Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Foreign Affairs
Issue 20 - Appendix
SPEAKING NOTES FOR
Janet Siddall
Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
Before the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs
Ottawa, Ontario
November 2, 2005
Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here this evening. I understand that the committee is studying the development and security challenges facing Africa as well as Canada and the international community's role in supporting the continent to meet these challenges. I look forward to hearing what you have learned from previous witnesses and in your travels. I am also grateful for the opportunity to speak to Citizenship and Immigration's operations in Africa.
Before proceeding allow me to introduce myself and the colleagues who are with me today. I am the Acting Assistant Deputy Minister of the Operations sector in Citizenship and Immigration. Marlene Massey is the Acting Director for Africa and Europe in our International Region. Rénald Gilbert is Director of Economic Immigration Policy and Programs and Bruce Scoffield is Director of Policy Development and International Protection in our Refugees Branch.
If you will permit me I would like to first talk a little about the department and then focus on Africa. The Department of Citizenship and Immigration, or CIC, is a medium-sized department, with about 4,000 people. It is highly decentralized, which means that our program is delivered in five regions in Canada; in three specialized case processing centres located in Vegreville, Mississauga, and Sydney; through one consolidated call centre in Montreal; in about 46 offices distributed in various cities of the country; and at 92 international points of service in 79 countries. That does mean our department is present just about everywhere in the country and just about everywhere in the world. It also means our activities are directly affected by international events, whatever they are, and we have to constantly monitor what's happening there. It also means our environment is sometimes extremely complex, depending on events that are happening in the world.
The other characteristic of our department is that it deals with high volumes. The department has around 3.2 million contacts with various clients in any given year anywhere in the world or in Canada. It handles about 1 million transactions of some sort. It brings in close to half a billion dollars of revenues, which makes it a fairly big revenue- producing organization. We get about 16 million visits to our Internet site, and only 30 per cent are from Canada; the rest come from all over the world.
Immigration is a very human and very individual matter. We deal with people one-on-one, and everyone is different. Citizenship and immigration issues have a very strong human face. This is good, and this is what I think motivates many of us who work in the department. What is not so good about this is that quite often an anecdote, the one case, makes the story, and so we always have to be very careful not to let the anecdote influence the overall assessment of our policies, programs and operations.
I would also like to mention an important change to CIC that took place at the end of 2003. On December 12, 2003 the government undertook an important internal reorganization and transferred a certain number of operations from Citizenship and Immigration to a new agency known as the Canada Border Services Agency. During that transfer all our immigration control officers abroad were transferred from CIC to CBSA, which is the acronym for the Canada Border Services Agency. All the intelligence and enforcement functions, including removal, detention, detention centres, investigation have all been transferred to the new service agency. I would suggest that the committee may wish to invite officials from CBSA to learn more about these activities.
As I said, I am the Acting Assistant Deputy Minister for the Operations sector. So, in operations, what do we do? In Canada our offices deliver integration and settlement services, process citizenship applications and organize citizenship ceremonies. They also process complex immigration applications and visitor applications referred to them by the case processing centres mentioned earlier. They represent the department in a variety of activities, including federal- provincial relationship and outreach. They work with a number of NGOs and other organizations, supporting them and helping in the settlement of immigrants and refugees.
The international region, our missions and operations abroad, process applications for permanent and temporary residence. Our permanent resident programs include family, economic and refugee movements. When we speak of temporary residents we mean visitors, students and temporary workers. Our operations abroad are also responsible for the health screening of migrants, security and criminality screening, reporting, and liaison. We work very closely with the new Border Services Agency in the area of security.
As I mentioned, we have 92 points of service in 79 countries. We have abroad 277 Canadian officers, 232 who are now Citizenship and Immigration employees and 45 who are Canada Border Services Agency employees dedicated to the immigration program. In addition to that, we hire approximately 1,200 locally engaged employees.
Of our workforce abroad, 43 per cent is in the Asia-Pacific area, 15 per cent in Africa and the Middle East, 21 per cent in Europe, and 21 per cent in the Americas.
We do operate a highly decentralized program, one that tries to be as close to our clients as possible. This presents both a challenge and opportunity for us. We have to ensure consistency in the application of the law and the management of the program. We also must be sensitive and adapt to local conditions. We leverage the important knowledge our locally engaged staff bring, their knowledge of the culture, the language, and the way other countries work.
Another challenge is to make sure we don't make too many mistakes, but high production like ours does brings exceptions. We have to look—and we are looking—at what we do and how we do it on a continuous basis, and when we do make a mistake, what's important is that we ask ourselves questions like, what went wrong, what have we learned, and how do we fix it?
In Africa we have visa offices in eight cities, Cairo, Nairobi, Lagos, Abidjan, Accra, Pretoria, Rabat and Tunis. Applications for temporary residence (visitors, students and workers) are processed in all these offices. Applications for permanent residence are processed by our offices in Cairo, Nairobi, Abidjan, Accra, Pretoria and Rabat. Our clients can also submit their applications for temporary residence visas to our embassies or High Commissions in Addis Ababa, Algiers, Dakar, Dar Es Salaam, Harare, Lusaka, Tripoli and Yaounde.
The Government of Canada has recently closed our embassy in Conakry. To compensate for the closure of the office in Conakry, CIC has recently concluded an agreement with the International Organization for Migration office in that city so clients can submit their application to the IOM office who will forward it to our office in Abidjan for processing.
In 2004 our offices in Africa received over 56,476 temporary residence visas applications and, to date in 2005 have received some 51,472. This is about 11 per cent of the global total. The approval rate does differ between Sub-Saharan Africa where it is 71 per cent and North Africa where it is 81 per cent. CICs global approval rate for temporary resident visas is 81 per cent.
As I am sure you noted on your travels, the reality of Africa is that circumstances exist that could compel someone to seek to leave and remain permanently elsewhere. Our visa officers must be aware of this when assessing applications for temporary resident visas. The very definition of a temporary resident is one who will return to their country of origin after visiting, working or studying in Canada. Some applicants do provide questionable documents obtained through influence, corruption or recourse to organized criminal networks. Our visa officers must also work with their CBSA colleagues to screen out those applicants who have been complicit in war crimes or crimes against humanity. This screening can take time.
We also recognize that for some in Africa there is no choice but to seek life elsewhere. The UN High Commissioner of Refugees noted that at the end of 2003, there were 38 different protracted situations in the world, 22 of which were found in Africa, accounting for 2.3 million refugees. Canada resettles some 10,300 refugees from abroad each year through our Refugee and Humanitarian Resettlement Program. About 45 per cent of the total number of refugees resettled to Canada are fleeing persecution in Africa. Between 2002 and 2004, the top ten source countries for resettlement in Canada included Sudan, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Burundi. We realize that the need is much greater but we must be cognizant of our ability and the ability of our partners in Canada, the settlement agencies, municipalities, and provinces to provide sufficient support once those resettled from Africa arrive in Canada.
Thank you. I would now be glad to take your questions.