Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, there are a number of areas that I would like to outline. They fall into legislative changes, and there have been a number of those. Then there have been a number of other activities that have been undertaken, which have been useful. If we go back to Bill C-10, which received royal assent on March 13, 2012, it gave the CIC minister discretionary authority to instruct officers not to issue work permits to those whose situation could make them vulnerable to abuse or exploitation, including sexual exploitation or human trafficking.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. As you said, my name is Robert Orr. I am the assistant deputy minister for operations at Citizenship and Immigration Canada. I am here today with David Manicom, director general of the immigration branch; Angela Gawel, director general for international region; and Ryhan Mansour who, as you heard, was manager of policy integration branch.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. Obviously, if someone is considering which country they're going to go to, there will be a number of different factors, processing being only one of those. Frankly, I do not have the specifics of processing, particularly in Chandigarh, for instance. I do know that Canada is the only country that does processing in Chandigarh, but I do not have the comparison of timing with other countries.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are ways that we are able to expedite applications and put them to the front of the queues so we are able to get through them, but certainly our concerns about the safety, security, and health of Canadians remains paramount, and we will only be issuing visas when we are satisfied that those measures are in place and that we have done appropriate processing.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think you've essentially covered it, but one of the various things that we at Citizenship and Immigration can do in particular is to maintain good service standards for our students, and we are doing that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much for the question. We have a variety of measures in place to try to respond to the tragedy in the Philippines. Certainly we are providing priority processing to clients, which is already underway, and we are trying to contact applicants in a proactive manner, people who have an address in any of the affected areas, and we are trying to move them to the front of the queue.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are means for them to make themselves known to us, and we will deal with them on a case-by-case basis.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, I'm not aware of that happening, but I can confirm that again, Mr. Chair, through the clerk.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not sure how long it is retained, but it's a few months. I could provide that specific information to you.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The deputy minister I think has covered all the principal issues. There are regular audits. There are regular visits by our visa officers to the various visa application centres to ensure that the appropriate practices are in place. I'll just give you a couple of examples. For instance, the visa application centres have no role in the decision-making process and so on.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  But it is to the point that, when a passport is returned to them, they have no idea whether a visa was issued or not. They hand over a package to the individual and are completely unaware of what the decision was on any particular application. In terms of taking biometrics, there's a video camera that is running the whole time that biometrics are taken and, indeed, in Ottawa we can monitor and watch what has happened during the entire process.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's correct.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is correct.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, certainly.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There is a fee for taking the biometrics, which includes the visa application centre fee, of $85. For dealing with the visa application centre, there is a fee as well. Our experience is that where people have had the option of either going to the visa office or going through the visa application centre, they have overwhelmingly chosen the visa application centre.