I just honestly feel like it's fallen through the cracks. The government isn't malicious and they aren't out to deny new immigrants a chance at citizenship. It's just not something that's top of mind for them. Especially with various crises going on. The only solution is to rise above the din, and keep reminding the government that this is an important issue. Either via *carrots* - we will vote for you; or *sticks* - media attention, opposition complaints and legal proceedings. It's just the nature of things.Just give me a reason . Schools are going to be opened, Driving tests are being taken, all other academic tests in the fields of Medicine, Engineering or etc have been started either in-site or online. Why should Citizenship tests still are suspended? why IRCC cannot manage it?
Citizenship test: Collective action required, or expect endless delays, years. Example of the effective lobbyng of people awaiting spousal sponsorship
- Thread starter piotrqc
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@dpenabill Just curious. What do you do for a living? I have admired your posts since they're very detailed and erudite.
It's not that they cannot manage... It's simply that they don't want to bother !Just give me a reason . Schools are going to be opened, Driving tests are being taken, all other academic tests in the fields of Medicine, Engineering or etc have been started either in-site or online. Why should Citizenship tests still are suspended? why IRCC cannot manage it?
If immigration and citizenship is not a priority for this government why they are taking the oaths, why everyday there are news about accepting new immigrants in different provinces e.g. by express entry or so? They have only problem with tests?!! OK, if they have; Just please tell people no tests till end of this year, till end of this decade, till end of the century !!!!! BUT. Please tell us a date. Keeping all of us in this situation is not fair
They should start soon. Unless the objective is go reduce numbers per year.Just give me a reason . Schools are going to be opened, Driving tests are being taken, all other academic tests in the fields of Medicine, Engineering or etc have been started either in-site or online. Why should Citizenship tests still are suspended? why IRCC cannot manage it?
The answer is simple, there is a combination of two explanations:
- The "code 699" procedure for federal employees, which allows time for health or other emergencies to be paid for doing nothing, with no time limit. (With our taxes, of course).
- The union of federal employees which is very powerful, and which will require a daily rate of zero infection before considering, perhaps, returning to work ...
In conclusion: If we keep quiet, it will last for years to come.
And, disaster scenario that I do not want of course, but unfortunately very likely = Early federal elections = Liberal government falling = Conservative majority government = change of the immigration law retroactively = Unlimited stand by and without delay of requests already sent + referrals of all new requests with reimbursement.
... Wake up !
Not sure if this is the right way to do it but I have sent an ATIP request to IRCC with the following. I will keep you guys posted in case they respond with some useful information.
Excellent idea, thanks for thinking about it! ...
For people interested in making a similar request, here is the link:
https://atip-aiprp.tbs-sct.gc.ca/en/Home/Welcome
I will try to do one in French.
Thank you.
I'm old. More or less well past my professional days. I still run a business (on a work until I die retirement plan), and it's easy to guess it involves research and writing, something to do with jurisprudence one might also guess. But I have no expertise in either Canadian law or Canadian immigration, and no professional or occupational relationship to either. Indeed, what I do to earn a living is entirely for export abroad. Been over a quarter century already since I ceased being active in my profession in my home country.
None of which is much relevant. I make an effort to present information backed by sources or as reasonably explained, so there is no need to rely on me as a source, as an authority. Because, indeed, I am NOT an authority.
Conceptually, for someone genuinely interested in doing the homework (and it does demand real work), this is headed in the right direction for getting access to internal government information. For whatever that is worth in the context of this discussion.
However, successfully making productive Access to Information (ATI) requests tends to be a rather sophisticated endeavor. Outside requests within a narrow scope of this or that particular expertise (engineers seeking engineering project stuff for example), it is largely an enterprise engaged in by academics and journalists, with a lot of trial-and-error. Sometimes lawyers (but not as much as one might expect). There is no shortage of not-so-successful requests as well, represented in the open data inventory and online lists of completed access to information requests by requests resulting in a huge volume of "pages," but those are pages filled with irrelevant documents and information, as well as those generating nil results.
These are, of course, DIFFERENT from the ATIP requests frequently discussed in this forum. ATIP requests are for personal records. (Difference between a request for "general records" and request for "personal information.")
In reviewing lists of recent ATI requests and responses, it appears that the current government has a relatively flexible or liberal (nothing to do with what is politically "liberal") approach to interpreting and responding to the requests. Suggesting that you should get some response despite the general and deposition-like character of your queries. (Back when I was engaged more extensively in the ATI request process, when Harper was PM, the form of the query alone could generate a nil result unless it clearly requested government documents and records pertaining to the specified criteria in the request . . . queries in the form of a deposition question typically generated no relevant documents or records.)
The content of the documents and records that will be disclosed to you, in response to your request, may or not answer your queries. Indeed, this process often demands a trial-and-error approach . . . those requesting information refining their queries in each subsequent request.
I am not sure about how the government currently responds to these requests, but in the past they did not answer questions as such, but rather simply provided copies of documents and records regarding the subject matter of the question.
While you can make an effort to share copies of the records and documents here, once you have a response you can simply give us the reference number . . . it should be in the form A-2020-##### . . . and that will enable anyone who wants a complete copy of the response to obtain one directly from the government. The government will share the content of any completed request. (Not sure how Covid-19 is currently affecting this process; I suspect it is interfering more with the way the government responds to the original request, and not so much with requests for copies, but I do not know.)
As for others also getting engaged in this process, again for those sincerely interested in obtaining relevant government information, and genuinely ready to do the homework (real work), coordinated inquiries, and especially learning from the responses to other inquiries, is indeed a powerful tool in learning a lot about what the government is actually doing.
For now you may want to search the government's online data sets for completed access to information requests, to see how others have composed their queries. Without knowing how much relevant information your queries, as quoted in this thread, will generate, I suspect you will get few records, OR a huge number of not particularly relevant or illuminating documents. Yeah, making a request that gets what you want is not easy.
Worth noting, for example, relative to searching already completed requests, just using the search terms "citizenship" and "testing" generates 2,239 completed ATI requests from IRCC alone. Scores of which are barely relevant. Many not at all relevant.
But for sure, coordinated efforts by several can obtain a lot of information. And that information can be helpful. There were many involved in our efforts to dig up information on the Harper government's draconian Residence Questionnaire project, and we did indeed find out a great deal of information (even though much of it was redacted, resulting in a lot of "disclosed in part" responses to the ATI requests) . . . I had a stake in that one . . . dug up enough to persuade me to delay applying for citizenship for more than a year after I had become eligible, and enough to help me decide not only when to apply but how to respond to items in the application, especially as to employment history . . . and to help others similarly trying to navigate the process.
CAVEAT: all that said, I am not sure how what you can learn will be relevant to this topic or useful to those who are trying to encourage IRCC to resume processing, including tests and interviews, more aggressively.
Thank you " dpenabill" for your detailed post,
Could you please add suggestions or advice to your post for those people who are waiting “ desperately” for that ”30 minutes” test.
Because of this issue and after reading your post, I feel that I’m living in a third world country, where you cannot ask the government what they are doing.
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You were right. I got a response for my ATIP request and they want more "clarification". This is indeed a trial and error. They mentioned they don't answer questions but they will provide documentation and have provided a sample wording format on how the request should be sent.
I'll figure out on how to word this (and where to "amend" my request so that they provide the most relevant documentation that relates to citizenship testing holds.
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Maybe requesting documentation on the following items:
1). Please share all records including memos, briefing notes, internal notes, reports in relation to conducting citizenship tests, including strategy going forward, impact on backlog and mitigation strategies.
2). Please share all records including memos, briefing notes, internal notes, reports in relation to the current total number of citizenship applications awaiting AOR, citizenship testing and oaths including any information on reducing time for each stage
3). Please share all records including memos, briefing notes, internal notes, reports in relation to the total number of citizenship applications returned since January 2020 as incomplete
4). Please share all records including memos, briefing notes, internal notes, reports in relation to department strategy on prioritizing different forms of applications including citizenship, new PR, PR renewals, students and spousal sponsorship
and the most important
5). Please share all records including memos, briefing notes, internal notes, reports in relation to total staffing dedicated to different departments including citizenship, new PRS, PR renewal and visas in January 2020 vs July or August 2020 including staff still on 699 leave
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I do not understand how describing aspects of the process for obtaining Canadian government information, and referencing the utterly VAST amount of information that is readily available for those who do the homework to obtain and review it, would influence anyone to feel they are living in a third world country.
I realize many are frustrated. But suggestions that Canada is like a third world country are, at best, extremely hyperbolic.
I am confident you know that.
And you for sure know that I do not offer personal advice, since this has been explicitly discussed in previous direct responses to YOU. More than once as I recall.
If you are trying to bait me, you are hardly the first. For sure not to be the last. There is a tendency to shoot-the-messenger in these waters.
I will offer this: if you are "desperately" in need of progressing through the process of becoming a Canadian citizen, that is undoubtedly for PERSONAL reasons. The advocacy promoted here is aimed at accelerating resumption of citizenship processing generally. Aimed at encouraging IRCC to get things going and to address how to deal with what is already a large, perhaps huge backlog of applications waiting for the next step, which for many means waiting for the test and interview.
IRCC recognizes some personal reasons for needing expedited processing. This is a rather narrow range of reasons. If your needs fall within that range, a request for urgent processing is probably the best you can do for now.
If your personal reasons, your desperate need, falls outside the range of what IRCC recognizes as warranting expedited processing, that is what it is. In this situation it is quite likely your efforts will be more productive, more helpful, FOR YOU PERSONALLY, if they are focused on dealing with whatever is underlying this desperate need . . . after all, while some citizenship applicants will be proceeding through the process in the coming weeks and months, MANY, MANY will be encountering lengthy delays (@piotrqc asserts it is likely to be YEARS, with a "highly likely" risk the law will change and your application returned; I do not apprehend anything anywhere near so extreme as that, but another six months to a year, perhaps even longer, is well within the range of what many should anticipate). And unless they qualify for urgent processing, according to IRCC criteria, the best they can do is manage their personal affairs accordingly. Not my decision. I'm just a messenger, one tending to be more frank than some others seem willing to be.
It is to avoid such delays and scenarios, totally probable - and which are not science fiction - that we must mobilize and use all the possible and legal ways available to us.
Passivity is surely not a solution, and would certainly make the situation worse. More years to wait.
Please, please, do not spice up the discussion with one of the long speeches of which you alone have the secret, off topic and without any interest which will suddenly deflect the subject.
Thanks in advance.
I'm sure you probably wouldn't have had the same speech if you were personally concerned too. Human beings are selfish by nature. The joyful world of telletubies does not exist in reality.
You have the peace of mind of having your Canadian citizenship, not everyone is so fortunate and worried about not having it with the pandemic, and it's normal to be afraid. Human feeling.
With respect, I personally think this interpretation is wrong.
We are not here facing a personal case raising an emergency, but a total blockage of an administrative procedure, the citizenship process, in the impact affects a large part of the applicant.
In fact, it affects all those in the tests that have already been canceled, and all those who will have to do a test in their process beyond March 2020, and without any set limit. We are therefore here facing a generalized blocking of indefinite duration (until proof to the contrary).
In conclusion: We can certainly do more than just a request for urgent processing. And it is our right.
@All thank you for being focused on the subject that interests us.
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