Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2009

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I can say anything. Mr. Rae knows that.

I appreciate the work you do and what you've provided us with. I'm actually interested in what happens when things go wrong in the coordination of service provision.

In the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik, for instance, there was clearly a conflict between desks. On the one hand, we had consular affairs saying, “Our criterion is that we provide you with a passport and you have to provide us with an itinerary and show us an airline that will provide you with a flight.”

Of course, when that happened, because of section 10.1 of the act, the minister denied him the passport.

In that case, did the minister provide you, your officials, with justification for denying the passport?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Dewar, Mr. Obhrai has a point of order.

Go ahead.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair, this is being noted on my time.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, when we went on this study, it was very clear that we would not bring individual cases into it. That's number one. This is a clear cut, very specific individual case.

Secondly, the individuals who are here are not from the Passport Canada office and cannot give that kind of information.

So I take that into account, and I would tell my colleague that we agreed to not have individual cases, which he himself agreed to when we wanted to do the study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

That's correct. Thank you, Mr. Obhrai, for that point of order.

I have already mentioned that Mr. Dewar can say anything. However, there may be some things that our panel can't answer.

We are trying to be fairly broad. You brought in an individual case, Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I was looking at a policy, Chair, but let me try a different line of questioning on that.

When we look at enforcement and at service provision, there are conflicts. I note that in some cases where the consular affairs officials want to provide assistance, they can be trumped by enforcement officials at times. Is that correct?

[Patricia Fortier]

I think generally we try to work very much in concert.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'm assuming that, but I'm just saying there are times when that happens and there would be a conflict. You can say you want to provide a passport, and Mr. Leckey might say there is evidence to show that you shouldn't or some other variable comes into play that says you can't provide that passport and here's why.

[Patricia Fortier]

Again I would go back to what Parliamentary Secretary Obhrai said. Basically, I represent consular operations. So in all cases where we can provide consular services, we do provide consular services.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

So there's never a case where you're told that you can't provide services?

[Patricia Fortier]

In terms of people who are entitled to a passport, as Mr. Obhrai mentioned and I mentioned earlier, that is actually Passport Canada's function.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Fair enough.

I have a question for either Ms. Thomsen or Mr. Roué.

There is a consular services and emergency management branch that has been established. That's who you're representing. That's new, is it not?

[Paul Roué]

Yes, it is.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

As of 2008?

[Lillian Thomsen]

The branch was established in October 2007. The emergency management bureau, which is part of the branch, was established a little under one year later. The three of us who are here from Foreign Affairs are the directors general of the three bureaus in the branch.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

My question is simply around coordination, because when I asked the question back in the summer about who is training officials abroad on enforcement, I was looking to see where the consular services played a role. At the time, I was told in committee, and it has since been clarified, that in the case of a citizen who was having problems returning to Canada, they were initially identified by the airline officials. When I asked who was actually training the airline officials for enforcement purposes, I was told that it was our Canadian border services agents.

My question was a different one. I asked if we train the police and government officials on enforcement, because my concern was that providing consular services is one thing and enforcement is another. However, what my concern was at the time was that we are actually training officials from other countries and police officials--we have our people training them to do the enforcement--and there were some questions in this particular case around how they ended up in this situation.

I've since had a clarification from the Canada Border Services Agency. They initially said they weren't training police and other officials, but on October 28 I received an e-mail that says while most training is delivered to airlines and their security companies, training is also provided to local police, immigration officials, and diplomatic colleagues from other countries in the immigration and consular sections of our missions abroad. So I guess my question to Mr. Leckey is, for the record, do we train police officials from other countries and diplomatic officials to do enforcement of Canadian passports?

[Geoffrey Leckey]

Yes, we train officials of other governments. We train them in what a genuine Canadian passport looks like, how to detect a genuine Canadian passport as opposed to a fraudulent one, the security features, the requirements for visas to come to Canada, which vary from country to country, as you're quite aware. There's a need for the host country officials to be aware of what the proper documentation is that's required in order to board a flight to Canada.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

But in some instances they are pulling someone out of the line and processing them--not the Canadian officials; it could be a Kenyan official.

[Geoffrey Leckey]

It could be. It could be the local airline officials. We also train airlines. In those cases, if there's a doubt about the identity of a Canadian, they will call on the migration integrity officer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Leckey. We're going to have a second round, so you may all want to get prepared for that.

We'll move to Ms. Brown, and then over to Mr. Rae.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think you've shed some light on some things for our committee. It's been most helpful. I'm a mother of one of those wanderers. I have a daughter who has been travelling for three years. She has been in 40 countries so far and is intent on seeing the world before she stops. I applaud her for her energy and I applaud her for her initiative, because it's something that a lot of people never do.

I'm really interested in this registry of Canadians abroad. Ms. Fortier, you talked about self-reliance and about the need for people to take responsibility for their own travel and for educating themselves, following up on what Mr. Goldring was saying.

So you put considerable information on the websites; it's there for people to access. I know in my own constituency I've had people contact me and ask, “What if I go?” My backup is always to ask them if they have checked the Foreign Affairs website on that.

But I wonder if you could talk to us about this registry. How many people actually access it? We talked about 35,000 people who look at the website, but how many people actually register before they start their travel? Is there any way then that you connect with them when they are in the country? What access do they have to you when they are there?

[Lillian Thomsen]

On how many Canadians register, the short answer is—I'm just looking through my statistics here—it's not as many as we would like. We would like every Canadian to register abroad. I think it's about 3 million, but I'll verify and get back to you on it.

The pattern is that people who are studying or living abroad longer are more likely to register, or if they're abroad, for example, with a Canadian company, a Canadian company will insist that they be registered with us. We are less successful in reaching out to the independent wandering traveller. A lot of people who are going, let's say, to a Caribbean resort destination where they've taken a package from a full-service provider simply assume that if something goes wrong, the travel company will look after them. Of course, that's not always the case, as we saw with the collapse of at least one industry provider—Conquest—last year.

But in terms of last year, 19% of the 250,000 cases were new registrants on our registry of Canadians abroad. What it does is this. If there's a sudden tropical storm, if there's an earthquake, something that's totally unpredictable, it gives us an easier way of reaching out to the Canadians, either through our warden system or through the tools that my colleague Mr. Roué has at his disposal. The first thing we have to do if there's a problem is we have to find the Canadians, and they help us find them if they're registered.

[Patricia Fortier]

I would just add that in my direct experience, when I was head of mission in the Dominican Republic recently, where we have 700,000 of our citizens coming to visit us every winter, they tend to register when they see there's a problem. So there tends to be a rush of registration when people are made aware that there might be a problem. Other than that, they tend to be offhand about it.

But we do have campaigns that go out and look for Canadians and ask them to register, and certainly, as Ms. Thomsen mentioned, our system of wardens is absolutely key. These are people who volunteer and who are spread throughout the country. In the Dominican Republic, we've reinforced, for example, our warden system. They are our eyes and ears out in all the regions. So if they can't get through to us by phone, by e-mail, by friends, by family, or by physical appearance, sometimes we hear about it through our wardens, who are all out in the region.

So we're always trying to reach out and we're always trying to make ourselves accessible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We'll come right back to you. After we go to Mr. Rae, we'll come straight back.

Mr. Rae.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I thank our visitors for their very informative presentation.

I hope this is okay under what we've agreed to.

I wonder if the four of you, or however many of you, could comment, could take us through the emergency response to the war in Sri Lanka, in terms of access by Canadians, particularly of Tamil origin, to information about their loved ones who were in Sri Lanka to the end of the war, and the situation of the people in the camps. Then perhaps if there's time I'll have a follow-up question with respect to how much access we've been given to those camps and the extent of the consular visits that are taking place.