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.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Robert Orr  Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Michelle Lattimore  Associate Director General, Centralized Network, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Paul Armstrong  Director General, Centralized Network, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

4:55 p.m.

Director General, Centralized Network, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Paul Armstrong

Certainly, Madam Vice-Chair, monitoring the error rate is something that we do very regularly, because the error rate can be indicative of a number of things. One is that sometimes it can be that our kits or application forms are not clear. As Ms. Lattimore has mentioned, in some cases where that's the issue, we provide that feedback to the individuals who are responsible for providing the kits. We say that they provide functional guidance. We do that because sometimes that's a very real issue where our clients can't understand. Other times, there is error rate because clients simply don't comply. Some things may seem simple to you, for example, making sure that the document is signed, or if we need the birth certificate, marriage certificate, which are essential documents to the application. We monitor that very closely in the quality assurance that we do.

In the changes that are being made, such as the changes which the minister announced yesterday around family class sponsorships, we're also as a department simplifying the forms. As Ms. Lattimore pointed out, the work that we did with OCAD University and talking to front-line staff is really leading us to try to simplify application forms, change, for example, the upfront requirements that we made. For example, Mr. Orr made reference to the fact that we are not going to be requiring the upfront medicals because we were in fact causing a delay because sometimes the medicals expired.

It's really a multi-pronged strategy. It's not just one thing, but it's a lot of things that the department is trying to do to really improve the client experience, improve the client service, and at the end of the day, to process cases more rapidly.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Julie Dzerowicz Liberal Davenport, ON

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong.

Madam Vice-Chair, I'm going to give the rest of my time to Mr. Ehsassi.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON

Thank you.

If we could go to back to what I would say is the favourite topic today, the hotline, as I understand in the previous exchange.

First of all, when was that hotline set up? What year was it?

4:55 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Robert Orr

I think we're stumped on that one.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON

Okay, no problem.

4:55 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Robert Orr

It's been there for a number of years.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON

If I'm not mistaken, you've heard from everyone here that the hotline is very frustrating. It appears, truthfully, that the people who are operating it really see no need to actually assist and to make things more simple for us. I think you were talking about how the department did actually attempt to fix things several years ago, but there were challenges. Is that correct?

4:55 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Robert Orr

For the call centre itself?

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON

For the call centre, the department itself wanted to make improvements—

4:55 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Robert Orr

We're consistently making changes. A few years ago, I guess one of the decisions was so that we could focus on the complex cases, we made a decision that we were not going to...if the case was still within service standards within processing times—

4:55 p.m.

NDP

The Vice-Chair NDP Jenny Kwan

Thank you, Mr. Orr.

That's all the time we have for this part of the committee.

We're now going to suspend for two minutes and then we're going to go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]