Evidence of meeting #104 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cases.
A recording is available from Parliament.
September 17th, 2018 / 3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Jati Sidhu Liberal Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC
Thank you for your presentation today.
My colleagues have covered quite a bit of ground on the response time. It was said that it was done in two minutes, but I have a different picture. In the Caribbean islands, in the case of students studying abroad, they were not in touch with the students for a good 24 hours or 48 hours. Evacuation was a major concern.
Do you recommend that our Canadian missions abroad should come up with a plan? According to the students, Americans were picking up people left, right, and centre, with helicopters and other resources, but Canadians were left until everything was restored, and then they would come. There was no timeline on it.
I had calls in the middle of the night. They said, “What are you doing for us?” People showed up at my doorstep the next day. I said, “What's wrong?” He said, “My daughter is dying, and you're sleeping.” I said, “What do you want me to do?”
With climate change, we can expect more disasters. Do we have a contingency plan for our missions abroad to tackle all of those?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
That's an issue of government policy and whether the government wants to offer that type of service.
What we've said is that the department needs to make sure it communicates as well as possible to Canadians who are travelling or living abroad about what types of services they can expect. I think any time one of these situations happens, people are going to expect a lot from their government.
As Ms. McCalla said earlier, there were lots of reports of people who expected that the Canadian government would have evacuated them using charter aircraft. That's not a service the department promises to people.
It comes down to what level of service Canada is prepared to commit to for these types of situations, and then they need to communicate it. Even then, I suspect there will always be people who are not satisfied with the level of service when they're caught in these types of situations.
Liberal
Jati Sidhu Liberal Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC
Of course.
Would you encourage mandatory registration through travel agents, online bookings, so we know where Canadians are? Do you see this in the pipeline going forward?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I believe there is already a way for travellers to register with Global Affairs Canada. However, while there may be some motivation for people to register that they are travelling somewhere, they have, I suppose, less motivation to say they've come back. Sometimes that type of thing can mean that the department ends up with a list of people they think are travelling who are in fact back in the country.
I believe it's very difficult to get a precise list of who needs to be contacted. The better the information they can get, then the better contact they can make, but I think that no matter what information they collect or how they collect it, they also have to have ways to contact Canadians more generally, because they're never going to have a complete list.
Liberal
Jati Sidhu Liberal Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC
Some people plan to travel at the last minute and forget to do this. Should we make it mandatory or compulsory before you get on the plane, so that Canadian missions abroad know you're in the country? It would make life easier.
They can't register at the last minute; once they're stuck in the situation, they're done. Then they complain that the mission is not reaching them. They're not registered, though. How do we tackle that?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Even if people are registered, sometimes in the circumstances it can be very difficult to contact them. If you're dealing with a hurricane or an earthquake, it can still be difficult to contact them.
That's something that Global Affairs would have to tell you: what types of things might be possible, what sources they could use to collect that type of information, and what type of effort would be needed to collect it. It's always difficult to tell people they have to register and to make them actually register. It would be more a matter of whether there are sources of information already collected that Global Affairs could somehow tap into that would help them understand who is travelling.
I don't really know how feasible this is. It's something the department would have to explore.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Colleagues and guests, I'm sorry I'm a little late. It was a busy day on the Hill. Many Liberal MPs wanted to book some coffee meetings, so I was a bit detained.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Concerning the O'Connor report that you mentioned, I think promptly informing is critical, because we have explored some of the high-risk and extreme consular cases, and of course mistreatment or torture would be one them.
You mentioned, without reference to a name, another case in which it took seven months to inform the minister, which is obviously not promptly. You didn't mention which case that was. Was it the Khadr case?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General
I'm not at liberty to mention the name of the case for security and privacy considerations.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Perhaps, as an undertaking in camera, through the chair we could get more information, outside the public domain, on the case. Certainly the large settlement paid to Mr. Khadr was a result of the Chrétien and the Martin governments' consular visits to Mr. Khadr. I'm wondering whether, had the “promptly informed” standard indicated by Justice O'Connor been met, we would have had to pay a settlement.
I think the committee should be able to find out the details of that case through the proper channels. Can we just undertake to explore that outside this meeting?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
We can go back and explore what sort of information we have, first of all. We need to make sure that the information we give you on it would be accurate and then sort out how to do this. We wouldn't be able to provide the information today.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Sure. I want to respect all the privacy guidelines for your department, Mr. Ferguson, and to respect the committee, but I'm sure that Parliament can get access to that information. We should learn from these cases, rather than just pay settlements.
The rest of the time I'm going to use to highlight a situation that I would appreciate your looking into. I was startled that 40% of our high-volume consulates aren't meeting their standards. That's a concern.
One thing that presents a challenge that I've been exploring here is that there are one million dual citizens and that dual-citizen cases provide particular challenges in some consulate cases.
Also, what I don't think is being looked at are a number of cases in which a spouse is a non-citizen; that is, someone is travelling as a citizen, and their spouse may be a permanent resident. I have a case in my own riding. The Gopalapillai family were on holiday and had a consular issue in Spain, and because the wife was not a citizen, she was sent away by the Canadian embassy because they would not provide consular support.
I have been in touch with the parliamentary secretary on this case, because when a family in an emergency situation appears at a Canadian consulate or embassy and they will help the Canadians but not the mom, I think we have to fix the system. I said to parliamentary secretary Alghabra that I would be prepared to work on a non-partisan basis, because I think there are going to be many families like this—or maybe he's not the parliamentary secretary anymore.
I'm sorry. Sorry about that.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
I'm sorry about that. It's early day.
Has your office looked at that unique issue? I think we're going to see more of that in Canada, with one party being a citizen and the other.... I can share with you information on this family. I was concerned to see that the mother in distress was essentially sent to another country to get consular assistance because they weren't prepared to support a non-citizen. Have you looked at that at all?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General
We didn't look particularly at that case. We did see that they have discretion on whether or not they will provide consular assistance to non-Canadians. I believe we did come across one or two cases in our sample in which they did that. It is within their discretion to do that, but certainly the primary intent of these missions is to support Canadian citizens.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
That sounds like a rule book answer, with respect. This was a family that was travelling and had items stolen, including the children's EpiPen. Three of them were Canadian and one was a permanent resident. I think all Canadians and all parliamentarians would expect that family to be helped or for our visa office or our consulate to be in touch and facilitate the mother in this case.
Sometimes the best bright light of your department is finding these shortcomings that have existed under blue and red teams. I'm not trying to politicize this more than I need to, but there will be more and more cases like this one. As we see more dual citizens, as we see immigration levels maintained, we're going to see situations of Canadians and their family members in distress, and one of them will perhaps be awaiting citizenship.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
As Ms. McCalla says, the department has the discretion to provide that service. We indicated that the type of service that might be provided at one mission will be different from the services provided at another mission. I think it's exactly in these types of situations that they need to decide how they are going to treat people, and they should treat them consistently.
If they have the discretion to do it and they have provided those services in some cases, then it raises the question of why they did so in some cases and not in others. I think that is very much an issue the department needs to deal with. What's going to happen in the future in terms of the volume, I don't know, but you would expect that they should be assessing that type of risk so they can say they either do or do not expect—
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
I'm going to interrupt you there. I don't want to make it seem that I'm frustrated with you; I'm not. I think you can help highlight these challenges we have. This case has frustrated me for the sake of the family. I feel we let them down.
Do you have any details on how discretion is exercised in these cases? Is it a certain managerial position, or is it at the discretion of a front-line visa or immigration officer?
Principal, Office of the Auditor General
It's certainly at the discretion of the consular officer handling the case. That's what we examined, and we found: a high degree of variation in how that discretion is exercised.
