Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As was raised by another member, there is a limit to the levels for this year of 13,500 with another 8,000 booked next year. We will process according to the levels plan. At the moment, the processing is under eight months. We don't anticipate that the processing will rise to 21 months, but we will work within the levels that have been approved by Parliament and that our minister is accountable for.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The department will have to refer back if you wish to have monthly statistics. What I have is the year to date.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I will take that back to the department and raise your concern that the committee has been waiting for two weeks.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  For the streams, for the public policies we've introduced for Hong Kong, the data is showing that it is under eight months right now.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I believe there was a similar question raised in the committee meeting about Gaza and the Sudan, and the department has made a commitment to come back on this matter. We will echo that sentiment here that the department will come back with more clarity on how the numbers in the H and C category will be parcelled out.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The current processing time for the applications is under eight months. I'm unclear where the 21 months surfaced from, but it is under eight months. There are a considerable number of applications that did arrive in 2023 and that we will process through 2024, but, at the moment, there's no indication that processing will increase to 21 months.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Within the legislation there are provisions that officers will look at with respect to criminality, but the criminality has to be equivalent to that in Canadian law, so for Hong Kong nationals who participated in protests there would have to be an equivalent part in the Canadian Criminal Code that would find them inadmissible.