Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 14th, 2012

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Are there any cases of misrepresentation where, for example, an applicant claimed to have no children but four or five years later we found out that there was a child. Would you revoke citizenship for that?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I don't know; I doubt it. I'd have to check and come back to the committee.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I'd appreciate it if you would look into that specific one.

Another example would be a situation where someone comes to Canada as a single person. The person comes to Canada and finds out years later that he was technically living common law. So technically that person would have misrepresented himself. Has any citizenship been taken away in a situation like that? Would you know the answer to that offhand?

[Claudette Deschênes]

We will have to check that. Certainly from an immigration perspective, if a person was simply a permanent resident, we might look at that, but I will get back to the clerk on the citizenship.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

In another report, you say there were 54,000 inadmissible persons at ports of entry. Is that 95% from the U.S.? Were they people coming to the Canada-U.S. border? Where are those 54,000 inadmissibles coming from?

[Pierre Sabourin]

I'd have to get back to you on the country distribution. These are people who showed up at the ports of entry and were deemed inadmissible.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I think there would be a huge difference if out of 54,000, 90% were coming from the U.S., if you follow what I mean. So I think it would be beneficial to get a breakdown of where these people are coming from, these people who are inadmissible.

Then you say you've removed 1,800?

[Pierre Sabourin]

It is 15,000.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

It is 15,000 people. Typically, when you're removing, is it in part from deportation orders that are sent? On what grounds would you be searching to remove?

[Pierre Sabourin]

Close to 90% are failed refugee claimants.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

They've gone through the process.They're told that they have to leave the country. And now you're in search of those individuals. You find them and then you deport them.

[Pierre Sabourin]

Yes, that's correct. Most of them are compliant.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

On average, how long would someone of that nature have been in Canada before being asked to leave? Is there such thing as an average?

[Les Linklater]

We do know, given the availability of appeals and backlogs at the IRB, etc., that some failed refugee claimants can be in the country for as long as four to five years.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Leung.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions deal with the application of biometrics.

How do we share this information with other countries, and how do we protect or comply with the Privacy Act?

If we don't share this information about our country, or other countries don't share with us, then really, it's not an effective tool for determining who is admissible and who is not admissible. But if we do share it, then we are in a situation whereby there may be privacy issues with respect to some of the countries that may not have the best privacy protection or human rights records.

[Les Linklater]

As we look at developing projects like the biometrics project, we work very closely with the Privacy Commissioner. Most of these types of initiatives require that a privacy impact analysis be done by the department. It is then assessed by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. As we develop the policy frameworks, Mr. Chair, we are conscious of being compliant with our obligations under Canadian privacy legislation.

In terms of sharing information with other countries, we have a very good relationship with what we call our five-country conference, which includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and now New Zealand. We have developed some protocols that allow us to share biometric information through a shared server that Australia hosts. It is mostly tombstone biographic information, shared and pooled, against which individual countries can verify individual cases.

If there is any adverse information, beyond the tombstone, that would help us with matching in our decision-making, then on a case-by-case basis, and in conformity with our privacy legislation, we are given access to it.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

At the risk of profiling, there will be some countries that may have a higher incidence of potential criminal elements or people we would find inadmissible. How will we use this as a tool to effectively control that?

The five countries you mentioned are essentially Commonwealth, English, western democracies. How do we move beyond that and look at, say, some other countries that may have criminal elements we have to deal with?

[Claudette Deschênes]

As we launch the biometrics project, the fingerprints we take will be stored and kept by the RCMP, who will have access to criminal information from other countries, according to their legislation, such as Interpol and that type of thing.

We anticipate being able to get a lot of that information from that sharing.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

I'm thinking perhaps of a country like China.

We have experience with white collar crime by a gentleman it took us 10 years to remove. The case is well documented. How do we have a better tool to prevent these inadmissible persons from coming into Canada?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I don't think biometrics is going to be the solution to every problem. I don't think we can do that.

Part of our work is to, first of all, lock in the identity of people early and then know who we're dealing with. Then, of course, there's all the work we do from a risk-profiling perspective in terms of identifying issues. For example, where do people get their money, and what are the issues around that?

In the case of white collar crime, obviously, if nothing has been publicized about an individual.... We are likely, with an advanced passenger information interactive, to be able to maybe have more information. But it's not foolproof. I think that would be too much to ask.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

At least to the best of my knowledge, it's the following biometrics that we can do: fingerprint, digital image of a facial feature, and the last one is the DNA.

Will we be using all three of these? Or are we just limiting ourselves to fingerprinting? With a fingerprint it is easy to cosmetically, or with a good dermatologist, remove the fingerprint.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Our plan is to use fingerprints and a live photograph that we will have, which will permit the officers at the port of entry to also compare. We are not planning to do anything else at this moment. But like anything else, we will also be looking at what other countries are developing.

For us, fingerprinting is one that historically has demonstrated its usefulness, so that's where we will be focused.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

With the amount of information that is being stored with biometrics, what do you estimate is the cost of this, per individual, to store this information for his lifetime? Arbitrarily, if we know when he was born, let's say, what would be the cost of storing this information for 99 years?

[Claudette Deschênes]

I don't know how much that would cost because that's not the plan. We're not going to keep it for 99 years.

Do you know how much money...?