Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2020

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

When they appeared before the committee last Monday, people in the economic class said that they found it somewhat unfortunate that the information on time frames posted on the IRCC website is often general. The website says the average time that it can take to process a file. However, a file can be more complex or more straightforward, so it may require a longer or shorter processing time.

Do you think that it will ever be possible to give people a foreseeable date for the completion of their file and that this date will be based on their own situation?

[Catrina Tapley]

Thank you for the question.

Nothing would make me happier than to say that we could have an excellent system in there that would allow people to know exactly where their files are in progress. Until we have a system, a better digital system, and can move away from the number of paper applications we have, particularly on the permanent side, that's going to be very difficult for us to do. However, it's something that we absolutely want to come back to because that will also help us with the volumes of other things, including access to information requests.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Deputy Minister.

We will now move on to Ms. Kwan.

Ms. Kwan, you have two and a half minutes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I just want to go back to Mr. Mills' last answer. It wasn't clear to me.

If the application is stuck in the mailroom for six or seven months and is not opened until September, would the start date on the standard processing time be when the package gets opened in September?

[Daniel Mills]

The start date for calculating the processing time is the date when an application arrives in the department's mailroom.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

It's the date when you opened the mail, not the date since it's been sitting there for six months. Am I correct?

[Daniel Mills]

No. It's the date when the application arrives at the department. If the application arrives on January 1, but it isn't opened and processed until June, January 1 is considered the start date for processing purposes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

All right, since this year's decision is to only process about 49,000 files and applications, does that mean we should still anticipate a backlog continuing into 2021?

[Catrina Tapley]

We are working hard to make sure we process as many applications as we can, to not have that backlog continue and to move these files forward as fast as we can. We're in a situation now where we have, in person, about 30% of our workforce back in our large processing operations. A couple have now moved into a red zone where that will change. We're also looking at a number of contracts that have been put in place to be able to come in and digitize the applications and to be able to move those forward as quickly as we can.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

The immigration targets were increased in the 2020 levels. The targets were within the low and high ranges, and the lower range was actually reduced by about 20,000 for each year compared with those in the 2019 report.

Does that mean that IRCC anticipates the possibility of reaching lower targets than in previous years?

[Catrina Tapley]

For 2020, Madam Chair, we will not reach our targets. We've really been hampered by a border that's been closed since March 18—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Deputy Minister. The time is up. Maybe you can share that information afterwards or if it comes up again, you can share that information.

Thank you.

We will now move to Mr. Saroya. He will start, and he's splitting his time with Mr. Allison.

You have five minutes combined.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Deputy Minister.

Deputy Minister, I have known you for the last five years and you have always been good.

Perception is a reality. When I was interviewed back in 1973 in New Delhi—the first time I came to the country—I had a good feeling. After the interview, the interviewer or the counsellor, whatever you call him, walked with me outside. I went to the interview as nervous as heck. I came out good, but it felt good in all the stuff.

Many of the people who fill out the application feel they are lying on the application. As I said, perception is the reality.

Is there anything we can do? Is there anything we can do for those people who always feel that immigration is looking at them as though everybody is lying?

Thank you.

[Catrina Tapley]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Program integrity is a really important part of our business, as the member has indicated. We try to treat all applications fairly as they come through, but program integrity and fraud is a real part of our business. We're looking for things that are robust, incomplete or inconsistent and that really helps us analyze files, I think in a good way.

The other thing that I think is really helpful, particularly on the permanent resident side and the economic class, is express entry, where we're looking at things in a very qualitative way. We're looking a their educational experience, language levels and work experience. These are things where program integrity becomes a little easier. It's not that there isn't fraud in those lines of business, but it's easier to do. It's more transparent, and people can see that.

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

Madam Chair, my second question is this. We need those people. When I came to the country, I worked in a factory for minimum wages for a number of years before I upgraded myself, then I was the director of sales for a great Canadian corporation.

There are many people, thousands of people who are here in this country who I feel we can use. They speak the language. They understand Canadian culture. They are willing to work for the next 30, 35 or 40 years. They are the real resources we should be tapping into.

As I mentioned earlier today, at companies like Pizza Pizza, McDonald's, Tim Hortons—I could go on and on—and with truckers too, we cannot survive without them.

Why can't we do something for those people? Some of them are paying $40,000 to $60,000 for the LMIA, or on the black market and that kind of thing, to get into the program. If you and the immigration department can do something, I'd really appreciate it.

[Catrina Tapley]

On labour market impact assessments, I'll leave that as a question you can follow up on with my colleagues at ESDC.

On the other hand, I think I'll come back with something the minister said. With levels of 401,000 for 2020, it's going to push us in the department to be more innovative and to look at other means and other ways—particularly if the border remains closed—for those who are already here in Canada. Those are discussions we look forward to having with the minister.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Allison, you can go back.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Thank you for the 45 seconds, Bob. I appreciate it.

Deputy Minister, thank you very much.

I want to continue with what Mr. Saroya said and encourage you as you have those conversations with the minister. Certainly, as Bob said and as you indicated here, there are a number of people who are in our country right now. They're going to college, going to university, they're working in our restaurants. I don't call them “low skill”; I call them “core”. Their core skills are what we need. Food and manufacturing is the same way. I would hope that part of those discussions—and I'll leave my comments at that because I'm almost out of time—would be held with various industry groups that are struggling to fill those jobs right now.

As I said, I think a lot of people could benefit from some of those students who are in the country right now who are prepared to help us out with those jobs as they continue to improve themselves, as Mr. Saroya said. Thank you very much for considering that. I encourage you to have those conversations with the minister to make the best use of those people who are in the country already. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now have Mr. Dhaliwal.

Mr. Dhaliwal, you have five minutes for your round of questioning. You can start, please.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the deputy minister and the associates for being here today.

The department has shifted towards an easier client experience, while also maintaining the safety of Canadians, by moving online. Are these measures that have been adopted presenting a demonstrable change in terms of processing, and if it's proven successful, are there plans to implement digitization across the whole system?

[Catrina Tapley]

That's a really important question for our business.

I'll take it apart in two different ways. One is that we have had a lot of innovation in the past eight months, where we've had to look at different ways of doing our business. Where things have worked well, these are things that we want to keep.

When it comes to things like a virtual citizenship ceremony or an online citizenship test, hooray. These are innovations that we'll look at and we'll want to keep.

With regard to others where we can move more of our business onto a digital platform, where we can move applications more seamlessly within our network, that is the goal we want to achieve. There was a note in the fall economic statement yesterday about our IT platform, the global case management system. The statement reiterated something that had been announced already, that being the first two phases of our process to update our system. It's a legacy system.

The first is improving the technical depth of our system itself—in other words, to ensure that our system remains more stable over time. We have pushed our system to the limits of what it's able to do, so we need to be able to catch up with that.

The second is better disaster recovery in our system and to be able to try to reduce the number of outages in the global case management system and move it forward.

There will have to be a third phase to this. This will be the part that gives us more flexibility around digital applications, for us to continue to move away from paper-based applications.

We'll need to get the first two phases well under way. There's a lot of work going on now.

Having said all of that, 2019 was a record year on our system, across all categories. This was the same system that delivered. We continue to try to innovate. We continue to try to transform our business and to move that forward as quickly as we can.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Mills, I want to thank you for answering the question that MP Kwan asked. It was a very important question about a one-year term, because before with spousal cases, people had to wait years and years, and now that have to wait less than one year. I thank you for clearing that up.

I want to come back to the deputy minister on the spousal sponsorship. Family immigration is a key to the government, and also particularly to me as well, because I hear from people all the time on spousal sponsorships. I know there have been considerable changes to the program to allow a specialized task force to increase spousal sponsorship decisions. As we mentioned earlier, there were plans to have 49,000 decisions by the end of 2020. How close are we to achieving this goal?

[Catrina Tapley]

This has been Mr. Mills' innovation and good work, and I'm going to let him answer that question.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you.

[Daniel Mills]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

To answer the question, to date, we've processed about 40,000 family class applications for this year. As the minister said, the goal is 49,000 applications. We have one month left. We still have work to do, but we're confident that we'll achieve the goal.

We've put a great deal of effort and many resources into this business line. As the deputy minister said earlier, we've also set up a pilot project to digitize applications. Currently, all applications are received in paper format. The goal of the project is to be able to process the applications from any office in the world.

This innovation will hopefully enable us to process the applications more quickly.