Evidence of meeting #9 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 application.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Kwan, but your time is up.
In order to end this second round, we will have two minutes for the Conservative member and two minutes for the Liberal member.
Ms. Dancho, you have two minutes for your round of questioning.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank all the witnesses for joining us today. Your testimonies were excellent, so thank you for your time.
Madam Go, I want to get your perspective. Have you been made familiar with or are you aware of any intimidation that's happening within our Chinese community in Canada? We're hearing reports nationally that Chinese Canadians are being targeted by operatives from the Chinese Communist Party. I'm just wondering if you're hearing anything on the ground that concerns you, in the sense that we should do a better job to expedite the support for Hong Kong and to address concerns here at home.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Clinic Director, Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Sure. In fact, just half an hour before this committee hearing began, I received an email from one of my colleagues from Alliance Canada Hong Kong who has recently, or just today, written to Minister Bill Blair about intimidation cases that they have to deal with right now with respect to two of their members.
Certainly, it's a real issue that is happening to people who are here in Canada. It's not just an issue for Chinese Canadians. It is an issue for Uighurs and Tibetans. Our government really should pay attention to and try to support these activists in every way possible and deal with it.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Thank you for your feedback.
Do you think the government should be doing more to address the Uighur situation in China and perhaps provide them with some sort of pathway to safety in Canada?
Clinic Director, Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Yes. If we think that the situation in Hong Kong is bad, it's worse in Xinjiang, right? I think that—
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
We will now have the last round of questioning.
Mr. Dhaliwal, you have two minutes.
Liberal
Sukh Dhaliwal Liberal Surrey—Newton, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to all the presenters.
My question goes to Ms. Go.
Ms. Go, with regard to the parent and grandparent applications, I have some history. I first got elected in 2006. What Jason Kenney and the Conservative Party did was cut down the number of parent and grandparent applications to 5,000. They reduced the age of a dependent child from 22 years to 18 years. It was a first-come, first-served application. People prepared their applications, put in all that work and sent them to Mississauga. The first 5,000 applications got accepted and the others were out.
Since the Liberal government has taken over, if we average from 2016 to 2021, you will see that we have accepted four times the applications that the Conservatives accepted. We raised the age to 22 from 18. On the backlog, when the Conservatives were in power, it was a seven-year wait for parents and grandparents. We brought it down to under two years.
Would you say that the Liberal government has made improvements and that, in fact, the mess that was created was created by the previous government when it shut down the parents and grandparents category?
Clinic Director, Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
When the Conservatives implemented that program, there was a backlog of, if I remember correctly, over 100,000 cases in the system. They wiped it out by just refusing to process any of these cases.
The backlog has reduced because of two things. First of all, you're making it even harder for people to sponsor their parents and grandparents by raising the MNI requirement to MNI plus 30%. Many of the—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Go, but your time is up.
With this, our first panel comes to an end.
If any of the witnesses want to send some written submissions, please send them to the clerk of the committee and we will consider them as we draft the report.
On behalf of all the members, I would like to thank all the witnesses for appearing before the committee and providing their important testimonies as we continue our study of the impact of COVID-19 on the immigration system.
I will suspend the meeting for two minutes so that sound checks can be done for the second panel.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Good afternoon, everyone. I call the meeting to order as we welcome our second panel.
On behalf of all the members, I would like to welcome all our witnesses appearing before us as we continue our study of the impact of COVID-19 on the immigration system.
Madam Normandin, do you have a question?
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Madam Chair, since we have four witnesses instead of three, five minutes more will be allowed for opening remarks.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
We will see. If there is no technical difficulty, we'll see after the first round. I will determine how much time is left for the second round.
We have four witnesses on this panel.
I would like to welcome Roxane Hatem and Armelle Mara, representing Chercheuses de résidence permanente.
We have from Don Valley Community Legal Services, Nicole Guthrie, immigration lawyer.
We have Laurentian University represented by Robert Haché, president and vice-chancellor.
Our last witness for today is Spousal Sponsorship Advocates, represented by Ms. Misha Pelletier.
All the witnesses will have five minutes for opening remarks. We will start with Roxane Hatem.
You have five minutes for your opening remarks.
Roxane Hatem Representative, Chercheuses de résidence permanente
I'm going to turn the floor over to Ms. Mara because she will be starting our presentation. We will share speaking time.
Liberal
Representative, Chercheuses de résidence permanente
Ms. Mara, you have to unmute the microphone.
Representative, Chercheuses de résidence permanente
Madam Chair, honourable members, we would like to thank the committee for welcoming us today to hear our testimony on the delays involved in obtaining permanent residence in Quebec. Our aim is to draw your attention to the status of our applications.
My name is Armelle Mara, and I represent Où sont nos demandes de résidence permanente?, a group I formed together with Ms. Hatem. I am from Cameroon, and I came to Quebec as an international student in 2016. Although I filed my permanent residence application in 2018, I am still waiting and have not had a work permit since December 2018. I can assure you that many of us are in the same situation.
We are a group of permanent residence applicants who have been waiting for a decision since 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. We already have our Quebec acceptance certificates, an essential step in applying for permanent residence. Despite that fact, we are forced to wait 26 months—and, in fact, as many as 32 months—to become permanent residents.
Having had enough of waiting for months and, in some cases years, without any prospects, we decided to take clear, proactive steps to alert public authorities. There are 3,900 persons in our group, and we have started up a petition that has gathered nearly 11,000 signatures to date. We also demonstrated in Montreal and Quebec City on November 13 to draw attention to our cases.
We have come to this pass as a result of the total lack of response to our applications. File processing times have virtually doubled. COVID-19 and the advent of teleworking have contributed to the complications we have experienced in filing applications in paper format. We are immigrants, and we are definitely seeing red!
I'm going to hand over to Ms. Hatem.
Representative, Chercheuses de résidence permanente
Following on from Ms. Mara's explanations, I plan to cite some examples to illustrate the vulnerable position we find ourselves in today as permanent residence applicants in Quebec.
Waiting times have increased from 16 to 26 months, and even 50 months for investors. We have to pay renewal costs for work visas. These are closed work visas, which are paid for by both employer and immigrant, unlike what is done in the other provinces of Canada. Medical visits are valid for one year. Consequently, after a year, you have to pay again and see the doctor once more.
Our members include pregnant women, whose children will be Canadian, who are waiting for permanent residence, a situation that causes them stress and could affect their health. This has many consequences for us, workers who have been accepted by Quebec. We may wind up without jobs overnight. We can't renew our work visas any more. We are definitely in a vulnerable position. Once we have done all that and have waited 24 months for a decision in our case, we must wait months, in some instances, before receiving a confirmation email from IRCC offices in Montreal.
Our claims regarding these problems and what we are seeking from the government today are as follows. First, we ask that the government grant temporary open work permits to temporary residents who are waiting for permanent residence, as is done in the other provinces of Canada.
Second, we ask that the government give us a realistic completion date and undertake to meet it. According to our accounts, our files have been 100% complete since March 2020. We need to know how much longer we have to wait.
Third, the validity of medical appointments must be extended so that immigrants do not have to make another medical appointment one year later and pay more fees, which are costly, especially for families.
Fourth, we ask that the length of the delay in obtaining permanent residence be deducted from the required waiting period before we can apply for citizenship because we want to become citizens of Canada and to remain in the country. We want to be involved in society, but we unfortunately have to hold permanent resident status for two years in order to do so. The longer we wait for permanent residence, the more time passes, and the longer we have to wait to apply for citizenship.
Fifth, and this is one of the most important points, an acknowledgement of receipt must be sent to persons who submitted their files in 2019 in 2020. Some people who did so in July 2019 have not received an acknowledgement of receipt from IRCC. They do not know where there files are. They cannot access them online so they can monitor their progress. They fear their files will be returned to them at some point because they lack a document or their Quebec acceptance certificate is no longer valid. What are we to do?
These are our fears today…
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Sorry for interrupting, Madam Hatem, but your time is up.
We will now move to our next witness, Don Valley Community Legal Services, represented by Nicole Guthrie.
You have five minutes for your opening remarks.
Nicole Guthrie Lawyer, Immigration, Don Valley Community Legal Services
Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Thank you for having us as witnesses.
I am a lawyer at Don Valley Community Legal Clinic. We are one of the bigger clinics. We merged two former clinics, Flemingdon Community Legal Services and East Toronto Legal Services. We are funded by legal aid.
We have quite a large population in our area. Some of our clients include clients living in the Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon areas. These areas have seen quite a number of COVID-19 cases, which of course has impacted our ability to provide services to our clients. We understand the uniqueness of these circumstances, and I do acknowledge that IRCC has been quite flexible in allowing extensions and has been understanding of submissions and other documents. The Niagara Falls office especially has been very good to us. However, a lot of our clients are still stuck in limbo because of the impact COVID-19 has had on IRCC services.
We think it would be helpful if IRCC would focus their attention on providing resources for several areas. As everyone has mentioned in previous presentations and in this presentation, processing times have gone through the roof. We think there are certain circumstances where IRCC could expedite applications, especially for overseas family members, such as those who are waiting for permanent residence and who are protected persons or family members such as spouses or dependent children.
It would be good if IRCC provided a clear set of criteria for officers to expedite applications from the get-go. Whether it's severe mental health issues or physical risks to family members overseas, we think it would be good if IRCC could establish criteria so officers could expedite applications without our having to advocate or resort to temporary resident permits, which are almost always rejected.
We think there needs to be a clearer, more defined policy regarding dual intent. For instance, spouses who are waiting overseas can apply for a TRP and enter Canada while they wait for their applications to be processed. We have a number of our clients who have family members with pending spousal sponsorship applications being rejected for a TRP application because the officer seems to ignore the fact that a spousal application is pending, even when mental health issues are involved.
One of the things we see with temporary foreign workers is the need for a relaxation of LMIA requirements. There are a lot of temporary foreign workers here, especially caregivers, who have been in Canada for years working on work permits. The process of getting an LMIA has been impacted by COVID-19. We think IRCC should look into relaxing the requirement for these workers to get an LMIA. Maybe they could issue short-term—say, one year—COVID-affected work permits so these employees can support themselves and find work.
A number of applications have been submitted since March. We know that biometrics have been slowly coming back online but they are not up to the speed they were before. It would be really good if IRCC would continue processing other aspects of the application, like medicals and security clearances, instead of applications being put on hold while medicals and security clearances expire and clients have to do these things all over again and spend a lot of money. It would be really helpful if there could be concurrent processing of all these different areas of the application.
Temporary foreign workers are very much impacted by COVID-19. We have a large number of caregivers in our area. A lot of these caregivers have either applied for permanent residence under the interim program or are applying under the new pilot.
A lot of our clients do not have work permits—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, Madam Guthrie, but your time is up.
We will now move to Mr. Robert Haché representing Laurentian University—