Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 12th, 2016

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

The last one is just for students. Is there a possibility that students who are here can get more of a credit than 50%? When a student is here they're probably the most integrated of residents at the time. They're participating in school, they're learning a language, learning the culture from the grassroots, and they're staying in premises.

Is there an ability or a thought to increasing that time for students, particularly, to greater than 50%, more towards 75% or 100%?

[Catrina Tapley]

I think what the minister had said when he was here was that he felt that this struck an appropriate balance and given the requirements in terms of physical presence in Canada had changed to three to five years, he felt having 50% to accumulate to a maximum of a year was a very good balance with respect to the old system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you, Ms. Tapley.

Mr. Tilson, you have seven minutes.

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

Yes, Mr. Chairman, I'll be sharing my time with Ms. Rempel.

I have some questions on sections 11 and 12 of the bill, which have to do with the seizure of documents. My first question is what sorts of documents are envisioned with respect to the seizure of these documents?

[Mary-Ann Hubers]

This could be passports, for example. Every applicant is interviewed when they come in to take the test and at that point we look at their passports to verify their absences from Canada against their declared absences to see if they've been physically present. If there's some evidence that there may have been some tampering with those passports, this would give the authority to a citizenship officer to seize that document.

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

How much discretion will be given to the officials in relation to this new power?

[Mary-Ann Hubers]

There is an authority to create regulations in the bill, so there would be regulations that would describe the prescribed factors that would cause the document to—

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

Is there any hint as to what the regulations are going to be? You're going to be writing them.

[Mary-Ann Hubers]

The bill hasn't passed yet.

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

All right, that's a good answer.

What recourse will there be to the individual if his or her documents are seized?

[Mary-Ann Hubers]

Again, those would be details that would be worked out in the regulations.

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

What would trigger a seizure?

[Mary-Ann Hubers]

There have to be reasonable grounds to believe that the document is fraudulent.

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

Will all this be in the regulations?

[Mary-Ann Hubers]

In the act it says that there have to be reasonable grounds to believe that the document is fraudulent and then the regulations would prescribe the factors that could go into that, and then dealing with the detained document.

[Catrina Tapley]

If I may, just on that question, these are very similar to powers that are in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. They already exist in that act, so we would look to those regulations to inform what we'll be doing on these regulations as well.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Tilson stole a majority of my questions and your remark was satisfactory, so....

My question relates to processes to support the changes in this bill. This bill will create changes to some of the processes by which newcomers to Canada can obtain citizenship. Oftentimes, across party lines, one of the things that happens in our offices is that we get constituents coming in and asking questions about their applications. Most of the time they are pretty straightforward inquiries, and we'll tell them that they are within the normal processing times, etc.

But every once in a while there's a situation where we'll have a constituent come in who can verify and say that they know that the visa officer didn't review a piece of information or that they have a complicated case with an overseas embassy. What will happen in that situation is that we will call the dedicated 1-844 number for members of Parliament. The response that we'll get is that we need to talk to another contact in Ottawa, which usually means somebody in the minister's office.

My understanding is that there's a department called the ministerial inquiries division. I know this for a fact. As MPs, we also have access to a non-partisan service for MPs to phone in and ask for clarification on these types of cases. There's been some confusion as to whether MPs will have access to the ministerial inquiries division. My understanding is that there will only be one number to call now.

Will staff from the ministerial inquiries division be available through this new number so that, in effect, we're not losing direct access to the ministerial inquiries division?

[Catrina Tapley]

I'm sorry, I don't know. I'd be happy to get back to you on that point but I don't have that information.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I would love to have that information presented to committee because there's been a lot of lack of clarity from your department on this. I think this is an issue that's going to come up in all of our caucus meetings. Certainly, as a best practice, I and I think everyone around this table firmly believes that we should let visa officers do their jobs and that MPs shouldn't be interfering in that sort of thing. But when we do have to make legitimate inquiries, we shouldn't be adding an extra layer of red tape.

What's been expressed to us right now is that all of our inquiries will be going through this one particular line, and it sounds like they would be calling and asking the ministerial inquiries division on our behalf rather than having staff there available. This will gum up the system. We don't have a lot of resources in our office to do these sorts of things. My advice to you would be to really consider the impact on that to members of Parliament's being able to service their constituents. It sounds a little short-sighted if that's the case. I think everyone around this table would like to have some clarity on that as well.

[Catrina Tapley]

Mr. Chair, we're happy to come back to the committee on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Thank you.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Do I still have some time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Borys Wrzesnewskyj]

Yes, you do.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Excellent.

I just want to go back to the language training component.

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

Excuse me.

I'm sorry, Ms. Rempel, but this issue is so important. I think we should ask the staff when they've been briefed on this to come back before our deliberations on this bill ends. It does affect the bill and it affects the whole immigration process.

I would ask that you don't dismiss these witnesses and that you ask them to come back and brief us further on this issue.