Evidence of meeting #5 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was back.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Thank you.
My next question is simple; it should elicit a yes or no answer. Has the department considered using subsection 10(3) of the Safe Third Country Agreement to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement?
Liberal
Marco Mendicino Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
I addressed this in my first answer.
The STCA is an important instrument that ensures the safety and security of the border between Canada and the United States. We continually assess that instrument, and it is part of my mandate to support Minister Blair to look at modernizing the agreement, because it ensures the safety of all Canadians here as well as of those who are travelling back and forth. It also ensures due process for those who are claiming refugee status.
This is an important instrument. We are in the process, as I have said, of supporting Minister Blair's work.
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Unfortunately, this doesn't answer my question, which is simple: has this possibility been studied?
I'll allow myself, once again, a preamble. During the last election campaign, the Bloc expressed support for a suspension; the Conservatives expressed support for a suspension; the NDP expressed support for a suspension. There was very broad public support. My riding is a stone's throw from Roxham Road and that has been mentioned.
Is this possibility so frivolous to the government that it hasn't even been explored?
Liberal
Marco Mendicino Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
I would come back to my original points. We have a world-class asylum system that ensures the safety and security of Canadians and that ensures the orderly processing of refugee claims. We have seen progress on reducing irregular migration, as I pointed out to my colleague Mr. Kent earlier.
A part of the overall strategy is having the resources necessary to ensure the regular processing of those claims and also modernizing or looking at the potential of modernizing the STCA, which I am doing in conjunction with my colleague, Minister Blair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
We will now move to our last round of questioning.
Ms. Kwan, you have two and a half minutes.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
According to the government's website on service standards, while the target is to process applications 80% of the time within the standard, the reality is that in the provincial nominee program the process performance is at 5% of standard. The performance of the Quebec-selected skilled workers program sees 2% of applications done within the standard. In the skilled trades program—the express entry, of which the minister is very proud—the performance standard is 38% of applications within standard.
While setting standards is great, you're not meeting them for these critical areas.
I want to highlight this again, tying it to the fact that the ministry underspent and cut staff FTEs significantly, by close to 200. That is the kind of performance we're seeing. Is it a wonder that we have such long wait times in processing? I want to highlight this as an issue.
Another issue is that at the last committee meeting, the official said that when a form is missing in an application, or a signature or something is missing, they would contact the applicant to have it fixed, instead of sending the whole application back.
I have two active cases in which the application was sent back and as a result, the people's work permits expired. This creates great problems for them.
Social media is lit up, because somebody had put out something asking the community what their experience has been. Social media is lit up with people with lots of problems with respect to officials not processing these applications as such.
I want to flag these issues to your attention, Minister, and I hope they get fixed.
I'd like to ask a question about refugee sponsorship. In the Group of Five community sponsorships, the refugees who need sponsorship are required to provide a refugee determination certificate. This requirement was waived between 2015 and 2017 for the government to get their Syrian refugee initiative numbers up. This requirement is also not required for any other privately sponsored refugee stream.
Why, then, do we have this for the Group of Five sponsorships?
Liberal
Marco Mendicino Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
Just briefly, I look forward to working with my colleague on the issues she has flagged.
Regarding service times, I will always defend the work we have done. We reduced backlogs on spousal applications, on PSRs and on study permits. Since taking on this new role, we have seen things dramatically improve. As I said, 80% of our service standards are now being met—
Liberal
Marco Mendicino Liberal Eglinton—Lawrence, ON
—and this is work that I continue to do in conjunction with my officials.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
With this, we come to the end of our round of questioning.
On behalf of all the committee members, thank you, Minister, for coming and answering those important questions.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
On a point of order, Madam Chair, I'd like to get clarification.
From our last meetings, I thought that the request was to have the minister appear before our committee for the full two hours. Because we have collapsed both the mandate letter and the estimates component into this one meeting, I thought that was going to be the case.
It is now clearly not the case, because the minister is preparing to leave.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
We requested, but he was only available for one hour, so we will have the officials for the second hour. We will always allow the opportunity for the minister to come back again.
With this, I will suspend the meeting so that the minister can leave, and we will have the officials for the remaining time.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Madam Chair, I think that information should have been shared with the committee so that committee members were aware there had been a change.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
I don't think so. My understanding was that the minister would come for the full two hours.
I get it that the minister will come back another time—he will have to, I suspect—for other matters, but these two critical issues, the mandate letter and the estimates, are big issues with lots of questions for the minister.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Kwan. It was mentioned; it was in the notice of meeting also. It was, then, mentioned that the minister would be here.
I will suspend the meeting. We will allow the minister to leave and then resume the meeting.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I call the meeting to order.
We have our officials here to go into the round of questioning. We will not have any further opening remarks.
We will start, then, with our first round of questioning. We will go first to Mr. Kent.
Mr. Kent, you have six minutes.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I would like to echo my NDP colleague's disappointment that the minister wasn't available for the two hours. From experience, I know that ministerial availability is a very flexible concept. I look forward to his return for the discussion of the main estimates.
Deputy, I'd like to come back to the minister's deflection of my question regarding the judicial order to redetermine the rejection of Widlene Alexis's application for temporary residency.
Given the judge's scathing criticism of the flawed bureaucratic reasoning of the officer who rejected the TRP, I'd like to ask you not about this case but about how many instances of ministerial exemption were given in the past year. We know there were 4,710 decisions made on compassionate and humanitarian grounds and on “other” grounds, which one would assume would be ministerial exemptions.
I'm just wondering how many ministerial exemptions were made by the minister's predecessor.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I have processing times for permanent resident applications under humanitarian and compassionate grounds in 2019.
Madam Chair, I'm happy to get back to the committee with that answer.
Conservative
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Okay.
Moving on, another of the mandate letter assignments for the minister is “to advance reforms and investments in the capacity of the asylum system to ensure it is efficient while meeting...obligations”. With regard to support for cities and provincial governments and regional governments currently on the hook for many tens of millions of dollars for asylum claimant reports, and given this record 80,000-plus backlog of claimants processing, again the minister deflected his answer.
But did your department—did you—brief the minister on our previous Conservative government's express treatment: the 45-day turnaround for obviously unworthy asylum claims and the reduction to one single appeal?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
We have briefed the minister on a number of aspects of this. We continue to be concerned about the growing number of asylum claims. I think, as the honourable member has noted, we've had 64,000 claims in the last year, which is of concern.
We continue to look at ways to protect the system and to make the system work as efficiently as possible.