Evidence of meeting #44 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Has there been any formal working group or process put in place with Canadian airlines specifically, given the feedback from Air Canada in order to address some of their concerns? Have you guys reached out and formalized any sort of dialogue process?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Constantly, there's very regular contact with the airlines, both with all the airlines together and then individual airlines as well.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
What are you hearing from them in terms of concrete recommendations to improve the awareness process?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Again, what we're trying to do is diagnose exactly where there may be gaps right now. That's what we're trying to do working with them to see what they're seeing. One of the issues, I think, is not so much with people arriving for their initial flight, because people are able to get an eTA very rapidly, the vast majority within three minutes. The problem is those people who are transiting. That's why we're trying to get at that group, trying to zero in on that.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
So far you guys have not diagnosed exactly, to your words, what the problems would be coming out of some of the.... We're hearing a lot of this in the media as well that there are issues. From what you just said, you actually haven't identified the problems yet.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Let's say there are multiple things we are trying to attack, and for all of them, there is no silver bullet to solve them and ensure every single person...and get 100%. We're close. It's very high.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
In terms of the multiple things, what would those be?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Some of them are systems changes, which may help, because of people putting in passport numbers incorrectly, so that we self-correct that. There are issues like trying to get the word out to certain groups which are not aware of it. There are multiple things we are trying to do. We've set up the airline support centres so that airlines are able to phone if they have a client who does not have the proper documentation.
Within IRCC, we have hired 177 people who are working on eTA to ensure that we are responding as rapidly as we can to ensure that with those cases which are not automatically approved and fall out of the system, we get a response to them as rapidly as we possibly can.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Obviously, as you mentioned, they're shared responsibilities with CBSA. Could you tell us a little about the communication process that IRCC has put in place in order to functionalize or operationalize the eTA? Have there been any bumps along the way on that?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It's a huge system, so inevitably there are some bumps along the way, but I think we've addressed the vast majority of them and we continue to do so.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Is there an operational or project management group, a working group or something to that effect?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Yes.
Conservative
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It's been working very well. There's a governance level, from the working level to the director general level, to the ADM level, and the deputy ministers hold a meeting biweekly at the moment.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Are you tracking numbers, in terms of how many people have experienced issues? Do you have a CRM model or anything in terms of tracking problems?
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
I understand you've updated the website. I was wondering, in terms of risk mitigation, what your strategies are to deal with the possibility of cyber-attacks or data breaches.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I don't pretend to be an IT specialist, but IRCC works very closely with Shared Services Canada to ensure there is a robust system in place to manage any cyber-attacks. We're very conscious that the GCMS platform, the global case management system platform, is something which has to be very carefully protected, and there's been no indication thus far that there have been any attacks. We continue to monitor that constantly.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
My second question is in regard to the global case management system. What lines of business that are undertaken by IRCC can be done through the global system? Does it apply to all categories?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It does not apply to all categories, but to a very significant number of them. It would be all temporary resident, all permanent resident, permanent resident card categories, and it would be the citizenship program as well. It does not apply to the passport program, or at least to the vast majority of the passport program, at this time.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
The next question I have is with respect to service standards. I understand that last year you announced that for citizenship you're trying to make it one year or less. What are the consequences in the event that the department fails to meet its own service standards?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Well, in terms of citizenship, in fact, we're exceeding it. The processing times at the moment are 10 months. As I said earlier, the consequences are that we look very carefully at it to see what's going wrong and why we're not meeting those standards, and we do everything we can to ensure that we do get back within the service standard.
Citizenship is a very good example of where we were well over where we wanted to be. For citizenship, about three years ago it was taking close to three and a half years, and we've now brought it down to 10 months for new applications.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
Okay.
In terms of service standards, how does it work with various officers if there are officers who are outliers in terms of acceptance or timelines? Do you identify those officers?
