FYI
meeting minutes from house of commons immigration and CIC committe
Back ground check
The Chair:
We have finished the first page, so we're going to start all over again.
I'm going to ask one question first. I'd like you to tell me the difference between the security screening for temporary applications and that for permanent residency applications, if any.
Mr. Pierre Sabourin:
The security screening for temporary residents is for people who are coming here temporarily. The security screening for people who are permanent residents is for people who are coming in here permanently. We now have service standards for the temporary resident side. They're very different from those on the permanent side. I can elaborate more on those, if you wish.
The security screening is to make an admissibility decision based on specific areas of the act, IRPA. We're looking at whether there are reasonable grounds to believe, whether the individual who is applying is permanent or temporary, that the person might pose a risk to national security, such as espionage, terrorism, war criminality, or organized crime. In one case the process is much longer. It takes about eight months right now.
The Chair:
Which one?
Mr. Pierre Sabourin:
For permanent, it takes about eight months. On the temporary side, just over the last few months we finalized the service standards. For a VIP or urgent request, it's 48 hours; for China, it's five days; for what we call tier 1 countries, which includes Saudi Arabia, India, Haiti, Pakistan—there's another one missing—it's 10 days; and for the other countries, for tier 2, it's 20 days.