Government Operations Committee on April 1st, 2014

[Ward Elcock]

There are two of us, Mr. Chairman.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

So there are six of you in total.

[Ward Elcock]

It varies between five and six. We go up and down occasionally, as we need an additional person for specific tasks.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Ms. Day, your time is up.

Ms. Ablonczy, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Elcock, just to continue, could you give us an idea of the scope of the issue of human smuggling and more precisely what your mandate is?

[Ward Elcock]

Mr. Chairman, the problem of smuggling around the world is considerable. Canada is in some respects smaller than most other countries. If you visit some of the southeast Asian countries, the flows of people they have are in the hundreds of thousands and in some countries there are upwards of two or three million illegals.

There are very large flows, for example, if you look at the flows that Australia experienced up until very recently, in the last year they had something in the order of 20,000 people arriving by boat and about 350 boats. I forget the exact numbers but the number of people at the end of the year was about 20,000. That's a fairly substantial flow by maritime smuggling.

There are other flows north across the Mediterranean. There have been some maritime efforts to come to Canada and there still are some out there. You'll recall that two boats came here in 2009 and 2010. Our focus has been, to a large extent perhaps, ensuring that there aren't further maritime smuggling events, but we have also taken some interest in the other areas, such as the flow over the land border and through other areas.

Essentially my job is to try to coordinate the efforts of a number of departments. We work with four in particular on a day-to-day basis, but over a period of time we've worked with as many as five, six, eight, or ten departments. It depends on the issues we're dealing with at any time. Sometimes we're working with the Department of Transport; other times we're not. Sometimes we're working with the military; other times we're not. But we're concentrated with the RCMP, CBSA, and others in an effort to try to support their efforts, to coordinate their efforts with other various agencies to get the maximum bang for the buck, if you will. As distinct from those agencies simply doing their specific tasks, can we work together? Can those agencies work together and get a better effect for the dollar?

Obviously that involves working with departments and agencies here in Canada, but it also means working with agencies of other governments. We work very closely with the Australians, for example. We have some of their problems but by no means the same volume of flow as the Australian situation.

We also work with a number of other countries in Southeast Asia, working on the issue of people smuggling in that area, which ultimately could have some impact on Canada, and also in west Africa, in particular.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

In your expert opinion, what proportion of smuggled individuals would be economic migrants and how many would be smuggled for shall we say criminal purposes?

[Ward Elcock]

The whole of the endeavour is criminal. The people who are smuggling people, even if they're—

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I understand that.

[Ward Elcock]

Even if the people being smuggled are in some sense legitimate, the people smuggling them are rarely if anything but criminals. The proportion of economic refugees is probably the largest part of the flow. There are others involved in the flow who may be criminal or have other characteristics one wants to deal with.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

What's your biggest challenge, then? You mentioned to Ms. Day the length of our border, but what is the challenge for you?

[Ward Elcock]

Clearly the length of our border is a challenge if you're thinking in terms of smuggling across the border, but as I say, I think agencies have taken considerable steps to reduce that.

The other reality for us is that to stop smuggling you really have to reach out into countries and help them to stop smuggling from their side. It's not particularly effective to try to stop people in the middle of the ocean. You have to really reach out to other jurisdictions and help them improve their ability to exercise their own laws in respect of human smuggling in order to work against the smugglers and to build, if you will, a defence outside of Canada.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Mr. Byrne, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to our witnesses.

The Privy Council Office is sometimes a little bit of a mystery to a lot of Canadians and to parliamentarians as well, but one of the key functions—and I don't mean that disparagingly. I just mean that you're involved in some pretty high-level lofty stuff.

As to the Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat, could you give an overview of exactly what that does? I'll target my question. There have not been a whole lot of first ministers' conferences chaired by the Prime Minister, and I'm just curious. Are we keeping this effort going? What's its budget? Why are we keeping the Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat going?

[Michelle Doucet]

Thank you for the question and for your interest in that part of the Prime Minister's portfolio.

The acronym that we use in my office is CICS. That's what we call it. I have not sufficient information with me today because I'm actually not responsible for that institution. It's run by another chief operating officer, and they have a CFO who I'm sure would be happy to come and answer your questions.

But what I can tell you is that at this time last year, when I was here before this committee on main estimates, I was fortunate enough to have those folks here with me representing CICS, and they spoke at length, addressing, if I recall correctly, your very questions. In addition to the transcript, if memory serves correctly, I think they're actually quite busy with the work they do, because bilateral meetings between provinces continue to happen and they provide the support function that they have been doing for many years around that. They had certainly a pretty solid set of metrics around the work they continue to do in support of their mandate.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you very much.

If there could be a message sent back, given the fact that this committee will be asked to vote on vote 1 under the Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat, it may always be wise to have representatives either at the table or in the room who might be able to answer questions, but I do appreciate your valiant stab at it there.

If I could move now to polling, is the Privy Council Office still extensively involved in polling data of Canadians, in contracting polls and disseminating that information to other departments?

[Michelle Doucet]

Thank you for the question.

Again, I think I'm not going to give you a very satisfying answer. I have no knowledge of what we do on polling at the Privy Council Office.

Generally speaking, any matters pertaining to communications I would refer to my colleague, Mr. Ian McCowan, who's the ADM of communications and consultations. His focus tends to be on the communications end, but I'm afraid I'm not in a position to be able to speak to you on what we do on polling at the Privy Council Office.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

That said, here's what I'd like to ask about, just to go back to the first ministers' conferences or the bilateral relationship. What exactly is the budget of the Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat?

[Michelle Doucet]

Unfortunately, I don't have that with me because I'm not the chief financial officer for that institution, and I'm sure that if the committee wanted to invite them to appear before you to speak to their budget, both the amount and how they're planning to spend it, they would be happy to appear before you.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

If our information is correct, the amount for vote 1 under the Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat is $4,161,718.50.

Mr. O'Connor, you have five minutes.

[Gordon O'Connor, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC]

I just have some questions about the Queen's Privy Council organization. What are the President of the Queen's Privy Council's functions? What does he actually do?

[Michelle Doucet]

Well—

[Gordon O'Connor]

It's not one of those things you say I don't know to, because you're the PCO.

[Michelle Doucet]

Thank you for the question. Unfortunately, that is my answer again this morning. In terms of the nature of the Privy Council itself and what a privy councillor is, there is the usual political science explanation around that and—