Mr. Chair, in respect of the new system that you are operating under here tonight, I will give notice that I intend to devote the first five minutes or so of my time to outline some of the problems with the current immigration system and what my party proposes to do about it. I will follow that with questions for the minister and I would expect to receive responses proportionate to the length of time of the questions asked.
It is pretty clear already from the discussion here tonight that we have an unfortunate situation in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. It is in a mess. The system has serious problems. There is a perception problem as well in the country and internationally with regard to Canada and our immigration system. There is a sense that there is a partisan influence that is ill-effecting the department and that the employees are demoralized as a result of this effect. There is this perception of partisan motivation, changing the system, and people jumping queues. It has created a massive backlog. It takes up to four weeks to process a simple passport application, 22 weeks to receive a permanent resident card and 8 to 9 months for a citizenship card.
This reflects badly on our country as well as the anticipation and eagerness of people wanting to come to our country and to welcome family members to join them here. Policy is being made on the fly. We saw this in the case of the unfortunate tsunami victims who were mentioned by my hon. colleague from Calgary—Nose Hill earlier.
A program was cobbled together very quickly to say we were going to step up to the plate and help these people without the assets or resources to do that. The department had to take people from other embassies and consulates around the world into these areas. What happened to the people waiting in line at the time? Well, they were just pushed farther back in line and had to wait a little longer.
It was political posturing causing those people to be stuck longer in queues waiting for their loved ones, having paid their money and having sent in an application. There is this whole notion of the Liberals tackling immigration policy by politically advantageous announcements and reacting in a piecemeal fashion to crisis, scandals and mismanagement rather than a real effort to fix a broken system. This is not something we take lightly on this side of the House because it affects us all greatly.
Members' staffs of all parties find they are spending up to 70% or 80% of their time, while others wait to deal with immigration matters because the department is so overloaded and overworked that it cannot deal with the demand of Canadians to access the system. This of course increases as the inefficiencies increase, and the workloads and the backlogs increase.
Unfortunately, as we have heard tonight, the department is not a priority for the Liberals. They cut Citizenship and Immigration Canada funding in the early 1990s. Face to face processing was eliminated. Offices were closed and 35% of the officers abroad were cut. Interviews that were waived added to an increased reliance on local staff, the offloading of immigration problems, as I have mentioned, to offices of members of Parliament. There is a lax removal policy where we have people who should not be in the country just lost within our system.
As was mentioned by my colleague from Calgary—Nose Hill, we are grateful for the work and the extra effort that has been extended over the years by front line workers in the department, but we find there is a morale problem. Employees are stressed and overworked. There is a lack of resources to keep up. The minister admitted this when he first came into this portfolio. As late as March 9, I read in the Montreal Gazette that the minister said: “But that is the same Parliament that never put an additional penny forward for immigration in the last five years”. Even he admitted that his department was not a priority with the government.
Here is what we might do to rectify this problem. As my colleague has mentioned, the Conservative Party and the member of Parliament for Calgary--Nose Hill in particular have worked tirelessly to develop a sensible, mainstream set of policies and reforms.
At a policy convention held by the Conservative Party in Montreal recently, we passed a number of strongly supported motions outlining a welcoming and well managed immigration system, with a plan to reorganize the application process so that applicants are getting accurate information as to what to expect when they apply, so they are ready and able to obtain information on the status of their files and so they are given service in a considerate and professional manner.
We have also conducted a series of round table consultations on immigration, meetings we held coast to coast to seek advice, ideas, concerns and suggestions from people directly involved in the system. We got a number of consistent replies from people who were heartbroken with the length of time processing took. We are also working on proposing solutions to growing problems.
What we heard over and over is that the system reeks of political favouritism. This is sullying the department and the perception of Canada as being a fair and just country. There is a lack of resources to deal with even the most pressing concerns. These problems need to be addressed. We look for answers to these questions, hopefully in the very near future with a new minister of immigration and a new government.
I would like now to ask two questions. I will try to limit the length of the questions and hope that for a change we can have the minister limit his replies to a proportionate time.
On April 18, 2005, the government announced it would increase the number of sponsored parents and grandparents that are admitted. What the minister has not told the public is that the backlog of these applications for sponsorship approval is now estimated to be over 110,000. Many of these applications include multiple applicants; it is only after stage one, sponsorship approval, that the application is sent to the appropriate embassy for the real work of medical exams, criminal security interviews, et cetera, and this can take years.
Even worse, those 110,000 applications currently backlogged for parent and grandparent sponsorship approval do not even cover the applications waiting at embassies around the world. There is no excuse for the minister not to inform prospective applicants as to how long they can reasonably expect to wait.
I ask the minister this. What is the estimated number of outstanding applications at embassies and consulates? What is the estimated timeline and year that applications will be looked at?