Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 15th, 2012

[Balpreet Singh]

Our organization has a position on that. We do opposed that bill. A number of people, even if they're recognized as legitimate refugees, will be detained. Even if they're accepted after the whole process, they won't be given travel documents for quite a long time. They're essentially in limbo. Once again, that's not how we treat refugees in Canada, so I would not be in agreement with that.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

We've had lots of examples where people who were mandatorily detained, actually many of them are real refugees or refugee claimants.

Mr. Perchal or Mr. Platsis, do you have comments you'd like to add to that?

[LCol Walter Perchal]

I think your question underlines our point. I believe if we had more effective intelligence, if we were more effectively pre-screening before people landed in Canada, we would have far less of a problem or far less of a concern with respect to the respective rights of individuals arriving. The problem is that we don't know who these folks are; therefore, we cannot make a reasonable assessment of the potential risks or threats they represent to Canada.

Again, the bottom line is a simple one: we need to ensure the security of Canada above all other things. If we have information about this person before they get on an airplane, if we know who that person is, we can make a reasonable and effective assessment of risk.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Would you say, then, that it's important to ensure that our visa officers around the world have access to more resources so that they could do their work and not be rushed? I'm not sure if it was CIC officials or actual former visa officers who testified to this committee, saying that on average a visa officer has about five minutes to decide whether they're going to accept or reject a specific applicant.

Would you say that, in fact, we need to ensure that we have Canadian-trained visa officers who are in these posts around the world making those decisions, and have better training or resources made available to them?

[LCol Walter Perchal]

The critical question isn't time; the critical question is information. That is to say, on what basis do you review your five minutes? If you have a complete or a reasonably complete file that has been vetted by someone who understands the nature of the file itself—and that would not necessarily be a visa officer.

One of the things we're considering is actually having intelligence officers, in this concept that doesn't exist yet, vet those files. We see that as a more effective means than allowing somebody to arrive in Canada, and then spending an inordinate amount of time and money trying to deal with the consequences of that arrival.

[Rathika Sitsabaiesan, NDP, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Perchal, I'd like to ask if those files are available now. Do we have the files and they're not being made available to our visa officers? Are those files available already?

[LCol Walter Perchal]

I would think we have few, if any, files on most of the people we cannot identify. That's why we can't identify them.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Perchal and Mr. Singh, imagine you work eight hours a day. You sit in Chandigarh and every day you're given 80 applications for a visiting visa. So you have to go through and make a judgment on 80 of them. You know your colleagues on your right and your colleagues on your left. You have an approval rating of about 50%, sometimes a little higher and sometimes a little lower, but there is no doubt it's right around 50%. What impact is that going to have on you? Do you see that as a problem in pre-screening?

[LCol Walter Perchal]

I will defer to Mr. Singh.

[Balpreet Singh]

There are a lot of applications that go through the Chandigarh office. I'm not knowledgeable about other offices, but more staff is needed there.

With respect to security, there are definitely flags that go up when certain things appear on a file, like service in certain security forces. I suppose those files need greater time. But as far as our community is concerned, the level of rejections from the Chandigarh office is unacceptable.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Singh, one of the things I've noticed in looking at these rejections is that there seem to be a lot of siblings and parents. These are individuals who want to visit on special occasions—weddings, birthdays, graduations. They want to come to Canada, where their children are now living.

Do you see those types of individuals as completely different from others who might be coming to Canada? Is there something we can do to speed up that process, or enable them to be approved in a quicker fashion?

[Balpreet Singh]

I don't know if I would say they're in a different category. Once again, if certain flags go up on any file, those deserve a little more special attention. I understand that the super visa has been quite successful with respect to speed, as well as approval rates. So I think there's something good happening there. If we can learn something from the super visa system, perhaps that's something we can apply to other visitor visas.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I know my colleague across the way might have liked to have heard that. One of the issues I've heard about from the Indo-Canadian community is the affordability of the super visa. Do you believe that is an impediment for many members of the community?

[Balpreet Singh]

The insurance is quite costly and that definitely is a barrier for some families. For those who can afford it, it has worked well. But yes, there are families that can't afford it.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Perchal, is it possible to process large numbers in a short time and know if it's being done adequately, or is there a need to ensure that there are more resources where we have embassies and there's a high demand? India is just one such place. There are half a dozen where there's a huge demand. Is there a need to put more resources into pre-screening?

[LCol Walter Perchal]

I think the critical variable is how efficiently current resources are used, and how they are incorporated in a common database. My colleague talked about silos. We're not sharing information effectively, so it's difficult to make an informed assessment in the time we have and with the people who are available. We need informed assessment, and that is a product of intelligence-based information. That's what we need to do.

As to the level of efficiency and effectiveness, I'm afraid it would require a bit of study to look at the degree of employment, the degree of interoperability, and the degree of current sharing. To the best of our knowledge, working from the outside and looking in, we are not convinced that any of that is happening effectively.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Leung.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for all of three of you, but I wish to first of all address it to Mr. Platsis and Mr. Perchal.

You mentioned that part of our information sharing comes from the Five Eyes. You mentioned that there is an opportunity to use biometric collection and perhaps a process of intelligence gathering. My understanding from my previous work is that all of this is very easily done when there is a situation of human conflict, such as in the start of the Gulf War and Afghanistan, but given our current capability in a relatively peacetime situation, what is your recommendation for risk mitigation for today, immediately, and for the near future?

How do we start to establish this intelligence-gathering apparatus that will feed into what we need it for? Maybe the information is out there already—you mentioned a silo effect. Do we perhaps need to have a cross-sharing, a cross-pollination, with the other agencies rather than create something totally by ourselves?

[George Platsis]

The critical factor here is to start with properly identifying a risk analysis. That's where we actually need to start this, asking where our risks and where our vulnerabilities are.

Further to that, for information collection, even in a peacetime setting, we still have opportunities and networks that we can chat with—friendly nations. As I mentioned, the Five Eyes is only a departure point, because we don't have immigrants coming just from the Five Eyes. They are coming from all over the world.

I am going to defer to you on this one, because this is your area of expertise.

[LCol Walter Perchal]

What I would like to see is more interoperability. I think more interoperability with the current resources would establish our baseline on where we are and where we need to go and be. In my view, that interoperability would focus and centre around a common database—a very well-secured database—that would force multiply our capacity to make informed decisions in peacetime.

The Government of Canada has invested a great deal of money in technology. We have invested a great deal of money in various institutions. I think what we would like to see is more effective interchange of the information those institutions have and the degree to which they share that information for the purpose of making those decisions, again, well before anyone has the opportunity to enter Canada itself.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

There are situations whereby intelligence could be gathered with hard facts and hard evidence, such as someone being involved physically in training with terrorist groups and the like, or belonging to organizations that are known to be terrorist.

I'd like you to share your thoughts on how we determine intent. How do we determine whether a person coming in has evil, nefarious intent, and how do we mitigate that risk?

[LCol Walter Perchal]

We don't determine intent on a five-minute review of a file. If we have a concern, we start with a risk assessment. If we see a potential risk, then what we are increasingly dependent on, in a particular case or cases, is getting additional intelligence until such point as we are satisfied that we have an understanding of the individual file to the extent that we can speak to the notion of intent.

That is not going to be done quickly. It requires time. It requires effort. But for all of that, it is infinitely cheaper and more effective to do outside of Canada than to allow it to be done in the course of landing somebody and then going through a myriad of processes that are both costly and no more effective in coming to the conclusion that you are looking for, sir.

[Chungsen Leung, Conservative, Willowdale, ON]

I certainly share that desire to have people pre-screened before they land in Canada, but what we are faced with is the conundrum that if we do the screening offshore and do it to the extent that satisfies the risk mitigation, it would take a long time.

Perhaps you can share your thoughts on how we can shorten this process.

[LCol Walter Perchal]

We shorten the process as a function of the application of technology. If we have common, effective databases, we have a greater capacity to respond externally as opposed to internally. Those databases can be assembled in Canada and made available to those making the decisions at our various visa and consular offices abroad.