Citizenship and Immigration Committee on March 27th, 2012

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

You know that if a couple comes and they have an eight-year-old child and they are designated by you as irregular, obviously those parents are faced with a choice of either having their child stay in detention with them or having that child apprehended by the state. I'm a father of three, and I know what I would do in that situation. I would keep my eight-year-old with me rather than having the state take that child. So do you not agree with me that the bill still permits or will result in children who are under the age of 16 being in detention with their parents?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

That will be the choice of the parents.

Currently I would remind you that I don't recall anyone in the opposition ever having objected to the fact that minors can be and are subject to immigration detention if they are part of a family now. In fact, the immigration detention facilities take into account family units and provide special services for children. That would continue to be the case. If there's an unaccompanied minor, they could be released—there's a legal framework in the provinces for child welfare—into the custody of the child welfare agency at the direction of a court; they could be released into the custody of relatives in Canada or of foster parents—

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

If they have any.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

As you please. But I think this is really actually an abstract question, because the large waves of migrants coming in those boats are typically made up of young men who are sent in to create a basis for a future family sponsorship.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I want to shift to the designated safe country provision. Of course the people who come from—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We'll have to move on, I'm afraid, sir. We're out of time.

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do want to pick up on a couple of points, if I can. One is with regard to some of the comments that the minister would have made in response to questions from his Conservative colleagues. He made reference to biometrics. That's a very important issue here before us in the committee. It's also an important issue inside the House, because we're actually debating a bill on that issue.

You made reference to 9/11 and how there should have been something done. That would have happened in late 2001, but back in 2004 the Chrétien government actually allocated several million dollars to conduct and design and implement a program for biometrics. Is the minister aware of that?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

No, I wasn't. And I must say that since we've been pursuing biometrics as a policy in the past four years, we appreciate the fact that we have received the support in principle of the Liberal Party.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Yes.

I'm curious about something, and maybe the minister can get back to us. I'll just read something, and at some point, whether that's in the next week or so, you could bring it to the committee or have it sent to my office.

In 2004, CIC allocated $3.5 million to design, implement and evaluate a six-month operational field trial to explore how biometrics could be used in Canada’s visa process and to facilitate entry into Canada, enhancing program integrity and client service. The specific objectives can be summarized as....

And this comes from one of Immigration Canada's websites.

Why did it take so long to be able to take that initiative? Here we are in 2012, and now we're dealing with it in the committee. I think there would probably be some benefit to the committee actually having the results of that study. Would you not agree?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I'll look into that study.

I can tell you that my previous deputy minister, Dick Fadden, who's now the head of CSIS, was the Prime Minister's advisor for national security at the Privy Council Office at the time of and following 9/11. He told me when he first briefed me on biometrics that the previous government had chosen not to pursue it.

Madame Deschênes could perhaps comment on the $3 million.

[Claudette Deschênes]

Well, of course that was the study that has permitted us to plan what we're about to roll out using good public service initiatives. We wanted to make sure that whatever we're going to roll out will be feasible, will give us what we want, and so on. So it was the basis of the subsequent request for more money to—

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

But Mrs. Deschênes, you've had that report for how long now?

[Claudette Deschênes]

We'll we continue to work on it, but like everything else, you don't turn it around in two days. We are now at the stage of having brought in a contract for a company, and we have an RFP that has just closed in terms of the visa application centre.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Okay, that's fine.

[Claudette Deschênes]

So it's been in planning and then there will be the delivery.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I also want to ask something, again because we're debating the legislation currently. We have the Ocean Lady and the Sun Sea, two ships that landed in Vancouver. I'm wondering if the minister can provide some hard numbers as to whether any individual who came in on either of those ships has been deemed not a legitimate refugee.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I'll get back to you on the precise numbers, but the answer would be yes, because the acceptance rate for asylum claims of Sri Lankan nationals this year has been running in the 55% range, which means that about 40% to 50% are determined to be unfounded.

Between the two vessels combined, I believe that 36 individuals have been identified as inadmissible or likely inadmissible due to membership or suspected membership in a proscribed terrorist entity or criminality.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Can the minister make a commitment to get those hard numbers to the committee, ideally before the bill arrives in committee?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Mr. Yeates, they'd come to the clerk. Thank you.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I just think that would help, and I do appreciate the commitment to do that.

Can the minister give any indication as to whether in the last ten years there have been any arrivals other than those two that the minister would have deemed as irregular? It's quite possible that I might have missed some. I've been the critic for only a little while, and that hasn't been brought to my attention.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes, but I can't say with certainty without looking very closely at detailed circumstances.

I've mentioned, for example, a flight that arrived from Prague at the Toronto airport in May 2009, on which there were over a hundred people who made immediate asylum claims. All of the claims were almost identical. They were clearly coached and organized. That would be the kind of evidence that would lead to an assessment as a smuggling event.

Similarly, we've had cases of so-called “coyotes” bringing sometimes dozens of illegal immigrants across the land border, typically the Vermont-Quebec border, going through back roads and through the forests for a fee. These are smugglers. It's similar to what's happening in the U.S.-Mexico border.

So it wouldn't just be marine arrivals; there could also be terrestrial or air arrivals.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, I know you didn't have a chance to finish your presentation to us, but I took the time to read the rest of your submission. I read in the submission that as a result of the perimeter action plan, we will be establishing a common Canada-U.S. approach to screening travellers before they reach our shores.

Of course, at first thought, it would seem to me—and I think it's pretty obvious—that the approach of screening people before they board a flight or whatever method of transportation they board to come to Canada would just be a good proactive management approach. Can you elaborate a little bit on that for us, please, specifically on the electronic travel authorization?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes. Sorry that I didn't get to this, because quite frankly this is probably the single most important policy advancement, in terms of immigration security screening, that we proposed.

Electronic travel authorization is a system that has been implemented by Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and now the U.K. The European Union within the Schengen space intends to implement an ETA. That means essentially that people who are planning to fly, into Canada in this case, would first be required to receive electronic authorization. They would make an application online. They would pay a modest fee—I think in Australia it's the equivalent of $10—and the biographic information they submit would then be checked against our watch lists.

If there is a hit, if there is evidence that they had been deported or there are concerns about criminality, terrorism, or security, then we would take a closer look at the application and the person's identity. In the vast majority of cases—at least based on the experience of our allied countries—the vast majority of applicants for ETA would be approved almost automatically. This is a computerized system, so in most cases they could expect within a couple of minutes to get back a positive confirmation of their electronic authorization to enter the country. They could then share that with the airline in order to get authorization to board the flight.

The great advantage of this program is that it allows us to extend a form of immigration security screening to visa-exempt countries, to the roughly 50 countries from which we do not require temporary resident visas. Let me point out, for example, that if you look at the “underwear bomber”, the “shoe bomber”, and some of these other security.... For instance, there were German nationals involved in 9/11 who were originally nationals of Middle Eastern countries but who had attained European nationality. You can have people coming from visa-exempt countries who represent an elevated security risk, and creating an ETA will help us to identify those individuals.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

I want to talk a little bit about that and about biometrics, and particularly how biometrics is an improvement over the current system. I know that we've heard a lot about it before, and I'm very happy to see that we have some broader support for the biometric initiative.

In particular, how many countries would we share information with, and how would we be looking to increase and improve the list of countries we share that kind of information with?