Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 8th, 2021

[Daniel Mills]

I don't have the details with me to determine whether it's the client's medical certificate or passport. I'll have to get that information to the committee.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

It would be great if I could get that information and in separate categories so that we can have clarity on how many people have been impacted by expired COPRs and, as a result, are also struggling with expired medicals, expired passports and other documentation.

Moving on to a different question, my constituents are experiencing huge delays in IRCC processing of PR and citizenship card renewals. They are often urgent, as people use them as proof to qualify, for example, for health care and other services. I've had cases where their PR renewal applications can't be flagged for urgent processing because they're somewhere in the system, in the mailroom, and people can't find exactly where that document is.

Can officials table for committee how many applications are backlogged in the system across all the different streams and how long people have to wait to get their PR card renewed, along with their citizenship card renewals?

[Catrina Tapley]

We have worked hard to try to make sure we have cleaned up, as you would say, things in our mailroom and to make sure there is an acknowledgement of receipt for all our applications, and to make sure those applications are promoted into GCMS. We have focused on a number of different categories including spousal, and we are in the process of dealing with citizenship and PR card renewals now.

I'm going to turn to my colleague Mr. Mills because I think he may have the numbers.

[Daniel Mills]

In terms of renewing permanent resident cards, it currently takes about 130 days to process and about 115 days to issue new cards.

[Catrina Tapley]

If I could add to that, Madam Chair, the portal we have put in place for photographs, for people to be able to upload photographs in a secure way for us and for us to verify that, has been an enormous help on PR card issuance.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Do officials have information on how many applications are backlogged in the system? Can you provide that number to the committee?

If you don't have it now, you can submit it later. That's fine.

[Catrina Tapley]

We do, but I would track it in two ways. If there are applications we haven't opened yet, it's difficult for us to say, but we can certainly talk about the numbers in the system.

Mr. Mills.

[Daniel Mills]

We currently have a backlog of 49,000 renewal applications for permanent resident cards. There are about 50,000 applications for new cards.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Okay.

Are officials able to table or provide an update on operating capacity of each of the IRCC processing centres both in Canada and abroad?

[Catrina Tapley]

Yes, we can talk about our processing capacity and—

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'm sorry. I'm going to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Kwan. Your time is up.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I was just going to ask if the officials could table that information for committee members.

[Catrina Tapley]

Yes, we'd be happy to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Now we will move on to our second round of questioning, starting with Mr. Saroya.

Mr. Saroya, you have five minutes for your round of questioning.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the deputy minister. She is always good, and she's always thinking of us when we are stuck.

This question is for the deputy immigration minister.

The biggest issue that we see, time after time, day after day, night after night, is New Delhi. The biggest complaint I'm hearing from the people who are dealing with the New Delhi office is that they are saying nobody is working. One of the people sent me an email the other day saying that it used to be 150 hands-on people working at immigration, but none of them are working.

Can you confirm how many people are working or whether people are still home due to COVID? What are the main issues behind the huge backup situation in New Delhi?

[Catrina Tapley]

Thank you for the question. Thank you for your nice comments too.

First I want to say a couple of things about India. Because of country conditions, our visa application centres were closed for most of 2020—from March on in 2020—and this had a significant impact on our business. I'm happy to say that visa application centres have reopened. However, we ask visa application centres to put a priority on spousal and family class and on students, as they work through the backlog they had before the visa application centres reopened. I'm happy to report that they've now worked through that backlog and are returning to business as normal.

We have people in the office in all of our offices in India. Where we're still suffering a bit is with locally engaged staff. We still don't have all of our locally engaged staff back, given requirements around distancing and some health requirements, and that too is causing us some problems. However, the situation improves every day in terms of who is there.

Our people are back. Mr. Mills, do you have any further numbers on the number of people who are back in our offices?

[Daniel Mills]

For New Delhi or India, about 65% of our staff is back on site. However, it's important to note that there are vacancies because of the evacuation that took place in the region. So people have come back to Canada. Work is being done in other regions, not necessarily India.

Our offices are currently at 65% capacity for our Canadian officers.

[Catrina Tapley]

If I may, finally we have a new immigration program manager in New Delhi, and I am very confident in his ability to get things back on track.

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

Thank you, Deputy Minister.

The other thing is the timeline. The second thing I hear about is the timeline. I asked the minister for the information, but I didn't get the answer.

With regard to any PR application, when they say it will be processed in 12 to 16 months—I think this is what somebody sent to me—a year later, when the person checks on it, now it says 34 or 35 months.

If I calculate it, that means we are going to start having a backlog. Somebody is still in the queue for 35 months. We keep taking the applications, but these people assume they're going to get it in the next 12 months or 13 months.

Are you concerned about the backlogs? If there's going to be a backlog at the end of the year, how big is the backlog going to be?

[Catrina Tapley]

Thank you.

I have many concerns about operating in this pandemic environment. My first concern would be how long the border will remain closed, because this affects a number of our PR applicants in particular. These are people whose applications have been processed since March 18, 2020, and the border remains closed. I worry about that. I worry about how long the border will continue to be closed and what effect that will have on our business.

The other thing I worry about a little bit is that we've been very generous with people in terms of extending timelines for when they have to submit materials to us, because we recognize that it's difficult for people to get some of those materials due to local country conditions. Granting these extensions and leniencies plays havoc with our timelines and what those look like.

I would be a little more concerned about the backlog if we didn't have generous immigration levels for the next three years, with 401,000, 411,000 and 421,000—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry, Deputy Minister, but time is up.

We will now move to Ms. Dhillon.

Ms. Dhillon, you have five minutes for your round of questioning. Please start.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Thank you, witnesses, for coming to committee this afternoon.

One thing we hear a lot about is the AORs that need to be sent to immigration applicants. Many people have been waiting for a very long time and are looking to see even a little bit of an update on the status of their case.

I know the pandemic has made it very difficult to process a lot of applications. Can you please provide us with an update on the AORs that are being sent to applicants?

[Catrina Tapley]

I'm happy to provide an update on that.

This is a good news story, Madam Chair.

Last fall and last summer we tackled two things. One was how we could better digitize applications that were coming in. We contracted a company called Iron Mountain to come in and pick up those files and help us to digitize them and promote them in our network so that people could continue to work safely at home while processing those files in a timely manner.

The second thing, which I think is really paying off, was that we pushed hard to make sure critical staff were, in our case, in processing centres. Whether it's in Sydney or Mississauga or Edmonton or Vancouver or Ottawa, it has become really important to have those people in place.

On AORs, we have cleaned up most of those. I see Mr. Mills on the screen, so I'm going to ask him to provide the number on that.

[Daniel Mills]

In terms of acknowledgements, I'm very proud to say that the team has worked very hard over the last few months. We still have some paper inventory for certain business lines, such as the provincial nominee program, or PAP, as well as permanent resident and citizenship cards.

However, for skilled workers in Quebec, for instance, we have eliminated any backlog. An amended acknowledgement of receipt dated December has been sent for all applications we received. The same is true for the various programs for January and February. Individuals who submitted their application in the last few months or during the pandemic should have received acknowledgements for most business lines.

As I mentioned, we still have a few areas to improve, and we're working hard to eliminate that backlog and to ensure that people at least have an acknowledgement of receipt associated with the files they've sent to us.