Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 3rd, 2022

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you. I've sent a letter on this case to the minister before, and I will resend it, and hopefully the minister and his office will look at this seriously, help and do what they can.

With respect to the issue around caregivers, many caregivers have been impacted, and IRCC's quota for the cap for caregivers has already been reached. Many of them will have children who will age out as a result of that, and that means that by the time they get a PR application process in and it's accepted, they will not be able to bring their children here.

Will the minister consider changing the policy to allow for caregivers' children's applications to be considered at the age they were when the caregiver first started working in Canada under their work permit?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

That's a unique issue and a clever proposal, I must say. I'll have to make sure I do my homework, because I've not had the opportunity to seek advice on this very specific issue that you've raised. I think that's something unique, because we don't want to be in the business of separating families; we want to be in the business of bringing them together. I'd be happy to consider it, but I don't want to prejudge what lessons I may learn when I do my homework.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'd be more than happy to provide any assistance or information to the minister and his officials in this situation to help with that.

Related to this, many caregivers have not been able to pass their English language test to the level that is required for PR, and they're also not able to meet the education—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Kwan. Your time is up.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'll follow up with the minister separately on this.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

We will now proceed to Mr. Genuis.

Mr. Genuis, you will have five minutes. You can please proceed.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister, for your service in this critically important area for our country.

I want to pick up on some of the questions from Ms. Kwan about private sponsorship. I hear regularly from stakeholders from different communities about the need to improve and strengthen our private sponsorship system.

Minister, I've been disappointed that you have lied to the House of Commons on a number of occasions about Conservative proposals on refugee policy.

For instance, on February 14, you said this to my colleague:

I remind him that he campaigned, during the election he spoke about, to bring precisely zero Afghan refugees here. Moreover, if we look at their platform, we will see that they campaigned on a commitment to end the government-assisted refugee stream altogether, which has resettled thousands of Afghan refugees who now call Canada home.

That's a quotation from you.

Here's what the Conservative platform actually said. On page 129, the platform said this:

We will: Replace public, government-assisted refugee places with more private and joint sponsorship places. All refugees arriving in Canada will do so under private or joint sponsorship programs, with exceptions in cases of emergency....

Again, there are exceptions in cases of emergency.

The paragraph goes on to say:

This does not mean a reduced financial commitment to refugee sponsorship or lower overall numbers of protected persons. It means that public dollars will be directed through joint sponsorship programs where newcomers benefit from community support and the better outcomes associated with private sponsorship.

Minister, if we're going to have an honest conversation about the changes that need to happen around private refugee sponsorship, we need to be honest about what we each are proposing. It's fair to disagree and it's fair to have those conversations.

Will you commit today to stop lying about Conservative proposals and have an honest conversation about the steps we can take to improve private sponsorship?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Let me start by reiterating my congratulations to the member on the recent addition.

I must say, the comments he made at the beginning of his question about service during this crisis are appreciated. They characterize, frankly, the cross-partisan support I've seen on—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Minister. There's a point of order from Mr. El-Khoury.

I've stopped the clock.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

There was some word like “lying” or something expressed by our colleague.

We would like to apologize to the minister, because it's not an appropriate or parliamentary word to be said in a meeting like this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. El-Khoury, for raising that.

I would request that all members please be polite with the witnesses and make sure that we don't use any unparliamentary language.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Madam Chair, I insist that the person concerned apologize to our minister.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Mr. El-Khoury, for raising that. I'll remind the member again.

I would request that the minister please proceed.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My interest is in proceeding with the business of government. To the extent that opposition members wish to frame their questions in a particular way, know that it rolls off my back.

With respect to the Conservative campaign commitment, I think the way it's been framed could lead to a helpful debate around how the role of something like the BVOR model, joint sponsorship or the private sponsorship of refugees could be meaningfully advanced. That's a healthy conversation to have.

The reality is that the campaign commitment you've just discussed suggests that there would be an end to the government-assisted refugee stream. Even in non-emergency situations, I don't think it is a good idea to end that program altogether. One reason is that this program allows us to target the most vulnerable, not just those who have a connection to Canada. It allows us to respond to urgent situations that may not constitute an emergency.

I don't think the commitment would have served the interests of the world's most vulnerable, whom Canada's system of refugee resettlement has been designed to support.

That said, I think it is a helpful opportunity for us to continue to work with settlement organizations, sponsorship agreement holders and organizations who have a history of settling successfully, through the BVOR stream, for example, people who now live in the communities that I come from and right across Canada. We believe that private sponsorship can lead to superior outcomes in many instances.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Minister.

On the substantive policy question, I would counter that private organizations do an excellent job of identifying the most vulnerable. In any event, if the government wishes to prioritize certain communities of highly vulnerable people, it would make sense for it to engage with private organizations on a joint sponsorship basis, because we know that refugees who come here, through not just the financial support but also the social and community support of private sponsorship, have many advantages in terms of the success they experience when they get here. We can put government dollars behind it, but let's leverage the advantages of both of those streams.

In any event, Minister, it sounds like you are acknowledging that the comment you made to the House of Commons alleging that our commitment would have resulted in precisely zero Afghan refugees is inaccurate. Do you acknowledge that it was an inaccurate statement you made to the House?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

No. I have yet to see the Conservative pledge to settle any particular number of Afghan refugees.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

We were explicit about it, sir, but it's in the platform, on page 129, so please just review that before you make these kinds of comments in the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Mr. Genuis, your time is up.

We will now end our first panel with Mr. Ali.

Mr. Ali, you have five minutes.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister, for joining us. Thank you for your hard work, especially in the current situation.

Minister, in some recent correspondence, the High Commissioner of Pakistan raised a couple of issues. He pointed out that on the IRCC website the processing time for visa applications for Pakistan was 399 days—more than 13 months—whereas for applications from other countries in the region it was between 34 and 70 days.

He also pointed out that in the student direct stream, the number of Pakistani student visas had not increased, and the processing time target of two weeks had not been achieved.

Minister, can you assure us that this situation is going to improve?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We're going to do everything we can to improve the processing time for study permits and for immigration more broadly.

There are certainly frustrations that I appreciate exist, but we are working every day to make sure that we're advancing measures that will improve these processing times.

One of the things I think we need to do as well is update our processing times on our website to better reflect what's happening on the ground. I think it's one area of improvement, because sometimes we broadcast what service standards say, but it doesn't reflect the situation on the ground, because the system has been hit so hard by pressures over the course of the pandemic.

I am certainly willing to work with you to improve not just transparency in what we say about processing times, but also the results for applications, including from the area of concern that you've raised.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

I will continue a question that one of my colleagues asked about Afghan refugees and the visa processing centres doing it from Pakistan. You didn't have enough time to complete your response on that one. Would you kindly elaborate on that, please?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

One of the things I'm interested in doing as we move to a more digitized and modernized immigration system is to create the capability for us to leverage our entire global network of processing. When we are able to deal with applications that come in in a digital format, it creates an opportunity, when an office in London or New Delhi may be slow, to allow them to take on additional volumes that will be able to process people who otherwise would traditionally have to go to a particular office to deal with a paper application.

By digitizing the system and modernizing it, and then leveraging the global network of offices, we're going to have the opportunity to boost our processing capacity overall.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

One of my constituents happens to represent a mosque in my constituency. They actually reached out to me last night. One of their imams comes during Ramadan. He has been coming for many years.

They applied for his visa and it showed a processing time of 80-plus days—that's from India—but Ramadan comes in 30 days.

This is a religious worker. Would you provide any preference for those sorts of applications that might be made under special circumstances?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We will look at, for different reasons, prioritizing certain applications if there's a certain urgency to them. I think you can appreciate, between personal events in a person's life or different circumstances like this, there are competing pressures, so I don't want to commit to anything in public before I've had the opportunity to look into it.

If you send me the file we'd be happy to take a look purposefully, but I should point out that we want to encourage anyone else who is thinking of coming to Canada to apply as early as possible to allow us to avoid these kinds of circumstances. At a certain point in time, when there are so many applications that come in and need to be expedited, you will run into processing challenges that don't let you prioritize everything, because if you prioritize everything you prioritize nothing.

I would encourage anyone listening to apply as early as possible. For urgent situations that are unforeseeable, sometimes we are able to expedite application processing.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Since I have a few seconds left, if you want to add something else, the time is yours.

Thank you, Minister.