Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 5th, 2006

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

My questions are on controlling the revenues of Citizenship and Immigration Canada within the framework of the Financial Administration Act.

Is CIC on the list of organizations authorized to make a profit, and to levy fees higher than the real cost of opening files and delivering services? In recent years, CIC has been making a profit. That profit is set out in the Annual Report and the figures are there to be audited. Do they have any right to use those profits for other ends? I would like to know where that money has gone. They have made a profit. What have they done with the money?

My second question is on the Immigrant Investor Program. There is a federal program and a Quebec provincial program. Quebec's program is quite transparent — we know where the money goes. How is the money transferred to the provinces used? Where is that money?

[Sheila Fraser]

First of all, on the issue of user fees, I believe that the Department is subject to government policy requiring that fees be levied to cover operating costs. I think it is generally recognized that the aim is not to make a profit. The Department should have an accounting method in place to demonstrate that costs justify the fees levied. This is perhaps something we should consider.

I do not believe we have ever audited the Immigrant Investor Program. That is also something we could consider.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you.

Barry, please.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today and sitting through that timeout.

I have a couple of questions. First, when the decision was made to create the Canada Border Services Agency, at that time, in terms of setting up processes, was your advice sought, and if so, was it listened to, in your opinion?

[Sheila Fraser]

Our advice was not sought. The government would not usually consult with us on something like this. As I mentioned earlier, there are two areas on which we do not comment. One is policy and the other is what we call machinery of government, so government can organize itself as it sees fit.

I certainly hope somebody looked at past recommendations, but I'm not sure that would be the case.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Okay.

I have a second question. I'm new to this file and this Parliament. I don't have a huge immigration workload within my own riding, so I'm certainly not an expert on it. But as a layperson, I can say that when you ask people which departments run well and which ones don't run so well in Ottawa, I don't think this one would get a high mark. A lot of people think it's very slow and that it takes years and years to make decisions. I appreciate why that's true in some cases, but I just think, in terms of perception....

In terms of goal-setting, we hear a lot of talk about this top-line number, 250,000 or 300,000 a year, or 1% of the population. It's a great number to use in a speech, but I mean, you're not going to say zero or two. I'm not sure it was a very rigorous process that came up with 1% in the first place. We seem to be about 250,000 and that's a number that seems to get tracked. But I'm not sure how useful that number is in terms of tracking the efficiency or effectiveness of this department. It may somehow measure what its capacity is, how many decisions they can spit out, etc.

Are there some other measuring tools or other numbers we should be looking at in terms of measuring the performance of this organization--for example, how long it takes them to deal with a file? Is there a process in place that on average it takes a year to deal with something, and if it gets to two years it's automatically bumped into a separate process and there's some requirement for it to be dealt with more quickly? If we wanted to identify two or three measurements in this department that would actually give us a better sense of how well they're doing their job, what might they be?

[Sheila Fraser]

I know that when we did this audit in 2003, we talked about processing times. We have this, and I presume members have this as well. It's facts and figures that come from the department. I note that they do talk about the processing times. They talk, as well, about approval rate. They also present the number of cases that are pending or what they call their inventory. The levels are really set as an objective, and I think that will determine the resource levels within the department. It also has a direct impact on the inventory, or as some would say, the backlog, because the greater the numbers that you accept—of course it will bring it down if you reduce those numbers—the backlog is going to go up. I presume this will affect processing times as well. They're all interrelated.

The levels are actually very detailed by type of category and by class. We've never actually looked at how it is established; we've taken that as a given. It's like a policy issue for us. We'll look afterwards to see how they manage that and how they do the processing.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Again, I guess my question is whether there is a range that's reasonable. Maybe waiting 40 weeks or 50 weeks for a decision to be made is reasonable, but waiting four years for that decision would be unreasonable.

Airlines can tell you what percentage of their flights arrive on time. I suspect if it drops below some level, it's deemed as unacceptable.

Maybe this isn't a question, it's more of a suggestion. I wonder if that isn't an area where some time should be spent to develop standards in terms of how quickly files should be dealt with. That's a better way to measure the success of the department rather than how many files they happen to plow through in a year.

[Sheila Fraser]

Theoretically, I agree with you, except that if you have a very large number of applicants, unless you have no target or no level established.... I'll give you an example. In the economic class, they say the level is from 132,000 to 148,000. There were actually 156,000 accepted. The number of applicants who are still waiting is 582,000 and it takes 57 months. Now, if you brought that down to two years, I would think it would mean—and I'm sure there's not a direct relation—that you'd probably be up over 300,000 acceptances. So the faster you deal with them, the more acceptances you're going to have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

We will go on strict five-minute rounds right now to see if we can get around again, because we have to break at 5:25 for our next group. It's eight minutes after; the clock is not correct up there, I don't think.

Madame Folco, and Bill.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Fraser, I am very happy to see you again today, even though it is on another issue. Please forgive me for being late.

I think my question is in line with Mr. Devolin's.

When the issue is to determine whether an individual will or will not be accepted for immigration to Canada, Immigration Canada is only one of the partners involved. You looked at the issue of health. There are a number of questions there, and decisions to be made. Moreover, there is the security issue. What we hear on that is always vague, not to say obscure.

In my riding, I need to consider a great many immigration cases. I'm not the only one in that position, I am sure, but it remains that when a case has been pending for four, five or six years and we are trying to see why it is taking so long, we are told without fail that it is for security reasons.

In my riding, there is a person who has already been in Canada for four years. Everything has been dealt with except the security issue. This person is wondering why it is taking so long to deal with the security aspect of the file.

Do you have a mandate to look at CSIS activities? If so, have you looked at their activities, and what have you concluded?

[Sheila Fraser]

Our mandate does cover CSIS. We can audit CSIS, but in some cases restrictions on the subject of our reports apply. For example, it goes without saying that we cannot publicly disclose secret or confidential information.

We looked at the security issue during the 2000 and 2003 audits, if I remember correctly. I think we focused particularly on the RCMP.

I would ask Mr. Flageole to provide more specific details.

[Richard Flageole]

Mr. Chairman, as part of the 2000 audit, we looked at the relationship between Immigration Canada and CSIS. Some procedures need to be followed. For example, CSIS has developed security profiles. We ensure that Immigration Canada was following the rules established for requesting or not requesting advice from CSIS.

We looked at what Immigration Canada was doing with the opinions provided by CSIS, but we did not look at the way in which CSIS conducted the investigations. We looked at the application and audited what was being done with the reports received. However, we did no audit at CSIS to look at procedures.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

You talked about the 2000 audit.

Did you do the same thing in 2003?

[Richard Flageole]

Yes. I believe we concluded that Immigration Canada was applying the established procedures. There again, we did not look at the way in which the investigations were conducted.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Could you look at that?

[Sheila Fraser]

We could review the process used and the type of information obtained. In fact, I think that's what we would do for all agencies, be they police agencies or other kinds. We would not redo the assessments they were already doing. Rather than reviewing individual cases, we would look at the process in general and the way it was applied.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

In fact, I would like to know why the process takes so long. Of course, I know there are borderline cases, but I cannot believe that all cases are borderline.

Is this something we can ask of you? Is this part of your mandate?

[Sheila Fraser]

If the committee asked, we would be quite prepared to consider the issue.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you for remaining on time, right to the minute--five minutes.

Bill, and then Ed, and we'll see if we have a minute or two left for you, Madame Faille.

Okay, Bill.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Fraser, the right-of-landing fee--its implementation--was that part of what your group looked at? There was some talk when it was implemented that it was intended to cover the costs of settlement services for new immigrants. Did you folks look at that?

[Sheila Fraser]

We haven't looked at that per se, though with the new policy on user fees we are certainly considering that we should be doing something within government to see how they actually justify the charges. This might be a good place to do it.

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

I think Madam Faille alluded to places where there are agreements in place with provinces. The specific case that I'd raise is the settlement agreement with British Columbia. There's some concern that not all of the money transferred to the province goes into settlement services, that some of it--almost half--goes into general revenue and is then used for other things that are outside of the scope of the agreement. The province will say it's for things like fee-for-service language training, which isn't part of the agreement.

Was that part of what the studies looked at in 2000 or 2003?

[Sheila Fraser]

No, we wouldn't have looked at that. In those cases where there are agreements with the provinces, we would have to look very closely at what the conditions in the agreements actually are and then see how the federal government assures itself that those conditions are being met. We wouldn't actually go beyond into the provincial governments to see what's actually happening there.