tasked you to look at reducing wait times for that particular cohort?

[Matt de Vlieger]

With the family reunification cohort, I think we're looking at spouses, partners and children. There's been a lot of progress in bringing down those processing and wait times. There was a big effort in 2016 to bring down the backlog, to the point where—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I appreciate that. I'm looking specifically at that cohort.

Has the government directed you to look at ways to reduce the processing time for family reunification around Yazidi genocide survivors, especially given that this committee had recommendations that suggested that would be beneficial?

[Jean-Marc Gionet]

To add to what my colleague has indicated, we've been indicating and have been prioritizing cases that fall under the one-year window, for example. I think we've seen the cases being processed in a couple of months, not the 30 months that is the average for the one-year window category.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Please table with the committee the number of outstanding cases for family reunification requests specific to the Yazidi cohort.

[Jean-Marc Gionet]

Yes.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I think that's the end.

Mr. Sarai, you have about three minutes.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

I have a couple of questions since we're doing this on migration and perhaps trying to compare other migration.

Has IRCC ever done a study to see what the success is of the three bulk categories of immigrants we have, those being economic immigrants, family reunification and refugees? Has there been a longer study over 10 or 20 years to see what their success is and to see if they are actually different in terms of not just the financial index, but in happiness and health and the indexes that are out there, and to see how they fare in comparison to others?

I think it would be very helpful for us on this migration study to see different patterns and different success rates, and to see if they overlap. For example, how do a single person or a couple who migrate as economic immigrants fit into a community versus when they get family reunification and have other members of their family here? How did they settle? How are their happiness or well-being and their success in a neighbourhood?

I'm not expecting you to have the answers, but if you have those studies, it would be very helpful if you could provide those to the chair.

I have a second question.

Have you looked at best practices of other OECD countries, developed countries, in terms of their settlement of global migrants, not just for refugees, but also for economic migrants and family reunification in terms of seeing how those models may have been successful or not successful and what to avoid?

As we've seen in Europe in some places, migration and immigration have not been successful. Why was it unsuccessful there whereas it has been much more successful here in Canada?

[Matt de Vlieger]

On the first question about outcomes, we would certainly be happy to share with the committee data on outcomes. We are able to do a lot of longitudinal data tracking. We're able to link our landings data: immigrants who come to this country, from where, and their profile with the tax filer data. There's a two-year lag time, but certainly on the economic front you will see by economic category, various economic programs and even the Atlantic immigration pilot where they will be in terms of employment and employment earnings and that sort of thing. Also, there is social data. We will undertake to provide the committee some information like that.

Your second question is about best practices of the OECD. With the OECD, Canada is a pretty active member at the migration table. A lot of sharing of best practices happens there. Specifically, in the last couple of years, because the OECD is so heavy with European members, they have been studying that cohort of Middle East movement, Syrian movement, and sharing best practices. I think they have some good reports from the last couple of years that you might want to take a look at in terms of that very question about what kinds of settlement practices work in Germany versus a comparison to Canada.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

I would ask if the analysts would be able to get the OECD ones, and for the ones you have, if you could provide those to the chair for our purposes.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

That's perfect.

Thank you again. We may call you back.

The meeting is adjourned.