Citizenship and Immigration committee  Chair, I've already mentioned that we will provide that information, which was requested in terms of what exactly is the breakdown of different categories of people who would be coming in, over the previous years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. The comparison for that one is that the Ukrainian program was meant to be a temporary residency program. The Sudanese program is a permanent residency program. This means we will be welcoming Sudanese permanently to the country. The processing is obviously going to take into consideration eligibility and admissibility.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As we continue to process, Chair, some of them will probably be landed in 2024, so they will be in the 2024 levels. The rest, as they are processed, will be in the other levels, which are subsequent years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  First of all, Chair, we will provide you with our estimates as requested in terms of the numbers. Second, we continue to process the applications as quickly as we can and actually find the spaces in the current program. However, if there is an opportunity, there might be other ways which we can explore in terms of adding more numbers.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I mentioned earlier, my intent, Chair, was to say that there is a yearly renewal of the multi-year levels plan. Those are the ways in which the adjustments are done for the purpose of all those pending.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, the minister has been able to waive the fees on biometric collection as well as some other fees. We can get you some information about how this compares in both the Sudanese and—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Every program is tailor-made to get the most vulnerable people out, and this program, in addition to what we have done for protected persons, permanent residents and assisted departures, has actually helped the Sudanese to come here as permanent residents.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For the purpose of this particular special program, we designed a program that has extended family members, which we are calling eligible family members. These family members, if I may, include children, spouses, parents and other close relatives. There's a definition that we have provided in terms of eligible members, which is more than the classic definition that is captured in IRPA about extended family members.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  What we try to do in terms of the ability to process their application is that, if somebody is in Cairo, they can connect through submitting a web form or connect with us through IRCC and our presence in Cairo at the Canadian embassy. We obviously are processing those applicants in terms of priority processing, and, if your biometrics are done, we will go through to the next step and process them accordingly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Chair, just to clarify, the program, which is designed for permanent residents, is for 3,250 applications, and each application can include dependants. If there were a family, that family would be included as a part of that application. Roughly calculated, our assessment—and this is a little bit of an extrapolation based on family sizes—is that somewhere in the range of 6,000 to 8,000 people will come on the 3,250 applications that are made.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Chair, what I am trying to say is this is an extrapolation. If the applicant includes family members on their application, we will process all of those members, so 3,250 applications will be processed, and spouses, kids and family members will comprise the number of people who come.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Chair, the 3,250 applications are part of a special program that we have instituted for Sudan, but before we rolled out this program, we had already done much more in terms of bringing Sudanese people here. If I may, 4,202 is the exact number of total permanent resident admissions since the conflict began.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, just for the record, I did not say that they should use any other channel. What I am actually mentioning is that anyone who is able to get out still needs to put in an application for a temporary resident visa. If they are not covered in public policy and they have been able to come to Rafah, in order to come Canada they will have to apply for a temporary resident visa.