Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 7th, 2006

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Yes, but my point is--

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

This obviously means you don't know the facts.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Order.

A reply from the minister, and then I have to go to Mr. Jaffer.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I would simply say that it's great to see the member arrive at the committee for once. I've been here three times now, and it's the first time I've seen him here. I'm glad to see that he's finally become interested in these issues.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Minister, whether I'm here or not is immaterial. The fact that's material is that you don't know your facts.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Order, please.

We'll go to Mr. Jaffer for five minutes.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, you should know that if Bob Fife said it, then it must be true, because the media are always right. Don't you know that, Minister?

Anyway, I just want to go to something in these estimates, the legacy citizenship fund that is being transferred to our former Governor General. Can you explain it? It seems to be a fair amount of money and I don't quite understand how it's going to be working or what the thrust of it is.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Every Governor General, when they leave their post, ends up with a legacy project. Adrienne Clarkson has chosen to focus on citizenship, so she's establishing the institute of Canadian citizenship with help from the Government of Canada. The money that we're providing to Ms. Clarkson is money that ultimately we'll be matching with contributions that she raises privately.

I welcome her involvement in this. I think it's important to strengthen the notion of what citizenship means, not just for newcomers, but obviously also for people who were born in this country. We have a great country, but it does not happen on its own. We need people to take the responsibility of citizenship seriously, meaning they have to understand that they have obligations to contribute to their community and get involved in election campaigns and really sort of regenerate the democracy every generation.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

So will you be overseeing, then, whatever that final program will be, how it will be administered? Is that how the department will be working on that?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Well, it will be an institute that Ms. Clarkson runs, but we will draw upon them for help in information and research, and that kind of thing. I've talked a little bit to Madam Clarkson about this. I'm looking forward to getting this up and running right now. They're still waiting for some funding, but that's all a function of the estimates being approved and that kind of thing. But when that funding starts to flow, they'll produce real research and provide some very good input into the whole topic of citizenship.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I appreciate that clarification, Minister.

I have another question. It's with regard to the write-offs of outstanding immigration loans. It seems to me there's close to $1 million in write-offs. I'm curious about the details on that. I hope it's not a reflection of your department not being able to collect this money or not being able to enforce it, but maybe you could give us a bit of an indication if that's in line, if that figure is an average, that the department writes off that much on a yearly basis.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

It is an average, but I might let Wayne, if he wants to weigh in, comment on that.

[Wayne Ganim]

Basically, the department runs an $18-million loan program for immigrants, and this is part of an annual review process that we go through when we assess the collectibility of these debts. On average, we collect over 90% of the debts, but there are some debts due to bankruptcy, small amounts, and so forth, that we go through and assess the collectibility of in accordance with the proper accounting procedures, and we write off the ones where we figure that the cost of collection activity would be more than actual debt, or that the recovery rate is so low that we write them off. So this is the write-off process that we do every year.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

But you mention that the collection percentage is over 90%.

[Wayne Ganim]

It's over 90%.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Okay, that's good.

Concerning one of my other questions, I notice also that there's a transfer from your department to the Department Foreign Affairs and International Trade to support citizenship and immigration staff located at missions abroad. I'm curious as to what sort of accountability happens in that process. When the transfer is made, is it up to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to make sure that the processing, whatever happens with regard to citizenship staff, is your responsibility, or does it become theirs?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Absolutely we maintain responsibility for overseeing their work. This is, in a way, a technical transfer. The funds are transferred from us to DFAIT to pay for the salaries of these employees. They do work for us and we have a way of holding them to account. For instance, when it comes to visa officers making decisions, their performance is reviewed and we check to make sure there's consistency and that sort of thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

You have a half minute left. Use it in whatever way you want.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Just to follow up on that, could you expand? I know, as I think you've heard yourself, Minister, there are concerns sometimes about that accountability in certain embassies in particular. I just want to know. I think it's an important process and I'm glad your department's on top of it, but are there certain further checks and balances we could put in place, or do you think the system is working currently as best it can?

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Of course not. This system could always work better. We always need to look for ways to make sure that the decisions are as consistent as they can possibly be, but it is a problem. I think it's naturally going to be a problem, because we're talking about decision-makers who make decisions based on imperfect knowledge of what the intention of an individual might be. They can look at the past history of that individual. They can look at the tendencies of people from a particular region and that sort of thing. But in the end, the decision that is made is always made without perfect knowledge, so they will never make perfect decisions every time.

There's constant training. We constantly review what the conditions are in the countries where these decision-makers are making decisions, because that has an impact, obviously, on whether or not we think there's a reasonable chance that people will return if they're coming here for a visit, for instance.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

It has been brought to my attention by Mr. Karygiannis that the minister referred to Mr. Karygiannis's attendance at the meetings. I would ask the minister to withdraw that, because we operate under House rules and you can't refer to a member's attendance at the meeting.

[Monte Solberg, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Okay. Thank you.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Chair, I didn't hear a retraction, as well as an apology.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

The minister retracted. That's fine.

I will go to Madam Deschamps.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I will be speaking, Mr. Chairman.

Further to the questions that I asked earlier, with respect to the global case management system for immigration, are there any functions related to document management?

I am asking you this because we receive a number of complaints from groups that help refugees once their application has been approved. They say that it can take the department up to nine months to return the original documents filed by the refugees when making their application and they require these documents when they apply for permanent resident status. Of course, this delays their application for permanent residency. I simply wanted to call this to your attention.

Can you explain how the management system works? Is there someone responsible for managing these documents?