Bill C6 - Official and verified facts!

[HamiltonApplicant]

Larger trends:

• Citizenship grants 2014->2015-16->2016-17 -----------> 250K->230K->105K
• Processing times 2015-16->2016-17-> As of now -----------> 21 Months->15 Months->12 Months

Number of PRs per year :
250K-300K(Source : http://www.cic.gc.ca/opendata-donneesouvertes/data/IRCC_overview_0001_E.xls)

Number of citizenship grants under "old" Bill C6 3/4 year rule in year 2014:
250K + some (Source http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canada-welcomed-record-number-of-new-citizens-in-2014/)

Number of citizenship grant applications "mostly" under Bill C24 4/6 year rule during Apr 2015 to Mar 2016:
100K + some (Source http://www.cic.gc.ca/opendata-donneesouvertes/data/IRCC_overview_0003_E.xls)

Number of citizenship grants "mostly" under Bill C24 4/6 year rule during Apr 2015 to Mar 2016:
230K + some (Source http://www.cic.gc.ca/opendata-donneesouvertes/data/IRCC_overview_0003_E.xls)

Average processing time "mostly" under Bill C24 4/6 year rule during Apr 2015 to Mar 2016:
21 Months + some (Source http://www.cic.gc.ca/opendata-donneesouvertes/data/IRCC_overview_0003_E.xls)

Number of citizenship grant applications "fully" under Bill C24 4/6 year rule during Apr 2016 to Mar 2017:
100K + some (Source http://www.cic.gc.ca/opendata-donneesouvertes/data/IRCC_overview_0003_E.xls)

Number of citizenship grants "fully" under Bill C24 4/6 year rule during Apr 2015 to Mar 2016:
105K + some (Source http://www.cic.gc.ca/opendata-donneesouvertes/data/IRCC_overview_0003_E.xls)

Average processing time "fully" under Bill C24 4/6 year rule during Apr 2016 to Mar 2017:
15 Months + some (Source http://www.cic.gc.ca/opendata-donneesouvertes/data/IRCC_overview_0003_E.xls)

Average processing time "fully" under Bill C24 4/6 year rule during As of now:
12 Months

Larger trends again:

• Citizenship grants 2014->2015-16->2016-17 -----------> 250K->230K->105K
• Processing times 2015-16->2016-17-> As of now -----------> 21 Months->15 Months->12 Months

P.S.I am making no predictions as of now, yours are welcome!

 

[rustic]

Great accumulation of data with supporting links. Wait and watch for comments you are going to have a long week replying to comments.

 

[spyfy]

Just one clarification: you can't call it "old c-6". Yes, the rule was 3 years (out of four back then), but the process of handling applications was overhauled completely by c-24 and that overhaul remains in place with c-6.

Writing "old c-6" seems to imply that before 2015 the situation was as it will be soon. That's not correct.

 

[NewUser2018]

for those complaining or who want to get citizenship in 4-8 months, Bill c6 is not for you and was intended for you, bill C6 was drafted to get rid of second class status. If you are mad apps will balloon because victims of c24 will apply once c6 effective this fall then you are just selfish brat and deserve to cry, just be happy for victims of bill c24 to get their justice.

 

[itsmyid]

for those complaining or who want to get citizenship in 4-8 months, Bill c6 is not for you and was intended for you, bill C6 was drafted to get rid of second class status. If you are mad apps will balloon because victims of c24 will apply once c6 effective this fall then you are just selfish brat and deserve to cry, just be happy for victims of bill c24 to get their justice.

How is your inflammatory ranting “official and verified fact”?

 

[devilhimselff]

Another important factor is also the application Fee increase that has had a prohibitory effect on some individuals and families.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-citizenship-applications-decrease-1.3976140

 

[SufferInCan]

Number of citizenship grants under "old" Bill C6 3/5 year rule in year 2014:
250K + some (Source http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canada-welcomed-record-number-of-new-citizens-in-2014/)

Old rule was NEVER 3/5. At that time it was 3/4 !!!

 

[HamiltonApplicant]

Great accumulation of data with supporting links. Wait and watch for comments you are going to have a long week replying to comments.

Thanks! I wish could access the single most important piece of information: The data from the year 2014, the year preceding Bill C24, but not much luck there!

As for comments and replies, facts are not interesting, most prefer feelings and speculations while insisting on facts!

 

[HamiltonApplicant]

Just one clarification: you can't call it "old c-6". Yes, the rule was 3 years (out of four back then), but the process of handling applications was overhauled completely by c-24 and that overhaul remains in place with c-6.

Semantics, but OK! Please provide me the bill # that enacted pre C24 citizenship act.

Writing "old c-6" seems to imply that before 2015 the situation was as it will be soon. That's not correct.

No I am implying anything! With Pre-PR credit in play, there is not way the emerging situation would like that before 2015; There will be a lot changes, not for good I am afraid....

 

[dpenabill]

Semantics, but OK! Please provide me the bill # that enacted pre C24 citizenship act.

The difference is NOT mere semantics.

The requirements prior to June 11, 2015 (changing on that date per Bill C-24) were very different than what the requirements will be when the Bill C-6 changes take effect.

Just a sampling of the differences:

Differences in minimum residency/presence:

-- Before 2015, there was NO minimum physical presence requirement if the applicant could persuade the decision-maker to apply a qualitative residency test; there were various, inconsistent tests for residency, leading to confusion and unpredictable results, and injustice

-- from June 2015 to date Bill C-6 rules take effect, absolute minimum presence required (after becoming a PR) is 1460 days

-- when Bill C-6 rules take effect, absolute minimum physical presence requirement is 1095 days


Differences in relevant time period:

-- before June 2015, the relevant time period was four years

-- from June 2015 to date Bill C-6 rules take effect, relevant time period is six years

-- when Bill C-6 rules take effect, the relevant time period will be five years


Differences relative to time prior to becoming a PR:

-- before June 2015, time present in Canada before becoming a PR counted, but only if it was within four years of the date the application was made

-- from June 2015 to date Bill C-6 rules take effect, no time prior to becoming a PR counts

-- when Bill C-6 rules take effect, time present in Canada before becoming a PR will count, as long as it is within FIVE years of the date the application is made

Sources:
for current (mostly Bill C-24) law: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-29/page-2.html#docCont and also see http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-29/section-5-20150611.html (the latter includes the Bill C-24 intent to reside requirement, which was removed per Bill C-6 as of June 19, 2017)

for requirements prior to June 11, 2015 (prior to Bill C-24 changes) see http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-29/section-5-20140619.html#wb-cont


for version of Bill C-24 adopted and given royal assent, see http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/41-2/bill/C-24/royal-assent/page-4

for version of Bill C-6 adopted and given royal assent, see http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-6/royal-assent


Differences in process itself:

Prior to August 1, 2014, CIC (before change to IRCC obviously) did not have any authority to grant citizenship without a Citizenship Judge's approval. Thus every single application had to be presented to and decided by a Citizenship Judge.

As of August 1, 2014, the role of CJs was dramatically reduced, pursuant to which referrals of the case to a CJ were limited to residency or presence cases (and another exception, too complicated to explain here and now, affecting a very small number of applicants). Basically, since August 1, 2014, the vast majority of cases are decided by a Citizenship Officer, no CJ involved . . . except that CJs still preside over the oath ceremonies.

Biggest impact of this: CIC could deny applicants who failed the knowledge of Canada test or the language requirements without those cases bogging down CJ referrals and hearings (prior to 2014, the overwhelming majority of CJ hearings were for knowledge of Canada and language capability cases), deny applicants with prohibitions, and proceed to schedule the oath for routinely approved applicants without waiting for a CJ to have time to review the cases. A big deal.

No I am implying anything! With Pre-PR credit in play, there is not way the emerging situation would like that before 2015; There will be a lot changes, not for good I am afraid....

Again, pre-PR credit was available before 2015. It will be available again once Bill C-6 takes effect. Difference is that the period of time during which pre-PR credit counts will be the previous five years rather than just the previous four years it was before 2015.

This has significant derivative consequences. For example, the 2-for-1 delay for absences for applicants relying on pre-PR credit in applications made prior to 2015, should not affect many relying on Bill C-6 pre-PR credit. (This has to do with the difference between a four year versus a five year relevant time period and how past days thus fall out of the calculation.)

 

[spyfy]

Semantics, but OK! Please provide me the bill # that enacted pre C24 citizenship act.


No I am implying anything! With Pre-PR credit in play, there is not way the emerging situation would like that before 2015; There will be a lot changes, not for good I am afraid....

I am not concerned about the bill number of course. But it is unfortunately a common theme that people in this forum think "since 2015, the processing time for citizenship went down due to the new residency requirement.", i.e. people simply ignore that the bill c-24 did not just change the residency requirements but actually significantly reduced the involvement of citizenship judges. The shortage of these judges was the major cause of processing delays.

In fact, that removal of the citizenship judge from most processing was possibly the only good outcome of C-24 and C-6 thankfully kept that change.

I also didn't say that you are implying anything. I was just commenting on how it could be read. It is just the wrong narrative that we will now go back to the state citizenship processing was in before C-24.

We are not in a situation of A=>B=>A, we are in a situation of A=> B => C.

Again, I'm not saying you were saying anything else. I wanted to clarify this for the other readers of this forum. And it is in fact kind of frustrating that no one seems to care about this removal of the citizenship judges from routine processing.

 

[dpenabill]

I wish could access the single most important piece of information: The data from the year 2014, the year preceding Bill C24,

Actually the statistics which would better illuminate something significant about how the changes will affect citizenship application processing are:
-- statistics which show the number of new immigrants to Canada annually over the course of the last four to six years, and
-- statistics showing the long term historical ratio between the number of new immigrants and number of new citizens, roughly indicating what portion of the pool of eligible applicants could be anticipated to apply for citizenship

However, the detailed statistics are not necessary to observe the obvious: the pool of eligible applicants for citizenship will increase by around a quarter million or so the day the new rules take effect. This is as simple as arithmetic and very basic statistics:

As of the day before the new rules take effect, no PRs are eligible for citizenship except those who landed, at the very least, four and more years ago.

As of the day the new rules take effect, suddenly many PRs who landed just two years ago will be eligible, and add to that many many more PRs who landed between three and four years ago.

This is to recognize that the number of newly eligible PRs will increase by at least a number approaching (probably exceeding, especially considering impact of pre-PR credit) the average annual number of new immigrants.

That is, the more significant statistics to consider, in respect to anticipating the impact of the coming changes on citizenship application processing, are those illuminating how many new PRs have been landing and becoming a PR annually. This will roughly illuminate how many PRs will be newly eligible for citizenship as of the day the rules change.

If someone wants to drill more deeply, to examine and analyze statistics which will illuminate more about how many new applications might be expected when the rules change, within six months or a year of the rules changing, I think one might be able to find, at Statistics Canada, data about the number of new PRs who have, historically, applied for and obtained citizenship, offering a rough ratio of how many apply for citizenship within the first or second year of becoming eligible.

Comparing those statistics should enable a statistician to figure out, roughly, within fifty thousand or so, how many new applications might be made in the first six months or so after the changes take effect.

The bigger that number, the more significant an impact on processing timelines might be anticipated. But of course this will be subject to the vagaries of actual, practical bureaucratic adaptation to not just the surge of new applications, but especially as to implementing the changes themselves. So it is mostly impossible to make a specific forecast as to the impact.

Leaving things back to what we know:
-- the pool of eligible applicants will increase by . . . something in the ballpark of a quarter million
-- thus the number of likely applicants will increase by some portion of that number, and
-- a large number of new applications, in conjunction with the logistics of bureaucratic adaption to changes, is likely to cause at least some increase in processing timelines
-- which is subject to whatever measures IRCC is taking to make this transition go smoothly, which most hope will be sufficient for IRCC to adapt and accommodate the surge in applications, plus changes in requirements, resulting in minimal disruption

All of which leads to a couple rather obvious conclusions:
-- we cannot predict what the actual impact will be, but
-- it is reasonable to anticipate at least some increase in the processing timeline, at least temporarily (for a year or so)


In Contrast:

In contrast, statistics about processing citizenship applications in the recent past do not offer much insight at all. Since 2009/2010 the citizenship application process has been subject to one dramatic change after another, one disruption after another. These include the early Harper-era policy to push the imposition of a strict presence test despite three decades of policy and practice, supported by the jurisprudence, oft times liberally applying a qualitative residency test; then the mid-Harper-era crackdown on fraud, and imposition of processing hurdles (with delays looming large) for applicants who appeared to be applying-on-the-way-to-the-airport, or applying-for-a-passport-of-convenience; then there was the near-catastrophic implementation of OB 407 in 2012, a further development in the Harper-era crackdown which nearly brought processing citizenship applications to a standstill (resulting in scores of routine processing timelines to exceed of two years and non-routine processing timelines approaching, some exceeding, four years), leading to a huge, huge backlog in citizenship applications; then the major changes to procedure implemented August 1, 2014 (per Bill C-24), taking the CJ out of the decision-making process for the vast majority of applications; and then in mid-2015 the implementation of dramatically increased requirements, including raising the minimum time as a PR from just two years to four years, imposing an intent requirement, and more.

Now, abruptly, in the course of one day, the required minimum time as a PR will drop from four years to two years.

Not much at all can be gleaned about what impact the latter will have based on mere statistics derived from the often chaotic, up-and-down, more than occasionally twisted sideways history of processing citizenship applications in the preceding six to ten years.


Besides:

In terms of real impact, in terms of what prospective applicants for citizenship need to know, even if the processing timeline increases some, the odds are good that overall the changes will facilitate many thousands, tens of thousands actually, becoming a citizen sooner than they would without the coming changes.

 

[spyfy]

Sorry, seems that dpenabill and I posted something similar at the very same second, but his is much more in-depth.

 

[dpenabill]

I am not concerned about the bill number of course. But it is unfortunately a common theme that people in this forum think "since 2015, the processing time for citizenship went down due to the new residency requirement.", i.e. people simply ignore that the bill c-24 did not just change the residency requirements but actually significantly reduced the involvement of citizenship judges. The shortage of these judges was the major cause of processing delays.

It is very difficult to sort out which factors had the greater impact.

By 2014, CIC had already gotten past the near-catastrophic crash in processing which stalled tens of thousands of applications between 2011 and 2013. Indeed, I applied mid-2013 and my timeline was barely (to the day) eight months, and others at my ceremony had timelines as short as six months. Fairly comparable to recent timelines. Main difference, as of 2014 (before Bill C-24 was even tabled), was the huge backlog . . . new applications apparently being processed on a relatively reasonable timeline, while the applications in backlog, a huge, huge number, wallowed, a slow process lasting until the last year or so.

The bottleneck due to Citizenship Judge availability mostly affected non-routine processing. The vast majority of applicants (but for that period in which the Harper government was employing extraordinary scrutiny even for scores of routine applicants) sailed through the process and the case was submitted to CJs for a paper-review only, and these were overwhelmingly cases in which CIC had in effect approved the applicant and the paperwork presented to CJs was such as to facilitate a CJ's perfunctory examination of CIC's conclusions, and give the stamp of approval.

But sure, a huge part of the CJ bottleneck was due to applicants failing the knowledge of Canada test or failing to meet the language ability requirements, and the fact that prior to August 1, 2014 these applicants had to go to a CJ hearing before they could be denied. That was a huge, huge burden on CJs and the timeline. And the procedural change eliminated most of this.

In the meantime, CIC had done other things like requiring applicants to submit proof of language ability upfront, with the application. This dramatically reduced the number of new applicants who did not meet the language requirements bogging down the system.

Nonetheless, the pool of eligible applicants dropped by huge numbers the day the 4/6 rule took effect and would not increase by much for at least a year. And the number of applications made in the following two years reflects that (one of the few aspects of things the statistics cited in this thread are relevant to illustrate).

And the impact of an actual physical presence requirement itself should not be underestimated. There were scores and scores of so-called shortfall cases, under the old 3/4 residency rules, and those cases demanded a vastly disproportionate share of CIC resources and imposed a large burden on CJs. The 4/6 APP rules totally eliminated the problems associated with processing shortfall (or qualitative residency) cases.

Since the implementation of a minimum APP rule, any application which on its face falls short can be summarily returned to the applicant. Under the old 3/4 rule, just being a PR for three years made the individual eligible for citizenship, so no matter how few days the applicant had been in Canada, CIC had to go through the whole application processing scheme and refer the case to a CJ for a hearing before the application could be denied. And if you look at old cases, it is staggering how few days in Canada many applicants had . . . scores applied having spent no more than a few scattered months in Canada. Most were obviously NOT qualified (not resident-in-Canada the requisite three years), but because they were eligible (meeting what was then called the "basic residency" requirement), but nonetheless CIC had to go through the whole procedural scheme, including a CJ hearing, in order to deny those applicants citizenship.

Again, what resulted in this latter change was the implementation of a fixed minimum physical presence requirement.

It is also remarkable how many of those shortfall cases were then appealed. And of course that was the other part of the big procedural changes which took effect August 1, 2014, the applicant's right to appeal was eliminated (there is still an avenue for appeal for those who successfully obtain leave for judicial review, but no right to appeal).

Lots and lots has happened over the course of the last half dozen years or so. Sorting out what has had the biggest impact is probably impossible. That said, I would put the change from a residency requirement to an actual presence requirement, at the top of my best guess list. No CJ hearings except in residency or presence cases next. Just my guess.

 

[HamiltonApplicant]

Bill C6 - Winners and losers

H & C - Gold medalists, Bill C6 benefits you the most!!!

PRs/pre-PR credits/qualify only under 3/5 - Silver medalists, Bill C6 benefits you!!

PRs/pre-PR credit/qualify under both 3/5 and 4/6 rules - Bronze medalists, Bill C6 benefits you too!

PRs/no pre-PR credit/qualify only under 3/5 - No medals for you, you find a place in the queue a earlier than otherwise!

PRs/no pre-PR credit/qualify under both 3/5 and 4/6 rules - Bill c6 does not work you Wishful thinking - IRCC provides you priority processing!