Citizenship and Immigration committee  On the security side, our proximity to Canada enables us to have a very close relationship with those we call the partner agencies. It's not uncommon for them to travel to Buffalo to review files, and sometimes to conduct interviews, which helps them fulfill their mandates. As f

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. Approximately 50% of our immigrant applications are distributed to our four partner offices in New York, Detroit, Seattle, and Los Angeles. They are smaller offices than Buffalo's, but they're full-service offices. It's a just-in-time process, so we want to ensure that a per

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I certainly don't want to disparage my inland colleagues, but we are in competition with them in a sense because, as members of the standing committee have pointed out, there is no necessity, except for the legislative provisions that Rénald has described, that there be an office

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Our student movement and our movement generally are relatively clean in the sense that while fraud runs through all programs all around the world, it's not as high among our clientele as it is in some of the countries where we have large offices. I don't think there's a particul

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We'll issue about 3,000 visas to skilled workers from Quebec in 2011, and we will issue another 7,500 to federal applicants in 2011, so that makes it approximately 30%. Our Quebec movement is as large as it is because Quebec, like other provinces, has increasingly adopted a syst

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We have six Canada-based and 45 locally engaged staff.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Probably about 80%. People both on the permanent resident side and on the non-immigrant side are currently temporarily residing in Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll just do a quick bit of math here: from the Buffalo office alone, about 16,000 permanent resident visas and about 24,000 temporary resident visas per year.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That would be persons currently temporarily residing in Canada, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I believe it was 16,000--this is from the Buffalo office alone--

Citizenship and Immigration committee  --who are Canadian residents on the permanent side, and 24,000 on the temporary side.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We offer walk-in service on the non-immigrant side, and I would say again approximately 20% of our Canadian applicants opt for walk-in processing. It's currently same-day service so if they're within commuting distance of the Buffalo office they prefer to take advantage of that s

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There are a couple of reasons why we do it the way we do. One is that the act requires applicants, except in certain very strict categories, to apply outside of Canada. The second reason is that we have, if I may say so, a very efficient operation here. We have officers with a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes--loud and clear.