Foreign Affairs Committee on Sept. 17th, 2018

[Carol McCalla]

In their 52 standards they list on their website, there isn't evacuation. They do not regularly evacuate people in trouble zones. What they do is inform them that trouble is coming, and they will offer information to affected Canadians on how they get in touch with different travel providers. It is not a service that Canada provides, but it was expected by many Canadians. That was published in the news. Many Canadians did expect Global Affairs to offer that service.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

To follow up on that, we know this is going to happen every summer. Do we pre-emptively have agreements in place with Caribbean countries in case we need our military cargo planes to come in, etc., as a consequence of these storm events? These are all friendly countries. We know that in every one of those Caribbean islands there will be Canadians who will be impacted. Is that something you would recommend?

[Carol McCalla]

We didn't see that Global Affairs had any of those agreements in place. When there is an emergency like a hurricane that affects Canadians, and depending on the scale of the emergency, it's a whole-of-government response that may involve DND or the reserves in helping Canadians. In the emergencies we examined, many government departments were involved in assisting.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Following up on the line of questioning of Madame Laverdière, I found it a little problematic that the minister, in cases that have been assessed as cases of torture, typically would not be informed for a month to a month and a half.

Do you believe there should be a recommendation that suggested that the minister, in cases that have been assessed to be torture cases, be informed within 72 hours?

[Carol McCalla]

Global Affairs does not have a time standard. That was an issue we had in conducting the audit. Justice O'Connor's recommendation was to promptly inform, but there has been no time standard such as the 72 hours that has been set.

In our view, taking more than a month to inform the minister on cases of a Canadian who has likely been tortured or mistreated does not meet the intent of Justice O'Connor's recommendation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you. I will go to Madame Vandenbeld, please.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much for being here.

I'd like to follow up on the variance that you found, particularly in the cases of people who are detained. One of the things your report says is that there wasn't enough evidence in the file to be able to explain why, in some cases, there were consular visits fairly quickly and in other cases there weren't.

What do you think accounts for that variance between cases?

[Carol McCalla]

The provision of assistance to Canadians detained abroad is a discretionary service. There's the service standard of 24 hours, and then, depending on the region where the person is detained, there's ongoing contact at regular intervals, with more frequent contact required when the region is judged to have harsher conditions.

As well, if a person is particularly vulnerable, the policy allows for more frequent contact. We expected that sort of assessment to be done and documented on the file, particularly for vulnerable cases. In our opinion, that can only be done in those cases in person. For us it was very important that this contact be made in person and that an assessment of the person's vulnerability be made so that the assessment can direct the provision of services, whether those be over health concerns or other vulnerabilities that the person may have.

We did not find that this was documented on the file. We also didn't see the required level of oversight, the quality control to ensure that it was done.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

As you've just said, one of the things you identified about the in-person meetings was that there wasn't enough training to be able see the signs of somebody being mistreated. Even if they were in-person meetings, you found that many of the consular officials might not be able to identify whether that person was being mistreated. To be able to look at those signs seems to be something that could be easily rectified through training.

[Carol McCalla]

Absolutely, and that was a recommendation from Justice O'Connor. This was a key issue that was raised in that inquiry, that the consular staff were not trained. Hence the recommendation that they do be trained. We looked at the level of training that was provided, and it is.... They do bring in experts in mistreatment and torture to give an overview, but what we also heard from the staff is that they do want to have a better understanding of what to look for and how to identify it.

These are very serious issues, and the staff themselves identified that they would like to have more training in that area.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

With regard to workloads, it was interesting to me when I was looking at it that the offices that have the most cases, that are the busiest, were often the ones that—if I'm reading it correctly—were able to provide the assistance more quickly than some of the other offices. Am I reading this issue of workload correctly?

[Carol McCalla]

We found that we couldn't find any link between the level of workload and the staffing of different consular offices. We found issues in the level of contact in offices that were well staffed and also in offices that weren't very well staffed. It very much depended, in our view, on the discretion of the consular officer involved.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

One of the things you identified was the lack of data—

[Carol McCalla]

Yes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

What kind of data is missing?

[Carol McCalla]

Every time a Canadian contacts the mission to request assistance, the mission is required to open up a case file. They did open up the case file, but we didn't find that the documentation within the case file, in many cases, was sufficient for us to assess whether or not the required contacts or the required services were being offered.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Why do you think that would be? Is that because they're too busy to do the documentation, or is it just a training issue? How would we rectify that?

[Carol McCalla]

There was a high variation. It wasn't documented, and, in our view, if it's not documented, it didn't occur.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Did you find any good examples or best practices that could be shared?

[Carol McCalla]

Yes, we found many good cases. I found where I would want to be arrested and detained and where not. There were many good cases of consular officers going above and beyond in providing assistance to Canadians.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I know this would have been outside the scope of your audit, but did you look at what other countries are providing and compare what Canada is doing with some of the other countries, such as European countries or the U.S.?

Are we doing better, worse? Did you do a comparison?

[Carol McCalla]

The consular services that Canada offers are based on the Vienna convention. These are pretty standard consular services across like-minded countries. The 24-hour contact is standard across many European countries, and with the U.S. as well.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

We obviously are not reaching that 24-hour standard in, I think you said, half the cases.

Are other countries achieving that standard, or is there a variance there?

[Carol McCalla]

We didn't look into how Canada compares with the other countries.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.