Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 7th, 2012

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

So if the Government of Canada wanted to get aggressive and start dealing with profiteers and human smugglers, our best bang for the buck, then, would be to be looking at working with other governments and other agencies abroad in order to prevent, for example, ships from being able to come to Canada. Is that a fair assessment?

[Ward Elcock]

I don't think it's an either-or, Mr. Chairman; I think you have to do some of both. Clearly you need the right policies and laws in place to manage your sovereignty and your borders, but you also need the capacity, and need to exercise the capacity, to reach out and prevent things from happening.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Now, would you be privy to any information in regard to this bill with reference to its potential constitutionality of mandatory detention, or can you provide any comment on the idea of mandatory detention?

[Ward Elcock]

Mr. Chairman, I'm a lawyer, but I don't try to give legal opinions in areas in which I haven't done any work, especially in the constitutional area, not since, I think, I left law school.

So you probably would be better to address that to somebody else.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

All right.

Admiral, maybe I can go to you. We had two ships in particular, the Sun Sea and the Ocean Lady. What I'm really referring to is the mandatory component. In those two ships—there were 492 people on one and 76 on the other—there were six to whom security issues were related to the degree that they felt it was necessary to retain them.

Does the U.S. refugee system have mandatory detention?

[RAdm Donald Loren]

Thank you, sir.

I am not aware of mandatory detention for the sake of detention or as part of a litany of actions that have to be carried out. Obviously we use probable cause, and if there is reason to take law enforcement action to detain a group, so that you can ascertain what their intention is. But I am very assured that the amounts of time we're talking about are considerably less than the lengths of time we're talking here, because unless you either bring charges against someone or in fact bring someone to arrest for reasons you have evidence to prove, we cannot take that type of lawful action.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

To the best of your knowledge, in terms of judicial oversight for refugees, would the U.S. have a system whereby all refugees are classified in a category in which they all are entitled to some sort of judicial oversight for detention purposes?

[RAdm Donald Loren]

Now we're getting a little bit out of my area of expertise, but I can sit here and say to you that one of the things we did is we brought immigration and customs, border patrol, and the United States Coast Guard together under the auspices of the Secretary of Homeland Security. One is so that we clearly recognized an agency that had law enforcement responsibility, because now we are talking about the law and taking legal action against people, and the ability to do that at sea, the coast guard, while maintaining our policies with respect to customs and border patrol security.

The bottom line is that we recognize that in the world we're facing today we have to take steps that bring together the establishment of policies and procedures to ensure that we are operating under the rule of law and that we afford all people the rights that go with human dignity and treat them fairly. If we have probable cause and then develop, through the course of investigation during the period of detention...or quarantine, as perhaps we called it in my country when we established Ellis Island over a hundred years ago.

Whatever you do to carry out those procedures, you want to make sure you give people the benefit of the doubt.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Admiral Loren.

Ms. James.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our three guests.

I am going to start my first line of questions with Mr. Elcock, but I want to make a comment with regard to what Mr. Loren said.

You stated with regard to biometrics that it's kind of like what fingerprints were years ago, and it's a statement that.... We've had countless other witnesses say that we're actually bringing Canada in line with many other countries around the world that use biometrics, such as the U.K., Australia, the European Union, and New Zealand, etc. So I'm glad that you also said the same thing. I think we are playing a bit of a catch-up game right now.

Mr. Elcock, this question is with regard to biometrics or sources of intelligence. What do you think about our provisions in Bill C-31 with regard to that particular aspect in the bill?

[Ward Elcock]

You mean the particular aspect in terms of biometrics?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Yes.

[Ward Elcock]

I think, as was pointed out, biometrics is clearly part of the evolution of being able to identify people and be certain of your identification. Frankly, I haven't done any recent work on biometrics. I know that in some cases there are some concerns about how fast the work on biometrics has progressed, but that was some years ago.

You're a little out of my subject area at this point for me to give you a learned comment on biometrics from A to Z.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Let me tie that into your expertise and knowledge of the human smuggling illegal industry. With regard to human smuggling, do you believe that the use of biometrics will help you in your investigations in identifying people who are coming into Canada through mass arrivals or human smuggling? In many cases the people who are claiming refugee status on our shores are part of the human smuggling operation itself.

Do you believe the use of biometrics will help with the identification of such people if we have that information available?

[Ward Elcock]

In theory it should help. However, most of my job is to try to prevent people from even getting here or prevent ventures from getting here. I'm working one level ahead of that. Hopefully they won't depart.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Perhaps I could ask one of the other two gentlemen if they would like to comment on that as well.

Do you believe it will help in the investigation of human smuggling operations?

[RAdm Donald Loren]

If I may, I think it's important, as we look into how the nature of the security environment we find ourselves in has changed—unfortunately, asymptotically—and how we are talking about transnational actors, independent actors, in a very complicated environment....

The fact of the matter is that we have to bring to bear all the tools we can to address the problem. Just as my colleague said here, we have to recognize that the start is at the point of debarkation and there's a continuum that takes place all the way through the point of landing. We have to be prepared to address that.

I might point out that one of the things that I have been concerned with, of course, is the close tie between all forms of illicit trafficking and the eventual smuggling of components or weapons of mass destruction.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Let me ask this question. Currently in the provisions in Bill C-31, where it only requires biometric data to be collected from people coming to Canada temporarily, do you believe this should be expanded to collecting data from anyone who isn't a Canadian citizen who is applying to come to Canada?

Again, for safety and whatever else with regard to the Privacy Act, biometric data would be, obviously, disposed of once they became a Canadian citizen. But instead of just people who are coming to Canada temporarily, do you believe it should be expanded to include people who are applying to come to Canada in general?

It's just an opinion question. I'm not sure if anyone has the expert knowledge; I'm just looking for an opinion.

[RAdm Donald Loren]

I'm going to fall back on my position that it's not my place to comment on the provisions of your law that you're considering. I will sit here and say to you, though, that we have to work through, both from a legal perspective and an operational perspective, all the processes that are available to us to help get our arms around the problem.

I would point out that 100 years ago or more, some people considered taking a photograph, capturing your spirit, an intrusion. These are things that constitutional lawyers and people who have to address these types of things are going to have to sit around and determine. As science and technology changes, as the threat changes, how do we keep pace with that and yet respect human dignity and the rights of the individual, which both our nations are very proud of?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[Inaudible--Editor]...so a fairly short answer from maybe one representative from both groups.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have time for one quick question and one quick answer.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Okay.

How can Canada better improve our immigration screening process? It's not a long answer. I just want to know if you have something specific that you would suggest, and maybe one of the other gentlemen as well can answer.

[A voice]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

No, that's not one of the answers.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Okay. We're going to move on.