Thank you, Madam Chair.
I would like to thank all the committee members for allowing me to speak before you today. I am especially happy to be here in person.
My name is Claire Launay and I am the president of an organization called Le Québec c'est nous aussi. We are a non-profit organization involved in promoting the rights and living conditions of immigrants in Quebec. We work in a non-partisan fashion by expressing the voices within our community and by making known the advantages of immigration to Quebec society.
I would firstly like to talk about what we think are the causes of the increased processing times and backlogs. Obviously, the pandemic has had a major effect on IRCC operations. However, we believe that the problem goes deeper than this and is linked to the way the department is managed.
During the Afghanistan and Ukraine crises, of which we have just spoken, IRCC became a crisis management department whose resources were systematically redeployed from one file to the next in order to handle the crises. This lengthened processing times for permanent residency, working permit and study visa applications and basically gummed up IRCC's normal operations, really.
We were obviously pleased to hear that the Government of Canada intends to take in a large number of refugees in the wake of humanitarian crises. That should not, however, be done at the expense of everyday IRCC operations. We believe that the fact that these emergency situations slow down IRCC operations means that there is obviously a need to change the way the department is managed, because the processing delays are having a tremendous impact on over two million people who are waiting for their files to be dealt with. I will give you some examples of those impacts.
Thousands of students have had to push back the start of their studies by a semester and sometimes by a year, depending on the program, because they are waiting for a student visa. Thousands of people are currently in Canada and are not able to work, despite the lack of manpower that we all know about, because they're still waiting for their work permit. At the same time, employers are forced to temporarily shut down their operations or turn down contracts because they are unable to find workers.
Refugee claimants are telling us that they are having to wait much longer for their Refugee Protection Claimant Document, their “Brown Paper,” that would allow them to file a request for a work permit, have access to health insurance and even find housing. All those persons are currently waiting for months for their Brown Paper, which stops them from making progress in any aspect of their lives in Canada.
We have all heard of issues surrounding family reunification, whereby families are separated and women give birth to their child without their husbands at their side. It is heart-wrenching.
Permanent residency applications are a problem that is slowing down the entire system. Many people are waiting for their permanent residency card and have to file requests for work visas, which is bogging down the system.
In a broader sense, this is hurting Canada's reputation internationally. Over the past few months, Canada's reputation abroad has been tarnished at some international conferences and events when participants were not able to attend as they couldn't get a visa.
In conclusion, I would like to give you some of our recommendations. I would invite you to read the document that we will send you in the next few days that sets out our complete list of recommendations. I will just mention a few of them now.
Firstly, we believe that the Government of Canada and especially IRCC should invest in a program that would better prepare the department for humanitarian crises, so that resources could be systematically used in these situations, which would avoid having to redeploy resources in crisis mode which are essential to normal operations within IRCC.
On a more general note, we have many ideas that would improve transparency and accountability at IRCC. A lack of transparency is the one thing that keeps coming back in testimony. We need an ombudsman for immigration who would make sure that IRCC reaches its targets and does so in a way that is fair and just. Moreover, on the subject of processing times, we need a regulatory framework to establish what Canada's responsibilities are if the department exceeds normal processing times.
We have lots of other ideas and we would relish the chance to talk about them with committee members. I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today.