Under Bill C-2, one of the provisions we are looking for is the ability for greater information sharing in the immigration program. Right now we do not have the legislated ability, except for the Privacy Act, to share personal immigration information for purposes other than assessing the application.
That means a couple of things. We're not able to share personal information with provinces and territories to make sure that individuals who are accessing provincial benefits, for instance, or social services are actually in status. We are not able to share certain pieces of information with our federal partners outside of the immigration stream.
Perhaps most importantly, for me, is that currently we are not able to share immigration information on applications between our business lines. That means we look at every application as an independent individual application. If somebody applies to be a temporary resident as a student and then later on applies to be a permanent resident, we're looking at those as separate applications. We can't share the information that was provided throughout their immigration process all the way until they become a permanent resident or citizen. In order to improve the integrity and fraud in the system but also help those individuals—they don't have to send us the same information, and we can omit errors this way as well—Bill C-2 will help with that information sharing.