Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. With respect to Canada's resettlement program, as you heard from the previous witness, the primary focus in the structure is on refugees. That said, there are mechanisms in the legislation that allow for special measures to be taken. We saw that imple

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It might have been but I'm not familiar, off the top, if that's come across my desk.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think there are a couple of parts to that question. I think the previous witnesses touched on accessing the UNHCR in terms of getting a referral for resettlement to Canada. Again, just to restate what was said earlier, when we do engage with the UNHCR to determine what cases

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can certainly speak to the staff who are Canada-based and who go overseas. My colleague might be able to add a bit more on the local side. Certainly each year there's a training program for officers who go out to deal with resettled refugee cases, and a component of that trai

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There may be an overlap. It's a bit difficult to ascertain in terms of how many of the cases would be on the UNHCR priority list for resettlement, but we know that sometimes we find that there is a privately sponsored case that would also be a UNHCR-referred case.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would say that those conversations happen proactively. There are situations such as the survivors and the plans that we implemented after the Haitian earthquake a couple of years back. As I indicated earlier and as UNHCR stated as well, the focus of the program is, from a res

Citizenship and Immigration committee  To add to what my colleague has indicated, we've been indicating and have been prioritizing cases that fall under the one-year window, for example. I think we've seen the cases being processed in a couple of months, not the 30 months that is the average for the one-year window ca

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. We are indeed taking a number of steps to support Ukrainians and people residing in Ukraine, to make it easier and faster for them to come to Canada. We announced on the 24th a number of steps to facilitate access to and prioritization of their immigration applications, and

Foreign Affairs committee  I think it's important to give a bit more context, as I was pressed for time in the response. To give an overview of the measures we currently have in place to facilitate the travel of Ukrainians—

Foreign Affairs committee  In response to that question, Mr. Chair, the reality is that we have existing pathways and are expediting the processing of immigration applications for Ukrainians and persons residing in Ukraine. We are putting them all at the front of the queue. We have put in place measures to

Foreign Affairs committee  Again, the assessment is done on a country-by-country basis, and at the moment it is not under review.

Canada-China Relations committee  Thank you for your question, Mr. Bergeron. In the case of VFS Global, the Government of Canada has done its due diligence by vetting the contractor when the contract was awarded for services to collect biometric data provided by visa application centres. Public Services and Proc

Canada-China Relations committee  The Government of Canada requires all employees of visa application centres who have access to personal information, including subcontractors' employees, to undergo security screening equivalent to a reliability check done in Canada.

Canada-China Relations committee  I do have some stats as of June 30, 2022. Out of the applications received on the temporary resident side, the work permits, there have been 14,054 processed, of which 12,477 have been approved. On the permanent resident side of things for those measures, 1,851 individuals have