Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can't give you this information because the system we have been using up until now keeps track of refusals but not necessarily of the reasons behind them. The new system that is just about ready—it should be up and running next week—will enable us to keep track of the reasons b

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Medical issues are certainly cited most often, while safety is less of a factor. In Moscow's case, for instance, there are a lot of concerns regarding organized crime. In certain countries, the risk of crime is higher than in other countries. Some countries don't have a solid jus

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Actually, in both missions there, the processing time with regard to immigrants is lower than what we have in other missions. Certainly if I just look at Kiev, for instance, for spouse cases, it's 11 months, while it's 14 globally. For parents and grandparents, it's 27 months; gl

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This issue is related to cost. It's more expensive to send a Canadian abroad than to have a local decision maker.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This is obviously taken into consideration, but I wouldn't say that it is the key reason. A very important reason is the fact that local decision makers can occupy a position for several years, so there is no loss of knowledge. Canadian employees may hold the position for two, th

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We are not aiming for any particular ratio. In some locations, such as the Buffalo consulate, in the United States, whose representatives appeared before the committee earlier this week, there are as many local decision makers as Canadian officers.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I do think there are any missions where local employees make up the majority. There are a few places where the numbers are evenly split. In most of our missions in Europe and in the United States, the numbers of local and Canadian officers are roughly even.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Not necessarily. First of all, if I look back, we set the target according to the levels that are announced normally in November. After that we set an operational target globally and then we look at how we will subdivide it. When we subdivide it we look, in the case of parents an

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Moscow is not the only mission without a local decision maker. The fact of the matter is that many missions do not have a local decision maker. That does not necessarily have a huge impact. What is important is having the number of decision makers needed to be able to make the re

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not sure of the exact time he said that because it depends on the question. If you refer to what was their transfer of resources—I can't say cut—they were transferred to another mission, so they're actually....

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Exactly, and it would depend upon when you ask, because there were additions of staff to Kiev. Right now, we have thirteen staff in Kiev, which is two more than then.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Currently we have two staff more than in 2006, so if I just look at that, I can't say we have cut that much, 30%. We did not cut 30%. If I look historically, we had 14 staff before 2006. Now we have 13 staff. We have one person fewer. We had a 48% drop in applications, so if we h

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have the quote, sorry. It depends on when it was asked and how it was formulated. If you said there was a 30% reduction, as of today, that's not true, so what can I say?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The first thing I would like to mention, which is a bit of a change compared to the other mission that came as witnesses to the committee, is that these two missions are slightly smaller than the large mission we saw a bit earlier. Another difference as well is the number of appl

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I couldn't tell you. The original act, which changed that, dates back to 1976. But I wasn't here at that time.