AGRI - Citizenship Certificates and Ceremonies - May 22, 2020
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Key messages
- On March 14, 2020, in response to the evolving COVID-19 situation, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada cancelled all citizenship ceremonies, tests and re-tests until further notice.
- The Department advised all applicants who had been scheduled for a citizenship ceremony that their scheduled event had been cancelled. We also told them that they could contact us if they felt their case was urgent, and that we would consider urgent processing on a case-by-case basis.
- Recognizing that there may be urgent or compassionate reasons for people to complete the citizenship process, the Department has started scheduling virtual citizenship ceremonies for individuals and families who had already contacted Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and noted the need for citizenship.
- These individuals were already part of the regular application process for citizenship and were ready to be scheduled for a citizenship ceremony.
- IRCC is working to implement virtual citizenship ceremonies for other cases, as quickly as possible.
Supplementary messages
Citizenship Certificates and Business Resumption
- The Department has developed a business resumption plan in response to the operational impacts of COVID-19. The plan includes a list of measures for the strategic resumption of service during and post physical distancing, including virtual ceremonies and electronic knowledge tests.
- While the Department scaled down its operations due to COVID-19, urgent proofs (certificates) of citizenship continue to be processed for the purpose of repatriating Canadians to Canada; between March 16 and April 30, 2020, around 800 proofs of citizenship have been processed.
Virtual Citizenship Ceremonies
- The first virtual ceremony was held on April 1, 2020, for a university professor in Winnipeg. [redacted] The ceremony took place with the use of Zoom web conferencing platform.
- The Department has now started scheduling virtual ceremonies with a phased approach starting with urgent cases for one-on-one clients or family clusters. The Department continues to ramp up its capacity to undertake more virtual ceremonies in the near future for non-urgent clients, aiming to swear in up to 1,000 clients per week, subject to technical and human capacity.
Citizenship Grant Processing Times
- The cancellation of citizenship events will have a considerable impact on overall processing times, which are already at 15 months, despite our Ministerial Commitment to process applications in 12 months.
- The Department is working on modernization initiatives in the citizenship grants line of business, which is critical to managing processing times for citizenship grants, ensuring more flexibility and improving client service.
- The program will be unable to sustainably return to the 12-month service standard without significant investments to transform the processing model by moving away from paper-based processing. This request was identified as part of Budget 2020 to modernize the process and support a potential citizenship fee elimination.
Supporting facts and figures
- The number of new citizens in fiscal year 2019-2020 was 247,139.
- There are currently 210,930 applications in the citizenship grant inventory, with approximately 42,000 individuals waiting for a citizenship ceremony and over 87,000 waiting for their knowledge test.
Background
Citizenship Grant Processing Times
- Citizenship applications are paper-based and received via regular mail. Despite the pandemic, thousands of new applications continue to be received by the Department, but the physical files are not being distributed to the processing network due to physical distancing measures.
- Application intake volumes are also expected to increase due to factors such as the Multi-Year Levels Plan and possible changes to citizenship fees, which will further contribute to longer processing times.
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Citizenship Business Resumption
- The Department has developed a Citizenship Resumption Plan. The plan includes a list of measures for the strategic resumption of service during and post physical distancing. The measures build on and reinforce the Department’s existing Plan to Modernize Citizenship.
- The Department is exploring on a priority basis, whether the following measures may be implemented under existing legislative and regulatory authorities:
- Online Applications and Digital Processing;
- Electronic Test Environment;
- Virtual Ceremonies; and,
- Electronic Citizenship Certificates.
Virtual Citizenship Ceremonies
- The Department has started increasing the number of virtual ceremonies with a phased approach, starting with urgent clients. Ceremonies can be held on a one-on-one basis or for family clusters. We are aiming to swear-in up to 1,000 clients per week, subject to technical and human capacity. The Department is carefully assessing security requirements associated with virtual ceremonies. The verification of participants’ identity and the mitigation of other risks is of prime importance to the Department.
- Urgent requests are currently being prioritized based on the following criteria:
- need for citizenship status for employment purposes and education purposes;
- essential travel; or
- compassionate grounds (for example: health reasons).
- The Department is also exploring ways to expand virtual ceremonies to larger groups. A technological solution for the larger ceremonies is being researched, one which would enable the private validation of the identity of citizenship candidates en masse. Security requirements and bandwidth capacity are also being assessed.
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