Evidence of meeting #37 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was applications.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Barrister and Solicitor, Long Mangalji LLP, As an Individual
When refusal rates go up like that, it's untenable. We certainly need to take a further look at the system before we implement it throughout immigration.
Executive Director, Canadian Council for Refugees
I'm sorry; I'll need a reminder of the question.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Okay. With the regularization process to streamline the red tape, the government may need to forgo some of the stringent eligibilities. For example, it was put to us by a previous witness that some people may not be able to pass a language test to the high level that the government has required and that we should forgo that in order to streamline the processing.
Would you support the idea of the government looking at those kinds of measures to streamline the process?
Executive Director, Canadian Council for Refugees
I think there are two ways in which things can be streamlined. One is in terms of the criteria, and certainly things like language testing or proof of language are a big barrier for people. Often people do speak English or French, but it's hard for them to provide the proof.
The second thing is around the kinds of documentation that people require and the ways in which they are sort of second-guessing.... We see this, for example, in the refugee family reunification. Somebody has declared that they have a spouse all the way through—they have documentation for it—and yet the immigration department is still asking them for all kinds of extra paperwork and justifications and so on. That slows down the process and is extremely burdensome for people.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you.
With regard to processing delays, oftentimes the government will make an announcement that going forward, these applications will meet the processing standards, yet they don't put resources into processing the people who are already in the queue and are delayed.
Do you think the government should establish a separate process to ensure that applications that are in the queue are also processed and not just sitting gathering dust?
Barrister and Solicitor, Long Mangalji LLP, As an Individual
Yes, absolutely. We're supposed to follow a first-come, first-served situation. It becomes really unfair when people are waiting for three years for an application to be decided, and then new people come in and their applications are decided in a few months.
Executive Director, Canadian Council for Refugees
Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of frustration. People compare and ask why this person is being processed ahead of them.
It's hard to understand why it isn't first in, first out, because with the digital tools, it should be easy for the immigration department to see which applications have been waiting the longest.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Kwan. Your time is up.
With this, our first panel comes to an end.
On behalf of all the members of this committee, I want to thank the three witnesses for appearing. If there is something you would like to bring to the committee's notice, you can always send a written submission to the clerk of the committee.
With that, I will suspend the meeting for a few minutes so that we can bring the second panel in.
Madam Clerk, you can do the sound checks and then we can begin.
The meeting is suspended. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I call the meeting to order.
We are joined by three witnesses in this panel. Thanks to all the witnesses for appearing before this committee.
I would like to welcome Mr. Omer Khayyam, lawyer from Omni Law Professional Corporation, who is joining us by video conference. We are also joined by Roger Rai, director, Regency Immigration Solutions; and from the same organization, we are also joined by Shervin Madani. Our third witness for today is Siavash Shekarian, chief executive officer and managing attorney, Shekarian Law Professional Corporation.
Welcome again.
All of the witnesses will have five minutes for their opening remarks, and we will start with Mr. Khayyam.
Mr. Khayyam, you will have five minutes for your opening remarks. You can please begin.
Omer Khayyam Lawyer, Omni Law Professional Corporation, As an Individual
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for inviting me.
My name is Omer Khayyam. I'm an immigration lawyer in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I'd like to share some thoughts on the growing immigration backlog and possible recommendations.
Immigration delays have direct consequences on all areas of life for temporary residents. I'm going to give some examples of clients' experiences in the past week or two.
I have a client right now who can't travel to his ailing father because IRCC has delayed issuing his COPR, his certificate of permanent residence, from the PR confirmation portal. He has had to delay because he can't get his PR card to travel and return.
I have another client whose initial Federal Court filing took a long time to even get approved because of backlogs that are now occurring at the Federal Court.
Health cards cannot be renewed when work permits are delayed. Others struggle even to get their first health card. I had a client who was very sick, and she failed repeatedly in getting a health card renewed. In the case of another family I had, the parents had to remove their children from public school because the parents simply couldn't get their work permits approved in time.
I have some clients who delay weddings in order to meet express entry scores, others who delay business start-ups until they become permanent residents and others who want to purchase a home in an expensive Canadian market, but they don't have their status. Some of them may go ahead and purchase it; some of them will delay it. Ultimately, they'll end up paying more.
It's a dehumanizing situation. People become file numbers and category types. In the media we see something else: self-congratulation and smiles. My clients get a progress bar, and they will repeatedly ask me what percentage it is at, but they quickly learn that it is a misleading and fictitious creation by IRCC to keep them placated.
Immigration should be about new beginnings, new relationships and fostering trust. The first lesson an immigrant learns is not to trust the Canadian government. As lawyers, our caseloads have grown with the backlog. Clients are more frustrated than ever. While programs such as the TR to PR pathway approve permanent residents in three months, programs like the caregiver program can take three to four years, so people don't know what to expect. Predictability is being eroded, so how can there be any certainty?
I want to bring home those three points: certainty, predictability and consistency, because these are crucial to the rule of law, and that applies to immigration. It's not just a government program; it's part of the legal system in Canada.
My suggestions are to approach this 2.7-million backlog problem differently. I don't think you can get out of this problem with the same thinking that got you into it. Some suggestions may be more drastic, but I'm offering some food for thought.
Our criminal justice system sees two million arrests a year. We can maybe learn a thing or two from this area of law. When I worked in legal aid, I noticed that when they could not handle the caseloads, they would outsource to the private bar to have lawyers deal with certain cases. Maybe in immigration we can outsource some work to lawyers to handle the parts of the visa processing on the front end that are not crucial to the decision and at least lighten the load for the visa officers who will ultimately be making the final decision.
Some provincial courts have weekend programs whereby a judge, a prosecutor and a private bar lawyer will come in on the weekend to lessen the load for the coming week. Can the backlog be solved on a 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday schedule? I think IRCC should use the resources they have and offer incentives to experienced officers to work longer hours and into the weekend at times.
There have been some suggestions about ramming people through and approving a number of people en masse. I think a controlled lottery of approving low-risk applicants, maybe 1% to 2%, may solve the problem in the short term, but it would put strain on other areas. I can maybe discuss a little bit more about that later, but I think you need to consider the unintended consequences that can happen when we take some of these unpredictable measures.
I don't have concrete solutions; I can only suggest that the existing problems be looked at differently.
There's one thing I was looking at, but I don't know how much time I have to get into this.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
You will get an opportunity when we go into the rounds of questioning. Thank you, Mr. Khayyam.
We will now proceed to Mr. Rai. You will have five minutes for your opening remarks.
Mr. Rai is representing Regency Immigration Solutions.
Roger Rai Director, Regency Immigration Solutions
I'd like to thank the committee for inviting us to speak on the current problem with application backlogs and processing times.
I'm a former CBSA officer who worked at the Pacific border crossing in Surrey, British Columbia, from 2007 to 2012. From 2012 to the present, I have been the owner and director of Regency Immigration Solutions, located in Surrey, British Columbia. I'm also a registered Canadian immigration consultant.
To my right is my associate, Mr. Shervin Madani.
Shervin Madani Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant, Regency Immigration Solutions
My name is Shervin Madani. I am also a former CBSA officer. I had pretty much the same career path as Mr. Rai: from 2007 to 2012 with Canada Border Services Agency at their land border, and from 2012 to the present as an associate with Regency Immigration.
Director, Regency Immigration Solutions
I've watched some of the committee's previous meetings regarding these issues, and therefore I'll try not to repeat the issues and hardships as identified by some of the other witnesses.
My previous experience as a border services officer for five years and my current occupation as an RCIC for the past 10 years have provided me with some unique insights on how the application process works. I have some ideas that we can implement, or at least study, that could significantly reduce the application backlog as well as prevent a further workload from accumulating.
Before I address the areas we have identified that could be looked at, I'd like to take a minute to stress the urgency of dealing with this problem. As I don't have time to go over all the problems and negative impacts of this backlog, I would just like you to consider what I think is the most important issue facing our country today, which is the economy.
In my 15 years of working in the immigration field, I have never seen a shortage of workers of the kind we face today. It is my firm belief that if this issue is not immediately addressed, we face a real prospect of some sort of economic collapse and the nullification of any recovery efforts post COVID. From small businesses to large corporations, the desperation for workers has never been so great, and if we don't find a solution fast, we will soon be past the point of no return.
We've identified a few problems. If we can solve them quickly, we think this backlog will be reduced significantly.
Number one is that in the training of inland and overseas officers, we see a lack of knowledge of program requirements. Officers are often asking for irrelevant documents and, as I think some of the other witnesses testified earlier, there are a lot of unjustified refusals of applications. The result is that we have to sometimes put in additional applications. It's either that or go to the MP inquiries or look for judicial review.
At the ports of entry, Canada Border Services is the agency that processes many applications for people coming into the country. They have a memorandum of understanding with IRCC, and I feel that the job they're doing at this time is either not working well or that there need to be some changes made, because I think a lot of the officers are not happy with processing immigration at the border.
We can go into that a bit more, because Shervin and I have experienced it first-hand.
Here are some of the solutions we've looked at.
One is an online portal for the reconsideration of applications, but we would need to have very specific criteria on the types of files and the issues that would be reconsidered.
IRCC inland offices or ports of entry should be processing work permit extensions, study permit extensions, work permits and study permits in the way it was done prior to 2004. That's when the amalgamation took place between CBSA and CIC, and since that time, a lot of issues at the ports of entry have happened. I think that if we went back to the previous way.... I know it's asking a lot, but I think we could solve a lot of the problems.
Also, then, if we separate the backlog from the current new files and set a firm date, all applications after that date should be processed with the new technologies and systems, and then we'd have to delegate a team of experts to work on just the backlog alone.
The processing of these backlogged files and new applications should be categorized on how complicated the file is. For example, a visitor extension is something that's very easily done. You can do it at the border or you can do it online. You don't need to have it in a queue for six months. If you just sort out the high-risk files from the low-risk files, we can have those files processed very quickly and eliminate the ones that we don't need to spend a lot of time on. Then the ones that do need more work can have the highly experienced officers working on them.
Another solution we've considered is the super visa program that has been implemented for parents and grandparents. A lot of those people are working here. Why not have them introduced into the workforce properly, give them work permit and—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, Mr. Rai.
You will get an opportunity to talk further when we get into rounds of questioning. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
We will now proceed to Mr. Shekarian, chief executive officer and managing attorney for Shekarian Law Professional Corporation.
Mr. Shekarian, you will have five minutes for your opening remarks. You can please begin.
Siavash Shekarian Lawyer, Shekarian Law Professional Corporation, As an Individual
Madam Chair and honourable members of the committee, hello and good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to appear today.
Backlogs and delays are not new to our immigration system. They have always been part of it. We have tried many things to solve the problem, from terminating 300,000 skilled worker applications back in 2012, with no notice or explanation, to creating express entry in 2015, with the sole promise of eliminating backlogs. That itself is now one of the main contributors to the problem. We have committed billions and have recently committed millions more to solving this problem, but it just keeps getting worse.
As a lawyer, I was trained to think within the limits of precedent. I was trained to think within the limits of what had been done before me. I was trained to think within the limits of a box, but I was an engineer long before I became a lawyer. As an engineer, I was trained to approach old problems in entirely new ways. As an engineer, I was trained to understand that there is no box. Today, I'd like to encourage you to think about this problem anew—to step back, zoom out and rethink the big picture.
Backlog is essentially a collection of tasks required to achieve a larger strategic plan. In other words, if you fix your strategy, you fix your backlog.
What is our immigration strategy? Today, it has been reduced to numbers. Just look at our official rhetoric. Look at our official announcements. In 2021, for example, we celebrated exceeding our target of 401,000 new permanent residents despite COVID. Our executives shook hands and took pride in being confident in setting even higher targets for the years to come.
Of course, under this strategy, backlog isn't even a problem. The incumbent minister himself admitted so in delivering his keynote speech at the CBA Immigration Law Conference back in June when he said that the backlog is a good thing because it shows that Canada is in high demand.
Madam Chair and members of the committee, numbers don't make the future of our country. Our future does not depend on how many people we admit, but on whom we admit, how we treat them and how we set them up to integrate and succeed in our country.
How do we want to grow our Canadian family? Do we want world-class artists, athletes and cultural figures who can expand our national horizon and inspire us to become the leader of the free world? No, because even if you have multiple Olympic medals, Academy Awards, accolades and recognitions, you still need to submit tens of irrelevant documents and wait 41months with only a 17% chance of success under the federal self-employed program—or you can choose the United States, show only your internationally recognized awards and get approved in less than a year.
The Business Development Bank of Canada deems us a nation of entrepreneurs. It claims that our economy is unequivocally dependent on small and mid-sized businesses. SMEs account for 90% of all private sector jobs and 55% of our GDP, yet our only other federal program targeting entrepreneurs is the start-up visa program, which has a backlog of more than 6,000 applications with processing times of well over 32 months.
This is a joke for the time-sensitive and incredibly risky innovative ventures that we want to come to Canada and become the next Shopify, the next Google or the next Facebook. It's no wonder passport shoppers are way more interested in this program than genuine entrepreneurs.
On the provincial side, things are not any better. Look at our most popular, populous and economically prosperous province of Ontario. Its entrepreneur program has had only two nominations in the seven years since its inception.
Things are even worse with our family reunification and humanitarian programs.
Madam Chair and members of the committee, backlog is a product of our immigration strategy. Our immigration strategy must be a function of who Canada is and who Canada wants to become. It takes more than just one ministry in the government. It even takes more than the entire government itself; it takes all Canadians.
Therefore, I recommend that Parliament legislate to mandate IRCC to institutionalize public participation in its policy-making, such that civil society and all other stakeholders can effectively be engaged in sourcing ideas, co-creating solutions and tackling complex policy problems like our current backlog.
I further recommend that in the interim, processing of certain immigration applications be outsourced to certain Canadian professionals under well-defined public-private collaboration frameworks and robustly monitored service contracts.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you.
With that, we'll now go to our round of questioning. We will start our first round with Mr. Kmiec.
Mr. Kmiec, you can please begin. You will have six minutes.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair. My question will be for Mr. Shekarian.
That was just a breath of fresh air. Thank you, sir, for saying all the things I've been thinking for several years now. You talked basically like an engineer, saying that there is no box and that we should rethink the way we do things.
I was going through the departmental plan and comparing past results to current results. You talked about the targets that we have in the immigration system, which is solely based on targets, not results.
I wonder if you could explain this from an engineer's point of view. If you pour in 30% more people—the department has grown since 2016 by 30%—with more people doing more work, and all the while the backlogs have grown more and more, what would you make of it?
Lawyer, Shekarian Law Professional Corporation, As an Individual
By adding more people to the department, are we expecting that the processing times would be better? This department is a black box. We don't know how it works. We don't know how it operates.
As a lawyer, we file ATIP after ATIP just to get the most basic information. The most recent thing that we know, based on Lexbase, is that the department, back in COVID-19, was at 80% capacity at best. I don't know if they're hiring.... If they're growing by 30%, I don't know how those resources are allocated.