Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 5th, 2006

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

I want to come back to the risk-planning exercise. Can you tell me the timeline for this, when you expect to know what you'll be looking at with regard to this department?

[Sheila Fraser]

By the fall of this year. If the committee is interested, we could certainly come back to discuss our plans in the department.

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

Okay.

You mentioned that you consult with stakeholders as well. How is that done? Is it by invitation? Do you invite submissions from anyone?

[Sheila Fraser]

No, we generally will just take the initiative to call people and meet them through an interview process to try to get their views on challenges that the departments face.

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

And how do you come up with the list of contacts?

[Sheila Fraser]

It's often through the department itself. The department will tell us the people who are knowledgeable, people they think we should be talking to. It's been a very good exercise, and we find as well that the internal audit function in departments will often cooperate with us, because they should be doing the same sort of exercise. Then we obviously go back and validate it with the senior management of the department to make sure we are addressing the right issues.

It's all part of our concern that we know, when we go into departments and start auditing something, that the departments are going to focus attention and resources there. So we have to make sure we're looking at things that are significant and we're not forcing them into areas that aren't as significant.

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

So how would you define a stakeholder, then? Is it like community organizations working with immigrants and refugees, or is it--

[Sheila Fraser]

It could be non-profit organizations. It could be associations of lawyers, for example, that deal with immigration cases, or resettlement services. I don't know if you want to think of other ones, but there could be a wide variety of people in the area, even groups that help immigrants coming into the country.

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

Is it problematic that you depend on the department for the list of referees?

[Sheila Fraser]

No, because we'll always pick some ourselves, too. The departments make suggestions.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Bill.

Ed, and I think we'll have time to go back to Madam Faille for a couple of questions.

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

Thank you.

I have a couple of brief questions.

In your 2003 annual report you identified a problem with respect to the primary inspection line that was done by the immigration department and the referrals to a secondary examination that was being completed by immigration officials. Part of the solution was to have both of those functions performed by an employee with Canada Border Services. But simply changing the duties to the Canada Border Services employee wouldn't necessarily solve the problem. The issue essentially would be whether the people were properly referred to a secondary inspection and whether the tools were available to ensure that the proper people were being referred and the proper job was done when they were referred.

Was there something done systemically or was a recommendation made to monitor the problem, even though it was transferred over to Canada Border Services?

[Sheila Fraser]

Unfortunately, I can't really respond to that, because we haven't done the audit work to see whether it has been addressed or not. A large part of the issue was just that they hadn't measured the effectiveness of that secondary inspection.

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

Even though it was transferred to one employer, the question of measuring the effectiveness is still an issue. Are there mechanisms in place to do it?

[Richard Flageole]

I can briefly add, Mr. Chair, that the main issue was that the immigration department didn't know whether customs was doing a good job in referring people to them. They had a study in the nineties that showed they were referring a whole bunch of people who should not have been referred, and the other way around. Even Immigration themselves at the time didn't know whether their second line was effective. Now that it's done by the same organization, as Ms. Fraser said we'll be quite interested to know whether a single organization knows whether what it's doing is effective. That's something we'll have to—

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

The same issue is still there. There needs to be a mechanism in place to monitor it.

The other point is that you mentioned that in the various categories we have of applicants, there wasn't a distinction between the applicants and their dependants. That is something that should be fairly easy to do. Is that being followed through and reported upon in the proper fashion?

[Sheila Fraser]

The only answer I can give is that on this information sheet we have, I note that they say “including dependants”, but I don't think they've actually broken out the number of dependants. Anyway, I think they have started to address it, at least on these information sheets.

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

It seems like a fairly straightforward breakout that you should be able to do.

[Sheila Fraser]

And they obviously have those numbers. I'm just trying to see if it's actually there. The sheet I have just has an indication that it includes dependants, but I don't see on it where they actually break it out between the applicant and the dependants.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Thank you, Ed.

We'll have a couple of fast questions from Madame Faille. Then we'll have to call it a wrap.

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

A number of organizations have pointed out that immigrants do not complain, because they are afraid of reprisals. I believe they fear the RCMP, but they also fear Immigration officers as well. Immigrants believe that, if they complain, immigration officers will find them and cause problems for them.

A recent article indicated that 15 of the 56 complaints examined by the department were well founded. That is almost 20 per cent of the total. If we extrapolate that figure, we might be led to believe that many people feel they're being cheated by the immigration system and cannot take their complaints anywhere.

Have you assessed the immigration complaint mechanism?

[Sheila Fraser]

No, we have not.

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

People also turn to our offices to complain about the fact that staff in foreign offices render decisions that are quite different from those rendered by Canadian staff. We are receiving more and more complaints to that effect. I would like to know how staff in foreign offices are hired.

When the issue comes up in the newspapers, the Department's spokesperson says that things are done this way to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.

Would you be in a position to make recommendations, and to determine whether people are being adversely affected by immigration services and the procedures in place?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, we will look at this issue. Staff hired abroad plays a very important role indeed.