Thank you, Madam Chair.
Honourable members of the committee, good morning. I also want to acknowledge the other witnesses. My name is Kyle Hyndman, and I am chair of the Immigration Law Section at the Canadian Bar Association, which brings together more than 36,000 legal experts in the country. The association's main objectives are the improvement of law and the administration of justice.
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today from Vancouver, the traditional and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil‑Waututh nations.
One of the most important points I'd like to make is that backlogs are about much more than waiting. The impacts of delayed processing are profound, personal and sometimes permanent and unfixable, and they're often about a loss of rights.
Today, I'd like to highlight solutions in three main areas: Number one is completeness checks, number two is transparency and predictability, and number three is equity.
I'll turn first to completeness checks. When anyone files an immigration application, as many of you know, the first step in processing is that IRCC conducts a completeness check under section 10 of the regulations. Applications that are deemed complete are entered into the queue for processing. Those that are deemed incomplete, no matter how trivial the apparent deficiency, are returned unprocessed and are treated in legal terms as though they were never filed. Applicants are then required to start all over again. Completeness checks are only fair and effective when they're done quickly and accurately. When they take up to a year, as they sometimes do now, the impacts can be serious and sometimes permanent.
I'll give you an example of a spousal sponsorship filed from within Canada where the applicant has a work permit that's expiring soon and, let's say, a 21-year-old son overseas. Filing her permanent residence application along with an open work application allows her to remain in Canada and keep working, and it also locks in her son as a dependant. The cut-off is his 22nd birthday.
If this applicant's PR application were returned for incompleteness a week later, she could simply correct any deficiencies and refile the application. The consequences would be relatively minimal, but if it were returned after seven months, let's say, the consequences could be very serious and very permanent.
First of all, because her application has been returned, her work permit application is also refused and she is now out of status and well beyond the 90-day restoration period. Her options are to leave Canada and be separated from her spouse, remain in Canada illegally or apply for a temporary resident permit, which is a highly discretionary application with a low approval rate.
In the meantime, many of her documents have expired. More seriously, her son has now turned 22 and is permanently excluded from the family unit. She can never sponsor him to come to Canada and she'll have to make the impossible choice between permanent separation from her spouse or from her son.
This situation may also lead to a cascade of resource-intensive applications to try to fix the situation, creating more work for IRCC, the courts, the CBSA and other departments.
There are two main recommendations on this point. One is to allocate more resources—whether electronic or human—specifically to reviewing applications for completeness, opening files and assigning file numbers quickly. Number two is giving applicants the opportunity to correct minor deficiencies rather than returning applications. The second point is about transparency and predictability for applicants.
We have three recommendations that we believe will help lower anxiety, increase confidence in the immigration system and reduce follow-up communications that consume IRCC resources. Number one, set reasonable service standards for responding to inquiries and ensure that they're met. Number two, inform applicants or their counsel where their applications are being processed and post information about the circumstances in which applications are transferred. Number three, provide accurate individualized information about the progress of applications.
The final point is about equity. We need an immigration system that both meets Canada's economic, demographic and humanitarian needs but is also administered in a way that reflects Canadian values of equity and fairness. Our current system fails to do this consistently, particularly when it comes to processing times, which vary wildly across IRCC's international network.
We've made three recommendations to address this. Number one, allocate more resources to offices that face unusually long processing times, such as New Delhi and Abu Dhabi. Number two, make better use of IRCC's global delivery network to reallocate files to other offices. Number three, post more accurate processing times online.
Those are my introductory remarks. I would welcome any questions from members of the committee.
Thank you.