Public Safety committee  Are you referring to the Beyond the Border declaration?

Public Safety committee  That's correct; that's the ideal place to be.

Public Safety committee  Well, while trying not to put myself into the place that Mr. Fadden didn't want to get into, let me answer to the best of my ability. There is no plan to establish a formalized exit control system. Under the Beyond the Border initiative, which we've agreed upon with the United States, Canada will be establishing an entry/exit system whereby the entry into one country will become the exit record for the other country.

Public Safety committee  We exchange information all the time with our two primary partners within the security and intelligence community: CSIS and the RCMP.

Public Safety committee  If that individual were under CSIS or RCMP surveillance, that would continue. By no means would they pass surveillance to the CBSA. Maybe I should go more deeply into the kinds of authorities CBSA does and doesn't have when it comes to the exit of individuals from Canada. At the moment, the Customs Act does not confer peace officer powers to Canada Border Service officers.

Public Safety committee  My answer to that would be yes. As I explained in my introduction, we take a risk-based approach to the work we do and to deciding where we need to concentrate our resources to interdict people and groups from entering Canada that may threaten Canada and Canadians. When we talk about a risk-based approach—and my colleague is more of an expert in this than I am—we mean a threat.

Public Safety committee  This is a reality. Within the Canadian security intelligence community, there are a number of people who are aware of such travel having taken place in the past. The existence of legislation such as S-7 could help to prevent it, to the extent that such travel could be learned about in advance.

Public Safety committee  Yes, absolutely, we support it. You're correct, of course, that it's already an offence to take training for the purpose of supporting the activities of a terrorist group, and Mr. Khawaja was convicted for that very offence. I'd refer you to the Government of Canada's counter-terrorism strategy, called Building Resilience Against Terrorism.

Public Safety committee  My position is the director general within the operations branch. There are two main branches within the CBSA: operations and programs. Within operations I'm the director general of what we call enforcement and intelligence. Enforcement comprises our criminal investigations division and our inland enforcement division.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, honourable members. My colleague and I are pleased to be here today. My name is Geoff Leckey and I am the director general of the enforcement and intelligence operations directorate in the operations branch of the Canada Border Services Agency. I have with me today Sébastien Aubertin-Giguère, who is the executive director of the risk management and foresight division in the programs branch.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think the place to start is with the three distinct mandates of the three organizations sitting here today. CBSA tends to have the most detailed information on immigration and war crimes; the national security agency of Canada is CSIS; and the police agency is the RCMP. In preparing security assessments and writing admissibility recommendations, it's CBSA that plays the coordinating and integrative role.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The members of the national security screening division, who I referred to before, those 60 people—

Citizenship and Immigration committee  There's a training package that is being developed specifically for their duties. It has been upgraded recently, and we're taking a close second look at it in the wake of the OAG report.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  As to overseas, the overseas officers you're referring to I think would be CIC employees. We're talking about visa officers. We wouldn't be able to comment on their training.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Oh, okay. Our liaison officers overseas tend to come within the agency from intelligence or criminal investigations backgrounds predominantly, not exclusively. So they start off with a certain amount of training, and they receive quite an extensive training course before they are posted overseas.