Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 9th, 2016

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Okay, thank you. I would appreciate that. Perhaps there might be some moments when the minister can work across ministries with CBSA to communicate with each other to endeavour to get the information that may or may not be able to take place. I think governments often work in silos, but maybe we could break those silos down.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

Actually, we work incredibly closely with CBSA.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Fantastic. Then I will look forward to receiving all of that information across ministries from the minister then.

On the issue around backlogs, let me get into this as well. According to the written response from the department dated March 10 for budget 2016, which proposes $25 million in the 2016-17 fiscal year to target specific backlogs in Canada and overseas and to reduce the processing times on sponsorships, I wonder if the minister could provide us with what specific backlogs are being targeted. How many applications have been and will be processed as a result of this increased funding? Which sponsorship categories does each application belong to? How old are the applications being targeted? In particular, with inland spousal sponsorships, there are issues that have been continuously brought forward. One is that in fact with the backlog the government is actually jumping the queue on different timelines of when they are processing the applications. I wonder if the minister can provide answers to that, if not today, then in written form.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I don't have all those detailed numbers in my head. I can tell you that the dollars from the budget are specifically directed to reducing those backlogs, and that's also reflected in the substantial increase in levels space for spouses. I wonder if we could—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

I'm sorry, but the time is up, Minister. We're over time at this point. Perhaps in the next round of questioning.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Do we have a commitment on the written response for my question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

I believe we have a commitment. We do have a commitment from the department to provide the information that has been requested.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I don't know, you've cut me off before I could answer.

[Richard Wex]

Yes, we have the information. If we can speak to it now, great. If not, then we'll do it later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

There will be another round where perhaps you may.

Mr. Sarai, for seven minutes, please.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Good morning, Minister. I want to thank you for being with us this morning.

I want to ask you one of the most popular questions that I get in my riding of Surry Centre, and that is, how is our government going to address the processing times? I know it's something that you are passionate about addressing, and you've mentioned it each and every time you've come to this committee. In fairness to the previous Conservative government, this is something they pretended to champion, but in these estimates, it states that approximately $39 million will be going toward reducing application processing times.

Can you tell us how you will achieve that goal while having high admission levels for permanent residents? I'm wondering if you could tell the committee how your department will differ from governments in the past in addressing the problems of processing times.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I'm not sure what the previous government said, but I know what they did. What we saw was processing times going through the roof over the last 10 years, particularly for the family class. One of our essential election platform commitments was to bring those down, which we are doing, and we are working every day to achieve that, but as I may have said before, one doesn't turn a battleship on a dime.

Whereas one can change provisions of the Citizenship Act through a simple act of Parliament, it takes time to hire the people to devise new methods to bring those waiting times down. I can tell you we have taken a number of concrete measures already, but there is a lot more still to be done. In particular, one of the more important things we've done is a 25% increase in the levels for spouses, partners, and children. In 2015, the levels space was 48,000, and in 2016 it was 60,000, which means 25% more coming in this year than last year. That is supplemented by the additional funding that has been mentioned, which will allow us to hire more public servants to do more processing.

We are learning from the experience in Syria. My department learned how to do things faster. We are hoping—we are not just hoping, we are in the process of importing those speedier techniques that were learned on dealing with refugees into the family stream. We've already acted on a higher number of levels, already acted on more money, and we are in the process of importing the quicker techniques that we applied to Syria into the family stream and other streams of immigrants.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Would you be able to elaborate on how many you're hiring to reduce processing times?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I don't have such a number, but perhaps my colleagues do.

[Richard Wex]

With respect to the family class of spouses, partners, and children, we're moving from 48,000 to 60,000. I'll check the numbers here, but I understand there are 191 additional FTEs for the fiscal year that will be retained to deal with the increase in levels, Mr. Chair, and at the same time attack the inventory. Those two things in combination will significantly have an impact on the overall processing times for that class.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Could you give an idea of how many compared to how many there were before?

[Richard Wex]

I believe there's an inventory right now, subject to being corrected by other officials, of about 80,000.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

FTEs.

[Richard Wex]

There are 450 FTEs at the moment, according to the 2016-17 report on plans and priorities that will be dedicated to this business line. It's the force power for this fiscal year to deal with the very issue the minister has commented on.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Minister, can you tell us for language training stated in the supplementary estimates, how that will be allotted going forward? I think you elaborated a little on the percentages, but will it be allotted, or based on a necessity in the area? How do you figure out which areas have more refugees after the 13th month?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

As my colleague Dawn Edlund explained, those additional funds are allocated according to where the language training is needed most and where there have been waiting times to get in. Perhaps she could elaborate further.

[Dawn Edlund]

There are a couple of different ways. There's the settlement pot of money itself that Ms. Tapley spoke to. It's allotted based on that three-year rolling average. As to the language dollars spent, I believe in 2015 about 37% of the overall pot of money across Canada was spent on language training. Part of that is doing a needs assessment, what the language training needs of this particular population are in a particular location, and then matching the training to correspond with that.

We're doing the same thing with the extra money for the Syrians, although we're moving it more to the communities where the Syrians are.

What we're finding, through the language assessments for the Syrians, is that they have not many language skills in either English or French and are relatively low-skilled. There are special types of classes for people who are illiterate in their own language, called a literacy type of training. Then there are other levels of training corresponding to the Canadian language benchmarks, levels 1 through 4. We're finding that the majority of the Syrian populations correspond either to that illiteracy level or to the language groups 1 through 4.

Then the training is devised around helping them at the level where they are.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

In addition, we heard from a witness who had been in Canada for over 13 months and had been waiting for eight months prior to this new government's coming into power. He complained that he still hasn't received ESL.

Can you tell us, were these long wait-lists for ESL or French language inherited by this government from the previous government?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I don't know.

[Dawn Edlund]

I'm not sure of the answer to that, although we've opened a module in the system that my colleague referred to, iCARE, whereby we can start systematically tracking wait-lists and the number of people on them. We've set out guidelines such that people shouldn't be on more than two wait-lists at a time.

When we looked at the situation in British Columbia, there were just under 8,000 people purportedly on a wait-list, but the names of some of those people had been on that wait-list since 2010. Are they still on a wait-list? There's been no checking back to make sure that, once they got into a class, they're taken off the wait-list.

We're hoping to get better information around the whole wait-list situation for all our newcomers, through this new module and iCARE, in the coming months.