44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 13, 2022 10:00AM
- Dec/13/22 2:38:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we can observe a fundamental ideological divide between His Majesty's loyal opposition and the governing side of this chamber.
On this side of the House, we believe that to support people in need, we can advance programs that provide direct help to them. The Conservatives' solution to an affordability crisis is to do less to help families in need. This should come as no surprise. That has been their approach since 2015.
When we cut taxes on the middle class and raised them on the 1%, the Conservatives voted against. When we stopped sending child care cheques to millionaires to put more money into the pockets of nine out of 10 Canadian families, the Conservatives voted against. When we had programs that kept food on the table and roofs over the heads of families in my community, they held a press conference and said they would never support those programs.
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- Dec/13/22 2:40:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with due respect to my hon. colleague, his mathematics are simply off. He ignores the fact that the program has been designed to put more money into the pockets of eight out of 10 families than any fuel charges would cost them. In addition, we have created a new $5,000 grant program, which is going to help people in my community transition from oil for home heating to heat pumps and that is going to potentially save them thousands of dollars a year. Every step of the way we have been focused on developing programs to put more money into the pockets of families in need.
Whether it is seniors, students, workers or households, we are going to continue to be there for people in their time of need. I would beg the Conservatives, for once, to join us in supporting ordinary families.
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- Dec/13/22 2:45:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer clarity to families seeking to be reunited and workers seeking economic opportunity in Canada. We are going to process every case in our inventory.
With respect to the hon. member's allegation, I can reassure people that the issue of codes for inactive employees is simply a reflection of the way we manage the inventory. Every single case is attached to a code that has been sent to a relevant processing facility.
While I am on my feet, I am pleased to share that earlier this month, we set a record for the largest number of newcomers ever settled in Canada. This is good news for Canada, good news for our economy and great news for our communities.
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- Dec/13/22 2:46:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's allegation that files are resting with officers who do not exist is unequivocally false. We will process every one of those applications.
I am pleased to share that as a result of the investments we have made to hire more than 1,250 people, to embrace technological solutions and to relax administrative procedures, we have, in the last few months alone, reduced the number of cases in our inventory by more than 300,000. That is more than 300,000 people in the last few months who are now reunited with family and are here making a difference in our communities and helping support our local economy.
We are the party that is going to continue to support newcomers because we believe it serves the national interest and is the right thing to do.
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- Dec/13/22 2:48:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the hon. colleague suggests the minister does not think this is serious; the minister does not think it is true. The allegation they are making on the floor of the House of Commons simply belies the facts of the situation.
When officers leave the IRCC, we maintain their codes so we can trace who touched employees' files. It is the responsible thing to do, and we convert those codes to make sure that files actually go to where they are going to be processed.
We are going to continue to do what we can to reduce the number of cases in our inventory. We have seen immense progress, reducing it by more than 300,000 in the last few months alone. Just this month, we set a record for the largest number of newcomers ever to be settled in this country, and that is a positive thing.
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- Dec/13/22 2:49:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to reassure every person who has an application in the system that they can expect their case to be processed in accordance with the laws of Canada. I thank the hon. colleagues of this House who have supported some of the measures that boosted the funding available to process cases more quickly, because it is having a serious and positive impact.
This month, we set a record for the largest number of newcomers ever settled in this country. Over the past few months, we have reduced the number of cases in our backlogs by more than 300,000. We are back to the service standard we enjoyed before the pandemic for study permits already. Early in the year, we will achieve the same for work permits.
We are on the right track. We are going to continue to make the necessary investments to get people into our communities because it is good for our communities and good for Canada.
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- Dec/13/22 2:52:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as always, I thank my hon. colleague for her concern for the well-being of newcomers and people seeking to access the Canadian immigration system. It is very important that we provide clarity to families seeking to be reunited, as well as the workers seeking to improve their economic outlook by coming to Canada for opportunities.
There are applications that were tied to officers who no longer work for our department. We maintain the codes of those officers in order to trace the cases, but when those workers leave IRCC, we convert the codes in a manner that allows us to send those cases to the location where they can be most effectively processed. This is a strategy we use to make sure we can process files quickly, and I want to reassure people that every file will be processed.
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