Citizenship and Immigration committee  I am. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Geoff Leckey. I'm the director general of the intelligence and targeting operations directorate at the Canada Border Services Agency. I'm accompanied today by my

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I don't think a lot of government departments have had major increases in their budgets recently, given the current context. I'm not the comptroller or the expert on that, but to the best of my knowledge our budget has remained relatively stable over the last couple of years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think you're referring to the refugee reform funding. We got a major addition to our budget under refugee reform. I think the bulk of those 100 are going to be inland enforcement officers, whose job is to speed up the removal of persons who are not authorized to remain in Canad

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Those 100 are not in service yet.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's a very good question. It will take a good year before those persons are hired, and then of course there will be on-the-job training. My answer is that they will be fully functional in two to three years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, that's not really my area, but I want to give you the best answer I can. I believe we're at the stage of collecting CVs and recruiting.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It can vary. It can be in the range of one year to five years.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, we don't start a removals process until clients have exhausted all their legal avenues to remain in Canada. A removal order comes at the end of every possible legal avenue.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  When I say one to five years, the priority for removal is on persons with serious criminality, persons with violent histories.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The total number of refugee claims received is in the region of 30,000. I believe it's been dropping slightly in recent years. It was 35,000 a couple of years ago. I think it's around 30,000 this year.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Well, there are two different processes. The refugee process does not affect only persons seeking to board aircraft and take a flight to Canada. The statistics on that particular program are actually quite encouraging, and if you don't mind, I'll take a moment to highlight them.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Okay.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You want to know whether our work would be easier if we had exit controls?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes. With your permission, Mr. St-Cyr, I'm going to answer in my mother tongue; the words come to me more easily. We don't have exit controls. Do we know how many people who entered Canada on a temporary resident visa have subsequently departed? No, we don't collect those stati

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's extremely useful information for us.