Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 28th, 2012

[Martin Collacott]

Could you repeat that, please?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

How could the individual interview establish the veracity of the facts reported by individuals and of the information gathered?

[Martin Collacott]

It would allow the interviewer to at least ask some questions about some of the qualifications. If you thought you had fraudulent documents, that would not completely solve that problem. You'd still have to go out and check on those documents with the institute that issued them.

A good interviewer who has a reasonable knowledge of the cultural background and the context in which it's being done can find out quite a bit of information, make some very good judgments, and write them up and report them in an hour or two. We're simply not doing that. Everything is pretty well done on paper now.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

In your view, if we reduce the number of admissions following the interviews, how will we be able to deal with the demographic issues?

[Martin Collacott]

What kinds of demographic issues...?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

I'm talking about the demographic problem Canada is currently experiencing. How to renew the—

[Martin Collacott]

You mean the aging population? Right.

That's one—

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Pardon me, Mr. Collacott—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Please stop the clock for a minute.

We have to be careful that only one person is talking at the same time.

Madame, proceed.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

All right.

A little earlier, you talked about the impact on the labour market, but there is also the demographic contribution that immigrants make. In your view, if we reduce the number of admissions, how will we be able to meet the demographic challenges?

[Martin Collacott]

If I understand you correctly, Madame, the demographic question you're asking is this. Canadians are getting older. They're living longer. We're going to have more older people. Who is going to provide the workforce to provide the taxes to support the social services for the older people? Is that correct? Yes.

That is one issue that is coming up less and less because it's been shown definitively that immigration is going to have almost no impact on the average age of Canadians, unless you bring in people in huge numbers. The C.D. Howe Institute has issued several reports showing that if you want to keep the ratio between people under 65 the same as for those over 65, you have to get the population up to maybe 60 million or more in the next 20 years. Immigrants get old like everyone else. So what we know is that unless you bring in astronomical numbers, the demographic situation isn't going to be solved. You have to do something about the fact that you'll have more older people. The issues are there. Immigration doesn't help.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Menegakis, it's your turn.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Collacott, welcome back. It's nice to see you again. Certainly, it's a benefit from the many years of your experience, sir.

I want to focus my questions on some of the practical challenges of the very friendly, if you will, immigration policy that we have. Canada, as you know, is one of the most welcoming countries in the world. I want to specifically ask your opinion. How culturally sensitive do you think the government is when it comes to information such as names? For example, as we translate a name of someone who is coming from a country that doesn't use English, the English alphabet, how secure do you think we are that we are doing it correctly?

[Martin Collacott]

I don't think I can generalize on that. Countries with very different cultural backgrounds sometimes put the surname first; even some western countries, like Hungary. My wife's surname when she was single was the first name, yet she is addressed by her last name as a first name.

I don't think that's a huge problem, frankly. It's nice to be sensitive, and I think we try to do it, but if you get the names the wrong way around, I think most immigrants aren't going to be that put out. Do the best you can.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Collacott, I was referring more to a mistranslation of a name because we're translating a name into English from someone who doesn't use the English alphabet. Do you see a potential for a security risk there?

[Martin Collacott]

Well, that can be a problem. I lived in Syria, and Arabic names are sometimes transcribed with different vowels, in particular, because Arabic vowels fall somewhere in between English vowels and vice versa. So yes, in that sense, that could be an issue. If you simply don't identify someone because their names have been spelled differently in two different situations, that's an issue of another kind, not so much cultural sensitivity as a security risk. That can be a challenge when you're dealing with a language that uses a different alphabet, or Chinese, which uses symbols.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

In your experience, did you have any situations of people with many names, like four, five, six names, where you pick two, and perhaps you can pick the wrong two? When you're doing the security screening, that can potentially create a problem. Have you seen any of that in your career?

[Martin Collacott]

In some cases, people deliberately use several names, especially criminals, or security, or spies. That's another kind of problem. The first one you mentioned was really whether to decide which transliteration you use in English, where several might be in use. China now, by the way, has a fairly standard and widely used transcription in English called Pinyin, which simplifies things there. The Chinese names used to be a major problem because they could be written in English in all manner of ways.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I have one more minute left, Mr. Collacott.

In your opinion, what are the specific deficiencies that still exist in the measures used to identify foreign nationals who may be inadmissible for health, safety, or security reasons?

[Martin Collacott]

Well, certainly the Auditor General identified quite a swath of them in terms of what we're not able to do thoroughly enough with regard to coordination among the four key agencies. I could list about ten of them, and I think they all sound pretty valid. Again, they are some of the ones I raised, for instance, not having enough time at visa posts to really check people out. I can go through the whole list if you want, but there are a lot of them.

I think the Auditor General's report was very good, but as I mentioned earlier, a lot of the things are the same things cited in a 2000 report and in a 1992 report. It's a bit more complicated now, because we have an additional agency, the CBSA. They have to do everything they can to coordinate their work and to make sure they're using the right kinds of identifiers for security purposes. There's a host of things in that report. It was a good report. I recommend it.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Weston.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Merci, monsieur le président. Thank you.

It's great to have you back, Martin. I would say great goaltenders make saves look effortless. You make your responses on the area of immigration look effortless. You show a great mastery of the information, an understanding of the objectives of the act, and a great balance of compassion and practicality. So again, thanks for being back.

My question to you is this. We have in the cards this electronic travel authorization that will monitor entries and exits under the perimeter agreement. How do you think that's going to improve our government's ability to crack down on residency fraud and help us prevent people who want Canadian status from living here but not paying into our system?

[Martin Collacott]

When you talk about the system that exists now, are you referring to the NEXUS cards, Mr. Weston, or are you talking about the biometric screening that's planned for implementation in the next year?

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thanks.

I guess the NEXUS is one small step, but clearly it's the biometric that we're going to, which our committee is looking at more and more closely, so I'd appreciate your comment on that.

[Martin Collacott]

The biometric the government is trying to use involves having people give biometric fingerprints and digital facial images overseas, so we can confirm when they arrive at the port of entry that they're the same person we gave the visa to. What I was recommending, though, is that we use some system for all non-Canadians coming into the country, so we know who's here, whether they're visitors or permanent residents.

For what you just mentioned, Mr. Weston, if we also have an exit system in which there is an electronic scan of people that goes into a central computer base, which the RCMP will be handling in the case of fingerprints, then we will know if a permanent resident has put in the time here that they are supposed to—if that's the issue you're raising. I think that would be a valuable use. That would be an issue not so much of security as of Canadian citizenship, but that system would certainly be a valuable addition to our collection of means for checking who's here.

We do have something, I think. There are tens of thousands of people here who are supposed to have left Canada and we can't find them. This system would at least let us know if they had managed to leave the country on their own without our knowledge. It would give us a much better picture of the number of illegals in Canada. That's not necessarily a security issue, but there are a whole range of benefits from having such a system.

Again, it's not cheap. It will take a while to set up, but I hope the government gives major priority to this.