Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Before we begin, I would like to raise a concern with officials and ask for their explanation and response regarding the situation.
During a meeting held at this committee on February 15, which was on processing timelines and acceptance rates, I made a request to IRCC department officials to table, by the end of that month, a breakdown of application backlogs in all streams. When I made that request, Mr. Daniel Mills, the senior assistant deputy minister of operations, said, “I will be happy to provide that information because I have it here on hand.”
Even though Mr. Mills clearly indicated that he already had the information on hand and I requested that the information be tabled by the end of the month, it took 44 more days after the deadline for that information to be tabled. The committee received it on April 13.
However, nearly a month before IRCC's response to the committee, the CIC News website published tables that were provided by IRCC in response to a media request in March. These contained the exact same breakdown requested by me at the committee meeting. The data IRCC provided to them was also more current, with updated figures as recent as March 17, 2022, while the information provided to the committee was current to December 31, 2021.
House of Commons Procedure and Practice notes:
The Standing Orders state that the standing committees have the power to order the production of papers and records, another privilege that is rooted in the Constitution and which is delegated by the House. In carrying out their responsibility to conduct studies and inquiries, standing committees often have to rely on a wide array of papers to aid them in their work.
It is therefore extremely concerning that IRCC is providing timely responses to media requests while withholding document requests—which an IRCC official explicitly said were already on hand—from this committee, which has a legal mandate to study its affairs. This constitutes, in many ways, a breach of privilege by preventing parliamentarians from being able to do their work.
I should note that it's often clear that the text of previous IRCC responses were written shortly after the request was made but took months to make it to the committee. I'm interested to know who was blocking that and why there was such a delay.
Madam Chair, I would like to ask officials to table a response as to why it took so long to provide information they said they already had to the committee, while providing more up-to-date information on shorter notice in response to media inquiries. I ask them to also provide a timeline indicating where the document was held up, why the document was held up and any email records relating to responding to that request. I would like to get a response regarding IRCC's delay in sending documents requested by this committee until the information is out of date, while more quickly providing more up-to-date information in response to the media.
This is not acceptable, Madam Chair. We have officials coming before us whose job is to answer our questions and accept undertakings, per a motion. If this is the approach they are taking, it is not good enough. I want to state that very clearly.
I would like to get a clear explanation from officials, tabled to the committee, as to why this happened. Furthermore, Madam Chair, I have a list of items for which I am still awaiting responses. I painstakingly put together a binder of all the undertakings that I have requested from officials. I have a series of them for which I have yet to receive a response.
I can put all of this on the record, unless the officials have actually tracked them to see where the responses are. We're supposed to get this information so we have it in advance of writing our reports. In many instances, that deadline passes and we don't have that information.
We're now into another study with respect to differential treatment. This is all kind of related, so it is absolutely essential that we get this documentation before we begin that work. Otherwise, we will not have sufficient information to proceed. That's a disservice not only to the committee and our members but also to the community that is waiting for answers, Madam Chair.
I will ask for your direction on whether I should read into the record the list of all the items that I have not yet received or whether officials will actually track that information down and provide it to us in a timely fashion.