Good afternoon, members.
My name is Saint-Phard Désir. I'm the executive director of the Economic and Social Council of Ottawa-Carleton, ESCOC, and a member of the Ottawa Local immigration Partnership, OLIP.
I'd like to point out that I'm not necessarily speaking on behalf of of OLIP. I would also like to have submitted a document to the committee, but I unfortunately didn't have enough time to write it.
I'm here to report to you that many of our clients have told us about how long it was taking for their applications to be processed. In addition, eastern Ontario employers, in Hawkesbury and Vankleek Hill, told us they were unable to fill all the positions they had available because of processing delays.
We therefore think that it would be a good idea two reduce the time it takes to process applications. The COVID‑19 pandemic caused some delays in file processing. The pandemic is now behind us, and we hope that a few more people will be hired to process things. Quite a few employees also appear to have left their jobs during the pandemic and have not returned.
We work with francophone minority communities, and believe that it's extremely important for them to attract immigrants who can speak French, in order to increase the number of francophones in these regions. It would be very helpful to us if application processing times could be reduced as soon as possible, all the more so as a growing number of people are submitting applications to come to Canada.
Another important factor is the students themselves, in particular francophone students from sub-Saharan Africa, who are also having trouble getting their applications processed within a reasonable period. Our hope is that the Department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada receives all the support it needs to hire more people to properly process francophone applications.