Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 12th, 2022

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

There's a lot that we agree on. On this point, I think there's a breakdown. Maybe I'm not being very articulate.

When we collect biometrics information from a person, we can use the Department of National Defence's database. We don't need to send a mission to the third countries we're dealing with to meet the volumes of people for whom we can process biometrics once they get to a third country.

If we're talking about extracting people from Afghanistan, that is a different issue altogether. Biometrics in the country, in Afghanistan, are a real challenge. However, biometrics in third countries, for people who've made it out, are not something we need to engage the Department of National Defence in to successfully process people in those third countries.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Maybe the minister should think about, then, the option of engaging the military and asking them for help to bring people out of Afghanistan as well. I would think that both measures are critically important.

I'd like to ask the minister if he can table for this committee a breakdown of the people who have arrived in Canada and those who were in a third country prior to the fall of Kabul. I think it's important to get that information, to distinguish between the people who were previously in need of getting to safety and the people who are in need of getting to safety as a result of the fall of Kabul in August.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Sure.

Dan or Jennifer, do either of you have that information with you right now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Our time is up for Ms. Kwan.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Okay. We can follow up on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Yes. If that request can be looked into, we will now proceed to Mr. Redekopp.

Mr. Redekopp, you will have five minutes. You can please begin.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Minister, in your letter that opens the 2022-23 departmental plan, you write about permanent residents, and you talk about the targets of between 360,000 and 445,000 new residents. Then, when you look on page 22, you can see the results from the prior years and they're always below.... In the last year, I think you said that you achieved that 401,000. The backlog that I've seen sits at 2.1 million people, and that I think includes new citizens.

You put some extra money in for that, but my question for you is this. With 400,000 a year and the backlog of two-million plus, that's five years of processing, assuming that no new people come. How do you explain that?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Okay. There are quite a few things going on that I think require highlighting.

Dan, you may want to jump in as well.

The numbers you're talking about, I assume, include all different lines of business, not just permanent residency. One of the other things that's really important is that it includes people who applied yesterday. It's normal for us to have hundreds of thousands of cases in any given year come into our system. In fact, we resettled 405,000 last year, and we plan on resettling 432,000 this year.

If I look at international students, we might have half a million applications in a given year, and that's actually a healthy sign. That demonstrates that people want to come to Canada. Where we run into a challenge is when the number of people who are applying each year is greater than the processing capacity of the department. With the investments that we made, I'm quite confident that the vast majority of our lines of business will be back to about the service standard by the end of the year.

If you want more specific details, I'm sure Mr. Mills would be happy to provide them. If you'd like to move on with your questions, we'd be happy to follow up if you want us to submit something in writing.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Let's move on to Ukrainian backlogs.

You came and touted the program on bringing in Ukrainians fleeing the war zone. I'm going to ask you some questions. If you have the information, great. If not, you can provide it to the committee later.

How many Ukrainians have applied under this program?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It's a little bit more than 200,000. I haven't seen the update today, but we're in that order of magnitude.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

How many have been accepted, rejected or processed?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It's a little more than 100,000, I believe. Over the last couple of days, we crossed that milestone.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

How many have made it to Canada?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

So far under that particular program it's unclear to me—because I just don't have the figure in front of me—but there have been more 25,000 since the beginning of the year. That includes people who may have come under a different stream.

I want to add a bit of detail from the trip where we went to the region with Mr. Hallan last week. One of the things we're seeing is that a lot of people are taking an application out of the program for peace of mind and as an insurance policy. Belgium, in fact, has expected and prepared for 200,000, but only 30,000 have shown up.

The people are, largely speaking, wanting to stay as close to Ukraine as possible, and those who have left are showing a real reticence to even move away from transportation hubs. I don't expect that everyone who becomes entitled to come to Canada will actually come to Canada, so we may continue to see a delta between the number who are here under this program and the number who have been approved.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

That's fair enough. Part of the reason I ask these questions is that the backlog has grown substantially. It has increased by I think up to 2.1 million, the same backlog we were speaking of before. I'm curious to know if that's driven by the Ukrainian program. What are the factors that are driving that explosion of 200,000 or 300,000 people in just the last few months?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I want to be careful because those are your numbers, not mine. I assume that includes all of the people who've just applied to the Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel. We've now seen 200,000 people apply for the program in a matter of a month and a half.

When you have that kind of new program with those kinds of volumes, that adds to the total number of pending applications, which, again, I hesitate to describe as a backlog, because it's normal to have an inventory of cases. My far more important measuring stick is, to me, how long it takes to get through these cases, not how many there are. If we have large numbers of people who want to come to Canada, I think that's a good thing, but the difference between the number of people who want to come and our ability to process them is a very important metric.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Yes. I think the point is that it wasn't going to increase the backlog, but it seems like it has, so that's a concern we have.

I just want to end quickly on SDS for Bangladesh or #SDS for Bangladesh. It has become a hashtag. Last week, I heard that the department is actually working on this. Can you give us an update on the timing and how long it's likely to take for this to get processed?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I don't have it in front of mind. I think we've actually seen a pretty significant increase in the approval rate from Bangladesh this year—in 2021, compared with 2020. I don't know if our officials have the update that Mr. Redekopp is looking for.

[Caroline Xavier]

Thank you for the question.

As was shared previously, we have been doing work with the High Commissioner of Bangladesh and we are finalizing the internal evaluation of the SDS. We're expecting and hoping for this to be completed by fall 2022 in order to be able to proceed to having the program live, but we are in the process of finalizing that evaluation as we speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Ms. Xavier.

We will now proceed to Mr. El-Khoury for five minutes.

Please begin.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you again, Minister, for being with us today. It is always a pleasure to talk with you.

IRCC has more than a dozen projects underway with equity and equality goals—I repeat, “equity and equality.”

Are you able to give us some details about these projects?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Sure. There's an awful lot of work going on.

One of the things that's really important for me to reflect on is that we have to be honest in government about what we do well and the areas where we need to improve. I think in every organization the size of our department and across government we need to constantly be pursuing equity and fairness and anti-discrimination initiatives.

It will come as no secret to members of this committee that we conducted a survey in the wake of the murder of George Floyd to understand what kinds of discriminatory behaviours exist within our own shop. That sort of inward reflection is really important. The lessons that we learned were not happy stories. We had some real challenges.

I've been pleased with the response of the department. That doesn't mean everything is fixed. There are still some real challenges, and by the way, these challenges interfere with the ability of organizations to meet their full potential. When you don't have a welcoming workspace, in some instances it makes it harder to recruit the best and brightest, who might not see themselves in an organization.

The initiatives focus on the policies that both impact the people we serve and impact the people we work with.

In terms of the people we work with, there are initiatives to bring more people into leadership positions within the department and to increase the representation of different demographic groups through all levels of the organization, making sure people have a safe and private place to raise concerns where there will not be fears of reprisal for sharing examples of unsavoury behaviour on the part of their superiors.

In terms of the policies that have an outward impact, we're constantly looking at differential outcomes. I'm actually very much looking forward to looking at all the recommendations of this committee on that particular study. These are the kinds of things that actually lead us to saying, can we be doing more to support people in regions of Africa, like francophone newcomers? A new office we're looking at in Cameroon is going to help with that kind of initiative. Constantly looking at both the internal and external impacts of our policies is something that's necessary. It's in our interests as a department. It's in the interests of Canadians.

I would be happy to provide more information on the back end of this meeting, if you wanted to nail down more specifically what you think is useful.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you. I appreciate it, Mr. Minister.

Minister, could you elaborate on the full-time working group that was established in July 2020 to provide strategic direction to the department on personnel management, policy and program delivery?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

On the specifics of the policy, I think the group that we have responsible for it are with us here today. Perhaps I'll let them take the floor to walk folks through the details.

[Caroline Xavier]

Thank you for the question.

In 2020, we have indeed set up a full-time working group, which works closely with all sectors of the department. This working group ensures that they set targets that are linked to the strategy. We have set very concrete targets, and we want to make sure that they are met.

The strategy has several components, including personnel management, service delivery, policy, program delivery and data. We want to make sure that we achieve all of these objectives related to the departmental strategy.

We also make sure that all of our managers are aware of the strategy. In that regard, we have even added a paragraph in the job offer letter to ensure that they understand the importance of not only achieving the objectives of this strategy, but also those of the fight against racism that is promoted within the department.