Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 9th, 2016

[Richard Wex]

I did not say that. No.

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

We'll come back.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Chen, I understand you'll be splitting your time with Mr. Tabbara.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Mr. Chair, actually, Mr. Tabbara will have this time.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I want to go back to what we talked about, the $39 million in extra funding for reducing the processing times. Minister, could you elaborate on how, going forward, this funding will help in our four-year term to reduce processing times in the long run?

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

There are basically two ways to reduce processing times. One is to hire more people to do the processing. The second way is to do the processing more efficiently so that you need fewer people to do it. We're working on both fronts.

We achieved a budget increase, which is now reflected in the estimates. It will allow us to hire more officials, which will allow them to interview more people and deal with more cases. That is one of the ways we will reduce the processing times and the backlogs. The second way we will do that is to learn how to do things more efficiently. That's what we did during the Syrian crisis, the Syrian refugee experience. Officials learned to do things a whole lot faster than had previously been the case. We're hoping to import the lessons learned from the refugee experience in order to make it quicker to bring in families and economic immigrants.

It's a combination of more employees through receiving more money, as you see in front of you, and more efficiency so that a given number of employees can get more processing done.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

This is not just with refugees, but all aspects of immigration. Is that correct?

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

Yes. What I'm saying is that when we did the refugees, that was a sort of case study, if you like, or pilot project for learning to be more efficient. If the people who work in my department have learned how to be more efficient in processing refugees, then they can take the lessons learned from over there and apply those same principles to processing other groups of people. They all have family members, economic immigrants, and any kind of immigrant.

The plan is to draw on the lessons learned, and they're working actively on this. They have what they call tiger teams set up, groups of active public servants coming together to talk about what we learned from the Syrian experience, how we can apply the lessons learned over there to family class, to economic immigrants, to whatever. People within the department are actively discussing that and putting into place what they have learned.

Yes, we will learn from the achievements we had with the refugees and use that new knowledge to improve performance elsewhere.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I'll be splitting my time with Mr. Sarai, if there's time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Perhaps, Minister, since we have a little bit of time and in the spirit of greater transparency, in the immigration levels plan that you've provided, you provide numbers by categories. Would it be possible to receive an approximate regional and/or country-by-country breakdown for each category from the department?

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

I know we publish information on immigration by country of origin. I'm not quite sure about region, but I will ask one of the officials to deal with that.

[David Manicom]

We can provide historical information both on which provinces immigrants arrive in and which country they came from. Our levels plan is not based on nationality, so we don't know how many people from which country will arrive in the levels plan this year, but that information can be provided retroactively. Canada's immigration programs are all nationality blind. They are not planned to get a certain number of people from a certain country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Is what you're saying that, for instance in the family class, there is no forethought put towards deciding that historically this is a country from which we have received a very large contingent but we are blind, in terms of our planning process, as to whether or not we'll be receiving large numbers from that country rather than from other countries?

[David Manicom]

We're certainly not blind from our planning and operational process point of view. We know historical trends and we use those trends to provide staffing and resources, but in our processing, we process cases in the order in which they are received.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Ms. Kwan, you have three minutes, please.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

I have a number of questions.

First, how many GLBTQ GARs have been identified, have been processed, and are here in Canada?

While you're thinking about getting that answer, let me ask a question concerning tracking of wait-lists. The minister's official mentioned iCARE. When can we expect that report to be made available? Will it be made public, and can a copy of that report be submitted to this committee so that we can review it?

I want to be clear about the breakdown of the funding for resettlement. What I'm looking for is which agencies have received additional funding above and beyond the normal resettlement funding for a Syrian refugee and for the Syrian refugee initiative. How much has each organization received? How long is the additional funding to last? That is to say, is it a long-term funding stream, short-term funding or a one-time cash injection? What is the funding identified for? When were the additional funds released to the organizations?

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

Well, it seems that's almost the full three minutes just to ask the questions, so we may have to get back to you, but if any of the officials can answer part of it now, I'll turn it over to them.

[Catrina Tapley]

Mr. Chair, I'll come back to the question on wait-lists for language classes. In tracking this now through the system we call iCARE, we've identified particular areas: northern and southern Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. With regard to British Columbia, I think both Ms. Edlund and I would say that those figures are just a little off at this point as we continue to work through a better way to plan on that.

I can tell you what we're reporting as of April 30 in our system, so these numbers will have improved since then. In terms of numbers of Syrian refugees who have received language assessment, and then the number of Syrian refugees actually enrolled in IRCC-funded language training, we have an adult population here now of about 10,000. Of those, about 8,000 have received language assessments, and we have just slightly over 4,000 who are enrolled in language training as of April 30.

We're ready now to pull out the next batch of information. This is information provided in the system by service provider organizations, and I have every confidence that those numbers will increase.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Ms. Kwan, the time is up.

Ms. Zahid, go ahead for seven minutes, please.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for coming today.

My questions will be in relation to the levels that have been announced for 2016.

The government has been criticized for reducing the levels of economic immigrants, possibly in favour of other categories such as family reunification. However, it should be noted that being separated from one's family and loved ones is a serious detriment and causes stress and a lack of support that can make life very difficult for the immigrants to integrate into Canadian society and to be contributing members of the Canadian economy.

Would it therefore not hold that family reunification actually provides a net positive economic benefit for Canada, and that it should be encouraged?

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

Absolutely, but we also want to encourage economic immigrants and we want to encourage refugees. The issue you're raising is that the pie is only so big, so if you have more of one thing, you have to have less of something else.

The target we have for 2016 is 300,000, and I am told that is absolutely the maximum capacity of the department. There is no way we can bring in more than 300,000.

Because we had made this large commitment to refugees, the number of refugees has almost quadrupled—it's three to four times higher than it was in 2015. The number of spouses is 25% higher, I think from 12,000 to 16,000 over that period. That demonstrates a commitment to family unification. We're also committed to strong economic immigrants, because we need to grow the economy. For that one year only, because the total capacity was limited and we had pressures on the other areas, we did have a small reduction for one year only in economic immigrants, so that's how it played out. Certainly our actions indicate that, as you suggest, family reunification is very important, and the numbers speak for themselves on that.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

During our study on Syrian refugees resettlement, this committee heard from some witnesses, especially the sponsorship agreement holders, regarding quotas and caps for sponsoring Syrian refugees. Some sponsorship agreement holders said that they have adequate funds and other resources to sponsor even more refugees but they are being held back due to the quotas and the caps for this year.

It is quite a great testament to the extreme generosity of Canadians, the way they are welcoming all the Syrian refugees. However, given the resources the government has available and the levels available for Syrian refugees, could you please discuss the impact that admitting more privately sponsored refugees from Syria, over and above the stated numbers, would have on other refugee admission streams with regard to numbers, as well as the processing times in all the other areas?

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

Yes. Well, that's a good question, and it is certainly the case that if we admit more of one, then we have to admit less of another because, as I just said, 300,000 is our absolute maximum.

We do have this issue that Canadians have been overwhelmingly generous in their response to the Syrian refugees and that's a good thing. It's so much so that we have trouble keeping up with the demand, and so we have made some adjustments to allow more Syrian refugees to come into Canada by saying that all those who applied before March 31 would be accepted by the end of this year or early next year.

That won't meet the full demand. I'm aware of that. Not everybody who wants to sponsor a Syrian refugee or indeed another refugee from another country will be able to do that as quickly as they would like to. That's because we have this constraint on our total levels. As much as I would like to have more refugees faster for the Syrian refugee sponsors, I don't feel I am able to because of the negative impact that would have on other categories of immigrants who are also deserving.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I see the levels plan indicates a target of 20,000 to 22,000 caregivers for 2016; the low is 20,000 and the higher is 22,000. We all know the important role that caregivers play for many Canadian families and about the backlog that has grown in this program in recent years. In my riding of Scarborough Centre we have many caregivers who, through this program, have become contributing members to Canadian society and play a very important and integral role.

I know that the department has undertaken a number of changes to this specific program to protect the rights and meet the needs of both the caregivers and the employers.

Could you discuss these reforms and how they will enable the target for admission to be met?

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

On caregivers, I'll make two points.

One, because of the pattern of inventories in recent years in the levels of admission, those processing times are going to come down in the next two or three years. They'll come down by approximately 10 months per year, I believe. We have good news on the horizon for caregivers; those processing times are going to be coming down.

We also made a commitment in the election which we are going to do and which I think would help caregivers, and that is to set up a system of regulated companies whose job it would be to hire the caregivers on behalf of families. That would help the families. It would make it easier for them to hire caregivers. It would help the caregivers as well, because if there's a bad situation with a family, the company can find the caregiver a different family.

That, I believe, is not under my ministry, but it's under ESDC. It is something that is being worked on now.

I think Richard Wex had something to add.