This graphic shows changes to Canada's citizenship decision-making process.
Today, Canada's decision-making model for citizenship applications is a three-step process: an application goes from a citizenship officer to a citizenship judge and back to a citizenship officer. Under this model, we have a large backlog and more applications than we can process in a timely manner. Currently, the average processing time is 24-36 months and the backlog is more than 320,000 applicants.
Under the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act amendments, the decision-making model would be a single-step process: applications would be processed by a citizenship officer. Under this model, we would see a reduced inventory of applicants and we would have the ability to process all applications in a timely manner. By 2015/16, average processing time would be less than one year and the inventory would be reduced to allow for real-time processing.
