Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 27th, 2016

[Chantal Desloges]

That's an interesting idea and there's no reason why that couldn't work. I do think it might become unwieldy at a certain point or a little unmanageable to apply multiple different income tests or settlement funds tests to different ages of parents. I think also it makes assumptions that younger parents may or may not work. Even if they're able to, they may choose not to. Also, older parents, even though past the retirement age, may choose to work.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Do you also think it might have an effect on our birth rate too? People may choose to have children later or fewer children because of child care, but if they have child care at home or in their family, they might have more children, like two or three.

[Chantal Desloges]

I 100% agree with you that it could have a demographic effect. Certainly, with my client base, I know a lot of clients who hold back on having children because they don't have enough family support to take care of them.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Mr. Wong, you were saying you had an issue with regulation 4. You made that abundantly clear. What are your recommendations on speeding up some of the processes by which you bring family sponsorship, so the medical, the security background, and then one expires versus the other? Do you have any recommendations? From your experience perhaps you could tell this committee how we could speed it up, so that we do not have delays.

[Vincent Wong]

There are so many different ways in which, at the back end, they could potentially speed it up. I do think that, if regulation 4 is changed, obviously you wouldn't get rejected as much at the front end. Of course, if you're rejected by somewhat overly broad bans or barriers at the beginning, that basically turns that particular situation into an appeal. That makes it very long, very time-consuming, and very expensive, not just with respect to immigration resources, but also with respect to our boards and tribunals. That's something you can consider, to make sure that the front end is not too generalized.

[Avvy Go]

Perhaps I could just add that, in my experience working in the clinic, a lot of the spousal sponsorship cases get rejected because the visa officers find that there's no genuine relationship. Then we end up having to appeal. In my view, many of these decisions are a reflection of the biases of some visa officers overseas, whether it's cultural bias, class bias, or race bias, that actually, in my view, prolong the immigration application process as well. If visa officers have more objective criteria—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. Go.

[Avvy Go]

—and they don't treat every single application as a potential fraud application, then I think a lot of these cases could move a lot faster.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. Go.

Mr. Tilson, you have seven minutes, please.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I'd like to ask Mr. Langford some questions.

One of the biggest problems that members of Parliament have, particularly in the more urban areas, is the issue of wait times. It goes back in time. There have always been problems with wait times.

You indicated in your brief that the family class migration should not be increased to the detriment of economic or humanitarian streams. I agree with that. However, you also indicate that Canada's annual intake of immigration through all streams should increase to 360,000, or roughly 1% of the population.

We're all concerned about wait times. We're concerned about the reunification of families. It's a serious issue. However, there's also the issue of cost. Has the Canadian Bar Association done any economic analysis of what it would cost the taxpayer in terms of increased departmental staffing in order to keep wait times at a reasonable level?

[Vance P. E. Langford]

We wouldn't have the information available in order to do an analysis of governmental costs and the processing costs to increase levels. We would expect the Government of Canada would be better prepared to do that analysis.

I think the comment about increasing the number of immigrants overall is one that recognizes the importance of immigration to the Canadian economy, and society, and our demographics in Canada and the fact that there are many reasons why immigrants do benefit Canada. I think that's the overall reason for that recommendation. It always comes with costs, as everything does. Our point was just not to start to slash or increase family to the detriment of economic programs in particular.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I understand that, and many witnesses have come to us, saying that we need to increase all this. But there is a cost, and no one seems to be able to give us a cost.

If you double something, does that mean the size of the departmental staff should be doubled?

You suggested changing the administrative procedures as one way of improving the system. Perhaps you could elaborate on that, because that's another way of reducing costs.

[Vance P. E. Langford]

One of the great improvements in the last five years, in particular, has been the implementation of the global case management system for the processing of immigration applications. Applications are processed at visa offices around the world. Work is shared, and processes are becoming automated. There is a recognized improvement in efficiency in processing, and hopefully there will be a cost benefit as a result.

One of the things the Canadian Bar Association would also like to point out, though, is that for people who are actually going to participate in the application process, the dehumanization of the current system is a big problem.

That's why one of the recommendations in particular is that there be not only improved officer training but also communication between the applicant and the officer, so there aren't unnecessary and arbitrary refusals of applications that result in appeals that drag on for extended periods of time, when it could be as simple as asking a few questions.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

You obviously represent a number of people in the legal profession across the province who deal with immigration issues. You must have some idea as to the staffing that's required to process these things, because you deal with it probably on a daily basis.

You also suggest that the department consider applying a processing time standard of up to one year from the date the application is complete to apply consistently across all visa offices. I don't think you'll get any argument against that.

Certainly, what you propose is a laudable goal and an excellent recommendation, but it seems to me there are only two ways of doing that. We may already have discussed that, but one is to relax or eliminate entry standards, or to hire more staff. It's as simple as that, to do all these things. Those are the two main things you could do.

In reviewing all these matters, what approach would the Canadian Bar Association recommend the government take?

[Vance P. E. Langford]

We would recommend that the government take an approach that involves enhanced efficiency, and some of the recommendations I've made about clearer standards, communication, and enhanced efficiency.

When we make these recommendations about a clearer standard, be it one year or two years for processing, the Government of Canada is already doing that very effectively for economic immigrants, and is processing 80% of applications under express entry within six months now. The government is doing a great job there, so why couldn't that efficiency be transferred to family class to facilitate reunification?

In terms of budgetary numbers and costs, no, we haven't done that work, but the recommendation is based on a fairness and efficiency approach to overall management of the system. There would have to be additional effort, that's acknowledged.

The question for the committee and for the Government of Canada is, is it willing to do that as a priority to achieve family reunification?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

Mr. Donnelly, for seven minutes, please.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you to all our witnesses for providing this testimony. It is very helpful. I am substituting for Jenny Kwan, who is normally at the committee.

I will start with Mr. Wong. You mentioned three main points. You talked about conditional and permanent residency, and spousal relationships, but on the third point you ran out of time. Would you like a little more time to go over that?

[Vincent Wong]

I appreciate that, Mr. Donnelly.

I wanted to go over some of the situations that paragraph 117(9)(d) captures that we've seen on the ground at the clinic. I mentioned the one-child, and I guess now a two-child, policy in China where those are the family planning regulations, and the penalties are extremely harsh. For good reasons, many claimants do not immediately declare these children and wait until after the fact to protect themselves from penalties such as forced sterilization or massive monetary penalties.

A second issue that we see is in conflict zones. Sometimes, for example, in refugee situations people don't know whether their children are alive, or maybe they get wrong information that their child is no longer there or their spouse has been killed. In some situations they find out after the fact, once they're settled, that they're still alive. This ban doesn't have any sort of give in it. Also, because of the way the regulations are considered, there's no jurisdiction at the immigration appeal division to consider humanitarian and compassionate situations within this bar.

The third one is custodial battles. We see situations where two spouses are separated. They have a fight over the kid. One parent is emigrating, and the other parent doesn't allow the child to be examined by immigration authorities. Even in that case, I'm sorry, there is a lifetime ban on family sponsorship.

That's what we mean by saying that it's overly broad and that we have to think about ways to take a more contextual and holistic approach to these cases.

Thank you.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

To the Canadian Bar Association reps, we were talking about costs. What about costs to Canadian families? In terms of these policies or the lack thereof and in your recommended changes, what costs do we have to new Canadian families that would be lowered or should be considered in the current legislation and the current processing?

I'll ask the same of the Toronto legal clinic.

[Vance P. E. Langford]

Are you specifically talking about parents and grandparents or new Canadian families?

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

We have costs to taxpayers and the government for processing and improving the situation. We also have costs to new Canadian families by not doing that.

[Vance P. E. Langford]

Of the costs to new Canadian families, the first one that comes to mind is child care. You have $2,500 a month, which is $30,000 a year, for a family to have a caregiver for children so the family can continue to work. There is the cost of having to travel to maintain multiple residences if you have a bifurcated family in different countries. You have travel expenses. You have maintaining multiple residences. Medical and other costs would be associated with travel and just maintaining the family across borders.

The facilitation of family reunification would reduce those types of costs, which are very basic and affect many families.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Ms. Go.

[Avvy Go]

There are costs to Canada as well. I cited the CIC study in my submission. It found that 15% of the sponsors said their parents and grandparents contribute to the household income. Another 21% said they contribute sometimes. Forty-eight per cent said that having the sponsors' parents here helped them go out to work more and therefore generate more income. Another 30% or so helped their spouse to go out to work more and generate more income. That's forgone income or tax income to Canada.

With respect to how you make it faster, I'm old enough to remember when Canada first introduced the right-of-landing fee. The government rationale was that it needed to increase the fee to pay for the processing of these applications, but of course we know that the money collected did not all go into the immigration system. I think that maybe it's time to dedicate all the application fees that are collected to the processing of immigrants. Then you would have a lot more resources to increase the number of applications being processed.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?