QUESTION PERIOD — Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
Sponsorship Applications
October 2, 2020
Honourable senators, my question is for the government leader in the Senate. It’s a continuation of the question that I asked on behalf of Senator Mobina Jaffer yesterday. The question, as it was left when we ran out of time, was:
What is currently being done to recognize the needs of Canadians who need to be reunited with their loved ones, and to ensure the immediate process of their sponsorship applications?
In addition to that part of the question, Senator Jaffer also asks:
Some Canadians have been waiting for over two years to be reunited with their spouses.
Part (a) of the question:
Have more officers been hired to process the sponsorship applications in Canada and in our posts around the world?
And part (B) of that question:
How is the processing of these applications being expedited if, indeed, they are being expedited?
Thank you.
Thank you very much for the question, and, again, to Senator Jaffer for her ongoing commitment to this important issue.
We all can imagine how frustrating — “frustrating” is too weak a word — the situation must be for those who are waiting to be reunited with their loved ones. The plain fact is that due to these exceptional circumstances that we are in, the government and, indeed Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has been and is focusing their resources on the response to the pandemic. As a result of that, the opening of the call for interest for the new parents and grandparents program that was to be launched has been delayed. The government knows this is very important to so many people. Though this will not impact the processing of applications in the current inventory, indeed IRCC will continue to process existing applications during this time.
I’m not in a position to answer specific questions with regard to whether additional officers have been hired or how many, nor the specific details of how the government plans to expedite these. I can assure this chamber that the government is seized with this issue. Indeed, as we know, over 6,000 people have signed the petition of NDP member Jenny Kwan calling on the government to deal with this backlog. The government is seized with this. We are all concerned about this. I will endeavour to have details, and I will communicate them in this chamber and, if I have them more quickly, to Senator Jaffer personally.