Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair and members. My name is Stefanie Beck. I am the assistant deputy minister of corporate services at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. I'm joined by Audrey White, the director of our access to information and privacy division. We've

Official Languages committee  I might have missed something with all these questions. If I remember correctly, our objectives are 4% for 2018, and 4.4% for economic immigration.

Official Languages committee  Understood. There's a whole series of things in that regard. There's what is stated in the roadmap. There are consultations with a view to the action plan that will follow the roadmap. We are spending money each year to increase immigration. Above all, we are asking ourselves h

Official Languages committee  No, but—

Official Languages committee  We, too—

Official Languages committee  We're as passionate as you are about this question. We are working with the communities, and are trying to give them as much money as possible to increase their capacity to welcome these immigrants—to attract them and retain them. It's not easy. You also have quite a job ahead o

Official Languages committee  I will also try to be brief. The 4% target is for 2018. We haven't yet met the objective, but it doesn't mean we won't achieve it in 2018. What more can we do on the subject? When we study the immigration continuum, we see that not enough francophones are submitting an applicati

Official Languages committee  There are many.

Official Languages committee  Yes, but—

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  We would very much like that to be possible. What worries us about such a test is program integrity. How can we know it's the actual applicant who took the test and pressed the button? As long as we're not able to confirm the identity of the applicant who took the test, we can't

Official Languages committee  We can find out what language course he chooses. If he chooses French or English language courses, we know it, and can compile statistics on the subject. However, we can't say which language the person chooses to use in the workplace, or in everyday living.

Official Languages committee  When people submit their application, they sometimes say where they want to go. We normally have statistics by province. A bit more research would be needed to have them by city, or by minority community. But I should repeat that it isn't necessary to have taken a French test in

Official Languages committee  That's true.