Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the ninth report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. I am going to talk about what we liked in the report and how we need to do more. I may pour some cold water on the praise that the government has been heaping on itself in this file.
Let us take a moment to seriously consider the reality and the challenges we see every day on the ground as MPs, when we are trying to help people hoping to become citizens, obtain legal status, or change their legal status. I am talking about people who want to come live here in Canada for a variety of reasons, all of them equally valid.
I think we need to get out of the Ottawa bubble a little and really consider the repercussions this has on the work we are trying to do, which is client service, the service provided to individuals by the department. I use the word “client” with apologies to my colleague from Hochelaga, because I share her aversion to the use of that word to describe these people, these human beings, who come to Canada and who quite often live in uncertainty and may not understand how to proceed with all the different applications they need to complete.
First, I would like to come back to the point I raised in my question for the member for Calgary Nose Hill, who moved the motion. One of the recommendations was to implement an online portal where both clients, meaning applicants for permanent residence, for example, and authorized representatives, who could be an MP, an MP's assistant, a lawyer, or any other person who might be involved in this type of file, could track the status of the application. That is extremely important.
As I said in the question I asked my colleague, I think it is unacceptable and appalling even that in this digital age, when I can get minute-by-minute updates on the pizza I just ordered, it takes days, even as a federal MP, to get any information on the status of an individual's application.
These applications can determine whether the applicants can start looking for a job with a work permit, move forward on a difficult personal situation, reunite with their family living in Canada or whether someone can come and visit them, whether they can attend their son or daughter's wedding, or in more tragic cases, whether they can be present for a dying family member's final days. These are the questions being asked by people applying for visitor visas for specific reasons.
That is completely unacceptable. People may think that whether or not we know the status of the file will not change the outcome, but that is not at all the case. It makes a difference to our work and the decisions that we must make to determine the next steps to be taken. Will we write to the minister? Will we approach the minister in the House? Will we go public? Will we ask a question in question period? Which tools in the MP toolbox will I use to deliver on a file and provide any help I can to the individual? These decisions are influenced by this type of information, which is not duly available as readily as we would like.
We would also like to see the duration of work permits increase from six months to one year. At first glance, this might be something that people will question. However, I have a perfect example to illustrate my point.
As you know, I have been helping a citizen from my riding for several years. I refer to her as a citizen even though she has not yet received her Canadian citizenship. Her name is Sophie Thewys and her case was highly publicized. She came to Canada after marrying a Quebecker, a Canadian. She decided to make a life here. She arrived with her son and started a family with her spouse, Nicolas Faubert. What happened then was tragic. On Christmas eve, her husband died in a car accident. Even though her permanent residence application had already been approved, the approval was withdrawn because she had not yet signed the papers granting her this status.
Now, over a year and half later, we are still trying to get her that status for humanitarian reasons. Even though this has been going on for years, and even though there were delays due to administrative errors that were IRCC's fault, not hers, she has to once again provide the same information, answer the same questions, and pay for police reports out of her own pocket to prove that she does not have a criminal record. This is a nightmare that is preventing a friend, a human being, a citizen, a resident of my riding, from grieving her loss and living her life as normally as possible under tragic circumstances.
Why is this relevant? When I started talking about this case in public with Sophie's permission, and when she pleaded with the government and the minister to explain this senseless situation, some of the headlines twisted the story a little. They said she was in danger of being deported. That was not true because she does have legal status here in Canada. She has a work permit, as does her son. Even so, we are caught up in all this stupid red tape—pardon the expression, I would not want to cross the line and use unparliamentary language. I have been trying, so far in vain, to convince the minister that this kind of case is exactly why discretionary authority exists. That permit will enable her to keep doing what she is doing, to live in the community, and to work, because she does have a job.
My intention is not to disclose all the details of her personal life. She talks about it and gave me permission to do the same. This work permit allows her to continue living with her son while awaiting the response to her application for permanent residence, which is taking a long time. It has already been approved. It would allow her to grieve properly. I have spent a lot of time on Sophie's case and we will continue to do everything we can for her, but unfortunately, with all due respect to her, she is not the only one going through this type of problem. As members of Parliament, we have many people who come to see us every day with this type of problem.
This brings me to the next recommendation, which seems appropriate to me. It would have us follow the Australian example by providing detailed explanations when applications are denied. That is very important. It is easy for an official to know which box has been checked off or not. That is part of their daily work. I say that respectfully. I do not mean to attack people who have to follow orders and deal with resources that make their work more challenging. However, someone who comes here from abroad, uproots their life to flee persecution and violence, or to flee abject poverty in order to live a more prosperous life in Canada, deserves to know more than just which box has been checked off.
We can do everything in our power as MPs, but in spite of our best efforts, we ultimately need some help from the public service, by which I mean the government. This is especially true for MPs' offices, which are flooded with requests of this kind in heavily populated ridings or ridings that are home to many new Canadians from cultural communities, people who came to live their lives in Canada in order to be with their families, for instance. God knows our assistants also deserve plenty of credit for the work they do on these files. When we travel to and from Ottawa, these people work extremely hard to support people.
Ultimately, more detailed explanations would help not only applicants, but also the MPs and other stakeholders assisting them. That is extremely important, because it will help us figure out how to proceed and how to hopefully resolve cases as quickly as possible. Some MPs get more work in this area than others, but at the end of the day, all MPs know how hard it is to deal with these systems.
We recognize all the work that needs to be done to improve the service that is being provided. It is important, because there are all kinds of factors that make life hard for a newcomer to secure a visitor visa, to visit or reunite with their family, and to become a citizen or permanent resident. There may have been extremely difficult circumstances driving them to come here.
There are many excellent people working in the community or in law to defend the rights of newcomers. We also know there are others who try to take advantage of them, and so we try to give them good advice. That is why we need more information from the government, as well as better-structured, better-funded systems. A change like that would go some way to eliminating this scourge, because we would have official sources we could rely on for this type of information. We would know that we could quickly get accurate information about a given file.
In closing, I would like to say that I am very proud of the work that was done by the committee. I am particularly proud of the supplementary report tabled by the member for Vancouver East, who just said that we like the recommendations that have been made, but that there is still a lot of work to be done.
The member for Winnipeg North said that we are trying to use obstructionist tactics because the report was tabled over a year ago. Regardless of when the report was tabled, nothing has been done about the difficulties we are facing or the recommendations that were made. There is clearly still an enormous amount of work to be done.
I am very pleased to join in this debate and talk about my experience as a member of Parliament, which I am sure is similar to that of many of my colleagues in the House. It is high time that we modernized our systems and created the tools needed to allow MPs, community stakeholders, and immigration lawyers to do their jobs. Ultimately, we need to ensure that the most important people in all of this, those who came to Canada to have a better life, whatever the reason, can benefit from a system that provides them with the information they need, supports them, and is easy to navigate. We would all be better off for it.