Immigration Minister John McCallum does not reject the idea of having an ombudsman office outright.
However, with the new Liberal government’s emphasis on transparency and accountability, critics say, an ombudsman could play a role in finding solutions to these systemic challenges.
While Immigration Minister John McCallum agreed that, “obviously there is enormous room for improvement” for his department’s service delivery, he was noncommittal.
According to the minister “That’s what a lot of my job is about. We are trying to reduce processing times and improve services. The idea of an ombudsman is an interesting idea, but it might be a little bit duplicating of what my office and I are trying to do, and it would add costs,”
“If having an ombudsman would assist that task, I would consider it ... if it’s value-added. Right now, people can go to their MPs; the MPs might bring it to me and we work on it. We certainly spend a huge amount of time dealing with these problems and cases, trying to get the best outcomes.”
One of the main reasons that the minister is not against ombudsman is that in many cases an error in law or maybe very simple misunderstanding seems to be the cause of refusal. Simple mistakes such as error in form completions, shortage in supporting documents could be fixed easily and save the applications from refusal. Ombudsman has been introduced to be established for many years but Ottawa ignored the idea. It seems the new liberal government is interested to study the option in more details and hopefully will recognize the need of having a public office to look after these issues.
