Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 7th, 2017

[Marta Morgan]

We will see whether that information is available.

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

Thank you.

On Friday the parliamentary secretary said that “IRCC will provide an information toolkit to the committee and MPs to support its outreach efforts” on unscrupulous immigration consultants. When will this be distributed?

[Marta Morgan]

I will get back to you on the timeline for that.

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

What was the cost, then, of developing this tool kit?

[Marta Morgan]

We'd have to get back to you on the cost as well.

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

Thank you.

With regard to changes to the oversight body for the immigration consultant profession, the parliamentary secretary said, “...the government expects to be able to provide more information on the way forward next year.”

Has the minister or his staff told you when this way forward will be presented to the public?

[Marta Morgan]

This is a very complicated issue, and the committee has made a number of recommendations that are complicated and interrelated that need to be studied in depth and looked at prior to responding. As the minister noted earlier in his statements today, we expect to be moving forward on this issue in more detail in the spring.

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

Does the department have a project plan in place to respond to the recommendations found in the report?

[Marta Morgan]

The department is actively analyzing the recommendations in the report as well as the fundamental challenges that were identified by the committee. It's actively working towards developing recommendations and an approach forward to recommend and propose to the government.

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

When does the department anticipate having a final solution in place?

[Marta Morgan]

As the minister noted earlier, we expect to be returning in the spring with recommendations to the government regarding how to proceed on these issues.

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

Thank you.

I just want to go back to the Vegreville questions.

Why was there a discrepancy between the advice given by the department and the promise made by the Prime Minister in terms of offering packages to affected employees?

[Marta Morgan]

The primary objective of the move to Edmonton from Vegreville was to retain staff and to in fact expand our footprint in Alberta. As a result, employees who have decided to move and who are considering moving were offered the opportunity to have those moving expenses paid for. We also converted a number of term employees who were not permanent employees, and that also enabled them to have moving expenses paid for so that they could move to Edmonton, should they choose to do so. This was done so that we can continue to keep our capacity and in fact expand our capacity in that area.

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

Thank you, Ms. Morgan. I just have one more question before my time is up.

Normally all interviews for permanent residency are conducted in person at an immigration office. Has the department of immigration started conducting permanent residency landing interviews over the phone to reduce costs?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

The permanent residency component that we are piloting is to have them land by phone, but obviously they would have to come to an office so that we can have all the paperwork done. The phone landing is a kind of pilot that would allow us to look at those people who are in Canada who already have the visa with them, and who could land in that context.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you very much.

We have five minutes left before we leave, but if you give us two minutes, Ms. Kwan could have her full seven minutes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

With respect to the processing of the asylum-seeker demand with the influx of asylum seekers, that would mean internal allocation—or reallocation, if you will—of resources in order to accommodate the increased demand. Could the officials advise which streams of application processing times have been impacted as a result of this since January?

[Marta Morgan]

Mr. Chair, the immigration processing streams are independent from the processing of claims for asylum seekers at the Immigration and Refugee Board. If the member is referring to the processing for eligibility of asylum claimants who have recently entered Canada prior to the IRB phase, that has been accomplished with the reallocation of resources from within the department and has not affected processing times in other streams of our immigration-related activities.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Where did the reallocated resources come from?

[Marta Morgan]

The reallocation of resources was made by reducing the level of other activities that were non-essential or could be delayed. They were not related to the processing of permanent immigration, where we have targets to meet, or temporary residence visas. We brought in staff from across the country and used a lot of overtime and undertook a number of strategies in order to do that.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you, Ms. Morgan.

I wonder if you can provide to the committee, then, the breakdown of where these other non-essential services, if you will, came from. I would like to see a breakdown of exactly where those resources came from.

[Michael MacDonald, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic and Program Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Chair, I believe that was in a previous response that might be with the committee, but I will highlight this, Ms. Kwan: of the 156 staff who were relocated throughout the time period of standing up the operations in Quebec, 70% of that 156 staff came from the immigration line of business, 15% came from the citizenship line, 1% came from various other functions and duties in our regional offices, and 14% came from headquarters and other places. We used multiple pockets of individuals.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Can you be more specific? When you say they came from immigration services, what were those immigration services?

[Michael MacDonald]

It was processing of all immigration types of lines that occur in the domestic network. Permanent resident processing is one example.