Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mark. As Mark indicated, my name is Clark Goodman. I am the acting director of citizenship and immigration program delivery, and also the registrar of Canadian citizenship. My responsibilities including overseeing the operational activities related to Canadian citizen

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No worries. As of May 1, we are managing an inventory of approximately 400 cases where people do not have citizenship. These cases are under review to see how they might be resolved and whether they merit a special grant of citizenship. The number is down somewhat from when the

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, Mr. Chair, I mentioned that we have approximately 400 cases of active files on hand that we're looking at right now.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I indicated, we have about 400 active files that we are looking at.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Oh, it's the ones on hold. Excuse me.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chairman, in response to that question, one of the reasons why we're going forward with a promotional campaign is to make people aware of needing to regularize or to find out about their citizenship status. In response to the question about the 400 cases, those are the cases

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Chair, at the direction of the minister we have created a special call centre unit to respond to people who are phoning in to check their status from within Canada. The case processing centre, or CPC, in Sydney has dedicated agents waiting to take calls when people phone, and if

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I believe that it takes approximately three or four months. Rosemarie, can you speak to that?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, I believe that it takes on average three or four months. In some cases, it may take a bit longer, but it usually takes approximately three or four months.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's the same 400.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the 75 that are being referred to in here—Initially, I said we received 1,900-odd callers, and all but 75 received confirmation that they were indeed citizens. So it's two different things.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can speak about the campaign itself; I can't really speak about the decision to do it. From my point of view, we're trying to make sure that our websites are updated, that we now have, going into production, some promotional material around how to retain citizenship, how to p

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can appreciate the fact that someone walking into an office doesn't want to be told flat out one way or another what the decision could be on the case. And to that end, I have instructed local offices to be sensitive to people coming in and asking questions. I think part of our

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You are correct that the 1-800 number is for people living in Canada. For people living outside of Canada, the two main avenues open to them are our missions around the globe and of course our website, for information.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, as part of our promotional campaign, we'll encourage people to want to regularize their status. I cannot argue with you saying that some people may be hesitant to come forward because they don't like the outcome; however, by not dealing with it now and finding out what the