Liberals call on Kenney to cut wait times for citizen applications

OTTAWA – The federal Liberals are calling on Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to do something about what they say are “dismal” wait times for handling Canadian citizenship applications.

Liberal MPs Kevin Lamoureux and Jim Karygiannis say there are more than 300,000 permanent residents whose citizenship applications are stuck in limbo.

They say people in some parts of the country face waits of up to five or six years for their applications to be processed.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada, on the other hand, says it takes 21 months to process routine Canadian citizenship applications.

The department says that figure is based on the time it took to process 80 per cent of all cases between July 1, 2011 and June 30 of last year.

Neither Kenney’s office nor the department were immediately available to comment.