Mr. Speaker, the Canadian embassy in Damascus, Syria, processes permanent residence applications from the following countries: Syria, Cyprus and Iran, 41%, Iraq, 15%, and Jordan and Lebanon, 23%.
This means that Cyprus, Syria and Jordan combined make up 21% of the claims. This is, therefore, an embassy whose needs are not really local, but elsewhere, when we look at the other percentages.
The Damascus embassy has around 11 officers and 36 locally employed staff, compared to the Ivory Coast embassy, which has 6 or 7 employees and processes claims from 16 African countries. We see that in 80% of the cases, all the permanent residence applications in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, are processed in 31 months. In Damascus it takes 61 months and the world average is 53 months. What is going on at that embassy?
Currently in Beirut, Lebanon, there is a Canadian embassy with some nine employees, which is just a satellite office for temporary residence applications. My numbers on the staff are approximate.
We are told by CIC, and I quote:
Over 50% of those who apply for permanent residence do not need to be interviewed in person.
They must be kidding. This means that the office in Damascus, which takes 61 months on average to process files, fast-tracks 50% of the files from Lebanon. The processing time should therefore be shorter.
We know that there are tensions between Lebanon and Syria that were exacerbated by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri on February 14, 2005. Other Lebanese leaders were also assassinated. This led to Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon on April 26, 2005.
CIC tells us:
After the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut in February 2002, some representatives and family members of Lebanese applicants expressed concerns about not being able to go to Damascus for interviews because of problems at the Syrian border. No such problems occurred. The RPC in Damascus checked with its clients to make sure there was no problem crossing the border.
That means that CIC does not even know when this political figure was assassinated.
Once again, they must be kidding. On November 1, 2005, when he was sitting on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the current Minister of Public Safety stated, and I quote:
Syria has tried to rule Lebanon for decades and now that it has been forced to withdraw, it is still trying to diminish the hopes of the Lebanese people.
Has a decades-old situation changed in seven months? The borders between Lebanon and Syria have been closed many times. People who have been waiting for an interview for years have had it postponed.
If this government recognizes Lebanon's sovereignty and respects the Lebanese diaspora in Canada and Quebec, it is time that it sent all the applications for permanent residence back to the existing embassy in Beirut. It is a matter of dignity and security.