In the 2014-15 year, CIC's budget for this stream (including inland and outland applicants) was $27.472.071. The goal was to process between 45,000 and 48,000 applications, which means an expense that goes between $572,33 and $610,49 per application
But applicants are in fact charged with $1,100, according to the CIC website, which means an amount between $489,51 and $527,67 that is charged to these applicants but not invested in processing their applications.
...
However, applicants requesting a TFW permit pay only $155, which only covers 10 to 20% of the real cost of processing their application.
...
The only two categories that see an increase in both staff and budget, while the goals are also the same, are Temporary Foreign Workers and International Students, which means more money will be invested per application.
...family reunification has experienced an increase in processing times and a higher error rate, while fees have been increased, and half of the fees these families are paying are not being invested in their stream. This while they are told CIC has no resources to improve their stream.
In the meantime, applications for a Temporary Work Permit have considerably faster processing times, between 1 to 13 months depending on the visa office that processes it. Average processing times in the 50 Canadian visa offices abroad processing work permits is 3 months.
The impact of cutting existing resources from one stream and increasing them for other is clearly visible in terms of processing times. However, if Canadian families are in fact paying much more than what's invested in their application, they deserve to know why this is happening and where are their fees going.