Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 27th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Please submit the information.

We will now go on to Mr. Seeback, and it will be for five minutes.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Can you let me know when I have 30 seconds left? I'm going to share my time with Mr. Chiu.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Okay.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I have some questions that I'm going to ask quickly because I know we have limited time, and I know you won't have the answers. I want to pick up on Ms. Dhillon's talking about visitors visas.

What was the visitor visa acceptance rate in Chandigarh in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018? I'd like to know the number of visitor visas that were issued in those years as well. I would also like to see what the visitor visa acceptance rate was in Delhi for those same years and how many visas were issued.

Quickly, to pick up on what Ms. Dhillon was saying, there is a gross inconsistency in the acceptance of visitors visas. I know of cases in my own constituency where someone has a visa to travel to the United States and applied to come to Canada for a wedding, and he was denied the visitors visa. One of the boxes that was checked said "no travel history", which is in direct contravention of what was applied for. The evidence of a travel visa to the U.S. and trips to the U.S. shows very clearly that they have a travel history.

Does any review take place of visa officers who are clearly making mistakes when they reject a temporary resident visa, and is there a procedure for a member of Parliament or an individual to raise that issue to see if there is any redress that would happen in the department?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

I'll try to mention this. I don't have the information ready on the visitor visas from Chandigarh.

I do want to mention quickly that we do not process visa applications in Chandigarh; everything is now done in Delhi. That has been happening for a couple of years. The decision-making has shifted from Chandigarh to Delhi. Only complex cases are done in Chandigarh, but most of the decision-making has shifted to Delhi.

In terms of the inconsistency, I do believe that we have programs that take into consideration every kind of travel. For example, it is very open that we have a CAN+ program. If you have a visa for the U.S. or for other M5 countries, we take that into consideration and give due credit for that.

In terms of procedure, there are times when the applications are submitted with a U.S. visa but there is no actual travel. Having a visa in there does not help us to gauge that there is travel. I do accept that at times there are mistakes. There are ways.... We regularly do a quality control check on our applications. We have an internal system for doing that, and clients are more than welcome to reapply. We will reconsider that if they reapply.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Is that review an internal document that cannot be shared, or can it be shared? If it can be shared, can it be shared with the committee?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

This routine is built within our way of doing stuff. Quality control is something that is built into our program, and we continue to do it regularly. It's not tracked as a separate thing. It's not something that which we have a separate way of assessing.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Picking up again on parents and grandparents—and you may not know this—what is the processing time for someone in the backlog? How long will it take for their application to be processed? Second, is there any plan or program in place with respect to specific reductions to take place in the parent and grandparent backlog? From my question before, we see there been a significant slowing in how quickly the backlog is being eliminated in the last number of years.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

You have 30 seconds.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Great.

I would ask you to maybe share the answer with the committee.

I'll give my time to Mr. Chiu.

[Kenny Chiu, Conservative, Steveston—Richmond East, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have several questions. I would appreciate it if you would provide some written answers to them.

I'm interested in what you mentioned about biometrics in terms of the day and age that we're in. Please let us know how you're enforcing biometrics verification and also the auto-verification process on applicants' demographic, marital, educational and professional claims. I'd also be interested to hear about the metrics on any loss of citizenship to non-naturalized citizens.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Your time is up.

We will move on to Ms. Martinez Ferrada for five minutes.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have three questions. I will try to be brief.

The first question is about what you were talking about earlier. Temporary employees, who had a licence tied to an employer and who were in a situation of abuse or who had poor terms and conditions of employment, could also apply for a program by sector and be mobile within a sector of employment, as I understand it. I would just like to have more details on this program. How many employees took advantage of it? What sector was it in?

The second question deals with francophone immigration outside Quebec. I know that there are objectives to achieve greater francophone immigration outside Quebec. I would like to have more details on the program. Are there any strategies in place at the moment?

The third issue concerns economic immigration to Canada as opposed to immigration of temporary employees who, while also meeting an economic need, are not under the purview of the department. Are there any commonalities? Is there any discussion on that? How does it all fit together? How is it complementary? Where are the needs, in fact?

How do you work with your colleagues at Employment and Social Development Canada to ensure that, in an effort to address a labour shortage, these two programs are linked by the same objectives?

[Marian Campbell Jarvis]

Thank you for these questions.

On the issue of economic immigration and its relation to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, or TFWP, there is certainly a link.

In terms of the program, the Department of Employment and Social Development has conducted a labour market assessment to ensure that there is a real need and that their work matches the needs of the market. I find that there is a good mix of skills that exist, for example, in the agriculture sector or the technology sector. The two programs, the TFWP and the International Mobility Program, or IMP, match those needs.

With respect to the question regarding the increase in the number of French-speaking immigrants outside Quebec...

[Fraser Valentine]

Excuse me, Ms. Jarvis. We have to keep our answers brief because we have limited time. We can send a document to the committee with more details.

In 2019, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship launched a strategy for francophone immigration. It aims to achieve three main objectives, which are to increase francophone immigration outside Quebec, to support the immigration and retention of French-speaking newcomers and, finally, to strengthen the capacity of francophone communities.

We have taken action on each of these objectives. We can share these measures with you as well as the funds associated with each.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Do I still have time, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

You have one minute and 10 seconds.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

I would just like to come back to the issue of francophone immigration mentioned in the documents. The terms “increase,” “support” and “strengthen” are used. However, I believe that there is still a challenge in terms of achieving the objectives.

I know that the department responsible for official languages has transferred funds to support integration programs, for example. My question is about the gateway. How do we increase immigration and open up access to the country? What strategies have been developed with other countries around the world? Who are the countries? What relationships do we have to promote francophone immigration to the country?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

You have 30 seconds to answer.

[Fraser Valentine]

The department has launched a really comprehensive recruitment and promotional campaign called Destination Canada. It's centred in Paris. We work with a number of francophone countries in the E.U. and we've just expanded this initiative to North Africa and to Morocco in particular. In addition, we've just created a port of entry at Pearson that provides francophone services to all folks who come. Certainly, promotion is a key area.

On the policy side, we've done a number of initiatives, such as our express entry system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Your time is up.

Next, we'll go on to Mr. Kent for five minutes.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

With regard to the almost quarter of a million international students who receive visas every year, there is abundant anecdotal evidence in a number of communities of international students who get their visas and arrive via a number of means and then either attend somewhat less than the body of classes that one would expect an international student to attend or don't attend classes at all.

Does the department audit or keep track of those international students who, in many cases, and again from certain communities, seem to be arriving in Canada to actually work, not study?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

Madam Chair, although it has significantly increased, we have started to put some emphasis on making sure they actually are in their classes. We have a little pilot at designated learning institutes for them to give us the information when they grant the letter of acceptance, which helps us to make sure that it is a genuine student who comes in.

Secondly, as soon as the folks arrive, we do get a yearly kind of score card—this is specific to all provinces other than Quebec—from which we see how many of those students have actually been in the enrolment phase at the same institute. The caveat with that is that if you change your institute during study, that is not captured and it shows up as a gap. It has just started and we are putting some more attention on the compliance aspects of that. It is an important issue for us.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

You don't have any numbers?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

I don't have numbers to share at this point.