Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Thank you, minister, for being here today. It’s good to hear about your successes. Everyone needs successes, and I want to congratulate you on them. However, I want to pivot our attention to the significant backlog of over 2 million people waiting in line for a response in every business stream of your department, from temporary work permits to renewals, to family sponsorships, to permanent residencies, to citizenship.

The complaint I hear most often is that there isn’t even communication with people waiting in line — not a peep. I want to ask you whether your government is making some effort to reach out to the customers — and I want to view them as customers — standing in line to let them know about the first response from you.

Hon. Percy E. Downe: Minister, thank you again for taking some questions. As reported in the P.E.I. Guardian newspaper, at 9 a.m. on September 11, 2021, a young woman walked into a Staples store in Charlottetown and spoke to an employee about buying a desk. After a discussion, she walked away and continued shopping in another aisle. She was followed by the employee and sexually assaulted. The employee was in Canada under a study permit issued by your department. The international student was charged and pleaded guilty to sexual assault.

It appears from the website of your department that only if you self-declare a criminal record on your application for a study permit is any confirmation of your police or court record required. Minister, is a criminal conviction background check conducted for all applicants for a study permit in Canada?

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you very much. Once again, if we’re going to identify the solution, I think we have to understand where the problem comes from. There are a couple of things going on that have created record demand in Canada’s immigration system at a time when our ability to supply services has been reduced primarily by the pandemic, but also by competing priorities, including the responses to both Afghanistan and Ukraine.

The numbers that we’re seeing now actually far exceed some of the numbers in your question, and when you seek to add thousands of staff over the last couple of years, it is still not enough to keep up with this short-term spike as a result of challenges related to the factors that I have just laid out.

Now, it’s not all negative news because, of course, we’re doing things to address these problems. I laid out some of the investments we have made that I won’t repeat. The big secret here is going to be to transform Canada’s immigration system into a digital one. We have a heavily paper-based system today. You can imagine somebody who has reached out to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and made a phone call will figure out that their paper is on the other side of the world. They call their MP, who reaches out to my office, who reaches out to a local office where somebody might actually have to pull out a physical piece of paper and then call everyone back in that chain to have the client receive an update on their case.

That’s unacceptable to me. I’m changing it. We have an $827‑million digital renovation of Canada’s immigration system under way. I mentioned the permanent residence case tracker available to family reunification previously. That’s going to give real-time information about a person’s case to them, so they not only will get good information, they won’t call Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which will free up the resources so we can deal with other challenging situations where a person is seeking something more than just an update.

We will have 17 lines of business with the ability to take digital applications as soon as this summer. We are already seeing some of the results of the investments in citizenship pay dividends with increased processing and results.

[Translation]

Hon. Salma Ataullahjan: Minister Fraser, an Auditor General’s report in 2019 found that 1.2 million calls to your department’s call centre were prevented from reaching an agent. Regrettably, the situation has only become worse.

An answer to a written question on the Senate Order Paper shows that between April and December of last year, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada call centre received over 2.6 million calls and 1.45 million of them were prevented from reaching the wait queue.

Minister, let me repeat that for you. In less than a year, almost 1.5 million calls were dropped, including calls from Canadian citizens, permanent residents and foreign nationals, some of whom are in desperate situations around the world and need your government’s help.

Minister, is that acceptable to you? Service has gone from bad to worse. Can you share with us what you are doing to fix it?

Hon. Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu: Minister, I asked your colleague, the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, a question on June 2 about the troubling issue of the labour shortage, particularly in Quebec, where this problem seems to be having a serious impact on the economy. One reason for this shortage is the basically unacceptable amount of time it is taking your department to process visa applications, as well as the equally unacceptable wait times. It can take more than a year to get a work visa from Immigration Canada.

Minister, we know that the backlog of applications at the department is in the millions. According to some media reports, we are talking about 2 million pending applications across all categories. Can you tell us how many work permit applications are pending and what you plan to do to fix these unacceptable delays, which are having a negative impact on the Quebec economy?

Senator Housakos: — or was Minister Gould throwing you under the bus for your mismanagement?

The Hon. the Speaker: Thank you, senator. Your time has expired.

Hon. Pierre J. Dalphond: Thank you for being here today, minister. We’ve heard a lot of questions about work visa backlogs. The wait can be up to 13 months, but we need to shorten these wait times if Canada is to remain competitive.

What would be your ideal target for processing foreign worker applications? Four months, five months? What measures have been implemented to achieve the target processing time that the department has set or that we should set?

[English]

Hon. Kim Pate: Thank you, Minister Fraser, for joining us. As you know, too many children who come to Canada as immigrants and refugees can end up in the care of the state through no fault of their own. That means the state becomes their parent, and it can be a very quick slide from child welfare into the criminal legal system, which is where they often find out for the first time that they are not citizens. Only unrelenting advocacy and last-minute interventions by the government have currently been accessible to prevent such deportations.

Minister, what does your government intend to do to stop these children from falling through the cracks? Will you commit to the solutions found in Senator Jaffer’s Bill S-235 that could help protect these vulnerable people?

The Hon. the Speaker: Are honourable senators ready for the question?

Hon. Percy E. Downe: Minister, in my first question to you I asked if a criminal conviction background check is conducted for all applicants for a study permit in Canada. Obviously, the answer is no.

In the case I mentioned earlier in which an international student sexually assaulted a young woman, he pleaded guilty and received a conditional discharge rather than a criminal conviction. Thus, he would not have to leave Canada before completing his studies at the University of Prince Edward Island.

Since this was not the first case involving someone on a study permit who committed a sexual assault but didn’t receive a criminal conviction, Islanders are wondering if the threat of deportation and therefore having to leave their studies is being used as a “get out of jail free card.”

The woman has paid a high price for the sexual assault. She quit her job, suffers panic attacks and is fearful of being in stores and near strangers, while the international student gets to finish his degree.

Minister, for the safety of all Canadians, why is it not mandatory that all applicants for study permits — rather than merely the ones who mention a criminal record on their applications — be required to pass a criminal background check prior to the study permit being issued?

Hon. Peter M. Boehm: Thank you, minister, for joining us today.

I want to ask you about an initiative undertaken by students at Wilfrid Laurier University, one of my alma maters. It’s called the International Students Overcoming War initiative. They have added, through a referendum, an $8 levy to their tuition fees so they can fund the placement of students from war-torn countries and regions at the university. There are some who are graduating. They have also come to Ottawa and met with your parliamentary secretary, I believe, and I think with your staff.

So far, 23 students have gone through this program. They have been very successful. Whether they go on to the permanent residency path or return to their countries and make contributions, it has been a success.

Is there something the government can learn from this particular initiative, which is privately done but at the initiative of our young leaders?

Hon. Mobina S. B. Jaffer, Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, presented the following report:

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs has the honour to present its

SIXTH REPORT

Your committee, to which was referred Bill S-4, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Identification of Criminals Act and to make related amendments to other Acts (COVID-19 response and other measures), has, in obedience to the order of reference of March 31, 2022, examined the said bill and now reports the same with the following amendment:

1.New clauses 78.1 and 78.2, page 37: Add the following after line 7:

Your committee has also made certain observations, which are appended to this report.

Respectfully submitted,

MOBINA S. B. JAFFER

Chair

(For text of observations, see today’s Journals of the Senate, p. 715.)

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

(Motion agreed to and bill read second time.)

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on December 7, 2021, Question Period will begin at 3:30 p.m.

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Coyle, seconded by the Honourable Senator Deacon (Nova Scotia), for the second reading of Bill S-9, An Act to amend the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Minister, I’m sure we’ve all heard the saying, “There is no end to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” On May 3, 2022, minister, your parliamentary secretary told the other place that the NDP-Liberal government did not support a proposal in Conservative MP Kyle Seeback’s private member’s bill — Bill C-242 — to allow super visa applicants to purchase private health insurance from foreign companies. She told the House it would be risky and too complex.

A week ago, minister, your government completely changed its tune, and you, minister, issued a press release which passed off two of the three proposals put forward by MP Seeback on Bill C-242 as your own.

Minister, why didn’t you show any respect for your House of Commons colleague by simply acknowledging his work? Why did you pass off Mr. Seeback’s proposals as your own?

Hon. Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship: Thank you very much to one of my Senate colleagues for the question.

Let me be quite clear: I’m actually very grateful for my colleague Mr. Seeback’s work. I sent him a note in the House of Commons to that effect because I think he’s done something important by putting some ideas down in the private member’s bill. I don’t think that the private member’s bill, as it was crafted, had accomplished things in exactly the correct way.

For those of you who might not be completely familiar with the program, the super visa provides an opportunity for family reunification for people who may not have qualified under a permanent residency program —