Federal ministers say hiring helping with visa, immigration delays

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OTTAWA — The federal Liberal authorities says tons of of extra workers have been added in latest months to deal with lengthy wait instances and backlogs at Canadian airports in addition to passport and immigration places of work.

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But whereas the hiring spree has began to make a distinction, cupboard ministers acknowledged Monday that much more work is required to unravel what has turn out to be a political headache for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s authorities.

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“We’re not out of the woods by any stretch of the creativeness,” Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller stated Monday. “There’s numerous work to do. And in some instances, we aren’t as much as the pre-pandemic service degree that Canadians anticipate and deserve.”

Miller was talking as co-chair of a particular process pressure that Trudeau established in June to assist deal with main delays with immigration purposes and passport processing.

Comprised of 10 ministers, the duty pressure was created in response to widespread public anger and frustration over the delays, which has additionally included important issues at airports throughout the nation.

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Six of these ministers appeared at a information convention on Monday to replace Canadians on their work up to now, throughout which they alternately accepted a number of the blame for the issues whereas additionally blaming components outdoors their management.

“How did this occur?” stated Girls and Gender Equality Minister Marci Ien, the duty pressure’s different co-chair. “The longer reply is that we’ve seen an unprecedented surge in journey by Canadians.”

Miller nonetheless stated the delays “ought to by no means have occurred,” earlier than Social Improvement Minister Karina Gould, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and Immigration Minister Sean Fraser supplied an replace on motion of their departments.

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That features making it simpler to resume passports, new measures to hurry safety screening at Toronto’s Pearson Worldwide Airport, and a brand new coverage popping out on Sept. 8 round airways having to supply refunds for modified or cancelled flights.

But a lot of the ministers’ laundry record revolved round hiring tons of of latest workers to course of passport and immigration purposes and velocity up airport safety screening, which they stated was beginning to have an effect.

For instance, Gould stated the federal government has employed 700 extra folks over the previous 12 months to assist with passports, and that about 65 per cent of purposes at the moment are being processed throughout the authorities’s 10-day service normal.

“However inside that common, there’s nonetheless a niche that we should fill,” Gould stated.

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Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada equally plans so as to add greater than 1,250 workers by the top of the autumn to assist course of visa purposes, Fraser stated, including: “Regardless of the work, we all know that the wait is simply too lengthy.”

But whereas Miller stated Ottawa’s hiring spree has helped, he made clear that the federal government doesn’t think about it the long-term reply.

“We’ve addressed this drawback all through the summer time by doing just about one or two issues,” he stated. “We’ve thrown our bodies on the drawback, which isn’t the simplest approach of doing issues.”

Trudeau created the duty pressure after extreme criticism of the Liberal authorities earlier this 12 months, when folks camped out at passport places of work and lined up for hours for airport safety screening, inflicting flight delays.

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Figures launched earlier this month confirmed practically 1.1 million purposes for brand spanking new and renewed passports have been filed since April as pandemic restrictions loosen and Canadians resume travelling.

A couple of-quarter of these hadn’t but been processed as of early August.

But authorities statistics additionally confirmed the system is beginning to meet up with demand, because the gulf narrows between the variety of passport purposes every month versus the variety of passports issued.

In the meantime, as of the top of July, roughly 1.3 million immigration purposes have taken longer to course of than the federal government’s service requirements dictate they need to. That’s about 54 per cent of all pending purposes within the system.