Thank you very much for allowing me to testify.
I'd like to speak with you today about the issue of backlogs for temporary resident applications, work permits, study permits, visitor visas and temporary resident permits that deal with inadmissibilities.
Temporary resident applications, for the most part, are urgent. Employers need workers to start working for them right away. Students need to go to school. Visitors need to see their families. However, we are seeing egregious processing times for these applications: for example, inland work permits, 168 days; work permits at visa posts like Dubai, 32 weeks; Singapore, 35 weeks; Pakistan, 37 weeks; super visas at the New York visa post, 508 days. Caregiver applications haven't even been processed since the program opened in 2019. Temporary resident permits and other temporary resident applications that are filed in Canada and transferred to local offices now take two to four years to process.
The result means people's lives are held in limbo for untenable lengths of time. There are many people in Canada who become destitute because they're not able to work, while their employers experience labour shortages. Classrooms have empty spots because students can't get their study permits. Family members are unable to reunite with their loved ones.
How do we fix this? I have a few suggestions.
Number one, we need to look at who evaluates the applications. Currently we're still following the old system that was developed decades ago, of using visa posts. That was when we had paper applications, and applicants were interviewed by officers at the visa posts. These visa posts are determining, still, most of the applications that are filed in a particular area. This is unnecessary. The law changed in 2019 to allow applications to be processed by any office, yet we're still following the old system, whereby the visa posts are processing them.
Now we have applications that are all submitted online. IRCC does not need to go to hire people from overseas or bring people overseas. Instead they should be hiring in Canada. They should be decided in Canada, where we develop officers and teams with specialized expertise to deal with particular applications. This will increase efficiency. It will also eliminate the discrimination in processing times and rejection rates based on where an applicant is based.
Secondly, we need to develop proper criteria that are outlined clearly so that the officers and the public can understand how these determinations are made. Currently the criteria for an officer's making this vague decision about whether they feel an applicant is going to return back to the country are much too vague, and that leads to frustrations on both sides, as well as clogging up the Federal Court with challenges to decisions that are unreasonable.
Finally, we need to be careful about using tools such as Chinook. If the refusal rates jump dramatically after the adoption of these kinds of tools, the assumption should be that there is an issue with the system. Now, I understand your committee has already had several studies dealing with these tools and the underlying issues with them, but I would just like to point out that many of these decisions that come from systems that have adopted these tools are unjustly rendered. As a result they lead to the Federal Court's being clogged with challenges. Then further resources are being employed.
What may seem to be efficient, if it ends in injustice, will actually cause further backlogs and delays.
Thank you very much.