Thank you.
Lexbase provides policy and operational information regarding immigration issues as well as Federal Court decisions rendered in the previous 30 days of the month, since 1989. We go to, in the public sector, CBSA, IRB, DOJ, IRCC, among others, the provincial immigration systems and, in the private sector, to most of the immigration bar and consultants.
I'll get to the point, which is the Service Fees Act. Small and medium-sized businesses require work permits to fuel growth, and the work permits have been in a state of decline in terms of processing times to the point where small and medium-sized businesses are suffering.
The Service Fees Act is a little-known law. Briefly, what it does is provide set standard processing times for a government service like an application for a work permit. It has teeth. Non-compliance results in an automatic refund or partial refund to the user directly. In addition, it motivates departments like Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, IRCC, to deliver in a timely manner that is predictable for small and medium-sized businesses.
Right now, the departmental remission policy is authorized pursuant to section 7 of the Service Fees Act in accordance with, if you like numbers, section 4.2.4 of the Treasury Board directive on charging and special financial authorities.
On the recommendation, right now IRCC has had limited use of the Service Fees Act in accordance with this policy. By placing work permits to make them subject to the Service Fees Act, we can motivate government to deliver, in a timely and predictable manner, work permits to small and medium-sized businesses. It's huge if you go to the membership of these organizations in terms of results. That's the first item.
The second item is something called the labour market impact assessment. There's no need for this in the province of Quebec. Quebec is already doing it. This is a classic example of government duplication and waste. Where Quebec is already providing the service, why do it again? You pave the road once, not twice.
The third item—and I'll close after this—is IT, information technology. This little fix will spill over to other departments beyond IRCC. What we need here is an application programming interface. An application programming interface, or API, is a bridge that makes communication possible between independent software programs. You can send and receive data with an API. CRA, Canada Revenue Agency, is already doing this. It has third-party independent software producers outside government that allow end-users, taxpayers' businesses, to directly interface with the CRA system.
We don't have that at immigration and other departments. We don't have that between the array of provincial nominee systems and our own federal government. If we allow that capability, small and medium-sized business don't duplicate their time and effort by sending the same information to two levels of government; it's a waste. As well, in government, you cut down duplication by providing shared information, common information.
I'm sure there will be some questions about this. The IRCC has been notoriously reluctant to give up power and control of its processing times, and that's where we need to go.
For Quebec, the last point would be, frankly, why should people in one province—it could be any province—have slower processing times than other provinces? The Service Fees Act can set standards. You combine provincial and federal processing times into one processing time for a service. If there is variation, say more than 60 days for a temporary status application, or more than three months for a permanent resident application, people have to pay money to the applicant directly—not intragovernment—for failing to provide uniform and consistent processing times.
There's no reason that a province like Quebec, for example, should be prejudiced for exercising Quebec's right in the field of immigration. That's contemplated by section 95 of our Constitution Act. The deal there is that you count the processing times together, Quebec and federal, or British Columbia and federal, or New Brunswick and federal, to provide a uniform and consistent yardstick or metre stick for the delivery of that government service.
I'm ready for questions whenever.
Thank you