Thank you, Chairman.
I have been asked to comment today on what further actions should be taken to enhance the security of Canada's immigration system. This covers a fairly wide range of topics, so I'm not going to try to cover all of them, but I'll be happy to respond to questions on any of the topics I don't cover in my presentation.
One of the areas that needs particular attention is the security screening of visa applicants, especially from countries that produce large numbers of terrorists. In May 2006 the CSIS deputy director for operations, Jack Hooper, testified before a Senate committee that over the previous five years, in the order of 20,000 immigrants had come to Canada from the Pakistan-Afghanistan region and Canadian security officials had been able to vet only about one-tenth of these.
To what extent the situation has improved since Hooper gave his testimony, I can't say. We do know, though, that in his report, released just four months ago, the Auditor General of Canada expressed serious concern over the effectiveness and extent of our security screening.
I won't attempt to go through all of his findings and recommendations. You presumably were able to discuss these with representatives of his office at the February 16 meeting. I'll mention just one of his concerns, though, as an example. He noted that only a very minuscule percentage of visa applications were turned down on security grounds—less than one in a thousand permanent resident applications that had been referred to security agencies for screening. This refusal rate understandably raises questions as to whether the current risk indicators to help identify potentially inadmissible applicants are appropriate or are being properly applied.
I'll flag a few other major problems at some of our larger visa offices overseas. One is the very high percentage of fraudulent documents submitted in support of applications and the amount of time involved in trying to verify whether they are genuine. Added to this is the fact that a great deal of visa officers' time at some posts is spent in responding to representations from immigration lawyers and consultants, non-governmental organizations, and members of Parliament on behalf of their clients and constituents. Indeed, turning down an application often involves a good deal more work than approving one just because of the challenges that may be raised in the case of refusals.
The result of all this is that the Canada-based staff at many of our visa posts simply don't have the time to screen applicants as thoroughly as they should. Our embassy in Moscow, for example, at one point advised headquarters that it did not have enough staff or resources to weed out all the Russian mobsters trying to move to Canada.
While this particular report was made some years ago, and it's possible that the situation at that particular visa office may have improved since then, given the various deficiencies cited in the most recent Auditor General's report, and indeed in reports made in 1992 and 2000, it would not be surprising if this kind of situation were still a major problem at some of our posts.
One of the particular things I recommend is that we return to having face-to-face interviews with visa applicants. We used to do that regularly; we rarely do now. These interviews are important for a number of reasons. One is that it enables the visa officer to ensure that the applicant has not only a realistic understanding of what he or she might expect with regard to employment opportunities in Canada but also has a reasonable appreciation of the challenges he or she is likely to face in terms of cultural adaptation.
Members of the committee are no doubt familiar with the recent trial in Kingston of members of the Shafia family for killing other family members. The head of the family, Mohammad Shafia, appears to have immigrated to Canada in the belief that somehow he and the members of his family could enjoy all the benefits of living in this country without being influenced in any way by Canadian values and norms. Had he been adequately counselled before he came here on what he could expect in terms of his family's exposure to Canadian society, he might well have decided not to come here, in which case all the members of his family would still be alive today and he and his wife would not be serving life terms in prison.
Quite apart from helping the applicant have a better understanding of what to expect when they come here, a face-to-face interview also provides visa officers with an opportunity to assess the suitability of the applicant for immigration to Canada. While such an interview is not a substitute for the regular security and safety checks, it does provide a very useful opportunity to make a first-hand judgment about whether an applicant is likely to have serious problems in adjusting to Canadian society and values. As well, perhaps, it is making available some insights as to whether the qualifications she or he says they have are genuine and whether they might constitute a risk to Canada in one way or another.
So the reinstatement of full-scale interviews for most applicants by a Canada-based officer is an important priority, both in relation to helping ensure they have a realistic view of coming here and to make sure they're a good candidate in our terms.
To make possible such interviews, as well as more thorough background checks of applicants, requires a substantial increase in resources. If we can't provide the funds to do this, then we should reduce immigration intake to levels where the resources available are sufficient to do the job properly, rather than jeopardize the safety and security of Canadians.
As a background to this recommendation, I would add that I and the organization I am speaking for today, the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform, strongly believe that while we support the admission of a reasonable number of immigrants in relation to our needs, the number of both permanent residents and temporary workers we're currently bringing in is much larger than what we need. Many of the current labour shortages, as well as anticipated shortages in the future, could be met domestically if we do a better job of making the best use of resources already in the country. So that is one of my recommendations.
I'd also like to touch on a number of issues related to the refugee determination system. Let me say first that Canada is one of the most generous countries in the world when it comes to both the acceptance rate of asylum seekers who make claims in Canada and the number of refugees we resettle from overseas. It should be noted that while Canadians strongly support taking in a reasonable number of genuine refugees, a great many Canadians also consider the system to be very much open to abuse and it needs to be tightened up considerably.
In relation to security matters, the refugee determination system has been a significant conduit for the entry of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers into Canada, as well as war criminals and other types of criminals.
I should point out in this regard that a large majority of refugee claimants, or asylum seekers, which is a term used in other countries, are neither terrorists nor criminals. Most are either genuine refugees fleeing persecution or people seeking better economic opportunities and using the refugee system to get into Canada. Nevertheless, a considerable number of terrorists or terrorist sympathizers as well as criminals have been able to gain entry to Canada by claiming refugee status, and they have usually been very difficult to remove if their claims were turned down.
In a paper of mine published by the Fraser Institute in 2006, which you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, I reviewed the cases of 25 terrorists and suspected terrorists who had entered Canada and found that almost two-thirds had come in as refugee claimants.
The use of the refugee system to get terrorists and their supporters into Canada is particularly well illustrated by the number of Sri Lankan refugee claimants who have succeeded in establishing themselves in Canada. Canada was so generous and unquestioning in its acceptance of Tamil claimants from Sri Lanka that for many years, on some occasions, we accepted more than all the other countries in the world combined. This in turn offered ample opportunity for Tamil terrorist organizations to build up their support base in Canada.
In the year 2000, according to a Toronto police Tamil task force report, there were as many as 8,000 members of Tamil terrorist factions in that city, almost all of whom presumably entered either as refugee claimants or as relatives sponsored by successful refugee claimants.
The current government has made and is making major efforts to prevent abuse of the asylum system by people who, by international standards, are not genuine refugees. If the government is successful in this regard, the measures they recently proposed will reduce the chances of such people using the system to get into Canada.
One further comment I'll make on the question of terrorists is that while the refugee system has been a major channel of entry in the past for terrorists—and still is to some extent—in recent years we've also had to begin looking at what is referred to as home-grown terrorism.
An example of this was the case of the so-called Toronto 18. This was a group of mainly young men who had either been born here or had come here at an early age and grown up in Canada, and who had planned to blow up the Parliament Buildings and behead the Prime Minister. Interestingly, they became more radicalized when they grew up in Canada than what their parents were when they immigrated here.
These are issues that we have to look closely at, particularly because this particular community, which was less than 100,000 in 1981, will be up to 2.7 million in 2031. It will move from being one-third the size of the Jewish community to being six and a half times as big. Homegrown terrorism is an issue. It's not directly related to border controls, but it's basically a security issue that has an immigration connection.
I will move on to a couple of other points. The government recently announced its plans for biometric screening. What it wants to do is excellent. It's designed to ensure that the person arriving at the port of entry is the same person to whom the visa was issued at one of our posts overseas. It will also make it easier to identify known criminals attempting to re-enter Canada, as well as failed refugee claimants and deportees attempting to re-enter under false identities or without permission.
These measures, in my view, are long overdue, and in this respect we're lagging well behind other western countries, such as the United States.
