Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 8th, 2021

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Yes, I'll be here twice.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

We will continue with the officials who will stay with us for the second hour.

On behalf of the committee, I just want to thank you. We'll see you on Wednesday.

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to my colleagues. You're in good hands with my officials. We'll see you again soon.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I would welcome the officials from the department for the second hour today. We will now go directly into the round of questioning.

We will start our round with Mr. Hallan.

You have six minutes for your questions. Please proceed.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the officials for being here with us today.

I want to elaborate a little bit more. After we get those documents tabled about what services are not being offered, can we get in writing when those services will be offered again? I brought up that example of someone who is waiting for a DNA test and it's the only thing left. It's absolutely devastating to hear that.

Can we move towards something like private testing for those types of services that are not being offered?

First and foremost, can we get some type of update on what services are not being offered throughout our offices? When will they be opened up?

[Catrina Tapley, Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Let me begin by wishing you, Madam Chair, a happy International Women's Day.

To the honourable member, congratulations on his appointment as our critic. We look forward to working with you.

As the minister has indicated, we are happy to provide what services are being offered at this time. I just caution that those change almost on a daily basis, but we could give the best we have on that—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I'm sorry to interrupt. The question was whether we can also get a list of what services are not being offered and a timeline for when those will be opened up. I think there's a lot of confusion and definitely a lot of stress right now on people because of that. When are those going to be opened up?

[Catrina Tapley]

That depends on country conditions. I'll start there.

If we take the example of India, a lot of the services that were closed in India in 2020 have reopened now. Our visa application centres have reopened now. We have Canada-based staff back in all our offices in India.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Definitely, but in my example of the DNA test, it's not being offered right now. That has real-life impacts because of these delays on opening everything up.

[Catrina Tapley]

I appreciate the comment. We're happy to look into this with you as well.

We can give you our best estimates on when things may reopen, but I would caution again that this does depend on country conditions.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you very much.

The CRS score of the lowest-ranked candidate who was invited was 75 in this new program. In the previous five draws for this class, the score never dropped below 431. Why has the score of the lowest-ranked candidate dropped so significantly?

Do you see any concerns with that?

[Catrina Tapley]

Let me just talk a little bit about that express entry draw and the Canada experience class. We believe that well over 90% of everybody we drew in that class are here in Canada and are working. Everybody who got drawn in the round in February meets our minimum criteria. I want to emphasize that point. I'd also point out that over 70% of those we drew had a comprehensive ranking score, or CRS, above 400. That's a really high human capital score.

I will say again that everybody, including at the lowest score, met the minimum criteria. It means they met language and they met Canadian work experience. We are confident that we will continue to see good outcomes.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you very much.

Given that we need a better economy coming out of this pandemic, I noticed that “self-employed” was not included in that category whatsoever, or they can't gain any points for that. Is there something we can look into so that people who are self-employed can be included in that?

[Catrina Tapley]

We do have a small self-employed category. Generally, people aren't in Canada when they apply under that, but we can certainly look at criteria that are there for the Canada experience class. We're always looking to improve our operations. We can look at that.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

I asked the minister this question, and I want to be very clear on it again.

To the best of your knowledge, are there any investigations, whether ongoing or that were there previously, of any types of security breaches to the IRCC or the CBSA going on, or that you know of that have happened in the last six months?

[Catrina Tapley]

I can't speak for my colleagues at CBSA. As for data breaches at IRCC in the last six months, no, I am not aware of any.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you.

There was a big concern about the VFS in China. One of the other biggest concerns, on top of what Ms. Kwan was talking about, is that the people entering this data are physically handling data. What's to say that this data doesn't get leaked? What are we doing there?

Those are major concerns for people, that someone is still processing that data and anything can happen with it. What are we doing to ensure that it's not being leaked?

[Catrina Tapley]

I want to come back to something the minister said, which is that we are soberly aware of the risks. One of the risk mitigation measures that's there is that our information is now handled electronically, as it comes in. We have a number of other risk mitigation protocols in the visa application centres that are regularly monitored.

I'm happy to talk about what some of those are, Madam Chair, but I'll leave that to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Deputy Minister, the time is up. Thank you for your answers.

We will now move to Mr. Serré for six minutes.

Mr. Serré, please start.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for their testimony.

I simply want to add to the point the minister made toward the end of his testimony.

First of all, Ms. Tapley, I'd like to make sure that you express our gratitude to all the staff at the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. Since March last year, they have been working from home in difficult times with their families. In addition, they've done so during a global pandemic, which raised many issues. They have truly risen to the challenge and achieved results.

The minister mentioned that 30,000 new applications for parents and grandparents would be accepted in 2021. How do you plan to meet this target, the highest ever set?

[Catrina Tapley]

Thank you very much for your question and your comments. It's very kind.

I'll be happy to pass that on.

On parents and grandparents, we have a difficult task ahead of us. We have launched a successful round or successful draw under the parents and grandparents program, fully subscribed—more than fully subscribed. We are processing through those applications, so we're confident about the inventory that we have. We continue to work through this. In many or in most cases, these are individuals who are able to land in Canada, who are able to travel and come to Canada, and as a result, we have put a priority on many of these applications.

Madam Chair, I wonder if Mr. Mills would like to add some commentary to that.

[Daniel Mills, Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

I'd like to thank the hon. member for his question, Madam Chair.

I think he's referring to what the minister mentioned about the 2021 intake, which would be 30,000 sponsorship applications.

We're currently reviewing the various processes that will be in place to support this new launch. As you know, last fall, we ran a campaign in which we announced that we'd be accepting 10,000 applications. These were sent out in early January. The 2021 cohort will begin in the next few months. We're in the process of working out the details.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

The minister mentioned and we've had a lot of questions about digitization and the application process. It's been a big task to make sure we digitize all of our products. We look at the application process. We mentioned the citizenship testing, which is the envy of testing online, one of the first in the world. There was mention about some of the citizenship ceremonies.

Can you explain the next steps? What are you planning on doing to digitize the immigration process to help streamline the process in 2021?

[Catrina Tapley]

Thank you for that.

We are pleased with the success we've had around our digitization efforts on the citizenship side with virtual ceremonies, but also with an online citizenship test. We are expanding the number that we are bringing in under that—I think we were moving to 5,000 last month—and that will be terrific.

The other enhancement that I'd like to point out on the citizenship side is that we're moving to an e-application. We are currently testing this and we're quite optimistic about how we'll roll this out.

On the bigger questions on digitization—and you'll see some comments on the main and supplementary estimates—we have a three-phase process for digital platform modernization. We're focused on the first two phases right now, which are to stabilize and standardize what we have now. We have a legacy system, and what we want to be able to do is, even with our legacy system, reduce our technical debt so that we're able to have a more stable platform, so that it doesn't go down as frequently and we don't lose processing time.

Our bigger goal is a new platform. The new platform will enable us to allow for full digitization and new client services. It will be a platform for the 21st century as we move forward.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you.

We've heard from the officials at VFS and we've heard it from the minister about the vetting and the robust process to protect data, to protect personal information. We also heard from the officials at VFS that there have been no breaches. There have been no reports in the media. I mentioned that at the last committee meeting.

I want to ask the officials here whether they have been aware of any personal data that's been breached. The minister mentioned some of the elements that are put in place to protect the personal information. Are you aware of any data breach?