Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 7th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I will call the meeting to order. This is the Standing Committee on Citizen and Immigration meeting number 41, on Monday, May 7, 2012, pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April 23, 2012, Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other acts. This meeting is televised.

We have the first panel here this afternoon.

Mr. Perchal, good afternoon. How are you? You have been here before for security, if I recall—

[LCol Walter Perchal, Program Director, Centre of Excellence in Security, Resilience, and Intelligence, Schulich Executive Education Centre]

I have. That's correct.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You're with the Centre of Excellence in Security, Resilience, and Intelligence at the Schulich Executive Education Centre. With you is Donald Loren.

Finally, from the Privy Council Office, we have Mr. Ward P. D. Elcock, special adviser on human smuggling and illegal migration.

Good afternoon to you. I understand, Mr. Elcock, that you do not have an opening presentation.

[Ward Elcock, Special Advisor on Human Smuggling and Illegal Migration, Privy Council Office]

No, Mr. Chairman, but I am happy to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Sure.

Then, Mr. Perchal and Mr. Loren, you have up to 10 minutes.

[LCol Walter Perchal]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chair and members of the committee, we are most grateful for the opportunity to appear before you.

Our point of departure for our presentation today comes from our involvement in the Centre of Excellence for Security, Resiliency, and Intelligence at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. However, for the record, our comments are our own.

Clearly, our current immigration policy has significant issues. As per the official record, some two-thirds of our current refugee applicants are found to be, by Canadian standards, inadmissible to Canada. However, the time between arrival and determination is not only a costly exercise to Canadians, but also a largely inefficient one, inasmuch as national interests are harmed, and legitimate claimants are adversely affected by this state of affairs.

The overriding fact of the matter is that the majority of people landing in Canada—excluding the majority of those travelling from the United States—either as legitimate visitors or as refugees are currently a product of a system that is based on discretion, intuition, and often by the determination of foreign nationals working for our embassies abroad. They are not, as the Auditor General observed, people vetted on the basis of sound, shared Canadian intelligence that would pre-screen any of those who potentially represent either criminal or security threats to this country.

Put simply, we do not have an elegant intelligence interface that allows us the benefit, in the age of information, of information that is the product of multiple vetted sources made available to those in our government who need it as the basis for sound decision-making.

In addition, those individuals within government who have an understanding of the differing sources of intelligence and how best to leverage these assets to not only support sound immigration policy, but also how to further our collective national interests, are often prevented from developing and implementing the necessary policies and initiatives. Accordingly, current policy is reactive rather than proactive.

As a result, individuals who represent various levels of threat to our national interests increasingly burden Canadians. Further, some of these individuals further threaten another critical interest and relationship, that of our neighbours and friends to the south. I would like to recall to members of the committee the damage done to our national interest by the mere perception in the United States, post-9/11, that a number of terrorists had come through Canada. What if our current policies lead to real threats to our friends and neighbours to the south? Might we not expect a significant tightening of what is effectively a critical component of our national economic interests? Might we not also expect other measures in what we have proudly seen as the world longest and oldest undefended border?

In the 21st century, the age of information, we need to force multiply and force protect our national interest by an aggressive and effective application of intelligence. In a time when a single individual can make war upon the planet, this is fundamental to our national interests. But, again, our interests are not limited to ourselves. Because we share a continent with a country that has been targeted by many and suffered much, we also need to think about our continental responsibilities.

With a view to that, I should like to give the remainder of our time to a great friend of Canada, Admiral Donald Loren. We have asked him to give you the benefit of his thoughts on these matters from an American perspective.

[RAdm Donald Loren, Faculty, Centre of Excellence in Security, Resilience, and Intelligence, Schulich Executive Education Centre]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me here today.

I am honoured to be a great friend of Canada and a senior adjunct faculty member at the centre of excellence.

It is at my colleagues’ request that I have joined them today to appear before you. In their view, my work at the U.S. Department of Defense, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Security Integration, and my work with the Director of National Intelligence, as the director of operations at the National Counterterrorism Center, is particularly related to the matters that you're going to discuss. It gives me certain insights that might be of benefit to your thinking on your way ahead.

I'm not here to address Canadian law in specific. As an American, it is not my place to do so. Rather, I am here to offer my perspective, as testimony, with a view to addressing your questions on how you are defining your own interests in the legislation. Certainly we all find this of interest, inasmuch as we do share the continent, and issues in either of our countries can quickly become important to both nations.

Clearly, a significant terrorist event will not be deterred by the longest undefended border in the world. A major attack would not, as it has been demonstrated in the past, be limited by borders, as evidenced by the death of 24 Canadians in the horrific events of 9/11. And it would not be inappropriate to single out singular events of impact alone when discussing this subject matter. What must also be considered are the policies and the legislations that address the ever-changing issues we face globally today, particularly where the threat spectrum continues to grow on an exponential basis.

You will recall how during 9/11 you assisted so many of my fellow Americans in accommodating landings of aircraft in your country. What this single event demonstrated is that we share the consequences of being neighbours. Therefore, within that context, we are concerned not with the legitimate traveller or the legitimate immigrant, but rather we are concerned about those who would threaten either of our countries, threaten our citizens, threaten our values, and threaten our interests.

In the 21st century, where transnational crime and terrorism pose substantial and increasing threats and risks, we cannot underestimate the impact of a single individual. What is worrisome for both of our countries is that the growing nexus between criminality and terrorism force multiplies the threats we currently face.

The degree to which we can be proactive is the degree to which we shall both succeed or fail as we face the challenges that lay ahead. Therefore, within that context, the challenges that both Canada and the United States face with respect to border security and immigration can only be resolved through both nations working together as we have done in the air and missile defence of North America through NORAD.

The key to working together will be to ensure that not only are the policies and programs that are implemented by both nations in alignment, but each nation is comfortable with the measures that are in place to address the customs and immigration challenges. In my professional experience, I can state that addressing these challenges is not only about ensuring that the necessary equipment and resources are in place but equally, if not more important, ensuring that the intelligence and law enforcement information upon which decisions are based is sound.

For example, biometrics is often presented as a potential solution to solve many of the immigration issues we both experience, but it would be naive to believe that implementing expensive technical solutions without the necessary intelligence to inform the technology is the sole answer. It is akin to buying the most expensive computer available, but not purchasing an operating system that it can use.

Canada’s membership of the Five Eyes provides access to significant amounts of information that can be used to better assess the potential risks posed by individuals attempting to enter the country, but this information must be readily available to the appropriate decision-makers and shared across agencies, something that both of our nations can do much better.

But even if the information was made available and utilized properly, there are secondary and tertiary concerns that must be addressed before courses of action are undertaken. For example, the security and assurance of the information must of course be protected.

This means it is paramount that the infrastructure and architecture of the security intelligence apparatus used creates a level of confidence amongst Canadian allies in order to have a more open flow of information.

The strong relationship between Canada and the United States must always consider political dynamics that face our respective countries, as these same political dynamics could have a significant impact on moving border initiatives forward. A mutual respect and understanding of the political winds of both countries should be considered when any course of action is taken, thus ensuring there are no misconceptions or misunderstanding among nations.

The United States works hard to ensure that its border, immigration, and security policies are correct, in the same way that Canada works hard at these very same issues. Our nations have built our relationship on trust and mutual cooperation, and that should continue to be the case.

In closing, both the United States and Canada have talented security and intelligence professionals to perform the work that lies ahead. These people exist both within and outside of our respective governments, and it should be a priority of government to engage these professionals and use to the fullest capacity the sound knowledge and practical solutions they offer to the security problems our nations face together.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Admiral Loren and Mr. Perchal. Thank you for your presentations.

Mr. Elcock, I know there will be questions.

Mr. Opitz is first.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, thank you all for being here today. I know you're all experts in your field, and we're delighted to be able to pose questions to you on Bill C-31 and related topics.

Admiral, I'd like to start with you, and I'm going to talk a little bit about detention biometrics and some of this information-sharing you talked about.

Then I'll turn to Mr. Elcock and talk a little bit about smuggling and trafficking, sir, if that's okay.

Admiral, you mentioned the sharing of data between allies, specifically in this case the United States and Canada. As Colonel Perchal pointed out earlier, it's clearly important that we make sure our shared borders are secured.

I'd like you to describe in a little more detail, sir, some of the things you were just describing about information-sharing, perhaps in the context of entry/exit protocols.

[RAdm Donald Loren]

Certainly.

First let me say that information sharing amongst our nations continually improves and is at a very high state. I know I, for one, worked very closely with ITAC when I was at NCTC, worked very closely with the Canadian defence forces at the Department of Defence.

But what I was alluding to, sir, is much, much broader than the information-sharing amongst nations. I think we're pretty good; we have lots of room for improvement, but there are vehicles in place. And there's a tendency to certainly treat the members of the Five Eyes and certainly our relationship with Canada as a very important and very special relationship where information-sharing is part of the norm.

I'm actually talking about not only amongst our nations, but internally amongst our own agencies within our own countries, and respectively amongst those agencies. For us in the United States, information-sharing has gone much further than the foreign intelligence of the past and it now butts directly against law enforcement intelligence.

Of course, as you know, as you are very sensitive to that, we are very sensitive in America to ensuring a distinction between foreign intelligence and law enforcement intelligence and information, because we will never have the federal government, and the military, and our homeland defence apparatus using intelligence against American citizens. We try to protect those rights and work very hard at it. That in itself creates a very convoluted system of sharing information among agencies and among law enforcement and intelligence agencies as well.

Case in point: when we talk immigration, one of the things we must consider, of course, is health and medical. I can't speak for Canada, but I would submit to you that we have lots of room for improvement in the United States in the ability to bring our immigration services in line with our health and human services and our centre for disease control, many of the areas that have to come into contact with each other, to ensure that we are protecting the nation against...whether it just be natural occurrence of people with various diseases transmitting globally in a much smaller world that we face today, or, quite honestly, if you get somewhat science fiction about it, perhaps a specific threat of spreading disease throughout the world, the hemisphere, the North American continent.

My point is that we have to work together as a nation and we have many of those vehicles in place. We have to work internally within our respective nations, and then we have to ensure that information and intelligence are shared appropriately across all those interfaces—while protecting sources of information, of course.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

How does biometrics factor into all of this?

[RAdm Donald Loren]

I don't consider myself an expert in biometrics, per se, but we have to realize that biometrics is along a line of progression where perhaps we were with fingerprints or photography or dental or DNA testing years ago. This is a continuum, and we have to be able to develop our processes, our methods, our CONOPS, if you will, to evolve, as the technology and the state of the art develop so we can use that to confirm identity management.

We have all seen again in this age of Print Shop and electronic manipulation of the tools we have available to us that it is important not only that you identify yourself—just as I showed a passport for entry into this building—but that you positively prove that the person whose identity record you held in your hand, who appears to be you, is in fact you. So we have to continue to develop those capabilities.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have two minutes.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Okay, great.

I'm going to move to Mr. Elcock, because I wanted to get into the smugglers and traffickers.

Mr. Elcock, I know you have a lot of expertise in this. I'd like you to describe some of the tactics that smugglers and traffickers use to try to get into this country and some of the threat that this actually has towards Canada. Clearly we have a right to defend our borders, and we have of course a need to defend our citizens and our safety and so forth.

Sir, can you describe how smugglers and traffickers actually try to access our country? This could also include the dot-dot-dot to terrorism.

[Ward Elcock]

Mr. Chairman, that's a bit of an open-ended question in the sense that what they're prepared to do depends to some extent on what we put in the way. Anything we put in the way they will seek to get around. That's the normal.... It's why the Income Tax Act used to be about this thick and is now about that thick. Human ingenuity being what it is, people will look for ways to make a profit even out of illegal activities.

In terms of human smuggling, which I would distinguish from human trafficking—they're not necessarily the same thing, although they may cross at some point—the reality is that we have seen in Canada over the last few years attempts in particular by Tamil ventures to smuggle Tamils to Canada by vessel. That, essentially, is assembling a bunch of passengers willing to pay sufficient money to come to Canada by a somewhat decrepit vessel, braving the Atlantic or the Pacific to come to Canada. There have been two earlier occasions and an earlier exodus back in the 1980s, but in the last three or four years—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

We're way over, Mr. Elcock.

I'm sorry, but I have to watch the clock.

Ms. Sims.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much, the three of you, for coming to spend some quality time with us.

I think all of you will be aware that just a year ago we adopted Bill C-11 and the components of Bill C-11. Also, I think it has been very clear as we have questioned both staff and others that the key elements from Bill C-11 have not been implemented yet, so we actually don't even know whether we really have a problem.

Bill C-11 is called the great compromise. The minister and our critic of the day, Olivia Chow—and I'm sure Mr. Dykstra was involved in it as well—all talked about it being a great piece of legislation, because it brought all the elements together and there was a lot of agreement. It seemed to address the key issues arising from boatloads of people coming to B.C.'s shore, the two boats.

I have to say that most of those people—as we know, even before Bill C-11—have been accepted as refugees. Refugees very rarely stop to think, especially if their lives are in danger and they've had the kinds of persecution they've had, about the dangers of the seas, because they're in a corner and they have to escape. They're worried about their lives, limbs, and their families, and all of that. They came to our shores, and as we know, a vast majority of them have been accepted as legitimate refugees.

In Bill C-11 Canada also has, I would say, some of the strongest sentencing for human smugglers. Really, in Canada we can't go greater than life imprisonment, because we don't have the death penalty in Canada, and I'm not hearing anybody from either side say that it is where we want to go. So we already have the strongest deterrent possible for smugglers, a life sentence and also $1 million in fines.

But as you know, smugglers are very sophisticated operatives. I often say that while we're chasing the victims, they're probably sitting—and I don't mean to malign New York—in a New York side street café drinking lattes and wearing their Armani suits, for all we know.

Yet it's the victims I want to focus on here, because I believe Bill C-11 already has very strong punitive measures towards smugglers. I also recognize the fact, and I would say many experts do, that smuggling is an international problem—it's a curse across the world—and it needs to have governments working together to address it in a way that targets the smugglers, not the victims again.

The other aspect of Bill C-11 is the detention part. Bill C-11 allows detention of people, but not just for a year; they can even be detained longer, for identification and for security checks. But what's different about Bill C-11 is that periodically you have to go back and justify why you want that extension.

So as far as detention goes, I think it's already covered, because the minister, even under the current system, has been able to keep some people in detention for far longer than this; whereas with this new piece of legislation, all the irregular arrivals would end up in detention. Notice a marked difference from where Germany is, as we heard in earlier testimony as well.

The other concern, when I look at all of this, is over the detention. My colleagues across the aisle have sort of said, “Yes, but the minister....” That's another concern we have: there is too much power in the hands of a minister.

It's not because it's this minister; I would have concerns about a minister of any stripe having that much power in individual hands. What we're seeing is more and more of that power being centralized and therefore losing some of the objectivity that you count on when you have a panel of experts, say, or others.

One of the other things we're hearing a lot about is cost. Well, I can tell you that the cost of detention is very, very high. I have often said that if we were willing to spend even one-tenth of what we're prepared to spend on detention for youth...in my previous life. We would not have the need to have that many detention places if we were willing to spend one-tenth on education, on prevention programs, and a lot of those things.

But in this case, the cost for detention for a year...? This is for everybody who comes here in an irregular way in a group of more than two—except for families, and I appreciated that clarification this morning. We really have to take a look at that as well. Surely this can't be another prison-building agenda when we look at where we want to go with our refugee policy.

One of the other concerns we've had raised by quite a few witnesses of all stripes is the timelines and the kind of charter challenges that could be opened because people are not being given due process.

Other countries that have taken these kinds of measures of mandatory detention are actually moving away from them. Here we are in Canada, a progressive country; instead of learning from the mistakes of others, we have a tendency in the last little while to want to copy the mistakes of detention.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you.

I appreciate all the presentations, but this is specifically to Mr. Elcock.

You'll have to excuse me for not necessarily knowing; as a special adviser on human smuggling and illegal migration, who do you report to?

[Ward Elcock]

It's to the national security adviser.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Our current system has a detention component to it. Has our current system failed to detain individuals who are important for us to detain?

[Ward Elcock]

I think that question would probably be better addressed to some of the other agencies, such as CIC or CBSA. Frankly, my job is more to the point of trying to prevent smuggling ventures from succeeding rather than what happens when somebody arrives here.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Right. So where you do your best is not necessarily within Canada; it would actually be abroad. Would that be a fair assessment?

[Ward Elcock]

For my part of the job, yes, Mr. Chairman. It's really a focus on working with other countries, working with our intelligence and enforcement agencies to build a picture of what we should be looking at, and then working with other countries and other international organizations to stop vessels from departing, stop ventures from departing.