This House of Commons committee meeting on Canada's immigration system featured witnesses Mario Bellissimo (immigration lawyer), Aileen Calverley (Hong Kong Watch), Laurent Martel and Ron Gravel (Statistics Canada), Rabab Al Khatib (Rainbow Railroad), and Mehmet Tohti and Zaimira Dilimulati (Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project).
Mario Bellissimo argued that the immigration system suffers from a gap between policy ambition and administrative capacity, citing over two million pending applications and processing times extending into decades. He recommended binding service standards through the Service Fees Act, a universal expression-of-interest model to align intake with delivery, a statutory immigration ombudsperson for redress, and stronger legislative oversight of AI and automation, warning that Bill C-2 risks constitutional vulnerabilities by consolidating broad executive powers without adequate safeguards.
Aileen Calverley stated that the Hong Kong pathway's processing delays stem from being placed under the humanitarian and compassionate category, which has a limited 2025 admission target of 10,000 shared with other public policies, leaving over 20,000 applications backlogged and wait times exceeding 10 years. She recommended allocating dedicated admission quotas for each public policy, allowing Hong Kong applicants to access economic-class quotas through express entry with lowered points thresholds, granting approval-in-principle status earlier to stabilize families, and fixing system errors that cause wrongful rejections.
Laurent Martel and Ron Gravel from Statistics Canada explained that the agency provides population estimates and projections used by IRCC for planning, noting that after record 3% annual population growth in 2023-2024, growth has slowed to under 0.5% due to a decline of 100,000 non-permanent residents over three quarters. They confirmed that Statistics Canada does not track health care access or costs for non-permanent residents, and that entry and exit data from CBSA is being evaluated to improve population measurement.
Rabab Al Khatib highlighted that Rainbow Railroad receives one request for help every 26 minutes, with over 90% seeking relocation to Canada, and recommended hiring more decision-makers trained on SOGIESC cases, introducing fast-track procedures for clear-cut claims, expanding the government-assisted refugee partnership, removing the provision in Bill C-12 that renders refugee claimants ineligible if they claim more than one year after entry, and ensuring universal access to legal aid for inland claimants.
Mehmet Tohti and Zaimira Dilimulati reported that of the 10,000 Uyghur refugees Parliament committed to resettle by 2026 under the M-62 program, only 143 have arrived, with 770 applications referred to IRCC but processing slowed by limited annual quotas and allocation in the immigration levels plan. They recommended increasing the allocation of Uyghur refugees under the levels plan, expediting arrivals to prevent refoulement to China, and extending the program deadline, noting that over 80% of applicants are working age and many hold higher education degrees in skilled fields.
The committee briefly discussed procedural matters regarding the request for correspondence between Statistics Canada and IRCC on non-permanent resident data publication between 2018 and 2023.
AI-generated summary — may contain errors; verify against the official evidence.