Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll speak about the family reunification work because I think that's of greatest concern to you. When we first took over the Pakistan family program, we had a unit made up of seven people—one decision-maker and the rest were administrative support. The unit now is at 17 people, and that includes nine decision-makers, one of them being a unit manager.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  They would have come on since we took over the caseload in 2014. It would have been a gradual increase.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The department is currently resourced to deliver annual levels in the range of 300,000 each year. The exact composition is less relevant than the actual number, although some cases do take longer to process than others. Any increase in one category would have to be offset by a decrease in another category, unless the larger levels number were to grow.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I guess we would have to take a look at our operations to see if there are any additional efficiencies that we could implement to try to deal with an increased number.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We aren't able to comment on specific cases. There may be a unique set of circumstances in the case you're referring to that caused the case to have taken longer than normal. When it comes to matters of security screening, we work together with our colleagues at the Canada Border Services Agency to complete the assessments that have to be done under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll start off, and I'll invite my colleagues to weigh in. As I mentioned, we work with the Canada Border Services Agency. We use panel physicians to complete the medical processing that's required for all of these sponsored cases. They are subject to service standards as well. That process is administered by a different part of the department than I am responsible for.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We're within departmental standards for the family reunification program that was transferred to us from Pakistan. In the early days, it took us a bit of time to gain traction and to complete the knowledge transfer that we had to put into place to make sure we understood the cases and weren't unnecessarily calling people to interview or belabouring the applicants in any way.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The department has established service standards for the entire network, and we aim to complete 80% of family class applications within 12 months of the original application by the sponsor.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning. My name is Sharon Chomyn, and I'm the immigration program manager at the Canadian High Commission in London, England. I'm also the area director overseeing the visa offices in London, Moscow, Warsaw, Kiev, Vienna, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Accra, and Islamabad.