Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I am an area director so that means oversight of the offices under my territory, looking at productivity, looking at the operations. Certainly there are opportunities where we'll provide input, recommendations...also coming in the other direction to my headquarters.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Within our department, yes. There may be some processing issues or something that I think we could take some steps to correct or to make some improvements upon or to share best practices among the different offices.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would only be speculating, sir.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's something that we've never come across, or I've not heard before, so I thank you for raising that. I would undertake that we would look into that. Again, we have to look at the traditions and the cultural norms in the country, the society from which both parties are coming.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'm not in a position to make any recommendations or to say we'll consider any recommendations. But thank you very much for raising that.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would only be speculating. I certainly don't want to give a number. That is an issue for officers, marriage of convenience or fraud or some sort of documentation versus other refusal reasons.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, we're very proud of the training that we give our officers who come to India. We have a Delhi “academy”, which is something that I think is quite unique, and a network where new officers will get a week-long training course. Again, we do use very much our local staff, who are certainly familiar—born and raised in the culture—with their traditions.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Mr. Chair, it's not possible for myself or my colleagues to answer questions on specific cases without knowing any of the details and also for privacy reasons. I would just clarify that the use of DNA testing is for cases where there really are no other options. Perhaps the documentation is not reliable or is non-existent.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I'm well aware that it's marriage season during the winter. The Canadian winter is marriage season in India, so all those people who have gotten married in India will be going back. First, though, the sponsorship will be submitted to the case processing centre in Mississauga.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  People who are assigned overseas are Canadian-based officers, working for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Any of our locally engaged staff, although they're working for our department and our program, are employees of Global Affairs Canada. We work very closely together to ensure that we have a strong team in place in each of our missions, embassies, and high commissions to deal with the applications.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I wouldn't want to give you the number, because that would be speculating. If you look at our approval rate of 86%, the remaining portion would be refused cases, but not necessarily for marriages of convenience. There could be other inadmissibilities or ineligibilities for the sponsor.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As I mentioned in my remarks, 86% of our applications are approved under the family class priority category, which would illustrate a very high level of acceptance. We have officers who are from that region, born and raised in India, who speak the local language, as well as all of our local staff.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  A lot of our local staff speak the local language. However, what we do now for the interviews is ask the applicant to go through an interpretation agency to bring someone with them who will speak their local language and dialect. There have been rare occasions that if we have someone on the staff then we would interpret for that person.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I should just clarify that the office in Chandigarh does not at this time process any applications for permanent residence. It only deals with applications for temporary resident visas, for study permit applications, and for work permit applications. Most recently, the processing times for temporary resident visas in that office are approximately 18 days and would be even shorter for study permits.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In terms of the Chandigarh visa office, in fact, Minister McCallum just paid a visit to that office and to New Delhi last week. He was in India. There is a very high incidence of fraudulent applications submitted by agents to that office, which does impact the approval and refusal rates.