Evidence of meeting #18 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pandemic.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Catrina Tapley  Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Daniel Mills  Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC

Thank you for that.

I have a follow-up question regarding this matter. Can you tell us what was considered when it came to prioritizing these files and why it was important to prioritize certain streams as opposed to others?

5:45 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Catrina Tapley

I'm happy to say we've put a priority on people who are either in Canada or able to travel to Canada, given the current restrictions. For us, in practical terms, that's meant things like the Canada experience class draw under express entry, out of which over 90% of individuals are in Canada and working.

The other areas that we put a premium on are those who can travel to Canada—so spouses, partners, children, parents and grandparents in some cases. All of these are important populations that can come in, even with the border restrictions that are there now. That's been our priority. It doesn't mean that we have stopped doing other things—we haven't—but that's where we have placed the priority.

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC

Can you provide us with some clarity with regard to applications from people from Hong Kong?

We've heard from witnesses that there were people who were worried about applying because of fears that, because they have been charged or convicted of a crime like peaceful protest, their applications would be immediately revoked.

Can you confirm for us the process for reviewing an application with regard to criminal inadmissibility, especially when it comes to these matters?

5:45 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Catrina Tapley

Simply participating and being charged with participating in a peaceful protest would not be grounds for us to reject an application in and of itself, so the answer to that is no.

I'm happy to report that student applications in particular are up in Hong Kong, and we are encouraged by that.

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

Anju Dhillon Liberal Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC

Thank you very much, again, to the witnesses and for their answers to our questions.

5:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid

Thank you, Ms. Dhillon.

We'll now move on to Madame Normandin.

You have two and half minutes. You can please start.

5:45 p.m.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

Thank you very much.

I'd like clarification on Mr. Mills's last answer. He said that acknowledgements of receipt had been sent to almost everyone in December for skilled workers.

Is this an ordinary acknowledgement, if I may call it that, that the file has been received, or is it the acknowledgement that the file has been received, that a preliminary analysis has been done and that it is in order?

5:45 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Daniel Mills

In the case of skilled workers in Quebec, it's an amended acknowledgement that we've received their application. That doesn't mean it's complete. At this point, we're in the process of checking that. Individuals will receive a second notification once their application has been processed.

We've eliminated the backlog for skilled workers. All applicants have received an amended acknowledgement of receipt.

5:50 p.m.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

Do you know how many applicants are waiting for a full acknowledgement of receipt in Quebec, for instance?

5:50 p.m.

Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Daniel Mills

I'll have to get that information to the committee. I know that we sent out over 12,000 amended acknowledgements in the fall and late December, but I don't know if any files have changed category since then. I'll be pleased to provide the committee with the information.

5:50 p.m.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

Thank you very much. I'll give you time to complete your answer to the question I asked a little earlier.

This year, I understood that 46,000 sponsorship applications have been processed and accepted. So we met the target set by the minister, but in the past we were talking about 91,000 or 92,000 applications. So I guess it's had an impact on the backlog, although there may have been fewer applications.

I'd like to know what the backlog is for sponsorship application.

5:50 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Catrina Tapley

We processed or finalized 46,000 applications for spousal in 2020. This year, in 2021, since the first of January, we have processed about 10,000. We think we're really on track to being able to hit our levels targets and to—

5:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid

I'm sorry for interrupting, Deputy Minister. The time is up.

We will have to move on to Ms. Kwan.

Ms. Kwan, you will have two and half minutes. Please proceed.

5:50 p.m.

NDP

Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC

With regard to the last question I asked of the officials, could you table that information for the committee, please?

With respect to VFS, could the officials advise us when IRCC knew that the subcontractor for Canada in China is owned by the Beijing municipal police?

5:50 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Catrina Tapley

Thank you.

We work very closely with our partner at PSPC, which is the contracting authority. I'm going to suggest that maybe that's a question that's best addressed to PSPC as the contracting authority in terms of ownership around the subcontractor. I think that would be—

5:50 p.m.

NDP

Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC

Thank you.

We know that, in response to The Globe and Mail, IRCC officials advised that they only just recently found out. We also know that back in 2013 when this question was asked of officials at committee, officials including the deputy minister then were not able to answer. Actually, they said that it was not being subcontracted out. I think this is really important for us to find out. When did IRCC know, given that this is immigration?

With that being said, the other issue, of course, is that the general manager for the subcontractor is selected and elected by the CCP. That means that this subcontractor's company is run and operated by the manager of the CCP. That, I would think, is cause for concern. If I were somebody who was submitting an application to that visa office centre, I would be very concerned knowing it is owned by the Beijing police and that the person who is the general manager for that company is selected by the CCP.

Given this information, are officials at all concerned? Just give a quick answer.

5:50 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Catrina Tapley

I'll repeat what the minister said. We are soberly aware of the risks of doing business in China.

5:50 p.m.

NDP

Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC

All right. In the U.S., in fact, they do that stuff in-house with their own in-house operation. Is this something the Canadian government would consider?

March 8th, 2021 / 5:50 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Catrina Tapley

We are similar to our other Five Eyes partners—

5:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid

I'm sorry for interrupting, Madam Deputy Minister. The time is up.

We will now move on to Mr. Hallan.

Mr. Hallan, and Mr. Dhaliwal after him, will have three minutes each, and then we will end the round of questioning and go to voting on the estimates and the mains.

I would request Mr. Hallan to please proceed.

5:50 p.m.

Conservative

Jasraj Singh Hallan Conservative Calgary Forest Lawn, AB

Thank you, Madam Chair.

On February 13, there were 27,000 invitations, as we know, through express entry to the Canadian experience class. Previous draws averaged about 3,500. The 2019-20 service targets were not met, and now we're piling more applications on top of that.

How is the IRCC going to process all of these applications within the standard processing time, especially considering the current delays?

5:55 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Catrina Tapley

One of the nice things about the Canada experience class is that these individuals by and large are in Canada. That's how we can process these applications and bring these applications to landing in 2021. That's a big difference from what we've seen in other categories. We were quite targeted about what we were doing under express entry. By and large we were focused on a category of people who are in Canada and who are working. That's why we're confident that we'll be able to process those applications in this calendar year.

5:55 p.m.

Conservative

Jasraj Singh Hallan Conservative Calgary Forest Lawn, AB

Given that there are still delays in a lot of offices right now, do we have a contingency plan?

If we can't meet that target, if some of the offices can't open due to COVID, and if there are processing delays with police clearances, etc., do we have a contingency plan if we cannot meet those targets?

5:55 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration

Catrina Tapley

We're looking at a number of measures in 2021 of things we can do to ensure we will achieve our levels targets. The minister has talked about some of these publicly.

We're looking at things like smoother transitions of people who are here on a temporary basis, such as students working on post-graduate work permits or some temporary workers. We're examining if we can do a smoother pathway there. We're looking at other categories. We're looking at others who are in Canada now, so we're carefully looking at the PNP.

5:55 p.m.

Conservative

Jasraj Singh Hallan Conservative Calgary Forest Lawn, AB

Thank you very much for that. I appreciate that.

Can we also get a rough summary of the distribution of the 27,000-plus candidates? Who received the invitations amongst the range of the CRS scores for this draw? For example, what was the portion of candidates who scored, let's say, above 431, which is an average from before, or what portion was less than 100? Can we get a breakdown of that?