Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 1st, 2017

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Are you aware of any particular regions in the world where the processing time is much longer compared to certain other regions? Maybe if you don't have the information, you could get us it.

[David Arnold]

Yes, I'll check that for you. I'd be happy to.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

It is possible to get that information, thanks a lot.

My next question is for Mr. Langford. I certainly recognize the important role that immigration lawyers and consultants play in our immigration system, particularly when it comes to the more complex cases. I think we would agree that for routine matters and most cases, it should be easier for applicants to complete the process successfully without third-party assistance.

What specific changes in technology and process would you recommend to make it easier for clients to successfully navigate the system without the assistance of a third party?

[Vance P. E. Langford]

If you're asking me to talk lawyers out of a job, that's a difficult one for me to answer.

However, I can tell you that there is a premise made in regard to lawyers, and we've made submissions that many of the government websites are actually quite negative about representatives, and lawyers in particular. We would advocate for change in that area.

To answer your question, if you have a client who is educated or even has secondary education and is approaching doing an immigration application in Canada, the first place he or she goes is to the website. The website is improving, and I've seen acknowledgement that it needs to be improved, so that's understood. Terrific. However, it does need to be simplified.

As we migrate now to global case management and online applications, the overall recommendation would be just to use plain language, easy to follow check lists, and perhaps systems in GCMS that require the documents before you can file the application.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Langford.

Mr. Tilson.

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

Ms. Malik, one of the biggest problems for members of Parliament is the complaints that we get from constituents about service delivery, delays in processing times, and their inability to get status reports. It's an awful problem for us.

How do you deal with those things?

[Saima Malik]

There are a couple of things we've introduced, including newer technologies for how we optimize our standard questions and answers.

We're going through a process right now where we help to triage customers. The goal is that there are standard questions and there should be standard answers available to all customers, but if we know it's a specific case that needs support or assistance, we're essentially guiding that customer into an assisted help function, whether it be through chat, directly through a call to the call centre, or eventually things like video calls or co-browsing.

We're really helping customers with the goal and intention of resolving their issue in one interaction, so that if they need an answer or a simple answer, we're able to provide that; but if they need to speak to a human, we make that simple and easy for them.

One recommendation to this group is that we've seen a number of our digital interactions move to mobile, and that has forced us to make our experiences, whether they be an application process or contacting the bank, much simpler and easier for things like reviews of application processes and simplifying that process. Because of the nature of mobile experiences and access via your smart phone, you really have to optimize and slim down that process.

We've also taken advantage of technologies that are available out there such as chat or click to call to understand where the customer is coming from and the experience they've had—for example, what application process they were in or what their inquiry was about.

The other thing we've taken advantage of is virtual assistance. We are looking at technologies now that take advantage of understanding and mining answers and knowledge bases to help respond to the customer in a chatbot-like fashion. When and where we feel it's the right time to have them connect with a human, we'll do that.

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

Thank you very much.

Do I have any more—

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

The bells aren't going.

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

The bells aren't going. Well, that's good news.

Thank you for your comments.

You are in competition. We love competition, but one of the issues of competition is improving your digital service offerings. What do you do? I'm saying there are obviously other institutions that you're in competition with. How do you keep up?

[Saima Malik]

We constantly benchmark.

We have certain KPIs that evaluate the time it takes a customer to get through an application process and how quickly a customer's query is resolved. We use external agencies or organizations to help benchmark those KPIs to understand how we're competing, not only with our own FSIs but also looking globally at how other organizations in the FSI space are performing. We're constantly optimizing things like our application process and how our customers utilize some of our self-help and assisted-help capabilities. We use external organizations to help benchmark.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

I'd like to thank our witnesses for appearing at this committee meeting and for their understanding of the compressed amount of time we had. I dispensed with the niceties of introducing all of you individually, as is the normal practice of the committee, for the same reason, but we do have all the information. The committee truly appreciates your understanding.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.