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Results: 1 - 15 of 151
View Dan Albas Profile
CPC (BC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here with your committee today.
Minister, I'm very happy that you and the officials are here today.
Minister, sometimes I think that oftentimes parliamentarians relay only complaints to ministers. I think it's appropriate where that happens, but I would like to highlight a few things that are important to my riding of Okanagan—Coquihalla.
A few years back, I had the opportunity to question some of the officials from Shared Services Canada specifically on the accessibility of websites. I had a resident who is blind and had to rely on very cheap software or free software. Some of the changes made when Shared Services Canada made the Government of Canada websites more accessible were really a thrill to him, because he was able to feel that he was part of the country. He's able to ask and seek information about government programs or policies that affect him, and that certainly is an important thing. I wanted to say that it's been important in my riding.
There's some further feedback. Of course, this isn't directed at you, Minister, but he also wishes that the Parliament of Canada's websites were just as accessible. Obviously, Parliament is not a government agency, so it has its own processes for putting those in place, but I would certainly encourage those officials who are in charge of our websites to take a look at what Shared Services Canada has done, because it has won quite good accolades in my riding.
Furthermore, I had the opportunity to talk to someone who worked in Ottawa for a number of years for a subcontractor and did a lot of military work. I had the opportunity to ask him about Shared Services Canada's approach and to ask if he agreed that there would be a fair bit of savings, Minister.
Your presentation today shows first of all that there have been quite a lot of savings right across government. I'm happy to see that Moore's law is being reflected, in that we have new data centres that are able to consolidate into one centre the operations that previously would have had to be done by probably three or four centres. Actually, I think some of the numbers shown here are much higher than that.
He also emphasized to me that the security is much better for the government, because it's far easier to look after a smaller amount of resources than to have hundreds of these centres being watched.
A number of things are here, but in your statement, Minister, you showed that the main estimates represent a total of $1.44 billion and of course a net decrease. Are there specific files that you think the Canadian public would benefit from hearing about? Again, there are big savings and great security for the government. What other elements do you think would be important for my taxpayers to hear about?
View Guy Lauzon Profile
CPC (ON)
In other words, every five years there's going to be $1 billion of savings and, Ms. Forand, I think you said it's going to get up to $400 million. In other words, every five years we'll save $2 billion. That is the kind of government that I think we want to have in place, so thank you very much for that. That's music to my ears.
One of the other things, and this is a little personal note, is that my office used to get a lot of calls from people that they couldn't use the websites. I think you mentioned the IT has improved greatly. I'm not getting those comments now. I think your websites in the various departments, all the departments, seem to be more user-friendly. As a matter of fact, I was on one yesterday for Canada 150 and it was really useful. Even I could use it, so that's a good testament. It's nice to hear.
The other thing I heard is about the 256 companies. My riding is a middle-class riding and over the years we've had challenges with employment and now we find that our companies are working. Shipbuilding has nothing to do with my riding—we're between both oceans—but quite frankly, we're excited about that because we're going to get a heck of a lot of contracts, especially from the east coast. There are a lot of fabricators in my riding. You mentioned small businesses. These folks are creating jobs and when another welder is hired at $60,000 to $80,000 a year, that adds to our economy. All of that is good.
As I said, I heard a lot of good things here. You talked about the Miramichi call centre. For the last five years we have had a call centre in our riding and it's like an anchor tenant at a mall. When you have a good government facility like that, it encourages other people to invest, and our community has improved over the last five years as a result. I'm very happy for Miramichi.
I have a question for the minister. Minister, you mentioned there would be 50,000 jobs for the next 30 years for shipbuilding, so probably in the next three to five years we'll be dealing with everybody in the world. We have 38 free trade agreements already and growing. You talked about the ups and downs in shipbuilding, but is there a way that once we do our work we can sell our shipbuilding expertise to other countries? I guess that's what I'm asking, because I would think that after 10 to 15 years we're going to be in pretty good shape.
André Gagnon
View André Gagnon Profile
André Gagnon
2015-05-26 11:00
We'll try to meet your expectations.
Good morning. We are pleased to be here to provide you with a progress report on the implementation of the electronic petition system.
I am accompanied today by Stéphan Aubé, Chief Information Officer, and Jean-Philippe Brochu, Deputy Principal Clerk in the Journals Branch.
Our objective is twofold. First, we will provide you with a progress report and brief you on some of the outstanding issues. Secondly, we'll show you some of the mock-ups—that's really the reason why you're here, I suspect—of what the e-petition website would look like. All of this should not take more than 10 to 15 minutes.
I am happy to report that the work is going very well. We expect to launch the website for the beginning of the new Parliament, as requested. The implementation of this new system will require $250,000 of new investments. The initial estimate based on Mr. Stewart's proposal, as you remember, was up to $200,000. The committee's recommendations were much more complex and required much more significant technological investments. That explains the difference.
In addition, an employee was hired to monitor the e-petition system and ensure it works properly. We set out to create a system that is both easy to use and very secure.
ln this regard, the report adopted by the House insisted on the importance of the protection of personal information and the integrity of the petition process. As a result, the system will also have the highest levels of privacy protections. Monitoring and verification mechanisms will also be included. Personal information will be deleted in accordance with the House's strict data retention policies, based on the model used for the departure of MPs.
Before we proceed with the mock-ups, we would like to draw your attention to two specific issues.
The first one is IP addresses. Under the proposed system, the clerk of petitions will have the necessary tools to further enhance the integrity of the process. The clerk may also withdraw invalid petitions or signatures that compromise the process.
Public IP addresses that belong to the federal government will be blocked.
The second issue concerns the posting of responses to paper petitions online. Obviously, responses to e-petitions will be easy to post online.
However, as you know, over 3,000 paper petitions are tabled in the House each year. A response is prepared for each one. Discussions are under way with our partners at the Privy Council Office—and they're going very well—but considering the scope of the project and the short deadline, online publication of responses to paper petitions will not be possible by the deadline, given the resources available. If the committee wishes, we can return after the launch to reconsider this option and report on the challenges involved.
Besides this specific issue, we are pleased to inform you that the other recommendations in the committee's report will be implemented with the opening of the next Parliament. For example, various guides and manuals will be prepared and made available. lt will be easy for individuals to follow the petition they signed through the various stages of the process. A section of the website will keep a record of all the petitions that have been published, sorted by Parliament, and accompanied by the response provided. All Canadians will be able to consult the website and find information on a given petition for a long period of time.
Finally, I wanted to mention that we have developed a communication plan to ensure a successful launch, and training sessions will be offered to interested MPs and their assistants.
Thank you for your attention. We would be happy to answer your questions right after Jean-Philippe presents the mock-ups.
Jean-Philippe Brochu
View Jean-Philippe Brochu Profile
Jean-Philippe Brochu
2015-05-26 11:04
Good morning.
I have the thankless task of showing you the mock-ups. I hope you will be more interested in what is before you than in what I will be telling you.
Before I start, I have a few disclaimers.
First of all, the mock-ups we will be presenting to you today are static. The website is not operational. Although it may be tempting to do so, we unfortunately cannot click on the links on the screen. We are simply trying to give you an idea of what the future website will look like.
Second of all, you should keep in mind that the website's design and features may change before the launch. What you are seeing here today and what you will see after the election could be slightly different.
The first two mock-ups show the website's homepage.
The home page will be accessible on the Parliament of Canada website through a link on the second page, just after the first page where you select French or English. The website and the system are simple and easy to understand and to navigate. The home page will also contain four distinct and clear sections. We adopted a look and feel similar to those of upcoming new websites.
The system will automatically detect logins associated with an MP's account, and a “Sponsor” button will appear at the top of the page. We will use the same accounts as those authorized for submitting e-notices. A process to manage access or permissions similar in nature to the ones used to manage e-notices will be put in place.
A sign-in button will be available for those who already have an account to submit petitions. There's also a quick search box to easily find open or archived petitions. It will be possible to link to social media platforms on each page of the website, including on each specific petition web page.
A section of the website will be devoted to all the information about the petition process—guides, user manuals and step-by-step documents. Throughout the website, petitioners will have access to information to help them navigate.
The next image is somewhat different and gives a glimpse of the website's homepage on a mobile device. This will not be a separate application to be downloaded, but rather a light or adapted version of a desktop computer's interface. So the content will be adapted to small screens. The content and the design will also be in line with the current best practices for mobile devices and will be compatible with the vast majority of mobile devices on the market.
The next mock-up is an example of a form for submitting a petition.
We'll go through it from the top to the bottom. An e-petition practical guide will be available to consult or download. There will be plenty of information icons identified by the letter “i” next to the key steps. This page will contain drop-down menus throughout the form to help petitioners frame their petition in a proper way.
As per the committee report, petitioners will be prompted to identify five supporters, with the possibility of identifying up to 10 names to make sure the petition receives five positive answers. If need be, additional supporters above five will receive a notification informing them that the petition has already reached enough supporters. The five supporters and the petitioner will automatically be added to the list of signatories once the petition is published. It means that a published e-petition will automatically start with a total of six signatures.
E-petitioners will be allowed to have one e-petition open for signature and one draft e-petition in the system at any given time. Upon request from an e-petitioner to the clerk of petitions, petitions will be allowed to be withdrawn up to the time of their publication on the website. Petitions already published on the website can be closed and moved to the archived section, but only to be replaced with a second and different petition, as per the committee report.
In order to make sure that no robots sign the petition, security features will be included in the form. It will also be possible to preview and save a draft before submitting the petition.
The next mock-up is the default view of all petitions open for signature. If you click on the option “Sign or view an e-petition” on the homepage, you will be redirected to this page. You could switch between the two main tabs. The first one contains petitions open for signature, in the 120-day period to gather signatures. The second one contains all e-petitions and all the information about the various stages of their progress—for instance, whether they are certified, whether they have been presented in the House, or whether the government has responded to them. That tab even contains older petitions that have been archived.
By default, the petitions will be classified by topic, but they could be sorted in a number of other ways—for instance, by the number of signatures or by their closing date.
We have also included a user-friendly search engine that will help visitors further personalize their searches, such as by the name of an MP sponsoring a petition, by keyword or by full text search.
It will be possible to export data in CSV files—in other words, the types of files used by Excel—and in XML format.
When you click on one of the results, you will be redirected to a detailed page for each petition. We have tried to simplify as much as possible the user options for each petition's detailed page.
There are three distinct sections on that form. First of all, at the top is the petition prayer. Then on the right are the petition details, including the breakdown by province and territory. Finally, at the bottom left you will find the section to sign the petition, including security features and three check boxes—one for the citizenship or residency status, one for the terms of use, and one to receive automatic email notifications at each subsequent step reached by the e-petition.
Petitioners can also subscribe to an RSS feed on each e-petition web page.
After they sign a petition, signatories will receive an email with a hyperlink they have to click on to confirm their identity.
Once they complete the mandatory fields and click on “submit”, signatories will automatically receive an email to confirm their signature.
The email will contain the date and time by which they have to confirm their signature, a link they will have to click on, as well as the clerk of petitions' contact information.
We have designed a specific interface for members acting as sponsors. After a new request to sponsor a petition is sent by a petitioner, the chosen member receives an email with a link to his or her e-petition web page. He or she may also access this part of the website through the home page.
Members will find three distinct tabs on this page: first, the pending requests, organized from the most urgent to the least one; then the petitions a member has already sponsored; and finally, the declined requests. User guides specifically intended for members of Parliament will also be available.
Once you have clicked on one of the petitions, a new page opens. The prayer of the e-petition is reproduced, as well as the petitioner's contact information, as per the committee's request. Members have the option to provide comments when accepting or declining the requests or simply to contact petitioners directly, using the contact information provided. There will be a 30-day deadline to respond to requests, after which the e-petitioner will be given the opportunity to select another member. The system will automatically send two reminders to the member: a first reminder after 10 days and a final notice three days before the deadline.
All e-petitions published at some point on the website will leave a trace in the archive section, with the relevant notes, response, and final status information.
When analyzing the report, we realized that as things currently stand there will be a discrepancy in the manner in which paper and electronic petitions will be handled at dissolution. Currently, once a paper petition has been certified, it can always be presented in a subsequent Parliament. We consider that a certificate issued for a paper petition remains valid after the election. We therefore suggest to the committee to allow petitions that have reached 500 signatures before an election is called, even if the 120 days are not over, to be certified and presented in a subsequent Parliament, as is currently allowed for paper petitions.
Finally, at dissolution only the options to create, submit, and sign e-petitions will be deactivated. The archived e-petitions, government responses, and other information of a general nature will remain posted for consultation by the public.
That concludes the presentation.
We will be happy to answer your questions.
View John McCallum Profile
Lib. (ON)
Excuse me, Minister. How can you say these numbers are completely inaccurate when they come from your own department?
View John McCallum Profile
Lib. (ON)
Well, look. I have the numbers for refugees today from your website for the current processing times, and it says for refugees, government-assisted, 18.5 months; privately sponsored, 38.9 months. These are from your website as of yesterday, so I don't think you can be more up to date than that.
View John McCallum Profile
Lib. (ON)
Right, and with all due respect, you're cherry-picking favourable cases. I'm giving you the overall numbers.
Hon. Chris Alexander: No, I'm talking about—
Hon. John McCallum: I do have an alternative explanation. If you look at the processing times, they spike up in 2011. They go straight up after 2007. They spike up when you introduce the expenditure cuts under the strategic and operating review.
We've seen the effects of these cuts, and as your own backgrounder admitted, for citizen applications as well. A lot of this, I think, is resource-related, as the spike up starting in 2011 indicates. But your RPP doesn't indicate any new funding for this.
I'm at a loss to explain whether you care about these skyrocketing waiting times, or what, without the additional money, you propose to do about it.
View Devinder Shory Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you, Minister.
I want to expand on express entry while we are talking about this.
We know it is vital for the government to respond to labour market needs and work with employers to do so. I'd like you to explain how express entry is engaging employers. Was CIC in contact with industry leaders leading up to the launch of express entry, and were they interested at all?
View Chris Alexander Profile
CPC (ON)
Thank you very much for that question, Mr. Shory.
Let's register a note of caution with regard to our waiting times and our service standards. I know all of my colleagues on this side are very conscious of the fact that the numbers on our website, the way we post them, do not fully reflect the reality. They often reflect the worst-case scenario for privately sponsored refugees, for example, and the statistical picture for every one of our programs is actually more complicated and it's hard to express with one number.
An easy application, an application that's been properly filled out, as most of them are, moves forward quickly. One where we go back and forth with the applicant to find out more information to complete the application takes longer, and those worst-case scenarios are often reflected conservatively in the numbers we have on our website, but we're working on reflecting the reality.
Express entry has been a success not only because it's faster, not only because it ranks large numbers of potential immigrants before they apply—and we're talking about 30,000 who are in the pool right now—while we invite recent rounds to apply, between 1,000 and 1,500 roughly in the latest round.... We really are selecting from a large number of highly qualified people. What else is good about it is that we now, as of May 2015, have full functionality for the provinces and close to full functionality for businesses in Canada, which means they can see online the people who want to come to Canada as immigrants when they register with us.
We have had thousands, I think close to tens of thousands, of companies register as part of the Canada job bank to be able to see who is coming to Canada through express entry, to have the opportunity to recruit them as they come, and even connect with them before they're invited to come as immigrants. That is a huge benefit for us, because we in government do not want to be choosing exactly who comes. We know we need accountants and we know we need software engineers, but we're not the ones to decide whether out of 10 software engineers these two should come, or these three should come. It is the private sector, it is employers, who must make those decisions, because it's part of their competitive advantage to choose the right person.
Express entry allows them to do just that. As well, when there is an LMIA, which as I say for permanent immigration they can achieve free of charge, they can literally bring people if not to the front of the line, close to it, under express entry when a Canadian is not available to do the job. We anticipate under express entry many more immigrants coming to Canada who have jobs, who are going to work immediately, who have been recruited by employers, which was not the case in the past.
View Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe Profile
NDP (QC)
That answers my question. I do not need further details. That is what I thought.
Perhaps Mr. Orr can tell me whether, according to what I saw on the CIC website today, the routine files are processed on the average in 23 months. Is that correct and do I understand the situation clearly? How can the minister talk to us about 12-month processing times if the department's website cites 23 months? Could you please enlighten me?
Robert Orr
View Robert Orr Profile
Robert Orr
2015-05-26 9:16
Mr. Chair, essentially the discrepancy in that is because we are dealing with a huge backlog. When you deal with a major backlog of applicants and are working through it, the processing times tend to go up before they come down. What we are in right now is that phase of when they're going up as we work through the backlog. We're going through it at a very fast pace right now, far faster than we anticipated, in fact. So very soon processing times will come down, both for complex and non-complex cases. We're committed by the end of March 2016 to be well under 12 months. In fact, if you were applying today for citizenship, your application would be processed in well under 12 months. That's already happening.
I think what you will see in the processing times reflected on the website, which are always a bit behind anyway, is the reflection of this going through the backlog, and then the processing times coming down quite dramatically after that.
View Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe Profile
NDP (QC)
Thank you.
I know that you do very rigorous work and that we will probably see a decrease in application processing times soon. However, according to what we see on the website, the current processing time is still officially 23 months for routine files.
Robert Orr
View Robert Orr Profile
Robert Orr
2015-05-26 9:18
Yes, but as we're seeing at the moment, we increased the number of people who became citizens last year. As we said, it was a record number in Canadian history. We're also going to see very large numbers this year as we work through that backlog.
The reality is that if you're applying now, it's going to be well under 12 months.
View John McCallum Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you.
On the question of data, we used open data from data.gc.ca, as well as the current website. I'm not clear why this should overstate wait processing times, since I understand only the 20% slowest cases are excluded anyway. It's only the 80% that are fastest. To give you just one example, for the last 12 months ending September 30, the average processing time for skilled workers under MI1, MI2, MI3—I think that's ministerial instructions—were respectively 35 months, 55 months, and 25 months according to the website yesterday. Those were the figures on which I was basing my questions. Are those figures, in some sense, misleading?
Anita Biguzs
View Anita Biguzs Profile
Anita Biguzs
2015-05-26 9:25
Mr. Chair, I'll turn to my colleague, Mr. Orr, but first I'll say that the inventory of federal skilled worker program has been reduced by over 93% since 2008. What we have now is a working inventory that we're working through and it's the transition.... As we've introduced the new express entry system, which we launched in January, we've actually had an intake to make sure that.... We couldn't predict how successful express entry would be, so we wanted to make sure we had a working inventory in the federal skilled worker category. As we ramp up on express entry, certainly our working inventory we will work down through this year and, I think, a very small number into 2016.
Mr. Orr, perhaps you could add to that.
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