Evidence of meeting #45 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 ircc.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Jenny Kwan
Mr. Saroya, I'm sorry to interrupt, but your time is up. In the next round you can come back to your question.
4 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Jenny Kwan
Moving to the next round, which is mine, I'm just going to stay in the chair to ask my seven minutes of questions, if committee members are fine with that.
First off, thank you to both of the witnesses for being here today.
Processing is one of the biggest issues that I think MP offices face and, of course, it's the same in your line of work. The big question is, how do we improve the system?
There is this automated system that's being worked on at the moment. My first question is to Ms. Rico. Those changes do not apply at the moment to refugee applications. Would you recommend that the government undertake those kinds of changes and apply them to other categories as well?
4 p.m.
President, Canadian Council for Refugees
Could you repeat the question? I have problems with the volume.
4 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Jenny Kwan
I'm asking whether or not the changes that have been undertaken for the economic class ought to be applied also to the refugee class and other categories in the immigration stream.
4 p.m.
President, Canadian Council for Refugees
If that is going to happen, and if the government is going to do it, they need to consider the diversity of the categories and the vulnerabilities of the categories. For example, if the application is online, a simple change of address for a refugee claimant could be done in different languages in a way that the person understands how they can apply on the computer to have it simpler. In that case, consider that for the refugees who are coming, their English and French are not the best. That's one thing we need to do if that happens.
4 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Jenny Kwan
Okay.
In terms of access to information, oftentimes people would phone into the call centre and they would get very generalized information. The automated information is often frustrating for individuals, and often they're actually put on long wait times to talk to a live agent. I've done it myself, and it's an exercise in frustration.
It was interesting, Mr. Jade, that you suggested an approach whereby people can access the information, and you suggested that consultants could access further detailed information or even get into the notes in getting that information. I'm wondering, both of you, whether or not it would be advisable to go to a system almost like the bank or like your income taxes. You file your income tax. In order for you to sign on to get your information, you actually have to have a pass code, and it's only for you, obviously, for security purposes. Would that make sense? Then people could actually get the detailed information, and maybe they'd stop phoning people.
I just want to get your opinion about that. I'll start with Mr. Jade, and I'll come back to you, Ms. Rico.
4 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
Thank you.
In fact you're dealing with, I believe and I'm sure you are aware, two different acts, the Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act. In these cases, what's going on is, first of all, we continue to recommend that the person needs to be in Canada. Therefore what's going on is that if you have a username and password for anyone to access his or her file, you're exposing the whole system to a security issue. That's number one.
Number two, when you deal with a client and you start to file and submit an application on his or her behalf, what would happen at the later stage is that the client would get a decision and/or is waiting for a decision. In this process, you can still, at any time, file an access to information request. We have been working on workshops and other programs with IRCC teams in order to see how we can improve this.
Every time we file an access to information—and by the way, for the information of the committee, IRCC is the largest solicited agency in the government for ATIP access—what goes on in this case is, if it's available on the authorized representative portal, we don't have to file an access to information, which is more work for them. It's already there. All you need to do is just make a tick to then access what the officer has done so far, because this information is not hidden from authorized representatives. The only difference is that it requires one additional step on the side of the client and his representative and on the side of Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
4:05 p.m.
President, Canadian Council for Refugees
Can I intervene? At this moment right now, refugee claimants or people who are going to do an application online have to build their own account. These are called “My Account”. They use the UCI, the unique client identifier, and that is the client ID. You can use that as a call, and the person can build their own password. The problem is that not all the information is online. We need to see that you don't need a representative for every immigration process. You can do it because it is your own form and it's your own application. In that way, when we talk about facilitating and simplifying, this is a way the person can see it.
As you say, you file your income tax. Someone helps you, but you as a person have access to that. That's what we were seeing as a possibility with immigration. I totally agree that they should have the information. For example, when they refuse humanitarian and compassionate grounds, you need to send a letter asking why, asking the reason for the negative. It could be in the file, and that will facilitate things for the client.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
The Vice-Chair NDP Jenny Kwan
Thank you very much.
That's helpful. I would anticipate, though, with the question around potential security issues, that surely there's a way to figure that out. If they can do it with the income tax, I'm sure they can apply the same level of security to this kind of modernization with respect to access to information.
Mr. Jade, would you like to comment?
4:05 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
All income tax accesses are done by Canadian citizens who can be under the Canadian law, but in immigration not all of the applicants are Canadian citizens, which is a different ball game in different jurisdictions.
4:05 p.m.
NDP
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair. I will start off with a question for Mr. Jade.
Thank you so much for your comments. It was good to hear that your experience with the call centre has been a positive one in the last several months. Having spoken to many colleagues, I know this is one of the issues that befuddled all of us. Just out of curiosity, I will ask if you could explain to us if it was just the messaging that was different, or the tone, or were they also more helpful from a functional standpoint?
4:05 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
Thanks for asking.
In fact, I'm aware of the process. This process has been in place and we've been working on it with IRCC for at least one and a half years, and it's the whole functionality that has changed.
By the way, just to make a long story short, the message is a shell. In order to get there, there has been a lot of changes in the functionality and the hiring and the way they were doing it, but there is still room to improve.
4:10 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
The first thing is the agents are supposed to be more trained. Second is the way the call gets in. IRCC receives five million calls or more a year. The way the system used to work was that you could go to either immigration or to citizenship and it was the same group helping you. Most of the agents were on a general knowledge inquiry basis. For example, if you said you wanted to do something to your file, they would answer that they couldn't help you, and they would tell you to wait or to send an email or a file.
Right now, we are seeing that you can, for example, change your address. We're looking for more improvements on that level. If, for example, they had a specific line for authorized representatives who really know the file and the case, it would save time if the officer could make the change. We would call the call centre on that specific line and say this case is at that stage and it requires this and that, so please give it to the officer, and then the agent would be able to deal with it.
We need to still improve on it, but we have gone from two entries through the system to seven, which is also an improvement.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
Thank you.
You wrote a letter to Minister McCallum in 2016 earlier this year, and you argued that processing of parent and grandparent applications would benefit greatly if it was online as opposed to paper-based. In your estimation, how much of a difference would that make?
4:10 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
We believe it would make a lot of difference. Let's speak about those two categories, which are different from the situation faced by refugees who don't have access to the system. Those categories are used by Canadian citizens who have access to the Internet. Of course, for the parents and grandparents, it's the same.
The nuance here is that if we take as an example the express entry model, which is all online, what happened was that they were able to deliver in six months because the whole system works online. They hired new, fresh officers to deal with it, and they can process it in Canada or in any other centre because, as I said, GCMS allows IRCC to move files from here and there.
The less paper you have, the more efficient you can be and the more new blood you can inject into the system. Those newcomers, new graduates, will deliver differently from the way they would using paper. This is where we see the big difference. It can all be filed online, especially with the help of the children who are sponsoring their parents or the spouses helping their spouse come to Canada. It's much better.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
I take it you interface with many different jurisdictions, many different provincial ministries. In your opinion, which is the most service-oriented one?
4:10 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants
Do you mean in Canada? The most solicited one among Canadians is CRA. It is the one we all test, and I believe it is one of the best.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
Okay. Thank you for that.
Ms. Rico, thank you for your testimony today. I understand, having looked at your background, that you're a physiotherapist and that you've also worked with disadvantaged children. Given your previous work with children with Down syndrome, what suggestions would you have as a general rule to enhance accessibility, apart from the ones you've already mentioned?
4:10 p.m.
President, Canadian Council for Refugees
I will talk more about the vulnerabilities of refugees.
Sometimes we have refugees with disabilities. They may even be deaf or blind. If you are going to do it online in a modernized way, it has to be in the same way that you fill out your forms. They can use either the TTY that they use or a special computer system to do the applications.
As I said concerning the filling out of the forms, if we are going to modernize, to use the example of express entry, we need to do it in a simple form, because many of the refugees will come with vulnerabilities or trauma, and not all of them have a knowledge of technology. In that case, it has to be simple, in such a way that they can fill it out themselves.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
Thank you.
I know that the Canadian Council for Refugees does quite a bit of advocacy for LGBTQ applicants. Recently, they changed the electronic travel authorization form so that now there are three different gender options—
