Yes.
Evidence of meeting #101 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #101 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
1:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, International Affairs and Crisis Response, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Yes.
1:40 p.m.
Liberal
1:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, International Affairs and Crisis Response, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Yes, it's true that since the start of the crisis, we've been assigning priority to processing applications from Sudan residents.
1:40 p.m.
Bloc
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Bloc Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
Why does this not apply to the 1.8 million refugees who were living in Sudan on April 15, 2023, but who have since been forced to flee from Sudan and take refuge in a neighbouring country?
1:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, International Affairs and Crisis Response, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
At the beginning of the crisis, Canada was very successful with Sudan nationals. Last year, we were one of the leaders among our allies. More than 3,000 Sudanese refugees came to Canada. We co-operated with the International Organization for Migration in Port Sudan, where we processed applications from more than 400 refugees.
1:40 p.m.
Bloc
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Bloc Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
My question is pretty straightforward. Why don't we also set a priority on the 1.8 million Sudanese who were in Sudan on April 15, 2023 and who then took refuge in a neighbouring country?
1:40 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, International Affairs and Crisis Response, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
We are in fact processing all applications from Sudanese nationals, even those who are currently in a neighbouring country, including those who were in Sudan at the start of the crisis.
1:40 p.m.
Bloc
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Bloc Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
So those who are in neighbouring countries are also being prioritized—
1:40 p.m.
Green
Mike Morrice Green Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you once again, Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the officials for being here.
I would like to follow up with concerns among the Sudanese community in the Waterloo region.
At a time when we know there have been 15,000 or more people killed and four million children displaced, leaders in my community are saying that they just want to see treatment similar to what they've seen for other countries. I'll share one example. The president of the Sudanese Canadian Association of Waterloo Region and Wellington County, whose name is El Bagir Abdulkarim, submitted applications for his brother and mother on March 2 and 6. There has been no response yet.
I've spoken with the minister about it. He shared with me what he shared with this committee, as well, which is that the standard processing time would be early 2025 and that we should be grateful things are being moved faster, to potentially fall of 2024. We know that other countries, like Ukraine, for example, have had processing times of 14 days.
Why is it that processing times for family members of Sudanese Canadians seem so much slower than for other countries?
1:45 p.m.
Liberal
1:45 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Thank you for the question.
The comparison for that one is that the Ukrainian program was meant to be a temporary residency program. The Sudanese program is a permanent residency program. This means we will be welcoming Sudanese permanently to the country. The processing is obviously going to take into consideration eligibility and admissibility. On the other hand, it was an eTA country, which is not a visa-required country, Ukraine, and we had to process them faster.
This is a norm in any comparison between permanent residency and temporary residency.
1:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sukh Dhaliwal
Thank you, Mr. Morrice. Your time is up.
We'll go to Madam Kwan.
Madam Kwan, please go ahead for four minutes.
1:45 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
On the issue of differential treatment, the government could have brought in a temporary program for Sudanese to get to safety, and then, as they are doing for the Ukrainians, provide a PR program subsequently. The government could have done that, but they chose not to. It's going to take at least two years now for people to get to safety.
Now, I think the block here is on the immigration levels plan numbers. The deputy minister just said that out of the 3,250 special immigration measures for Sudanese, we'll be expecting 6,000 to 8,000 people from those applications.
Would that be coming out of 2024 immigration levels plan numbers or is that going to be coming out of the 2025 planned immigration levels for the H and C category?
1:45 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
As we continue to process, Chair, some of them will probably be landed in 2024, so they will be in the 2024 levels. The rest, as they are processed, will be in the other levels, which are subsequent years.
1:45 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Could the officials provide the committee the list of countries of PR applications under the H and C program that have been approved so that we can see how many of the spaces are allotted for 2024, which is 13,750, and how many they expect for 2025, for which the allotted space is 8,000?
If you look at the numbers accordingly, 6,000 to 8,000 coming out of the 3,250 applications for 2025, let's say not all of them; let's just say even 5,000. That's the bulk of the numbers. You then have only 300 left. That's supposed to cover Ukraine; that's supposed to cover Gaza and that's supposed to cover Hong Kong. It's supposed to cover all the other categories, including protected persons. How is the government going to make those numbers work? Is that the real reason there is such a delay?
1:45 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
First of all, Chair, we will provide you with our estimates as requested in terms of the numbers.
Second, we continue to process the applications as quickly as we can and actually find the spaces in the current program. However, if there is an opportunity, there might be other ways which we can explore in terms of adding more numbers.
1:45 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
I'd love to hear from the deputy minister and, if we don't have time, perhaps have him submit to the committee what other streams they are going to raid to make these numbers work. Unless the government actually increases the immigration levels numbers, the numbers are not going to add up, so which stream are they going to raid?
1:45 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
As I mentioned earlier, my intent, Chair, was to say that there is a yearly renewal of the multi-year levels plan. Those are the ways in which the adjustments are done for the purpose of all those pending.
1:45 p.m.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
On the yearly renewal, we're already talking about 2024-25, so now we're talking about 2026 and beyond. The numbers just don't add up. In any event, I'll wait for the breakdown so that we can see, because this has implications not just for the Sudanese community but for all the other communities that are in desperate need of the PR numbers and the processing delay that is jammed up in the system.
I want to just touch on the issue of finances and financial barriers. If the deputy can also provide the exact breakdown of why some communities have had their fees waived and others have not, we have a fulsome comparison using Ukraine as the gold standard and then comparing that to all the other communities that are in need of support.