With regard to the inventory of immigration applications in the Humanitarian and Compassionate (H&C) and other categories: (a) in which month and year were applications received, broken down by country of origin; (b) what is the average processing time from application submission to final decision, broken down by country of origin; (c) what are the total resources or staffing levels dedicated to processing applications in the H&C and other categories over the past three years to date; (d) considering that the 2024-26 Immigration Levels Plan target presently provides for a target of 29,750 allocations for the H&C and other categories in total from 2024 to 2026, with a low range of 22,000 and a high range of 41,500, and the current inventory already exceeds 70,000 applications, how many years does the department estimate it will take to clear the present application inventory without projecting for forthcoming applications; (e) what are the details of all special measures and policies included in the H&C and other categories over the last five years, including the (i) eligibility requirements for those immigration streams, (ii) descriptions of all processing prioritization directives given for each stream, (iii) dates on which updates or changes were made to those directives, broken down by country and the year the measure or policy came into effect; and (f) what plans or strategies are being developed to address the backlog of applications in these categories and to improve processing times?
In the House of Commons on October 30th, 2024. See this statement in context.