Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 5th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Okay.

The meeting is adjourned for approximately half an hour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

My apologies for the interruption, but that's politics.

When we left it was your turn, Bill, so we'll go to you.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being with us, Ms. Fraser, and your colleagues as well.

I appreciate that we're dealing with older reports and that some things may have changed in the time period, but I want to ask a couple of things and I am looking forward to participating in further discussion about what might be on an agenda.

One of the things I want to ask about is your statement that there were “significant weaknesses and serious constraints in establishing criminality and security admissibility”. We recently heard testimony from CSIS before a Senate committee that up to 90% of applicants from Pakistan and Afghanistan weren't being screened appropriately, in that particular person's opinion.

In the work that you and your department did, were there any regional concerns? Were particular areas not being screened? Was that part of what you reported on, or did you notice those kinds of things?

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, I'll ask Mr. Flageole to respond to that.

[Richard Flageole]

Mr. Chairman, we covered that question quite extensively in our 2000 report. The reference we made was that in a number of countries it was not possible to obtain a police certificate, which was one of the requirements. I think we gave a list in that report. I think China was part of that at the time.

I'm just going through the 2003 report....

There was also the question that some of the security information obtained in confidence from other countries couldn't be released. Not being able to use that information was a major problem. I think there were amendments to the Immigration Act to deal with that specific issue.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Did your 2003 report update the countries list, or was that just a...?

[Richard Flageole]

In 2003 we talked about it more in general terms and mentioned that they have better tools, but the whole question of the difficulty of obtaining reliable information from police services, for example, in a number of countries was still there.

[Sheila Fraser]

Actually, we said in 2000 that the department at that time didn't require a police certificate for applications from more than 40 countries, and that 23% of applicants came from those countries. That was one issue.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

It looks as if that issue might need some continuing work, especially when you talk about risk-based planning, although to you folks that might mean something different from what we're talking about right now.

I want to follow up on the question about the immigration levels. Did you examine how the department sets those targets and what information it is based on? There has often been some question about where those targets spring from and how commitments like the previous government's commitment to 1% of population as an immigration target are established. Generally, where did the annual targets that were announced in the past come from?

I also have a question about the 60-40 split in applications. Of the applicants accepted each year, 60% are from the economic class and 40% are from the family and refugee class. Why is it 60-40? Is there a point that would establish a better equilibrium between economic and family class applicants, a better balance, so as not to have the huge backlog in family applications? Is that something you folks looked at when you were considering targets?

[Sheila Fraser]

We wouldn't generally look at the 1%, for example, because we would consider it more of a policy issue. On the levels themselves, Mr. Flageole might have information. There is also some information about the approval of the levels; based on the previous question, we might want to clarify that.

[Richard Flageole]

Mr. Chairman, we never really looked at the actual process to set the levels. We haven't audited this. There are a good number of consultations with a whole bunch of stakeholders that take place in Canada, regarding the levels. A major question is how able the country is to absorb and integrate those people.

Those levels, if I understand correctly, are tabled in Parliament. They're approved in Parliament. I'd like to go back to one question that was asked before, when you made the comparison with 2000. When we did the audit in 2000, the situation was very different from what it is now, because in 2000 we were not meeting the levels. We were behind. We said at the time the department was overtasked. We were not able to get all the people that we would like to get as a country.

The situation in 2006 is quite different. We're meeting the levels. We exceeded the levels in a whole bunch of categories in here, so I guess the whole question of processing time is linked with the levels. We said we would like to get 250,000. We're getting the 250,000. We have a number of applications in the process. So there's a question of balance between setting the level and waiting times, and that's something that probably needs to be looked at.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

On the question of temporary resident permits, there's been some concern in the past that this was something over which there was undue political influence. There have been accusations of bias out of the minister's office, particularly that certain MPs' requests from certain ridings might be more favourably looked upon than others. I wonder if you found any suggestion of that in your review.

I noticed that one of the statements you made is that there was no consistent documentation of the reasons for the issuance of a TRP, but was there any suggestion of bias or political interference in how those were issued?

[Richard Flageole]

Mr. Chairman, I think the main issue we raised was the lack of documentation. I don't think we've seen any specific instances of this, but we don't know because the basic reason for issuing those in almost 50% of the cases was not adequately documented. We have asked the department to make really significant efforts to make sure that the file provides the reason the permit was issued.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Would part of the audit not have looked at which ridings the people who received the temporary resident permit or their families lived in, that kind of thing?

[Richard Flageole]

No. I think we looked at just a sample of permits.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Can you explain to me what a “risk-based planning exercise” is so that I'm a little clearer about what you're going to be looking at and what I hope we might have some input into?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes. To determine the audits we're going to do, we use a planning exercise in which we try to identify the major risks to the department or agency in achieving its objectives. We go through a fairly extensive exercise. We interview, obviously, people within the department, parliamentarians, but also stakeholders outside to try to get a sense of what the risks are. Then we will look at those risks and determine if they're auditable, because some obviously are outside the scope of audit. Some could be questions of policy. There are other areas in which, frankly, we don't have any expertise

We then put it through a filter and develop a plan for three to five years of audit work that we want to do within the department. We do this for all the major departments, generally every three to four years. Obviously, if there are significant changes, we have to go back, and given that there have been some significant changes in this department, and given that all the enforcement activities have gone over to the Canada Border Services Agency, it's time for us to go back and take a look at it again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Ms. Fraser.

I'll now go to Ed.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you, Ms. Fraser.

I understand that your reports are generally issued every three to four years, perhaps five years. The latest report made a number of recommendations, some of which were to reconsolidate or consolidate some areas of responsibility for border services and so on, in defining the responsibilities of the various parties. As I understand it, you have a fairly good working relationship with the department, even though you don't do audits except on certain terms. There is an ongoing process that takes place between the auditing bodies of the department and your department with respect to the areas that are of concern to you.

Objectively speaking, how has the department reacted to most of your recommendations?

[Sheila Fraser]

Obviously we have an ongoing relationship with all of the major departments because we audit the public accounts each year. So for any departments that have significant spending, we go in to do financial audits of transactions.

When we did these audits I would say that the department was very responsive. It agreed with the recommendations and was very open to them. In fact, we can easily say that the deputy minister at the time was very interested in the audit and took a personal interest almost from the very beginning when we started the audit work. I think we even saw that he was trying to adjust as we were doing the audit. So the department was responsive. I guess the true test of how responsive it was will be if we go back and re-audit to see if the issues have been addressed.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

One of the concerns left with the department was on case management, both abroad and inland, and the fact that various agencies were attempting to access data to ensure its integrity and that people had access to it. You had some remarks about the case management system, and there's a significant discussion about going to a global case management system. There was a recommendation that the area needed to be improved.

From what your recommendations were to what you see on an ongoing basis, is that being approached in a reasonably comprehensive fashion?

[Sheila Fraser]

I think we did see some improvement. From 2000 to 2003, on the informations systems, there was this global case management system that you referred to, which I think was supposed to be operating by 2005. I think it is still not fully operational. It's one of the systems we're looking at in an audit we're doing called “systems under development”. That will be coming out in November. It's not specifically on Citizenship and Immigration, but on broader systems.

Perhaps Paul could give some information on the information systems.

[Paul Morse, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

We did see quite a bit of improvement there in the system called CAIPS. In 2000, a lot of the missions abroad were not really hooked up to it properly. There was no interface with the basic data system called FOSS, and a lot of the people weren't very well trained on it.

By 2003 they had fixed the interface, so there was real-time data between their basic database, FOSS, and what people were seeing overseas. The training has been done, and close to 100% of the people have access to it. So there has been quite a bit of improvement there.

It's going to be supplanted by the global case management system, whenever that's done.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Noting the various recommendations you had and the responses to them, other than the case management system, what is the next area to watch for an audit?

In response to a question raised about undocumented workers, I'm wondering if it's possible within the audit to look at whether there's any systemic bias in this type of worker not being able to come through the system. Is there a reason for that, other than queue jumping and not waiting in line to go through the proper system? Has any thought been given to that, or have you looked at that aspect of it in your audit procedures?

[Sheila Fraser]

We haven't specifically looked at that aspect. We tend to audit more of the systems and processes in place to see how they're working, and not judge the unintended consequences or people who don't come into the system. But if the committee thinks this is an area we should look at, we will certainly consider it.

As we mentioned, we're just in the process of doing the planning for the next three to five years. I suspect we will have some follow-up work. There are some important recommendations that came forward in 2000 and 2003 that we need to look it. I shouldn't advance the planning that the team hasn't done, but we also need to look at the relationship between Citizenship and Immigration and the Border Services Agency, how that transfer has gone, and whether the Border Services Agency has also addressed some of our recommendations.

Those will be some of the areas, but we'd certainly be interested in any suggestions the committee has on future audit work that we should be doing.