Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the member for Burnaby—Douglas for his very constructive remarks and for his intimate awareness of the challenges many of our constituents face in dealing with this industry.
He has raised a number of good points. One I thought I would respond to is his commendable suggestion that accelerating the process for processing applications at CIC would reduce, to some extent, the demand for the services of consultants, both legitimate and unscrupulous.
I agree with him. Our ministry has taken some really significant steps in that direction. To give the member an example, three years ago it was taking five to six years to process applications for the federal skilled worker program, our core economic stream of immigration. Five or six years was completely ridiculous.
As a result of our action plan for faster immigration, over the past two years we have been processing new applications we receive in that program within several months. We have gone from several years to several months. Six to 12 months is the range, but in most missions it is happening in about seven or eight months. That is great news. The credit goes to our officials as well as to the additional resources voted by this Parliament.
Second, the provincial nominee program has grown substantially. He will know that in British Columbia it may have outstripped the federal skilled worker program as a source of permanent-resident economic immigrants. It operates on a priority processing basis. Usually those applications are processed in a matter of a few months.
In most missions, we are keeping on top of priority processing of what we call priority family class. Family class one or spousal sponsorship applications are typically being processed in a matter of about four to five months.
Finally, many of our missions have significantly improved the processing times for temporary resident visas. I can report, based on my recent visit last week to Beijing, that they are processing temporary resident visa applications on the same day they receive them in the mission.
A lot more could be done. There are certain streams that are not moving as quickly, but we are making progress. I just want to point that out.
We always look forward to advice from parliamentarians on how we can make further progress to speed up the process.