(Ottawa) Federal Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller plans to reestablish the telephone line dedicated to MPs and their staff who are trying to help immigrants in their ridings who are often desperate.
“There, obviously, in certain situations, it doesn’t work. Then I am always open to reopening the telephone line, but there is a system now which works better for certain deputies than for others,” he declared Wednesday during a press scrum upon his arrival at the Liberal caucus meeting.
The obstacle course his ministry puts through those who need its services and the difficulties of elected officials wanting to help them have been in the news since the beginning of the week.
In turn, we learned that two doctors from the Laurentians – who had 2,700 patients – and a man from Bas-Saint-Laurent were threatened with expulsion for administrative formalities.
During this time, the Bloc Québécois has increased the number of interviews to denounce that MPs no longer even have a way to use the famous telephone line when the situation requires it.
“These are public servants who don’t necessarily want to serve politicians because they have work,” said Minister Miller.
He nevertheless assures that elected officials “have direct contacts”. Moreover, he himself says that he “sometimes on a daily basis […] contacts with Alexis » Brunelle-Duceppe, the Bloc spokesperson on immigration.
And while requests for help with immigration files are increasing in constituency offices, Bloc elected officials have pooled funds to hire a person who will be responsible for managing complex cases.
However, the telephone line was not “abandoned”, he insists. Instead, it was replaced by a service where MPs and their staff can make one-hour telephone appointments. In any case, he noted, the telephone line was “busy, […] blocked” so that “people could not [rejoindre] anybody “.
Marc Miller, who has held his new position since the mid-summer reshuffle, also indicated that a strategic review process is underway in his ministry.
“We want to rectify this department which has really not fit into the 21ste century,” he said, noting that the problems in the administration of this department, “it’s the same story” for 50 years.
Meanwhile, Mr. Miller said he feels like “a pilot who is renovating a plane in mid-flight and sometimes there are spills that the captain himself has to go and rectify.”