Minister Alexander helped bureaucrats avoid giving full details on visa wait times | Toronto Star

2015/01/12 1 Comment

While there is some validity to the concerns regarding officials about the workload, one has to question whether or not CIC’s computer systems cannot generate these kinds of reports relatively easily (it’s not as if officers are looking at the 16 million records individually, they are using the CIC databases to extract the information):

The emails have officials describing the “enormity of the request,” estimating it would involve some 16 million records.

The emails also say the team tasked with crunching these numbers had to keep putting it aside to work on “high-priority requests to respond to public discussion and interdepartmental analysis around the (temporary foreign workers) file.”

Relief came when an official wrote on May 2: “You can hold this work — MINO (minister’s office) has come back to advise ADMO (office of the assistant deputy minister for operations) that we will use the same response we provided to Q-359.”

That was an order paper question about processing times submitted by Liberal immigration critic John McCallum, which was almost identical to the part of the question from Blanchette-Lamothe officials were scrambling to answer in time.

The response Alexander provided in the Commons last May 12 — there was no accompanying paperwork — is nearly verbatim to the response Blanchette-Lamothe received in writing two days later, although it also refers to “an excessive number of taxpayer-funded man-hours.”

A spokesman for Alexander said that was appropriate.

“It was at the advice of the department that we took the chosen approach. The questions posed by both Mr. McCallum and Ms. Blanchette-Lamothe were detailed, multi-part questions which could not be answered within the prescribed time frame. The answer to this (order paper question) reflects the advice of (Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s) professional, non-partisan public servants,” Kevin Menard wrote in an emailed statement Friday.

Chris Alexander helped bureaucrats avoid giving full details on visa wait times | Toronto Star.

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‘High error rate’ found in Canada’s immigration processing

2015/01/07 Leave a comment

Hard to know how many of these errors were major, but they do create processing inefficiencies not to mention the additional burden and frustration on applicants:

According to the review of 996 files handled between Nov. 1 and Dec. 6, 2014, at the Vegreville operation, which deals with permanent residence applications, the quality management team found these shortcomings in the 617 request letters sent:

  • 13 per cent did not address all missing items.
  • 23 per cent had no timeline or an incomplete one or did not mention the consequences of failing to reply.
  • 6 per cent were either “not professional” or chose the incorrect template form.

Of 426 files that received a second review during the five weeks, decisions were pending for 149 owing to errors made by decision-makers at an earlier stage.

While the 2013 review of the Canadian Experience Class — a pathway for those with Canadian work experience and education to obtain permanent residence — found 23 per cent of the decisions had “significant” eligibility concerns, the evaluation of refugee permit applications identified 113 errors in 88 files.

‘High error rate’ found in Canada’s immigration processing | Toronto Star.

And the subsequent story, with CIC’s response:

“Employees receive an initial three-day training on the department’s Global Case Management System, but there is additional training and coaching that takes place depending on the line of business,” wrote Chan.
“Before any employee begins to make any application decision, they receive comprehensive training on eligibility and admissibility assessments.”
Chan said immigration officials conduct quality monitoring exercises regularly to evaluate programs and procedures and adjust staff training accordingly.
“CIC is focused on making our application processes and our correspondence with clients simpler and clearer,” said Chan. “The integrity of these programs was not compromised.”

Ottawa defends errors in immigration processing

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Canada welcomes more new Canadians – Citizenship Stats

2014/04/02 Leave a comment

The usual monthly update on citizenship processing, showing CIC on track to eliminating the backlog through a doubling of the number of new Canadians:

Approximately 33,700 people from 199 countries became Canadian citizens at citizenship ceremonies held across Canada in March 2014. This is almost twice as many compared to March 2013 when 17,089 people were granted citizenship across Canada…

So far in 2014, Canada has welcomed more than 75,900 new citizens at 759 ceremonies across Canada. Comparatively, in the first three months of 2013, Canada welcomed 35,320 new Canadians.

Canada welcomes more new Canadians – Canada News Centre.

Still would like to see a commitment to service standards!

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News Release — Improving the Citizenship Application Process

2013/06/11 Leave a comment

Behind the press release – a dramatic drop of 37 percent in number of new citizens – from 181,000 to 113,000 in 2012.

News Release — Improving the Citizenship Application Process.

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