Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 21st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Good afternoon, everybody. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 37 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

I would like to welcome the new members to this committee. We have with us Mr. Maguire, Mr. Kmiec and Ms. Rempel Garner.

Welcome to the immigration and citizenship committee.

Today we will continue our study on application backlogs and processing times.

I would like to welcome the witnesses who are appearing before this committee. All witnesses will have five minutes for their opening remarks, and then we will proceed to a round of questioning.

In our first panel today, we are joined by Elizabeth Long, a barrister and solicitor for Long Mangalji LLP; Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees; and Mary Roman, executive director of the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization.

Welcome to this committee. Each of you will have five minutes for your opening remarks, and then we will go into our round of questioning.

We will start with Ms. Long.

Ms. Long, please begin. You will have five minutes for your opening remarks.

[Elizabeth Long, Barrister and Solicitor, Long Mangalji LLP, As an Individual]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Ms. Long.

We will now proceed to Ms. Janet Dench, executive director, Canadian Council for Refugees.

The floor is yours. You can please begin.

[Janet Dench, Executive Director, Canadian Council for Refugees]

Thank you for the invitation to address the committee as part of your study on application backlogs and processing times.

The Canadian Council for Refugees has many concerns about backlogs and processing times, but today I would like to focus on applications for permanent residence from protected persons in Canada and their family members. We addressed this issue in a submission we made in July, entitled “Accepted refugees: on hold and separated from their family”, which I hope you have before you.

Firstly, who are we talking about? Protected persons in Canada are people who have made a refugee claim in Canada and have been determined to be convention refugees or protected persons. They can then apply for permanent residence for themselves as well as for their immediate family members, spouses and children, whether inside or outside Canada.

At the end of January 2022, there was an inventory of nearly 70,000 applications of accepted refugees; in other words, protected persons and their family members. However, in February the government announced a target of only 24,500 for protected persons in Canada and dependents abroad. According to the government's multi-year plan, the target goes up very slightly next year, to 25,000. This means the government is planning for some of the applicants in the January 2022 inventory not to receive their permanent residence until 2024.

The gap between the number of applicants waiting and the target in the immigration levels will only grow, because the Immigration and Refugee Board is making more decisions on refugees. This is due to the pandemic and the addition of new decision-makers. Already in 2021, over 30,000 people were accepted as refugees by the IRB, up from 16,000 in 2020.

The 2022 immigration target of 24,500 for protected persons is clearly far too small for the 30,000 people accepted as refugees in 2021, even before considering their family members abroad. As the gap grows between the number of people accepted as refugees and the immigration target, people will be forced to wait longer and longer.

Our submission outlines some of the serious consequences for refugees who must wait years to receive permanent residence, but the most devastating impact is prolonged family separation. People are often forced to flee, leaving their immediate family behind. Their spouses and children may remain in the home country, subject in some cases to threats from the same agents of persecution that the refugees fled. In other cases, family members have also been displaced from their home country and are surviving in precarious circumstances in a third country. Some parents have had to leave their children behind in the care of an elderly relative or even a neighbour.

I invite you to listen to the words of one mother.

I had to leave my spouse and two of my children behind. I travelled because I had to—it was the only choice and I was crying a lot, but I was pushed by my family to leave. In 2018 I started my refugee journey in Canada. I had no family, no friends and I didn't know anything about the system in Canada or life in Canada. [...] It's so stressful to wait for a hearing and then wait for your permanent residence and then wait until your overseas family get their permanent residence. It has taken almost four years to be at the point of being reunited with my family. My children and I lost four years of our life together. We suffered a lot [...] I couldn't stand life without my children, and my children suffered at the same time. They stopped going to school; they lived in constant fear. No health care, no school, their life and mine stopped. I always wondered how a large developed country like Canada could allow families to be separated for so long, especially if children are involved. [...] I think those four years will always have an impact on us. We will never forget them. The pain we suffered will never go away.

I would like to point out that IRCC refuses to publish processing times for the family members abroad of accepted refugees, either globally or by region.

In 2021, IRCC informed a journalist that, for family reunification cases finalized between April 2020 and March 2021, the processing time was 39 months, so more than three years. In the experience of our members, the timescales vary greatly by region, and people in Africa or Haiti generally wait a very long time; this situation is completely at odds with the department's commitment to fight racism.

Our report concludes with four recommendations: ensure that the ministerial letter mandate for family reunification applies to refugees and not only family class; increase immigration targets for protected persons in Canada and dependents abroad; publish the processing times for dependants of refugees abroad; and amend the law to provide automatic permanent residence for accepted refugees.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed to Mary Roman, the executive director for Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization.

Ms. Roman, you have five minutes for your opening remarks.

[Mary Roman, Executive Director, Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization]

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee, for inviting the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization to share our experience regarding the backlogs of IRCC file processing times.

For 45 years, OCISO, working in partnership with IRCC, has been supporting newcomers settling in Ottawa. We have dealt with many complexities related to immigration waves from different sourcing countries. Today we would like to highlight the challenges related to two specific immigration classes within the general stream: the backlogs for government-assisted refugees', or GARs', citizenship applications and PR renewals, and also the backlogs for refugee claimant processing times.

Most GARs are vulnerable, multibarrier clients, with a high percentage of disability cases. Most of them have challenges in language and digital literacy. As we appreciate the launch of the online application system of IRCC, we also acknowledge that these clients cannot navigate the systems by themselves. Rather, they depend on our settlement practitioners to help them in processing PR renewals or citizenship applications and to provide responses in cases of delays.

The backlog has extended to two years for decisions on citizenship and to six months or more for PR renewals. Because of repercussions and for their security and safety, GARs cannot return to their sourcing country or be reunited with their families until they have Canadian citizenship and passports. In the meantime, we have noticed that the applications submitted post-COVID, in 2021, were prioritized and finalized, whereas applications from 2019 and 2020 are still pending.

We've tracked some cases requiring disability accommodation for hearing and for speaking, but they could not be processed for months, whether it was for their citizenship test or the citizenship ceremony. Our practitioners struggle to get responses via the web form supplied or in reaching an agent over the phone. There are children attached to adults with delayed processing times. There was no option to process their independent files without finishing those of the parents. This is combined with the economic challenges of the costs of the application process for GARs.

Today, OCISO recommends to this committee and to IRCC doable solutions that might work, such as adopting the same approach as the CRA, where a help desk for non-profits and volunteers was initiated during the tax season. We suggest that IRCC create a helpline regarding overdue processing times that is accessible only by organization-specific codes for settlement practitioners and non-profits in order to get responses to attend to our clients. We also suggest freezing for a few months all of the new applications for citizenship to finish the queue of the backlog for the previous years, and then starting to accept new files after clearing all of those queued behind.

We have a dream, and we are sharing it with you today. We look forward to the future innovation of artificial intelligence to triage the applications, whereby the components of the applications are in view of the CRA, the CBSA, security clearance and the IRCC, all linked via an intragovernmental network, so that the system, by itself, can sort out and finalize the complete packages automatically, minimizing the processing time and the workload on different immigration officers and their human inputs into the revision of those files.

I now want to reference the refugee claimants.

The backlog to get the work permit is now up to one year. It is a fact that refugee claimants are usually skilled and ready for employment, but for one year, everything is frozen for them. They are not able to have a driver's licence issued, to work or to study in universities. They live on income assistance, which in itself is a load on taxpayers and the government. Without residency status, they are not able to leave the country, bring in their families or process any application for reunification with their loved ones.

OCISO's recommendation is for IRCC to grant open work permits right away to all claimants to alleviate the pressure until the processing of their case is done. We are asking for this as it aligns with the approach adopted by IRCC regarding the Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel, CUAET, which was a successful experience. It put them into employability immediately. We hope to apply this to all refugee claimants as well.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you. You are right on time.

With that, we will proceed to our round of questioning. We will begin with Mr. Maguire.

Mr. Maguire, you have six minutes for your round of questioning. Please begin.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to give notice of the following motion, which my office will make available to the clerk:

That Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada table in both English and French with the committee, until further notice, the previous month's number of people entering Canada through non-official points of entry who claim asylum, not later than the 5th of the month succeeding the data.

Thank you.

I have a number of questions I'd like to proceed with for Ms. Dench today. I'll get right into them.

Ms. Dench, after reviewing the statistics on the Immigration and Refugee Board's website, their most up-to-date data has 13,389 pending asylum claims from irregular border crossers. We know that the number will rise drastically, as the RCMP has already intercepted 23,358 individuals as of August 2022. It's also clear that we're on track for over 30,000 irregular border crossers for this year. Is the Immigration and Refugee Board prepared to process this dramatic increase in asylum claims so people aren't waiting for years to get either a yes or a no?

[Janet Dench]

Of course, you'll have to speak to the Immigration and Refugee Board to have a sense of their capacity, but there has been a very welcome increase in capacity at the Immigration and Refugee Board. They have adapted. I think they were one of the institutions that adapted the most quickly to the pandemic situation and having online hearings. They have also been given a budget to hire new decision-makers, so there's quite an increase in the number of decision-makers, which increases their capacity.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thanks.

Do you know what specific law or regulation the Liberal government used to stop irregular border crossers from claiming asylum during the pandemic?

[Janet Dench]

It was the order in council that was part of the pandemic border ban. It didn't prevent them from making refugee claims, but it directed them back, so people who came up to the border and made a refugee claim at an irregular point were told to return to the U.S. and that they would have to come back later to pursue their claim.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Yes. That was my next question.

My colleagues on this committee may not know this, but, as you mentioned, the IRCC's website has a section entitled “Asylum claimants who were directed back to the U.S.” Under that it says, “We’re contacting individuals who wanted to make a claim for asylum in Canada, but were directed back to the U.S. because of the COVID-19 border restrictions. These individuals will be able to return to Canada to continue their claim.”

Do you know how the government collected the contact information for those individuals? Do you know specifically how the government is now contacting these individuals? Is it by phone, by email or by letter? Do you know the means of contact?

[Janet Dench]

I think that was happening mostly last year. They had some contact information because, when the person came to the border, they took contact information, so they used that information. They also worked through the non-governmental organizations that the CCR brings together under its umbrella. We took the information and made sure we passed it out to organizations that might be able to be in touch with people to encourage them to return to Canada.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Was there a time frame on that? They were directed to go back and come back once they were contacted, which could have been years.

[Janet Dench]

Before the pandemic border ban was lifted, they were given individual appointments to return, but at the end of November of last year, when the border ban was lifted, they could choose to come at any time they wanted. I think most of them have either come or are probably not going to come.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Back in 2017-18, the Liberal government was not transparent regarding conversations it was having with the United States administration about amending the safe third country agreement. Since the election of President Biden, are you aware of any conversations between Canada and the United States about amending the safe third country agreement?

[Janet Dench]

We have followed the news and the rumours like you have, but we don't have any privileged information.

I'll take the opportunity to say that we would hope the government would withdraw from the safe third country agreement, and then there would be no more irregular crossings.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

That's interesting as well. Thank you.

With the increased numbers of people walking across the border to claim asylum this year, which are already higher than what we saw back in 2017 and 2018, are you aware of any Liberal ministers travelling to the United States as they did in previous years to discourage people from irregularly walking across the border to claim asylum?

[Janet Dench]

No.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, I will cede the rest of my time to my colleague, Ms. Rempel Garner.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

There are 25 seconds.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Oh, well....

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

That's a lot of time for me to get in trouble, Chair. Thank you.

Ms. Dench, earlier this year, actually this month, the CBC published an article stating, “The federal government is aiming to create a program that will provide a path to permanent residency for up to 500,000 immigrants who are working in Canada but do not have official standing.”

Has your organization or has anyone in your organization been consulted by the government on this potential amnesty program?

[Janet Dench]

We have made a submission, which is available on our website, and we had a meeting with the department to discuss our submission.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Your time is up, Mrs. Rempel Garner.

We will now proceed to Ms. Lalonde.

Ms. Lalonde, you will have six minutes for your round of questioning. You can please begin.