Debates of May 28th, 2018

Procedure and House Affairs

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Orders 104 and 114, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 63rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding the membership of committees of the House.

If the House will give its consent, I intend to move concurrence in the 63rd report later today.

Status of Women

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 11th report of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, entitled “Main Estimates 2018-19”.

Procedure and House Affairs

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, if the House gives its consent, I move that the 63rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs presented today in the House be concurred in.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to move the motion?

[members]

Agreed.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[members]

Agreed.

(Motion agreed to)

Citizenship and Immigration

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

moved:

That, the ninth report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration presented on Thursday, March 23, 2017 be concurred in.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about some important work the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration did earlier in this Parliament in relation to the modernization of client service delivery within Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. This was a very extensive report, which the committee put a lot of time into, with the goal of trying to improve the experience for people who are applying, through various processes, through this department to legally come into Canada.

There were many witnesses who appeared before our committee, and there were many recommendations put forward by the committee, unanimously, as a matter of fact, to improve that experience. I will note, however, that it has been many months, over a year, since this report was tabled, and the government has not responded to many of the recommendations herein, nor has the government accepted the reality that we have seen a major change in the operating environment in Canada, with the influx of tens of thousands of people at the Lacolle border crossing trying to illegally enter the country and subsequently claim asylum, and the impact that has had on the overall client service delivery experience for people who are trying to access the immigration system.

The genesis of this report was earlier in this Parliament, as I mentioned. The purpose was to look at ways IRCC could improve the user experience for people entering the system. There were many reasons the study was undertaken. I can think of a few.

I would like to talk about the public servants who work within IRCC. For the past two years, they have had to deal with a lot of immigration policy decisions being made on the fly by the current government. They have done their best to respond, but because of the rigid system of processing within the department, it has become a very inflexible system. We are seeing delays and backlogs happen more and more, especially now, since the government did not budget or take into account in its levels plan that by the end of this year, the minister will have overseen what could be close to 100,000 people illegally crossing the border into Canada and claiming asylum. That has had an enormous impact on the processing system as well as on client service delivery for IRCC.

I listened to the minister's responses to four hours of questioning last week with regard to the illegal border crossing crisis. He made many assertions about the government's record on client service delivery. I want to set the context of the system he came into.

Previous Liberal governments created a backlog of 108,000 for the parents and grandparents application stream alone. The previous Liberal government also increased wait times for parents and grandparents to 64 months and created a total immigration backlog of 830,000. Previous Liberal governments also imposed a right-of-landing fee of $975 on new immigrants.

When we came into government, obviously it was a very daunting task to address the backlog, and we had a lot of success. Our former Conservative government had an action plan for faster family reunification. It included increased numbers of parents and grandparents as permanent residents and managing the number of new applications to reduce the backlog, including introducing the super visa and cutting the backlog and processing times in half. Part of the reason we introduced the super visa, in terms of service delivery, was to ensure that families were reunited faster. It was a 10-year multiple-entry visa, introduced by our Conservative government. Some 50,000 super visas were launched, with an average processing time of only three months. It also protected taxpayers by requiring private health insurance. Again, we were being cognizant not only of client service delivery but of the sustainability of Canada's social programs.

We saw more parents and grandparents welcomed as permanent residents under our government as compared to the previous Liberal government. Over 171,000 parents and grandparents were admitted, versus 154,000 grandparents admitted from 1997 to 2005. I should go through the numbers, because government members keep standing up to talk about the illegal border crossing crisis, which, of course, was launched by the Prime Minister's #WelcomeToCanada tweet. Some keep trying to say that somehow it was Stephen Harper's fault that the Prime Minister tweeted #WelcomeToCanada.

We need to focus on client service delivery right now, because all members in the House are getting calls in our riding offices from people who are trying to legally enter the country and are now encountering seven-year-plus wait times to come in under certain streams. What I think is most disgusting is the fact that the government is prioritizing the allocation of resources to process people who are illegally entering the country and is taking resources away from streams such as the privately sponsored refugee program, in which we now see wait times of up to seven years.

Do they think about that? Someone languishing in a UNHCR camp, who does not have access to a lot of resources, is now facing that long of a backlog. Meanwhile, the work the committee did over a year ago needs to be updated, given that the immigration levels report has been blown out of the water. In fact, the immigration levels report is probably birdcage liner at this point. This report not only needs to be concurred in, it needs to be updated because of the backlogs that are being created because of the reallocation of resources.

The minister will stand up here and tell us that this is not happening, that there are different processing lines, and that this is bananas. However, that is just cover, because we know that as of six months ago, over 80 processing staff from other lines of processing were reallocated to processing illegal border crossers, and I think that number has increased over time. When one thinks about removing 80 staff members, although I am sure it is at over 100 now, to process the crisis that is happening at Roxham Road, and we have seen these numbers exponentially increase since that figure was put forward, certainly we will continue to see backlogs. That is going to reduce the client service delivery experience for people who are trying to legally enter the country.

We should be prioritizing some of the recommendations included in this report, because we should be trying to prioritize the client service delivery experience for people who are legally entering the country as opposed to people who are illegally entering the country. If we continue to build tent cities and send people to process their applications and turn the CBSA and the RCMP into a glorified concierge service, we are, in fact, incenting people to continue with this activity rather than trying to enter the country legally.

I would argue that client service delivery for people who are trying to legally enter the country would be improved if the minister would seek to close the loophole in the safe third country agreement. If the minister closed the loophole in the safe third country agreement, or sought legislation that would allow him to designate the entire Canadian border an official point of entry for the purposes of being applied to the safe third country agreement only, we would reduce demand on the system for processing the applications of illegal border crossers, thus allowing resources to be freed up for legal border crosses, which is what this report talks about.

To me, it is very important that the House move this report forward, but the committee should probably update this report as well. I think it is another piece of work we could do to investigate the burden of this border crossing crisis, which is squarely the Prime Minister's fault. It is squarely the Prime Minister's fault that he has refused to walk back his tweet, and these services are being impacted.

I would be very curious to see how the government votes on concurrence on this report, because many of the recommendations outlined here the government has not responded to. They have been exacerbated under the government's tenure.

I would like to point out some other things. There is a call centre. If a person is trying to access information when applying for permanent residency, citizenship, or any of the myriad of other services IRCC provides, there is a call centre that a client, ostensibly, should be able to call to get information.

Here is an interesting piece of information from the study:

The IRCC Call Centre has been the subject of numerous complaints about poor client service. Departmental officials provided detailed information regarding complaints received. Specifically, they noted that, with regard to the 4,453 feedback web forms received in 2015, there were 35 complaints specific to the Call Centre;

For those of us who do a lot of casework related to immigration, which would be almost every single person in the House, we understand the problem with the call centre intimately, because our staff actually have a hard time calling into it. Under the tenure of the former immigration minister, John McCallum, the government tried to remove the dedicated line for members' staff who were enquiring on behalf of their constituents. This report recommends that the government, under all circumstances, keep that line ongoing. It is very important for the House to accept that recommendation, because sometimes it is the last line of defence under the incompetence of the government in terms of being able to get information on an application that is pending.

My colleague, who has Vegreville in her riding, seconded this motion. She has been making an impassioned plea to the government. We have this whole report on client service delivery, and the government has decided to shut that processing centre down, even though, first, it is one of the most efficient processing centres in Canada, and second, the union of labourers there has been saying that there have not been job guarantees for all workers. Third, why is it kicking Alberta when it is down? It is taking away the equivalent of taking 100,000 jobs out of Toronto in terms of the impact it will have on the community of Vegreville. It is completely decimating that community. I do not think the minister even bothered to visit Vegreville.

When we are looking at client service delivery, we have all these recommendations in the report that have not been responded to, which the government is making worse by closing one of the most effective processing centres in the country. There were also documents that came out that showed that there would be an additional expense to the government to shut down this processing centre. The Liberals' whole argument for closing it down was that it was supposed to be more efficient and save the taxpayers money, when, in fact, it is going to make the taxpayers spend more money. We get less efficiency and an increased cost for taxpayers. That is the hallmark of Liberal management.

There is one other thing I want to point out. The last time I tried to get concurrence on a report from the Citizenship and Immigration committee, it was on the issue of immigration consultants who were essentially fraudulent. We know that there are instances of people we would call ghost consultants. These are people who contract themselves out to newcomers to Canada under the guise of providing services promising to get them to Canada faster. It is very difficult for people who are working like this to face any sort of punishment under our current system.

Liberal and Conservative governments have made changes in how the immigration consulting profession is regulated. We know that there are still a lot of problems with that. I believe the committee put forward a unanimous report on recommendations on how to fix some of these things. However, the government, including the members on the committee that voted for the recommendations, when we tried to have it concurred in in the House, voted against the concurrence motion, therefore showing the true colours of the government on immigration, which is that it does not really care about improving client service delivery for people.

Why am I talking about immigration consultants in the context of this report? If we are talking about client service delivery, in a lot of ways, people should not have to contract an immigration consultant to do some of the most basic work it takes to apply to come to this country. We should be looking at ways to streamline and simplify processing for people who are seeking to enter the country.

This is what I have been saying all the time. When the immigration system of a country like Canada is functioning well, it should be a debate about process and how we improve processes. We can have partisan differences on that, but we should not be having a discussion about the fact that the entire system is melting down because the government has no control over a planned, orderly migration system.

What is striking to me is that since this report was written in March 2017, we have seen close to 40,000 people illegally entering the country from the United States of America, which we know is safe third country, to claim asylum. A lot of the processing issues that are noted within this report have been exacerbated because the government has refused to respond to this report in any sort of meaningful way after the recommendations were put forward by the committee, and then, of course, the additional burden on the system has made things worse.

The current government is very good at standing up in the House of Commons and using one thing to describe its action on a file: the amount of money spent. I am assuming that the remarks the parliamentary secretary is about to give on this matter will be that the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars. I am sure the government is quite proud that it has made a more expensive plan to deal with the Prime Minister's tweet. However, the reality is that it is throwing money into things and it is getting worse. The metric here should not be how much money the government has spent. In fact, I would argue the opposite. I think the government should be saying it has created efficiencies while saving the taxpayers' money. It should be about how we are moving back to a planned, orderly migration system wherein we are talking about things like how we modernize client service delivery for people who are seeking to legally enter the country. However, we are not there.

Where we are today is that we have the minister on national TV spreading falsehoods that Parliament can put forward legislation that could technically deem the entire Canadian border as a legal point of entry. There are ways we can legislate it such that it would only apply to the safe third country agreement. I think it is probably Parliament's job to look at legislation that could do that. However, the government refuses to walk back the ill-advised tweet that the Prime Minister put out, essentially for his own ego. I wonder also why the Prime Minister has not staged a photo-op at the refugee camp at Roxham Road. Perhaps the photo opportunities are not as good there as they are in other places.

I should not be glib. We should be providing incentives for as many people as possible to come to Canada through legal, planned, orderly migration that meets the needs of Canada's growing economy, that meets the needs of our obligations to humanitarian immigration. However, it needs to be done in a way that we are focusing on integration, not on entitlement, and on an easy-to-use, good system that would provide incentives for people to legally enter into the country. We should not be talking about spending hundreds of millions of dollars, which could be upward of a billion dollars, to the court's failed asylum claimants who have come in under the current government's watch. In fact, that is going to be one of the legacies of the current Prime Minister. In years to come, we will be looking at the tab he created for deportations of people he is essentially pedalling false hope to, who had no hope of ever claiming asylum in Canada. The cost to the Canadian taxpayer, and that diversion of resources that could have been used for the modernization of services for people who are legally entering the country, is something I do not think he or anyone else should be proud of.

I think this report is good. I might have a few quibbles here and there, but there are some good ways that I think are non-partisan. We could improve client service delivery. There are practical things. I love that the department officials at IRCC could be focusing on implementing these recommendations rather than having to focus their time on the tire fire that is happening at Roxham Road. It is very simple to me.

Therefore, I would like the government to acknowledge my points today by voting to concur in this report on modernizing client service delivery. We could reset the tone in this House. We could say that we want to focus on legal, planned immigration, on resources for the live-in caregivers, the reunification of parents and grandparents, and all of these people for whom we know we did a good job under our Conservative government. This report should be concurred in to do that.

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud of the efforts that our government has made. For instance, if we look at the immigration services which are provided, we have cut the processing time in half for spousal applications, for 82% of clients. We have also cleared the backlog left to us by the decade of darkness by 80%.

We have made a great commitment. We have shortened the processing times to 12 months, from years and years when people had to wait to get their spouses to come to our country, our great nation. We are trying to get families together to make sure they are more productive and able to work better.

Could the member comment on the improvements we have seen in the immigration system and how we have made things better for more Canadians?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am so glad that my colleague mentioned the decade of darkness.

Under previous Liberal governments, and the member talked specifically about parents and grandparents, I will reiterate the statistics for him. The previous Liberal government created a backlog of 108,000 people in the parent and grandparent stream. Let us think about that.

Our government had to come in and say to over 100,000 people that the former government had created a backlog under, that we needed a system to make sure those people could come to Canada in a planned and orderly way. What did the best immigration minister in Canadian history, Jason Kenney, do? He created the parent and grandparent super visa program. That super visa program cut backlogs and processing times in half. It also ensured the sustainability of our social programs, reducing the risks to taxpayers, by having a requirement for health insurance. This is something that the Liberal government has embraced. I am proud that I have the opportunity to talk about the fact that our Conservative government cleaned up a huge mess.

I believe my colleague represents a riding in Winnipeg. I would note that Manitoba has been one of the provinces that has complained that the Liberal government has created a problem for them, in terms of strain on social programs, affordable housing, health care, and access to legal services, because it refuses to close the loophole in the safe third country agreement.

As a Manitoba MP, he should be ashamed that his government is not doing more to close the loophole in the safe third country agreement.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

As far as report and the recommendations go, there are some positives there. As members, we are aware of most of them. For example, as she said in her speech, there is the fact that the government has to process this type of case. Unfortunately, limitations in terms of client service, if I can call it that, can make it very difficult and time-consuming to help people. One of the more interesting recommendations I spotted in the report is the one about creating a web portal so that people applying for this service, or their authorized representatives, and, in many cases, MPs, can access updates.

What does the member think of that recommendation? When I work on a case and I call my assistants to ask for an update, I have to wait days before they call me back. I am a federal MP who is trying to represent people and advance cases that are, in some cases, very complex and difficult and take a heavy emotional and mental toll. I am sure people here know what I mean.

I would like my colleague to comment on that and her experience in her riding.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more.

We should be doing everything possible to make it easier for people to go through these application processes, such that they do not need to hire an immigration consultation, or such that we can reduce the friction points within IRCC. With some of these processes, I think we still use carbon copy forms. It is just bananas.

I want to give some credit to department officials within IRCC. I would love to give them a mandate, to say that the government is going to deal with the issue at Roxham Road and they should put their brain power toward developing a web portal, or creating a cloud model, or ensuring that people who are processing applications are not in such rigid silos that demand cannot be met in different areas.

There are many different things that this minister could be focusing on in terms of modernizing client service delivery. Are there ways we could be using artificial intelligence to help client service delivery? How can we make the experience easier and more consistent, incenting people to come to Canada legally? That should be the focus of the minister. That is the focus of this report.

Unfortunately, we are not there because of what is happening at Roxham Road in Quebec.

[Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development]

Mr. Speaker, this report was tabled in March 2017, and the government provided a comprehensive response to it. In addition to the response, we have made a number of changes, which I am sure a number of my colleagues will be able to speak to or have already spoken to.

The member spoke about the call centres. In that regard, the department is focusing on providing agents with advanced training and support to ensure their skills line up with the individual call needs with respect to the website, and ensuring that all types of communication are implemented in plain language, as well as on the content of the website. With regard to more frequent and useful information, the government shares the committee's commitment to ensuring that clients and stakeholders have this information. Also, on application forms, the government agrees. Therefore, the government has provided a very comprehensive response to this report which was tabled in March 2017.

I am wondering, with the comprehensiveness of the response and the work we have done over the past year, does the member opposite not think, with the individuals who come to Canada through the regular immigration system as well as those seeking asylum, with the investments we are making that we are doing a great job to ensure that Canada stays secure?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, when I think of the minister's response to the immigration crisis in Canada right now, I think of the GIF of the cartoon dog sitting at a table with a cup of coffee while there is a fire behind him. It says that everything is fine. That is what I think of whenever the Minister of Immigration stands up in the House of Commons and comes up with a non-response to the fact that there are tens of thousands of people flooding across the border at the Roxham Road entry point while we are seeing backlogs of over seven years for somebody in a refugee camp in Djibouti to be privately sponsored as a refugee. Therefore, no, I would not classify that as everything being fine.

[Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will continue with my questioning.

Again, this report was tabled in March 2017. Part 5 of the report spoke about processing times. As mentioned, we have reduced processing times for individuals, especially for family reunification. We have heard the minister talk about the capacity for caregivers, for family members to come, almost making the previous record look like they were not really focused on this file.

On performance measures and client feedback, again, the government agreed with the committee's recommendation and outlined a number of areas in which it has done continuous improvement to client services. On part 7 and the conclusions, again, the recommendations in this particular report have been comprehensively responded to by the government. I actually wonder why we are bringing it up at this point.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, everything is not fine. My colleague opposite will likely be shocked when she sees numbers for processing times that are accurate and up to date after the illegal border crossing crisis came forward. The minister has been very silent on those wait time increases, because we know they are there.

Second, the government's response to the committee report was typical Liberalese. It said a lot of nothing. It did not implement any of these findings at all. It had a lot of nice words, though, and I am sure the bureaucrat who wrote it spent a lot of late nights trying to figure out how to write 10 pages' worth of stuff without committing to responding to any of these things.

We have had to fight tooth and nail to not have the MP's response line be cut. The government has not responded to the immigration consultant issue. The fact is that the IRCC is essentially imploding from within, as every member of the committee saw in front of that particular study.

Again, I would point to the wait times on things like private sponsorship for refugees. They continue to increase. Therefore, people who are legally trying to come to the country are having to wait, because the government is spending all of its time on Roxham Road. It is like the eye of Sauron has been diverted to Roxham Road instead of just closing the safe third country agreement. It should be more simple, and they should be doing that.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Winnipeg North.

As part of the review of the votes under Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in the 2018-19 main estimates, I want to talk about the government's priority to improve client services. High quality, effective, and timely client-service delivery is a priority for the government and for IRCC. The department interacts with millions of clients in Canada and around the world, including applicants for electronic travel authorizations, visas, permanent residency, asylum, citizenship, and passports.

Canada is becoming more attractive to talented, skilled people, businesses, tourists, students, and families who want to contribute to our economic and social prosperity. For example, last year alone, the department processed more than 2.3 million temporary resident applications and more than five million passport applications, and it responded to nearly six million requests for information.

The government recognizes that a strong, effective, and efficient immigration system is not only desirable, but indispensable in every way for our country's future. With that in mind, IRCC has made it a priority to improve services for all of its clients. We know that by enhancing the quality of its services, Canada will be better placed to attract talent from around the world, boost trade and tourism, and help families reunite with loved ones or claim asylum in Canada.

We also know that while the number of applications in all of our business lines is rising, so are clients' expectations for faster, simpler services that are available electronically. Clients also have higher expectations of receiving updates on the status of their applications.

Because improving the client experience is a key priority for our government, IRCC recently launched a suite of initiatives aimed at improving service delivery and client experiences. The department also engages in an active dialogue with clients to better understand the issues they encounter.

To begin with, IRCC now has its very first client experience branch, whose mission is to improve services to clients. It is responsible for improving existing services, testing new and innovative approaches, and improving dialogue with clients. I would like to talk about these areas in greater detail.

The government knows that processing times have a major impact on client experience in all business lines. I can assure my colleagues that the department is working hard and will continue to work hard to reduce processing times for economic immigrants, citizenship applicants, family class immigrants, and refugees.

The department's commitment to reducing processing times and improving service delivery is already making a difference. For example, processing times for spousal reunification in Canada used to be 26 months or more. Now, most new spousal sponsorship applications are processed within 12 months. Processing times for citizenship applications have also dropped from 24 to 12 months. Family caregiver applications used to take as long as five to seven years. That was unacceptable. Now that we have made changes, those applications are also processed in under 12 months.

The new express entry system for economic immigrants has also improved client experience. Last year alone, more than 86,000 of these express entry candidates received invitations to apply for permanent residence. The system is easy to use for these potential applicants, who can easily create an online profile and, once they receive an invitation, can fill out an online application that will, in most cases, be processed in less than six months.

We acknowledge that improvements can still be made in some areas, and we know that ongoing discussions with stakeholders are important to simplify, clarify, and improve services in the various sectors. IRCC also regularly updates its website with information on processing times for the majority of its services to clients.

The department is establishing more and more service standards that it reviews regularly. Once a service standard is established, the observation rates are published annually on the IRCC website. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has opened visa application centres around the world, which is another excellent example of its commitment to providing more efficient services to clients.

Today we have a standard network of 137 centres in 95 countries. It provides claimants with several important support services, especially in areas where there are few or no visa offices.

These services include the reception and transmission of visa applications and documents, the return of processed documents to applicants, the scheduling of interviews, and the collection of biometric data. The centres also verify whether visa applications are complete, which expedites processing and helps decrease the number of applications rejected because they are incomplete.

At the same time that the government is undertaking initiatives to improve existing services, it is also testing new and innovative approaches in order to grow the Canadian economy through immigration. For example, last year we launched our global skills strategy to attract the best talent from other countries. It should be noted that a good number of the ideas that led to this strategy originated from stakeholders, particularly private sector employers, and we extend a very big thank you to them.

The strategy is designed to help Canadian employers recruit the highly skilled foreign talent they need when they need it. Whether employers need to bring in a professional to train Canadian workers, an experienced executive to lead a major expansion, or an expert with highly specialized, in-demand skills, our global skills strategy will make it faster for businesses in Canada to bring in the talent they need to succeed. To achieve this, the global skills strategy has set an ambitious two-week standard for processing visas and work permits for certain highly skilled workers for businesses operating in Canada.

Our government has also introduced a new work permit exemption for very short-duration work terms, for example 30 days or less for work in highly specialized fields and up to 120 days for researchers, which means less red tape for employers.

IRCC continues to innovate and invest in new ways to design its services. IRCC has also launched some design challenges that consist of choosing a service to improve and review from A to Z with the help of its clients.

Since 2016, IRCC has been tackling these design challenges with clients, consultants, lawyers, professors, immigration officers, call centre agents, and master's students in the design program at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Together, they have come up with new ideas that have been tested by our clients, then fine-tuned and turned into pilot projects. Using this approach, IRCC is creating solutions that directly address the issues raised by clients, so we can provide better services.

By understanding clients' frustrations and innovating to create a culture of service, IRCC is implementing lasting and major transformations.

We also need to recognize that the services provided by the government relate to some of the most important decisions and stages in the lives of our clients. It is vital that the delivery of those services reflects well on the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and showcases the best that Canada has to offer.

That is why our government has recently undertaken a series of initiatives to ensure that all of our actions reflect a positive attitude toward clients and our relationship with them.

For example, we want clients who contact the client support centre to be given information about their files more quickly, we want to provide sponsors with tools that will help them better track the status of their spousal sponsorship application, and we want to improve the online experience, since that is how a growing number of our clients are contacting the department.

The website is also constantly being improved to meet clients' needs. The department has already updated over 500 pages on the site. As members know, electronic applications also allow the IRCC to optimize the use of technologies and implement an effective application processing system so that it can offer clients simplified, more user-friendly services.

Our priorities include innovation and improving client service delivery. We know that, in addition to making service to IRCC's millions of clients better, our improvements will make our immigration system faster and more efficient, which is also good for our economy. Our government made a firm commitment to reunite families as quickly as possible, and these improvements will make that happen.

Ultimately, our immigration system will be set up to serve Canadians better. We are committed to continue improving the immigration system so it is as efficient as possible.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciated the parliamentary secretary's remarks. His document and his speech were very detailed and included hard numbers.

Some numbers were left out, however. For one thing, he forgot to mention that, since the Prime Minister's infamous January 28, 2017, tweet, over 26,000 people have crossed the border illegally, most of them via Roxham Road. I call those crossings illegal because there is a big sign not far from Roxham Road that says “It is illegal”. People can see a picture of the sign courtesy our public broadcaster. More than 19,000 people crossed the border last year. As of May 18 this year, 7,612 people have crossed the border illegally via Roxham Road.

I asked the Prime Minister this question during question period, and now I am asking the parliamentary secretary the same question. Does the government acknowledge that the Prime Minister's infamous January 2017 tweet inviting the whole world to come to Canada was inappropriate?

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, what we can acknowledge is that the previous government cut $400 million from the Canada Border Services Agency budget. In our last budget, we reinvested $173 million to deal with the issue of irregular border crossers.

Let me be clear on one thing: our government is doing everything necessary to deal with this situation. We have deployed a tremendous number of missions abroad to ensure that potential asylum seekers are aware of our laws and rules before coming to Canada. We have a working group in place with the governments of Quebec and Ontario. We also have partners on the ground, such as the municipalities and settlement and integration agencies, who are helping us a great deal. To say that we on this side of the House have done nothing is completely false. On the contrary, we are very focused on this file. We will continue to do everything we can to manage this situation with the key partners that we have been working with from the start.

[Celina Caesar-Chavannes, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development]

Mr. Speaker, I refer back again to the document we are talking about, which was tabled in March of 2017.

First of all, I would like to thank the committee and witnesses for being able to produce a comprehensive report, to which the government provided a response. Since 2017, I think that the minister, the parliamentary secretary, and the team have done a remarkable job in ensuring that many of these issues have been addressed.

The report talks about having a call centre, and we have introduced a client experience branch to ensure the services we provide to clients are better. For the website, we have introduced innovation and have harnessed the best technology to ensure that individuals are having the best experiences. One of the recommendations was to provide more frequent and useful information. With our services, we are making sure that we are providing faster, easier, and better-targeted information to clients. With regard to application forms and making sure they are comprehensive, we see a team of individuals going out, the minister and others, making sure individuals are aware of what the expectations are when coming to Canada. For processing times, the parliamentary secretary talked about reducing them. We have heard many times in the House about how they have been so dramatically reduced.

Based on the report that was tabled, the comprehensive response from the government, and what we have done since then, maybe the parliamentary secretary could tell us if there is anything further he thinks we could do to better an already brilliant system they have been working on.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. She gave an excellent summary of everything the government has done so far.

We committed to improving client services at IRCC. As my colleague mentioned, much has already been done. I want to repeat this because it is important. Under our government, wait times for family reunification have dropped from 26 months to 12 months.

We have managed to significantly reduce the processing backlog from the previous government, and we will continue to cut processing times. The backlog for spouses or children was significantly reduced. We also doubled the number of applications for parents and grandparents. We did a lot for refugees, as well. For example, we welcomed 1,300 Yazidi refugees. The department decided to make client services and the services in our various sectors a priority. This is our commitment.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to a very important report, but there are some things on which I would like to comment before I get into some of the details of the report or issue that we are debating today.

It is interesting to note that the report was tabled back on March 23, 2017. Many dozens of reports have been tabled in the House, more than 100. As with this report, I commend the efforts of members who take the time and use the resources and spend the energy in putting these reports together. Whether it is this report or other reports that come before our standing committees, it is important that we acknowledge the amount of work, not only by politicians but by Canadians in all regions of our country, who often come to Ottawa to express their opinions and concerns. Ultimately information is accumulated and put in the form of different recommendations.

This report is no different from many other reports that in good part are being acted on by the government in different ways. For example, if we look at this report, we see there are 24 recommendations. I have had the chance to briefly go through some of those recommendations. There is one I want to provide some comment on specifically, but as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship has described, the department has acted in a very strong way on a number of different recommendations. Something that Canadians should be aware of is that even though all of our standing committee reports do not get debated on the floor of the House of Commons, it does not mean the government is not taking action on these reports. We value the fine work of our standing committees, where Canadians as individuals or groups express their ideas and thoughts on important public policy. We understand it and appreciate it, and it does not have to be debated in order for the government to look at the recommendations and act on them where we can.

There are very few ministers of immigration, with the possible exception of the previous one, who have been as aggressive in addressing the important issue of immigration here in Canada. Let there be no doubt that immigration is absolutely critical to the long-term development of our country, both economically and socially. As a government and as a party, we understand that and appreciate it. The actions seen day in and day out continue to reinforce just how important immigration is to our country.

Having said that, I want to also make reference to the reason we are debating it here today. I am very much suspicious in the sense that this is one of many different types of reports out there. Here is a report that has been sitting around now since March 23, 2017. The government has proactively been implementing certain aspects of its recommendations, but why has the official opposition chosen to take it up today?

The opposition members like to say they want to debate government bills, but when they are afforded the opportunity to debate government bills, we see tactics of this nature that ultimately prevent them from debating government bills.

What were we supposed to be debating this afternoon? I believe it was Bill C-59 regarding public safety. It is legislation that is very important to all Canadians. All political parties want to debate the bill, yet we have the official opposition bringing forward a report that will take away from the debate on Bill C-59. Trust me when I say that in the coming days, the opposition members will stand in their place to say they want more debate time. That is what they will argue, but then they will bring in motions of this nature.

This is not to marginalize the issue. We understand the importance of immigration. We understand how important it is to recognize and act on the work that our standing committees do, but we are not going to be fooled by an opposition party that now decides that this is the day to debate it. The real reason they are doing this is that they do not want to debate the government bill. That is the reason they have brought this motion today.

That is fine. They are the official opposition. They can work with the other opposition parties and entities in the House, and this is the topic that they want to debate today. It happens to be a topic that I am exceptionally passionate about, because there is nothing that is brought to my constituency office more often than immigration concerns.

I often say that I get hundreds of files or immigration requests every month. People think I am exaggerating if I say 400. If anything, I am underestimating the actual numbers that I deal with in my constituency office. Most people would be amazed at the amount of help we try to give people to come here from countries like the Philippines or India, in particular the Punjab, and other countries around the world, such as Ukraine and Pakistan. Individuals are trying as much as they can to get family to come and visit Canada.

I follow the issue of immigration very closely. I used to be the immigration critic for the Liberal Party of Canada when we were in opposition. I witnessed first-hand the types of problems that were created and generated by Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney, and there were plenty. If members want to talk about disasters in immigration, this is a great way to look at it. I remember sitting at committee when they came up with the announcement about stopping the sponsoring of all parents and grandparents. They killed it flat. What they did was say they would come up with a super visa to justify doing that. Then a couple of years later, after they finally opened the program, they said it would be 5,000. When the Liberals took the reins of power, we doubled that 5,000 to 10,000.

The Liberals put in a better processing procedure for immigration. We are making a real difference in processing times. The best example is the reunification of families. Imagine if a person is going to the Philippines or to India. In particular, I said I do a lot of work in relation to the Punjab. When a person went through the province of Punjab to get married, it would take two to three or even more years to get their spouse to Canada.

During the Harper years I was not able to get one temporary visa, not one, where dual intent could have been used in order to get a spouse over to Canada. We have seen significant improvements. Now it is closer to a year. I believe it is just under a year. I have actually been successful at getting some of those temporary visas for spouses.

Our ministers of immigration have understood, right from the get-go, how important it is to clean up the mess that the Conservative Party left when they were voted out of office. We will continue to do so. This is all about clients.

I believe that technology can make a difference. In 1991, I believe it was, I was in the Philippines in the embassy as a Parliamentarian taking a tour of the facility, and I saw these huge plastic containers. I asked what all the plastic containers were for. There were literally thousands of documents inside these plastic containers.

They said they would get two or three plastic containers of written correspondence a day.

Technology does need to be acted on, which is something this government takes seriously. We are proactively fixing many of the problems that were created by the previous Conservative government.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague's interest in this file and his past history with it.

Monte Solberg, a friend of mine, was a former immigration minister. I remember visiting with him in the immigration building, where he took me from floor to floor and showed me the stacks of files that the Liberals had left him with. Those files were stacked in rooms on every floor. He told me that his department was left with a staff that spent 50% of its time finding a file and 50% of the time putting it back. He said that was what the Liberals had left him with. His job, he said, was to try to change the process, digitize it, make it modern, and make it work.

The Liberals left paper files and a bureaucracy of paper that created this nightmare of finding files and putting them back. Monte, as the Conservative minister of immigration, undertook the process of modernizing the process.

If we are talking about continuing the process that the Conservatives started, I would be happy to see that, but it was not what the Conservatives were left with when they took office. Is the member talking about carrying on the process of making it more advanced than it was when the Liberals left it when the Harper government came to power?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was lucky to be a parliamentarian in 1988. Back then, not all civil servants had computers.

Technology has been able to assist government in many different ways, and I have not even touched on the web.

At one time we did not have anything but paper, and it took time to work things through the system.

Let there be no doubt that even when we were transitioning back in the early 1990s and a live-in caregiver had to go through a live-in caregiver process, all paperwork and everything else was done within three months. When we took office it was years. Back in the early nineties most of the work was done through paperwork, yet it was still done within three months.

We can take advantage of technology. We need to continue to move forward with that. I am very familiar with it.

It is amazing what can be done with an immigration file number, a date of birth, a person's last name, and the type of information that can be pulled from the Internet. That sort of thing did not exist before. It does today, and that is a positive thing.

This government will continue to improve the quality of client services as best we can. One can tell how we are doing by looking at processing times. In many areas the processing time has been virtually cut in half.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I find the use of the word “client” a bit cold and rather jarring since we are talking about people who want to immigrate to Canada or who are refugees in Canada. I think another term would be better, but that is not what my question is about.

I am very pleased that the wait times have been reduced, but there is a problem that I see regularly in my riding of Hochelaga, and I would like to know whether the government intends to do anything about it. When a person makes an asylum claim, a process is set in motion and, when that process ends, any other process that was undertaken at the same time also comes to an end. For example, in my riding, an individual made an asylum claim and an application for permanent residency on humanitarian grounds. However, when an asylum claim is denied and the person is sent back to his or her home country, the application for permanent residency is no longer considered valid.

I have seen the same thing happen to someone in the case of sponsorship. A person submitted an asylum claim and a sponsorship application at the same time. The asylum claim was denied and then the sponsorship application was no longer considered valid when the person was sent back to her country of origin.

Could the department not take into consideration the other types of claims that may be pending before sending people back to their home countries?