Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to state my rationale for this amendment and explain its potential benefits. We all know how important immigration is to Canada. We also know, when we talk about immigration levels and immigration numbers, that part of the challenge in the past has been that any sort of response from the department can become an impediment to either immigrating to the country or obtaining citizenship. Many of us around this table have constituents that this motion speaks to exactly, where their cases are just lost in limbo in a massive backlog in the system.
I don't have the current stats as of today, but I think there are around two million cases—I'm looking at my colleagues—in the inventory. Right now we don't have any recourse as parliamentarians, or people who are in the system really don't have any recourse, for when the Department of Immigration doesn't meet its service standards. That is very detrimental to mental health and to Canada's reputation in terms of attracting and retaining talent. What I'm thinking is that if this were embedded in the act, the department would all of a sudden become motivated to look at these cases that are wasting in the inventory and that haven't met service standards, because they will be inundated with requests for a review based on this component. I think it would also motivate the department to not let things get to this point.
I want to state why I think it's so important that we do this. I have had numerous cases, particularly in family reunification, where people have not received responses from the department. The tools I have as a member of Parliament to respond to them are very limited. Frankly, what we hear from the department quite often is, “Sorry. We can't do anything. We're working on the backlog, so don't worry.” It doesn't seem like there's political impetus right now from the minister to push down into the department. I know that we have colleagues here from the department. I don't really feel like there's any sort of managerial motivation to move faster or to do things better. We're still moving at this pace.
We are actually talking about non-compassionate actions at this point. That's really what it boils down to. I personally know what it's like to be separated from a spouse across a border. It wasn't due to the department's backlog, but I was separated from my spouse during the pandemic for a period of nearly a year. That was very difficult for us, but we made it—God bless you, Jeff.
Chair, I would like to put it on the record, if my husband is watching, to tell him to not get on the tractor today. He had abdominal surgery. I feel as though this is a very good opportunity for me to scold him in public.
It is very difficult, particularly in cases of family reunification, when there is not an end date in sight. The department has an onus to consider compassionate grounds when they're responding to people who are sitting in the inventory. What we would be doing as parliamentarians, colleagues, is essentially enforcing a service standard upon the department but also giving people who really feel like they have no hope a little bit of hope.
Also, frankly, in the minister's defence, we'd be giving the minister a tool. I know. I've been in cabinet before. I worked with some very talented public servants whom I still very much appreciate to this day, but I also know what it's like to be told, “No, we can't do that”, instead of looking for solutions. As a minister, it takes time. You have to convince cabinet colleagues and people in your department, the PMO and the PCO that, “Do you know what? Telling me that it's not good enough or that I can't do that is not enough.” That process does take time, and it takes a lot of political will to end up pushing against your bureaucrats and saying, “No, we have to do better.”
What this would do is actually give the minister a tool so that while they are doing that, while they are pushing their department to do better or perhaps clean up the mess of a previous minister, as happens from time to time, some of the worst cases will actually have some hope.
In many of these cases, the only tool an opposition member has to try to get a response from the department is to take the case to the media or to raise the issue day after day in the House of Commons, knowing that the department doesn't care if you raise it in the House of Commons. They don't care. It doesn't matter to them. They're just going to continue on their merry way. I think instead of having to do that, this would give people, like all of us sitting around the table, a tool to communicate with our constituents and say, “Listen, this seems really bad. We've done everything we can to try to figure out what's going on in the department, so now we're going to appeal to the minister on your behalf.” That's better than my just saying, “Okay, I'm going to try to make a big case out of this in the House of Commons” or “I'm going to go to the media.”
That is a better way, because sometimes, as people sitting around the table, we don't actually know the details of these cases. As parliamentarians, we also have to rely on the independent third party arm's-length review of an immigration process, because it shouldn't be politicized. We just had an entire series—and I have to give all colleagues in this room credit—of very troubling meetings in which we essentially heard that a member of the other place was issuing travel documentation out of her office without oversight.
My colleague Ms. Kayabaga and I were looking at each other incredulously as the details of this were coming out and thinking “how did this happen?” The job of parliamentarians is not to actually make determinations ourselves, as I think our colleague from the other place did. We have to rely on arm's-length processes from within the department. This amendment, if it were in the act, would allow us to say, “Look, we can now appeal to the minister on your behalf, but we're going to let the minister and the department sort this out for you.” That would be a better route than taking things to the media or, let's say, issuing travel documentation off the corner of one's desk. This is a common-sense tool.
Also, colleagues, frankly, the reality is that there's a massive backlog of responses within the immigration department. I appreciate and I know that the department has a new deputy minister, who seems very dynamic and who understands the gravity of the situation, but I also appreciate that she's probably facing a lot of inertia in her department. It's incumbent upon us as parliamentarians to look and think outside the box, beyond just having more consultants.
We've been talking about only the McKinsey contract. I have no idea what happened there. That was a bit of a surprise, but there was a lot of money spent on a consultant and I'm not sure that really resulted in anything. As parliamentarians, we should be looking outside the box at low-cost, easy ways to have extra tools to expedite cases that clearly need to be expedited when the department is saying, “We're implementing all these other systems”, because at the end of the day this is about compassion.
I hate being in a situation where I have to say to a constituent, “I don't know what I can do next outside of taking this to the media and making this a political issue.” I would like to occasionally not make things all about politics but instead work collaboratively with the minister and say, “Look, I appeal to your heart. I appeal to your sense of justice. Your department has been sitting on this for five years. I don't understand why I can't get a response. Can you look at this from a compassionate grounds perspective?”
My understanding is that we are now looking at amendments to the broader scope of the Citizenship Act. I would hope....
This is not a partisan amendment in any way, shape or form. It doesn't take a partisan ideological perspective on immigration. It's very much a process-oriented amendment. It says that, if the department is running so far behind in their inventory, in spite of staffing up and spending millions of dollars on consulting contracts—but I digress—there is a tool the minister can use to address situations where families are separated or people are facing extreme persecution. We're on the eve of Pride Month, which starts tomorrow, and I think all of us here understand the gravity of, let's say, members of the LGBTQ+ community who are in Uganda.
There sometimes are people who need to come to this country to get safe haven. It really bothers me and it cuts my soul when I hear from the department, “I don't know where this case is” or “there's nothing more we can do right now”. I'd like to say, “There is something you can do. It's this, and it's in the act, and it's hope.” I don't think that's a partisan thing. I think it is something that all of us here would agree is a great process amendment. It's not ideological. It doesn't add more burden. It just gives the minister a tool to say yes or no, a tool that thinks around the box, thinks around pedantry and is nimble. It speaks to nimbleness and the ability to have nimbleness in government.
I will point out technically.... I understand that I've just made this argument that parliamentarians can't and shouldn't, and I want to be very clear on that. Parliamentarians should never be making decisions on immigration files. That's not our job, but the minister is duly constituted to do that and what this would do explicitly is give him a tool, when his department is not responding to a case, to allow him to do so.
I have been waiting for years to move an amendment like this. I think this is an easy no-brainer amendment. I also think that I can't see a lot of resources having to be expended to do this. I think we would have a lot of support from the immigration lawyer community and the larger civil society groups. I would ask my colleagues to support this. This is, to me, a no-brainer. My understanding is, given the instructions in the motion that was passed in the House to this committee, that this is easily in scope, and I ask my colleagues to support it.
Thank you.