Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We need to look at the retention numbers. Every year 200,000 Canadians are leaving Canada, and we have to bring in more immigrants to cover for those. We need to find out why Canadians are leaving the country.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, sir. I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't complaining about Syrians coming over here getting special treatment. What I said was, when we had to bring in the 25,000 refugees from Syria, the resources of visa offices across the world were moved over to the Middle East

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The current guideline to fill the application for a refugee is 80 pages. This is the guideline to fill the application, so certainly we need to make the process simpler. The application should be simpler. Of course, the more complicated the application is, it's going to take more

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Absolutely, and for the case of the Afghani interpreters, I believe the government should have negotiated with friendly countries like the UAE or Kuwait, moved the interpreters to a safe country and processed their applications before bringing them over here. Keeping them in Afgh

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I absolutely agree. We were accepting 500,000 refugees every year. How many applications are coming in? If we're getting 600,000 or 700,000, of course we're going to have backlogs. We need to control that. Back in 2011 or 2010, we used to have backlogs of eight years in Af

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I agree that there is no transparency. A lot of data that the IRCC is sitting on could be used to optimize the system and make it more efficient and increase the efficiency of the process. I believe a parliamentary immigration officer similar to the budget office in Parliament sh

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, from the past, whenever you increase resources, you're going to load the system again. It's better to optimize our system. There are about 200,000 to 250,000 Canadians or permanent residents who are leaving Canada on an annual basis, so—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Most organizations, including the Catholic and non-Catholic sponsors, are going through the same thing. Most of the work on the ground is being done by volunteers. Those volunteers are doing it because they feel good about it, but dealing with the backlogs is stressing them out.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Certainly. Processing times are only one thing, but there are other issues with the regulations that are being imposed on sponsors. Volunteers are just not interested anymore.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, of course not. We can see the delays are there. I've checked back. In 2015 and 2016, when the Syrian refugees became a priority, resources were pulled from different visa offices across the world and moved over to Syria and Turkey so that they could get the 25,000 Syrians w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good afternoon to you all. I would like to thank you for the kind invitation. I am honoured to be here today to speak on behalf of the Catholic Refugee Sponsors' Council. In the time I have today, I would like to talk about retention, immigration applications and lessons to le

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The commitment Canada made to protecting indigenous people, according to the United Nations, applies to all indigenous people, not only to Canadian first nations. So now Canada is committed to protecting all indigenous people across the world, the Yazidis in addition to the Chald

Citizenship and Immigration committee  One thing the government could look at doing to speed up the Yazidi applications is to bring the people over here to Canada on a temporary visa, go through the screening, and then issue the permanent residency. That would be the best way to do it.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I believe that it is. Regarding identification of the government-sponsored refugees, or government-assisted refugees, instead of going to the United Nations and looking at their pool, Canada should consult other organizations in Canada to identify refugees rather than following t