Evidence of meeting #50 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was board.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
11:25 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
Okay. In the previous government there were reappointments in waiting, and vacancies.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Thank you, Mr. Fleury, for coming before the committee again. I always appreciate the clarity and preciseness of the evidence you provide. I thank you for your many years of service and wish you well in your retirement years. You've certainly put in a long shift. I see 42 years of rather interesting work throughout. You've certainly made your mark, and we appreciate that.
I want to preface three points. Would you agree that even before the present government took over there were vacancies on the board, and names had been submitted?
11:25 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
Yes. I can't recall precisely how many, but I had made recommendations of renewal, and we had vacancies because people had reached their 10th year.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Do you find that between elections there is a time when vacancies sort of grow before they're addressed, and it's something that happens naturally?
11:25 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
Yes, it happens in every transition, and it's normal.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
My other point is on the testing. When I look at the Harrison report, I see that he said that the new test you talk about seemed to represent a reasonable yardstick for screening candidates against declared member competencies. Would you agree that at the end of the day we want to find somebody who meets at least a certain standard so that, regardless of who you select, they're able to perform the job as you define it?
11:25 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
Yes.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
He goes on to say that in his opinion the standard applied for passing the written test was not high enough for the test to perform its intended function of reducing the initial group of applicants as a pool.
Would you agree that if you broadcast widely enough for applicants throughout the country, as the minister did in the most recent national advertisements for people who might be interested, it would be a good idea to set at least a passing mark in the written competency test?
11:25 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
I'll say yes and qualify it. If you didn't have the panel, you'd have to do it. The test would have to be the screening device.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Okay. Let's say I made the passing mark high enough, and a number of applicants got by without even meeting the minimum standard and were potentially recommended. You could still make your selection from that higher level of people—in terms of their background qualifications, how they could add to the system, their track records—at the selection board or the advisory panel.
11:30 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
Yes, you could. A test can be a screening device or one tool to evaluate candidates.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
My impression is that he's suggesting the passing mark for the test be set high enough to ensure that those who pass the test before they go through your further competency process are already at a high level.
11:30 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
Yes, but I do not want to mislead anyone here. Regardless of the fact that we did border cases on the marking of tests, at least one-third were completely screened out as a result of their test marks being so low.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Absolutely. Anybody under 12 marks was screened out, and I think you'd want to do that. Those at 15 marks or higher were allowed to go through, but 15 certainly wasn't the passing mark.
11:30 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
It was not a flaw. We were using our judgment on the total person in front of us. But as for whether you can use a passing mark, for sure, I think a lot of institutions do that.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
11:30 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
In the scientific field or in accounting, or whatever you need, where you can measure. But the difficulty with the tests with which we're evaluating judgment is that this is a very hard tool, and it's very difficult to develop a foolproof test with respect to judgment.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
It seemed that he felt the test was fairly good for that purpose.
But the other question he had was that if you had a test with a high enough passing mark, perhaps the two panels could be combined. He found that of all the candidates who were referred to the selection board, which was 114, almost all of them—104—were referred to the minister. Would you agree that once they got to the selection board, there wasn't much screening out?
11:30 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
It varies. I would like to say to you that if you take some of his statistics, it looks like that. But I chaired most of those, and I've seen series of interviews we conducted, in Toronto or anywhere else, where with the selection board we did not qualify 50%. So be careful with that statistic.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
He does use the numbers. There were 104 referred out of 114.
11:30 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
I don't question his sample at all.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
The other point is that initially, I understood, the then minister—I think it was Minister Sgro—indicated that the advisory panel would have persons appointed by the chair and persons appointed by the minister on an equal basis. There was a listing of the type of people who would be appointed: members of the legal community, academia, non-governmental organizations, as well as human resources experts.
Now, if you, as a chair, were sitting on that committee, you could appoint three people in that category, or you could appoint all people in that category. But do you not think the minister is fully capable of appointing three people so long as they come from a human resources background or a non-governmental organization or academia, just as well as you could?
11:30 a.m.
former Chairperson, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, As an Individual
My response is that if the government wants to do it that way, it's their prerogative, and I say they could do it, for sure.
