Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 30th, 2010

[Claudette Deschênes]

The comment I would make is that when they go to the Immigration Appeal Division, it's a de novo hearing. If it takes 18 months between the refusal at the mission and commencement at the Immigration Appeal Division, the Immigration Appeal Division will look at what happened in the intervening 18 months; I would hate to say this, but some of these cases will create a pretty good relationship record in the 18 months after the refusal, so it really doesn't tell us very much about whether the first decision was the correct one or not.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Madame Deschênes.

Ms. Chow, your time is up.

Mr. Dykstra, please go ahead.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

One of the things you mentioned in here, Claudette, was that beginning this summer we plan to gradually phase out the largely outdated computer-assisted immigration processing system and replace it with the global case management system. Could you expand on that a little bit? How is it going to reduce wait times, and how long will it actually take to implement the new system?

[Claudette Deschênes]

From the perspective of wait times, if the wait time is based on our annual levels exercise, it's not going to help us that much. What it will help us to do, though, is use our resources in a different way.

Because global case management will have more information in electronic form, it will permit us to see much more of the file than we presently can. Right now, in our CAIPS system, it's very biographical. There's not a lot of information. The global case management system will permit us to streamline how we share information with our partners for purposes of screening. It will also permit us, as we add any application component, to think about doing a front-end and a back-end office, which does a lot of the administrative things so that officers overseas can really be focused on quality assurance, fraud investigation, intelligence-gathering, and interviews, when required.

Right now we have many officers doing a lot of other things, such as supervising registries and that type of thing. We think that with GCMS being rolled out and with the addition of the application that will then come, we will be able to refocus our resources so that our officers overseas will do value-added work, while we will do more of the back end and front end in Canada.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

That relates a little bit to the next question I have in terms of what's happening in Sydney, Nova Scotia, right now. Obviously the ministry has not been able to renew the employment of the temporary employees there, in addition to the 63 casual workers.

I want to give you an opportunity, from a ministry perspective, to present the reasons and the case for making the decision that we did in terms of not extending that short-term renewal.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Every year we start with what we call an A-base, which is the resources we have for permanent staff in our offices overseas and in Canada. We monitor the use of our money, and sometimes there are slippages because new money comes into the department or we have not been able to staff positions in other places.

In Sydney, we found additional money and hired people, telling them that these were term contracts, or casual 90-day contracts, so we could keep working and keep the files moving, but knowing that these were temporary resources and at the end of the fiscal year we would have to let them go.

This year again, as we move into the mid-term, we'll look at the resources we have and try to do the same thing. So the question for us is always, can we add a few staff for a period of time and get more work done, but knowing that these are not permanent staff?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

In association with those staff, albeit that anything that's temporary you'd like to make permanent, are they fully aware that their opportunity is time-sensitive with respect to how much funding is available for that window?

[Claudette Deschênes]

The letters they receive, just as if they would receive them in Ottawa or Toronto, clearly indicate that these are term positions or casual positions and that at that point it will end.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

When you go through the A-base, would you be able to do that on an international level, if we were in a position with respect to in-year funding, to assist in a country where we are backlogged with respect to wait times? Have we ever been able to try to work through that type of temporary system, or is that impossible to do internationally?

[Claudette Deschênes]

Overseas, we call it “temporary duty”. Normally it's either staff who are sent from Canada in terms of officer decision-making, or what we call “emergency locally engaged staff”. It may be for 30 days, or for 60 days or 90 days. Actually, we use a lot of emergency LES overseas.

Sometimes it's for peaks in terms of the summer. So you wouldn't need people all year, but in the summer when people want visitor visas, we would add staff.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

So Haiti would be a good example where we would have ramped up some emergency service.

[Claudette Deschênes]

We have some emergency service. We have lots of temporary duty.

We have emergency service in Santo Domingo, and we have temporary duty there also.

And we're using, in the office in Canada, casual or emergency term positions too.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

So would you credit some of the reduction in wait times that we've seen here to some of that emergency scheduling or emergency planning, or putting those folks into those places?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I certainly would credit some to that. I would like to credit some to innovation and good management as well.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

The reason I ask is that obviously there has been some criticism of the decisions that were made in Sydney. It seems to me that if that criticism continues, it leads the ministry to not make decisions of adding additional staff because of the potential outcome that would be deemed negative versus positive, when in fact you have positive outcomes in terms of the temporary employment it provides and obviously the benefit it provides to the ministry itself in the processing and the reduction of those wait times. It would seem to me that it makes it difficult to move forward and make those decisions if at the end of the day you're going to be criticized for doing what you said you were going to do, which is to hold these as temporary positions.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Certainly I as ADM of operations, and also the group, sometimes feel that it doesn't matter what we do, we're going to be criticized. That said, I think we would still want to continue to do that. But yes, it is sometimes discouraging.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

This happened in 2006, and obviously in 2009-10 again. So I wonder how much impact that might have on the continued use of this process. It seems to me that while it does inevitably lead to the cutting off of a particular program because of its temporary nature, it can be of great assistance to the ministry.

[Claudette Deschênes]

From our perspective, we will continue to want to use it. We wouldn't want to come here and tell you we've lapsed a lot of money, because then you'd ask us other questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you very much. That concludes the seven-minute round.

I have a brief question for you. More than one constituent has come to my office and said that some of our staff in other countries have said, “Well, you know, if you give us a few dollars, we can speed up the process.” It has been said by more than one constituent--not a lot, but more than one. I have no idea whether it's true.

First of all, do you have any facts that it might be true in some jurisdictions? Secondly, what training and safeguards have you gone through to ensure that doesn't happen?

I assume you have done something to make sure it hasn't happened, ever, but I'm just asking that question because that comment has been made in my riding.

[Claudette Deschênes]

I'm glad you asked the second question, because I misunderstood your first one.

You are talking about people saying that if they paid something to somebody, they would be facilitated and get through.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Yes, I am saying that.

[Claudette Deschênes]

I'd be naive if I told you that doesn't happen or people might not do that. My own experience is that often when that is said there is really no link to anybody who can make a decision or make it faster. There is a story created of a perceived link to somebody.

Certainly when we talk about Canada-based officers overseas, they make decisions, and so on, but part of their work also is to manage the risk in that environment. So part of the work they need to do is quality assurance on decision-making. They put in place systems in which sometimes people say there is no flexibility, but sometimes having no flexibility in the system ensures that nobody can skip a line and take money, and so on.

We certainly have systems in place. We do regular audits throughout our program where independent auditors come in and verify whether systems are in place that work. We want to continue to improve the quality assurance we do, not only on negative decisions but on the positive decisions, to make sure that people are entitled to get what they do.

It is a variety of things. We certainly work with the Department of Foreign Affairs in terms of their trade officers in some missions where the risk is very high. There are also places where we have security officers and we work with them. All our locally engaged staff is security-cleared, and there are local checks made that are updated periodically.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Are you able to say whether some areas are worse than others? It's an awful question to ask, but I'm going to ask it anyway.

[Claudette Deschênes]

You can look at corruption indexes that are international. In countries where they have trouble with corruption, we would probably say there is a higher risk of that type of thing happening.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Monsieur Bevilacqua.