Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 14th, 2012

[Claudette Deschênes]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

—but I expect it is complicated.

Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a few questions for you folks from CBSA here.

Specifically to the Auditor General's report, the Auditor General made several recommendations to the department to improve security and health screening. Could you tell us what some of those recommendations were?

[Pierre Sabourin]

Sure.

First of all, we agree with all the recommendations of the Auditor General. I want to make that clear. The Auditor General made recommendations in four areas. The first one is around helping visa officers abroad make admissibility decisions: giving them the right tools, making sure the information we give them, such as risk indicators about those specific countries, are up to date.

The second was in the area of the security screening process, where we work very, very closely with our partners in CSIS and the RCMP. The Auditor General had a number of recommendations whereby we should ensure that all the information that is available in those three organizations be mapped out, so we're sure we're using the universe of information that's available in order to make proper decisions.

The third area was around process, and this is around training of our officers, quality control, and service standards. So there were some recommendations around there.

And the fourth area was around governance and performance measurement, whereby the Auditor General wanted to make sure our agreements, our memoranda of understanding with the various organizations, were up to date, that we were governing the process properly, and that we had proper performance measurements in place. In other words, we were getting proper feedback from visa officers that the system was working for them, that they had the right information, that they were able to make proper admissibility decisions, and finally, that between our two organizations—CIC and CBSA—particularly, that we measured the performance of the overall system in terms of knowing we're meeting service standards and this sort of thing.

We've agreed with all the recommendations. Most of the recommendations will be addressed this year. I could go into the details in terms of what we're doing.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Yes, he found that many of the recommendations have not been implemented. Can you tell us why it's taken so long?

[Pierre Sabourin]

The recommendations that were made to us in the last report...we've started working on them right away. It'll take about year before most of them are implemented.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Can you elaborate a little bit, update us at least on what actions you've taken?

[Pierre Sabourin]

Sure.

I'll give you an example: service standards. I gave you the example of service standards that didn't exist before and now exist, around the VIP and urgent, China five days, and then tier 1 and tier 2. We've made substantial progress also in terms of risk indicators around this and helping visa officers abroad make admissibility decisions. We're updating the risk indicators that help visa officers determine if a case should be referred to CBSA or not.

So those are in the process of being updated. For example, for a country where we get many referrals, such as Saudi Arabia, that work is now completed.

I can give you a last example. In terms of the two organizations working together, we've now elaborated what we call a performance dashboard. In that performance dashboard, which covers all of the joint activities we do with CIC, in fact, there's now something specific to security screening.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

So we can expect to see all of these implemented within the year?

[Pierre Sabourin]

Yes. Some are actually already implemented. The review of risk indicators should be done by the summer. Regarding some of the reviews, for example, the MOUs with the security agencies, particularly the RCMP, go to early 2013. But all the other deliverables are for 2012.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have about three minutes.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Oh, good.

You spoke about the large number of people who were invisible for security reasons. Can we get from you a breakdown for the last five years by country, perhaps through the clerk and the chair? It would be very useful.

[Pierre Sabourin]

Yes, I'll look into obtaining that.

Again, I just want to contrast in terms of visa applicants coming from abroad. The number of refusals last year was 652, so it's very low. If you look at the 76,000 cases that were referred—

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm now talking about the breakdown for security reasons, by country, for the last five years.

[Claudette Deschênes]

I would just note, though, that our systems before global case management didn't really track the reasons for refusal, so we can probably look at advice we might have received. I think the Auditor General said that less than 1% of cases are refused for security reasons. I'm not sure that we're going to be able to go very far. I think in the future we will be much better able to give you that data, but we'll look at what we have.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

But not everybody who was flagged is refused.

[Claudette Deschênes]

That's correct.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

So is there that data? Could we have that for the last five years as well by country? How many people are flagged by country and how many are refused by country?

[Pierre Sabourin]

For the 652, those are the ones—

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Whatever the numbers are, you would know.

[Pierre Sabourin]

We have the breakdown by country for the 652 we recommended that CIC make a decision on, somebody who gives us reasonable grounds to believe they're not admissible based on security. I can tell you the number one country we give negative recommendations on is Russia. That's different from the total number of people who showed up at the border that we deemed are non-admissible. That doesn't need to be for security reasons.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm just asking how many people were flagged and how many people were refused in the last five years by country. If you have that information, that would be very helpful.

[Pierre Sabourin]

I'll see if we can get it.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Am I running out of time?