Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, could I ask for it to be clarified? Is the question referring to the impact of the subamendment, or is the question about the regulatory proposal?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, in response to the member's last question, currently, an applicant becomes a citizen only once they take the oath of citizenship at a ceremony. That's to be clear on that. That would continue to be the case under the proposed regulatory change. As I understand the m

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, I'm not aware of any planned ratio. As I mentioned, as part of our effort to improve service, we're really proposing to give the choice to applicants. Because this is an important day in people's lives, an important event in people's lives, as many have mentioned, w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, that's not a correct assumption since this proposal is at the proposal stage and has not been implemented. What the member is referring to are statistics that relate to how the current program is being administered postpandemic. It doesn't reflect what applicants ma

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't have statistics for 2023 in front of me. I'm mindful that the member has quoted statistics from last year, which is a breakdown that I don't have in front of me, so I can't confirm or correct that statement. I'd have to check the data before I could say anything on that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Currently, the goal is to get back to the 12-month processing standard. The proposal under discussion—the regulatory proposal—would reduce the wait time for those at the ceremony stage. There's potential to get that average processing time down to below 12 months. I'm sure everyo

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, that is correct.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I believe they were closer to the 12-month processing standard, but as I don't have that processing time in front of me now, we will check and provide that to the committee.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you for the question. The department is constantly striving to improve processing times and to improve client service and accessibility, as I mentioned. Historically, the wait time for a ceremony, once the applicants had completed all the other requirements, was in the ran

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's correct.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I mentioned, these are the kinds of issues that will be further developed as part of implementation plans to support an initiative like this one. I think it's fair to say that ceremonies could look as they look today. There are not necessarily any plans at this time to change

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I can say in general that the department frequently receives representation from applicants who are looking to have their processing time reduced, and that is something that we continue to work hard to do. As I mentioned in a previous hearing, we had a record number of over 374,0

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not aware of all of the client feedback the department receives, so while it's possible that the request has been made, I don't have that information available to me at this time.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  This is an evidence-based proposal. It's backed by significant data. The data includes that the processing standard that the department strives to meet is to process citizenship applications within 12 months. Although the department achieved a record number of grants last year—ov

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Madam Chair, it hasn't been requested; however, there is already some legal authority in the legislation. I can tell you from years of experience in the citizenship program that those circumstances where somebody may be looking to complete their citizenship process from abroad te