With regard to part (c) of the government's response to Q-2104, which was tabled on January 28, 2019, and states that “The client submits a completed application by mail to the Permanent Resident Card Processing Centre in Sydney, Nova Scotia. The application is verified for completeness. If it is not complete, the application is returned to the client.”: (a) what are the average wait times for the return of applications which are not complete; and (b) is there any priority given to applications that have been deemed incomplete, once they are returned back to the Permanent Resident Card Processing Centre for a second time, or are the applications subject to the same waiting and processing times as a brand new application?
Madam Speaker,
insofar as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, IRCC, is concerned, in response to (a), as of March 5, 2019, the average processing time for IRCC to verify an application for completeness was 29 days from the day IRCC receives the original application. If it is not complete, the application is returned to the client. The return time has decreased significantly in the past year, from an average of 87 days between October and December 2018 to the current processing time of 29 days. These numbers do not include mailing time and are in calendar days.
As of March 5, 2019, the processing time to renew a permanent resident card was 32 days from the day the application is received to the day a final decision is made. The processing time does not include card printing time, which has a three-day service standard, and mailing time.
Note that the processing times are subject to change depending on available resources and volume of applications received.
In response to (b), applications previously returned as incomplete and resubmitted are subject to the normal processing times. They are not given priority processing.