Thank you, Madam Chair.
I am going to read it into the record so the public is clear on what we're trying to do here.
It's that Bill S-245 be amended by adding after line 22 on page 1 the following:
Section 27.2 of the Act is amended by adding the following after (d):
(f) requiring that service standards of the department in managing application backlogs are tied to bonus compensation at the EX-1 and DM-1 levels and above on an annual basis, where bonus compensation is withheld or wholly rescinded should the departmental backlogs exceed more than five per cent of total applications.
I am trying to find it on my computer here quickly, Madam Chair. I have the department's spending for last year on how much was paid out in bonuses.
As we know, the department's immigration backlog is about 2.1 million. It grew by about 100,000 applications during the public service strike. Right after the pandemic, it was at a high-water mark, since 2015, of about 2.9 million applications that were backlogged.
In the Treasury Board Secretariat submission—the departmental plans that are submitted by the department when it tables its estimates—usually there are sections in there that refer to the service standard expectations and how many applications they expect to complete by a certain threshold. The department has a target for every stream, and usually they try to meet it within a fixed amount of time 80% of the time.
However, that's not the experience that many of us have with our constituents. Probably 90% of the work in my constituency office in Calgary is on immigration case files, and many of those are related to backlogs. Backlogs cause problems for constituents. They mix up their lives. It delays planning for family reunification. It makes it very difficult to plan trips for families. It's very difficult to know whether you can grow your business or not when you're waiting for someone's work permit.
Although this is my favourite example to give, it is not a happy example. I have a constituent who came to me about a month ago. Her temporary resident visa application was from Tanzania. This application has been 1,113 days in the system.
I have another constituent from Nigeria. Her husband wasn't able to join her to celebrate Christmas in 2022. Every time she logged into the system, the delay kept increasing—every single time. When my constituency office and I would follow up with the agents, they told us we would have to wait.
I don't think that's acceptable. In the private sector, compensation bonuses are based on performance. The department, at this level that I'm referring to, the EX-1 and DM-1, is not performing up to the standard of my expectations.
A few months ago, I filed an order paper question in the House asking for the total amount being spent on bonuses. Over $30 million was paid out in 2022. Sadly, I don't have the exact number before me here, but quite a bit of money was spent by the department on bonuses.
For the benefit of my constituents and yours, Madam Chair, and I'm sure just like every one of us around this table, I would like to tie that to performance. I don't think that's unreasonable. It's strictly on the service standards set by IRCC and nothing more. I think tying the two together would give a very strong incentive to the most senior members of the department to drive the department towards excellence.
When you have an application backlog of two million, including all applications that are within the service standard and those that are way beyond the service standard, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that bonus compensation be withheld or wholly rescinded if the backlogs exceed more than 5% of total applications.
You could do it by streams. You could do it by overall numbers. I think it's reasonable to do. I think it's time that our constituents back home see some type of accountability from this department that has, as we know, doubled its staff since 2015 and doubled its budget since 2015.