Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2017

[Michael MacDonald]

No, that is done in a completely different processing network.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

All right. Thank you.

Back to the IRB, with respect to the legacy cases we're now at 5,000. Because that, too, was done through internal efficiencies, can you tell us what the implication has been as a result of the reallocation of resources within the IRB to deal with this legacy task force?

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

You have 26 seconds.

[Shereen Benzvy Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It is actually 5,300 cases. Sorry, I think I said over 5,000. But the reallocation was made. As I mentioned earlier, it turns out there are 26 vacancies. Essentially what we reallocated was the funding for salary dollars that would have been allocated had those positions all been filled, so it didn't actually impact our operations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Tabbara.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the witnesses for appearing before us today.

I want to talk about the work permits. You were here before to testify, Mr. MacDonald, and you discussed work permit applications as one of the measures that the government is taking to respond to the influx of asylum seekers in Quebec. I just want to read out something to you. The Canadian workers to retiree ratio today is 4:1, and by 2035 it will be 2:1.

Can you say that there's a correlation, knowing that we have an aging population, with our admitting a lot of work permits, because this is great for our economy and we need this to fuel our economy? We know the numbers of our aging population and we want to fill those gaps.

[Michael MacDonald]

I suspect there will be in a downstream effort if one were to draw that comparison. However, the most important point of the asylum seekers' experience at this stage, their journey towards possibly being accepted and then into settlement, is to get them as established as quickly as possible to help their settlement into Canadian society. That is the real goal of the work permit for today, in the present.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

The recent surge in claims at the border and entry points from the United States has been a concern within the media and within the Canadian public. Can you tell us how you are working with the United States' officials to ensure the border and the orderly processing of asylum seekers?

[Michael MacDonald]

I think I mentioned this last week and I'll just recap overall how we work with our American colleagues and how we are working with our American colleagues. We obviously enjoy a long-standing relationship with the Americans not just on immigration but on other parts of the immigration system, be it law enforcement, citizenship, even in the settlement world, and through non-government organizations. We have strong ties.

We obviously have information-sharing agreements with the United States. We check biographic and biometric information with the United States. We also have strong ties in terms of visa regimes. We have strong ties overseas because we are positioned similarly around the world, so our officers exchange information. These are the ways that we work with the Americans and these are the ways that we are already continuing to work with them in terms of the asylum seekers. The very fact that we share and manage a border together makes that partnership continue.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Can you give us current numbers? There have been about 50 people crossing daily, down from hundreds during the summer. There were almost 200 interviews scheduled daily, and that's up from just 30.

Can you tell us the additional resources that the departments have been using to process these numbers faster and to be more efficient?

[Michael MacDonald]

Certainly. We've been using only IRCC resources. I believe we have brought some people back out of retirement, people who would like to work on a casual basis, but at the end of the day we have....

I'll mention quickly that we have reassigned 87 officers of various nature to Complexe Guy-Favreau and 58 officers to our Peel Street location. We also had 21 individuals working in Cornwall at our mobile processing centre, which was open for three weeks to deal with the individuals there.

What's unique is that we're also using our existing offices across the country—63 individuals in fact—to work 24-7 in what we call the “back office”. They get applications ready and into our electronic processing system the day before, essentially, so that when an asylum seeker is ready to be interviewed, they give us their documents and we can interview them, in fact, the next day or two days afterwards. That's how we've been able to work through the large number of decisions we've made around the eligibility portion of this.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

You'd probably conclude, then, by saying that the situation at the borders since the influx in the summer has been handled very well and at a rapid pace. Is that correct?

[Michael MacDonald]

I would say so based on the fact that when you look at just the Lacolle movement, we have already processed through to eligibility 77% of all of the individuals who have passed through that Quebec corridor.

Of course nationally the volume of processing and our speed has not changed. When we have first contact with an asylum seeker at IRCC, we process them within one to two days, basically, in the vast majority of cases, if not in almost every case. I think that alone is testament to the machinery that we set up to handle the influx this summer.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

In 2016 Canada admitted the highest number of refugees—46,700 refugees—from Syria, Eritrea, Iraq, Congo, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and they were resettled here in Canada. In 1980 Canada accepted just over 40,000 people in a single year during the resettlement of Indochinese refugees. This year more than 32,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Canada so far.

The circumstances surrounding each of these surges are unique, but they show that Canada is equipped to process asylum seekers, because we have done it in the past, in the examples I've provided.

Can you share some of the best practices that officials have adopted from these past experiences?

[Michael MacDonald]

The response could be quite long, so I'll pick some of the most unique best practices that we've learned over the years.

It starts really with what we learned with our operation for Syrian refugees; that is, that our department now has a better-tuned ability to set up, very quickly, mobile processing centres. We have biometric kits, as we call them, that take biometrics and they are mobile. We can move those around. We have positioned in various places our secure forms, shredders, and secure printers. We have very much fashioned ourselves in the last few years to be mobile.

The other best practice is that because our global case management processing system is all electronic now, we're literally able to work around the globe, be it in Canada or elsewhere, 24-7. Because of the time zone changes and the different cultures we work in, work days are different. That's what we call the “back office”. We've refined our back-office processes, making them much better.

The other best practice we've learned is that when you start to look at multiple forms and intake mechanisms, you need to thin down and not ask the same questions at different points of the continuum, which can be long at times. The more you do so, the more quickly people can move through.

Also, to be frank, we've invested in individuals. We've invested in people by sending them out on temporary duty. We take headquarters people and send them out to the field to do processing for up to six weeks at a time. We offer employees what are called “single assignments” to go oversees to get direct experience. We also do this in our domestic context. We are trying, then, to invest in our people to make them better and faster decision-makers.

There is also one—

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I need to have you wrap up.

[Michael MacDonald]

Sure. There's also one other best practice that we've learned and it's called the hackathon. That's when you allow people, generally younger than me, who actually know computer systems, to sit down and actually—it's very exciting—devise ways to electronically work smarter and faster. We encourage that in the department and then we make it part of our processes: a very valuable lesson learned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Saroya, I'm going to give you a bit of extra time, because the Liberals had a little bit extra. You will have about seven and a half minutes.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses coming forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Sorry, it's a five-minute round, so you will have six minutes.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

How many asylum seekers entered in September from the non-official entry places? Do you know the number?

[Michael MacDonald]

The number I have up to September 17 was just over 2,000.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

[Michael MacDonald]

That is across Canada. Sorry.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Across Canada, yes.

According to the Toronto Star, the wait time for an asylum claim in Canada could go to 11 years and it could cost about $3 billion. Does that make sense? The Toronto Star is saying the wait time is a staggering 11 years and it will cost about $2.97 billion.