Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 14th, 2023

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Just to be clear—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Let me get to my question.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

There's one inaccuracy, and if I need to extend by 20 seconds.... People who left voluntarily are not inadmissible to Canada. They did not complete the IRB process and they have not been found to be—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Because they were given that letter, it was almost like, “You are a criminal. You gotta leave.”

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Those people—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

“Voluntarily” means they were given something by your department in order for them to leave their life here, where they'd built roots.

The reason why I'm saying this is that it took you two months to get to that point. That's 18 different families you'd already identified that could have been saved earlier. They could have stayed here and not spent that much money. They got deported or left voluntarily. That's why I'm saying this. It took you two months to send out a tweet, “Maybe we'll work on this.” I just want you to know the impact it had, not taking any action for those two months. It's interesting, because the tweet came out the day after the Conservatives wrote a public letter to you.

I want to know, again, why it would have taken so long for you to even respond to that.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I had spoken publicly, before the tweet you're referring to in May, about the action we were looking at taking.

As I mentioned in my response to Mr. Uppal's questions, there is serious potential criminality and it's underlying a scheme that has led to people being admitted. We need to watch very carefully. We need to investigate when we see a pattern of hundreds, or potentially in excess of a thousand, applications that were made on the basis of fraudulent documents, in order to make sure we are protecting the integrity of the system and not compromising investigations into how these fraud rings can come to exist in the first place.

With enormous respect—which you know I have for you, given our conversations before—sometimes, when you're developing new programs designed to allow a person to come to and remain in Canada and overcome investigations of fraud, it can take a matter of weeks to do this. This is not something that was years in the making. We moved quickly to identify the problem—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Are you saying that, since you became the minister, there was never a pattern that you or your department picked up on, or any colleges coming to you? Were there any indications from anyone about any kind of pattern, including anyone coming to you and saying that this is happening?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We know there are widespread attempts to defraud Canada's immigration system—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Since when? When did you find that out, and what did you do?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Mr. Hallan, your time is up.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Chair, with the indulgence of the committee, I can provide a 10-second answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Go ahead, please.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Upon being appointed minister, during my early briefings, I became aware that there are widespread attempts by bad actors to defraud Canada's immigration system. We have entire branches of the department seeking to investigate these fraudulent activities every single day.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Can you—

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Chair, I think I have the floor. I'm trying to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Mr. Hallan, let him finish, because your time is up.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Can you table that? How many have been caught in the time you've been minister?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Chair, I'm having a hard time hearing the member. You can direct me as you would.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

The time is up. Maybe you will get the opportunity in another round.

We'll now go to Mr. Dhaliwal for five minutes.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, I want to thank the honourable minister and his parliamentary secretary. Any time I go to you, Minister, or your staff, you are always welcoming and, of course, very patient in listening and always assuring me that you will come up with a policy that will be good for the victims. I want to thank you for that. I received a call today from one of the family members of the victims, who said this is exactly what they were looking for—what you announced today.

Going from there onwards, you said you can go case by case. You're not going to have a blanket policy. Would you be able to tell us what the consequences would be of implementing a blanket policy instead of looking at individual cases?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I believe the consequences of taking a blanket approach in this instance would be very negative and of a severe scale in both the short term and the long term for Canada's national interest. In the short term, we would be rewarding people who've committed fraud against the state. That is a bad idea. It's a bad idea because it's clearly contrary to the rules that we have in place, but it's also a bad idea because it would create a culture in which bad actors around the world would see a demonstrated inability of a country to manage its own affairs successfully and would seek to further defraud it going forward.

Moreover, many people who are seeking to come to Canada want to follow the rules. To send a signal that we're going to give preference to people who have committed fraud and who have broken the rules over those who are following the processes that we have set out in law and regulations would be a disaster.

I think we've struck the right balance to acknowledge that the existing process did provide an opportunity for certain individuals, potentially a few dozen individuals, who were innocent, who sought to come here genuinely and who were victimized by fraudsters. We're going to be able to demonstrate compassion towards them.

At the same time, Canadians need to know that we're going to crack down on fraud in the system. I think one of the reasons Canadians support ambitious immigration policy is that they trust the process through which people come to Canada. That includes security screening. It includes ensuring that we police fraud, and it ensures that we set people up for success when they arrive.

The path forward, I think, achieves those dual goals of demonstrating compassion for those who deserve it while at the same time not rewarding fraudsters for bad behaviour.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

Minister, one of the 57 people came to my office. I'm not going to expose their identity. In fact, I looked at this person's resume. They went to Langara College and earned a diploma with marks of over 80% in their studies. They've been working for the last five years with one employer. In fact, their employer also contacted me and gave good feedback on that particular person.

For people like that who are facing deportation, you said that these deportations will stop. Can you give a timeline for when this action will come into effect?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It will be as soon as possible, although there are some people who have not yet gone through the IRB process, so for them, the process will begin immediately after they complete the IRB process.

What we envision is an interim temporary resident permit that will be in the ballpark of a number of weeks. That will allow them, for example, eight weeks to complete the investigation. The sole purpose of that temporary resident permit is to allow us to complete the examination of their file. We want to move as quickly as we can to provide a fair resolution but also a fast resolution.

I know from you, Sukh, and from others that the stress on students has been enormous. We don't want this to drag out for months. We want to give them a platform to demonstrate their case and if, in fact, they can confirm that they were a genuine applicant, we want to provide a remedy as quickly as possible, recognizing the mental health and financial burden many students have undertaken.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Surrey—Newton, BC]

You have given assurance time and time again to those who are victims. Do you want to say something that you haven't said to those students about the actions they should take on their part?