Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 10th, 2016

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Thornhill, ON]

I want to thank you all and to assure you all that the multiple questions from the NDP will be answered and that yours will be, Mr. Chair.

I enjoyed this session. One thing I enjoyed is that the questions from the government side were not necessarily easier than the questions from the opposition side. That's the way committees are supposed to be. We don't expect lob ball questions from our own colleagues, and neither was yours a lob ball question, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank you all for your hospitality.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

I'll suspend for two minutes to allow the minister's departure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

I'd like to resume the meeting.

We'll begin where we left off.

The next person is Mr. Sarai. You have five minutes.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Thank you for coming. I want to ask a question, and you can choose which one of you probably best knows about this.

There is $3 million allocated for a migrant smuggling prevention strategy, which originally was for global assistance for irregular migrants. It seems as though it's going to an opposite program, from one that assists people to come in to one that makes sure they don't come in by illegal means.

There was an evaluation done by IRC in November 2015, but it found that the outcomes were difficult to measure. I want to know how effective the migrant smuggling prevention strategy has been in disrupting human smuggling activities, if someone can answer that.

[Anita Biguzs]

Mr. Chair, perhaps I can begin and then turn to my colleagues.

This program was, of course, part of a much broader strategy of the Government of Canada, dating back to about 2012, that was under the leadership of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. This was just one component of a number of different initiatives to try to deal with the whole issue of human smuggling generally.

The intention of the program was of course to provide basic support services. We actually provide the funding through a third party, in this case the International Organization for Migration, which is why it is in our vote 5, the grants and contributions vote.

The intention is to provide for the basic needs of migrants for such things as food and accommodation and to help return them to their country of origin and help them reintegrate. Basically, it is to try to close off the potential for human smuggling to occur in the first place. As I say, it was part of a larger, comprehensive strategy.

I'll turn to my colleagues. We have in fact been able, I know, to use the programming to provide the basic supports that have been needed for individuals in this situation.

Ms. Tapley, maybe you can give a bit more information on this.

[Catrina Tapley, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic and Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Just to pick up where the deputy left off on this question, under the broader strategy there were a number of different components to the program. This is one of the components that we have in our department.

As part of ongoing evaluations, programs, for instance, that were led by a sister department, the Canada Border Services Agency, were found not to be particularly effective, in their evaluation. This program, however, we continue to believe, has merit. Although it is difficult to quantify sometimes in terms of results, we continue to believe it has been effective in disrupting those networks.

[Dawn Edlund]

A couple of years ago, when the program was new, we had a population of individuals who had been smuggled to a transit point in Africa and were being held at a soccer stadium. They had no access to food or water or shelter, and so we used funding—I think Foreign Affairs was funding it at that point—to ensure that these kinds of basic human needs were being met for this population

Then there was work done with the International Organization for Migration to see, of the people who were there, how many voluntarily wanted to return to their country of origin, which at the time was Sri Lanka. Many people took folks up on that offer, and for the integration supports that they received when they returned to Sri Lanka.

It's access to money, then, if there is an incident in which we need to step up and provide those sorts of services.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Supplementary to that, has the money actually been used? Second, is it only to disrupt migrant smuggling when the end arrival point is Canada, or is it to disrupt global human smuggling in general?

[Dawn Edlund]

To take the second question first, it's to disrupt migrant smuggling efforts when people are destined to Canada, and this $3 million has not been used yet. If there were another smuggling event in which folks were destined to Canada, we would have this money kick in and be available for us to provide the appropriate supports.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

It's only on an “as needed” basis?

[Dawn Edlund]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Ms. Kwan, you may have five minutes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much.

How much of the contingency funding that the minister spoke about is expected to be returned, or are there any projections?

Then, while you are looking for that answer, I'll ask my next question.

Where did the $20 million mentioned in the minister's statement as being transferred come from—from what program internally?

In the same vein, is it possible for us to get a list of the agencies that got the settlement monies for the Syrian refugee initiative? How much did they get, and what was the money for; what specific programs were associated with it?

Then I'll segue into backlogs. Can we get information on how many applications remain in each of the respective streams by way of backlog? Then, of those streams, how many people were waiting for more than 10 years? Then, after that, can we get a breakdown year by year of the backlog, so that we have a full sense of what the situation is? Then, with the budget that has been injected to reduce some of the processing times, what is the anticipated reduction in the processing time?

[Anita Biguzs]

Perhaps I can begin and then turn to my colleagues.

In terms of the contingency, maybe I can describe it as more of a prudence factor, because we thought we would actually have to stand up the interim lodging sites, and of course, that was based on information we had in January or February.

As it turns out, as I say, we will have enough space available in our operating vote, for a number of different reasons, that at the end of the year we expect we will have enough funding in the operating vote to cover these costs. It would have required a vote transfer, and it is too late to do that.

In terms of the requirements involving vote 5, we think the requirements overall in vote 5 were greater, but there will be certainly enough funding left over in vote 1. I hope that's clear.

There are a number of reasons why we have funding available in vote 1, in our operating costs. In terms of the transfer we're doing, as the minister indicated, we are using a third party, the International Organization for Migration, rather than our own operating costs, which would have required staff. We would have had to put money into salary dollars.

It's also because our estimates were based on the best information we had at the time in terms of what would be required to stand up such a major initiative in a short period of time. As it turns out, our costs have been lower than we forecast.

For example, for transportation cost to bring people to Canada, we had estimated a certain cost that would be required. In fact, the cost came in much lower than we had anticipated. It would have been paid for either out of our operating vote or out of our vote 5, and a large part of the lower cost was due to our being able to get better rates because of the volumes we were chartering and the availability of commercial aircraft.

As I say, our estimates were based on the best information we had at the time, and the actual expenditures have turned out to be much less. All of that funding is earmarked. We can't use it for other purposes, so what we don't use effectively lapses.

Concerning the list of SPOs, I don't have it with me, but that's certainly something we can provide, Mr. Chair, to the member after this meeting.

I'm going to have to turn to my colleague concerning backlogs.

[Robert Orr]

You had a number of questions. I'll try to respond to a few of those.

The number of cases more than 10 years old would be very few in any line of business. We can certainly provide you the overall backlog by line of business and as well by year. We have the backlogs or inventories in all the various categories; that's available to us.

Over the past few years, the inventories have come down in a number of areas very significantly. I shall point to the federal skilled worker inventory, which was at more than 600,000 in 2008; it's now at 25,000. Parents and grandparents has now been reduced 70% since December 2011. We talked about the live-in caregiver inventories as well.

In terms of new work, much of the constraint about backlogs has been the levels space that we have had; in other words, the number of applications that we were to process to meet our levels plan. The department has consistently met its levels plan, and we have worked within it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Mr. Orr, and if you could undertake to bring the information to the committee in due course.

Mr. Sarai, seven minutes.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

My next question is with respect to the $2.5 million for the live-in caregivers to prevent that backlog. Is this money targeting all live-in caregiver applications, or those from countries with the longest wait times?

[Anita Biguzs]

The funding is enhancing our processing capacity in terms of helping us to deal...it's not targeted to any one country. We try to deal with the applications on the basis of when applications have come in, and in terms of processing on the basis of the oldest applications that we have to try to work through the backlog. As we said earlier, we have been able to reduce the backlog in the program by about 34% overall, which should help in the long term with reducing those processing times. It's not country specific.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Adding to that, my understanding, and I may be wrong, is that live-in caregivers from certain countries such as India have a longer waiting time for permanent residence versus live-in caregiver applicants from the Philippines, and that's the point of my question. I wanted to know if that was the case.

[Robert Orr]

We could look into that, but I would be surprised if that were the case. We deal with the applications regardless of nationality or any other factor on the basis on when we have received them.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

My next question is with respect to the number of permanent residents for 2015. We received numbers for 2014. Do you know when we can estimate confirmation of how many residents came under 2015?

[Anita Biguzs]

We should be in a position to make those numbers available shortly.

[Robert Orr]

The overall number for 2015 was just over 271,000 people who landed. We have the breakdown by the various lines of business as well.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Perhaps we'd be able to get those afterwards?

Am I right to understand that the settlement service agencies, the ones Ms. Kwan spoke about earlier, get their funding based on the amount of permanent residents who land in the year prior, or do they go by the estimated amounts expected to arrive in this year? Do they go by region? How do we estimate those numbers?

[Anita Biguzs]

I will begin by saying that normally for settlement services allocation, as Ms. Edlund had explained, we have a funding formula that's based on the last three years. It looks at the intake in terms of the number of immigrants destined to a province, plus a factor for the number of refugees who go to a particular province, in recognition of the fact that the needs and services required would be additional in supporting refugees.

In terms of the Syrian initiative, those allocations for settlement services, the incremental funding that's being provided under the initiative, are being allocated on the basis of the refugees final location destination. That's how we have determined the allocation of those settlement services.

Ms. Tapley, do you want to add to that?