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Canada opened a new visa processing facility within the offices of the Canadian embassy in Makati, Metro Manila.

Filipino Canadian Member of Parliament Rechie Valdez opened the facility on March 3 on behalf of Immigration Minister Sean Fraser.

Fraser said 37 new employees were hired for the processing facility that aims to ensure the faster processing of visa applications while boosting immigration targets.

"The growth we've seen between, relationships between Canadian people and the Filipino community is extraordinary, whether it's people who are coming here [in Canada] as tourists making contribution, whether it's people who are coming to fill key gaps in the economy, in particular in health care, or whether it's the growth of the International Student Program, it's clear that the relationship between Canada and the Philippines is trending in the right direction," Fraser said.

The opening of the visa processing facility in Manila is in support of Canada’s efforts to expand its operations in the Indo-Pacific region, including in the Philippines.

International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan and Valdez were recently in the Philippines to meet with local officials to discuss the two countries' shared priorities.

Fraser said the Manila processing facility may also be tapped to help other processing facilities in the Indo-Pacific region that are facing backlogs.

He noted, "we could see more of those applications being processed out of Manila to boost the global processing times. But we will expect to see a significant number of the applications from the Philippines processed in Manila as well and we expect that we're going to see a reduced waiting time for those seeking to come to Canada as a result."

Fraser admitted that the Covid-19 lockdown resulted in delays in the processing of millions of visa applications.

While the backlog in many immigration streams have been addressed, he said more needs to be done about visitors visas.

Fraser hopes the addition of the new facility will bring the processing wait times in the Philippines back to their pre-pandemic service standards.

"Our goal right now is to restore the pre pandemic processing timelines. And I expect with the investment that we're making in Manila as well as in other locations as part of the global network, they will be back to those service standards sometime near the middle of this year."

Filipino Canadian immigration consultant Arlene Ruiz welcomed the opening of the visa processing facility, saying this can help reduce the wait time for visitors visas.

As of last week, Ruiz said the time it takes for temporary resident or visitor visa to be processed can take as long as 14 weeks.

"Hopefully with this, with the new office in the Philippines, we hope to see more approvals or decisions sa mga applications rather than sitting and waiting and not knowing kung ano na bang nangyayari doon sa kanilang application," Ruiz noted.

(We hope to see more approvals or decisions on the applications rather than sitting and waiting and not knowing what happened to them.)

With the Philippines being one of Canada's top five source countries for immigrants, Ruiz hopes the delays in other immigration streams will soon be addressed. One such stream is the caregiver program, where some applications have remained in limbo since 2020.