Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 25th, 2020

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

Thank you, Mr. Dhaliwal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Minister.

I'm sorry about all those issues we had from our end or your end. We'll make sure that we look into those next time.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Chair, a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Yes, please.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I think we should have a bit of a discussion about the next time the minister comes to committee so that he has the proper equipment. Can he commit to that?

Maybe that will resolve some of these problems, but otherwise, I don't really know what we're all doing here if we're not going to have the equipment that we're being sent. I know it's not pleasant to wear, but we all commit to wearing it when we're doing virtual Parliament. If the minister has come unprepared—and I suspect that's part of the problem—can he commit for the next time he comes, in December, to having proper equipment?

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

Ms. Dancho, I've used this equipment to appear before committee. It's worked reliably up until today, but of course I'm always prepared to work with you and all members of the House to ensure that we can have a good conversation, as we did today. I thank you for your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Minister.

With that, we will end this panel. We will suspend for a minute so that we can allow the officials to be with us in the second panel, and if there is any sound check to be done the clerk can do that.

Thank you, Minister, on behalf of all the committee members. Thanks a lot for appearing before the committee.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'll suspend for a minute so that the clerk can have [Technical difficulty—Editor] if there is any sound check to be done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

For the second panel, we have the officials. We will not have opening statements. We will move into the round of questioning and we will start with Ms. Dancho.

Ms. Dancho, you have six minutes for your round of questioning. Please start.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the officials for being with us today.

I have a question about expired COPRs. All members of Parliament, I'm sure, are getting bombarded with this, as I am. I know that the NDP and the Bloc members have mentioned this as well. I want to know how this is working. My understanding is that they were permanent residents who were approved. They've sold their homes, sold their businesses, bought their plane tickets and were scheduled to come to the country, and then the borders closed. Now they've been stranded in their home countries since the borders closed in March and their COPRs have since expired.

My understanding is that what could be done is that the minister's office and the Department of Immigration could provide an authorization letter to those with expired COPRs. Is that correct?

[Catrina Tapley]

If I may, Madam Chair, I will just back up slightly.

With many who have expired COPRs, these were issued before March 18. They are authorized to travel, but for many reasons, including conditions at home, they have chosen not to travel and not to come. Now their COPRs have expired and we are working to find a way to put them back into validity.

We've worked through two populations. We worked first through families who are in this situation, and now we're working through the economic class who find themselves in this situation, because we would very much like them to land.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Deputy Minister.

I don't necessarily agree. My understanding, from those who have contacted me, is that it's not been up to them. They have wanted to come here since March, but they need an authorization letter or something of that nature, is what we're being told. If they didn't need certain paperwork from your department and from the minister, they would be already here, but they're stranded in a country of origin with no home and running out of savings. I'm not clear why there's nothing being done for them.

[Catrina Tapley]

Well, there's lots being done. Typically, confirmation of permanent residence is valid for about 12 months. There are some changes, but it's about 12 months, and those have expired. What we're doing now is a process. We go back through, individually, to reach out to contact people and to issue additional letters so that people can travel and people can come.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I don't mean to keep hammering on this, but my understanding is that they do need this authorization letter and they're not receiving it from you, and it's been nine months. I'm just wondering what the holdup is. You're saying you prioritize families before singles. Is that what you're saying?

[Catrina Tapley]

The issue with expired confirmation of permanent residence is that they haven't all expired at the same time, so we're working our way through. One thing we've done is define a pathway so that we can issue a new letter. We can reissue things inside of our global case management system so that people can arrive at the border and be welcomed to Canada, which is what we want.

Now we've had to go back through this. We haven't really dealt with expired COPRs before, so we're reaching out individually. It's a pretty labour-intensive process. We're making sure that people still intend to travel, because some people who have let their confirmations expire do not intend to travel, for a variety of reasons. For those who do, we want to be able to turn that back on and issue the letter and move it through. We've been moving through them since September.

I'm just going to double-check with Mr. Mills on that.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I see him nodding.

Sorry, just to confirm, you mentioned that you were first focusing on families and now others. Are you focusing by region at all? Are there any specific areas of the world that you're looking at first, and others that you're not?

[Catrina Tapley]

I'll double-check with Mr. Mills on that, but no, we're going through them, I think, really in order of how the files have come to us.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Deputy Minister.

I'm going to switch topics to adoption for my last few minutes. I'm sure you're very familiar with the Muth family and the Thiessen family, and a number of other families that were caught in the middle of this pandemic. They were stranded abroad when they were trying to adopt children in Africa.

What we've heard from these individuals is that they felt abandoned by their government. I know the Muth family was there. They just got home now. I believe they were there since December, so it was nearly a year. They hadn't heard anything for six months. They had to have a media campaign, email campaigns. It was the same with the Thiessens, who were not quite as badly off as the Muths, but at the same time did not hear anything for months.

Given what's happened with this pandemic, is your department planning to do a comprehensive review of how Canadian parents are treated when they go abroad to adopt children? We're hearing that couples in the Netherlands received documentation much more quickly, were in a very similar situation with border closures, and yet they were able to return to the Netherlands very quickly.

Are you considering a comprehensive review of how you treat adoptive parents?

[Catrina Tapley]

Madam Chair, thanks for the question.

International adoptions are a complicated business because so much depends on the host country. The member is right; it is causing us to look at how we work through our business and what we do. I hope we can continue to do things a little more smoothly.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Deputy Minister.

Just to conclude, my understanding was that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Your time is up.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

—there was no confirmation, no communication from the Canadian government to them for about a year. I don't think that's a foreign problem, but thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Ms. Dancho.

We will move on to MP Serré. You have six minutes.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the departmental officials for the long hours they work. Canadians are very proud of our immigration system.

We have heard from Collège Boréal and other francophone organizations that we are having difficulty in meeting immigration targets.

Are there things we can do, as a country, to increase francophone immigration targets for people from African or francophone countries around the world? What can we do, as a government, to ensure that more francophones settle throughout Canada?