Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Nov. 26th, 2013

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Do you have any recommendations on how we can tackle some of these challenges?

[David Goldstein]

We have several. Part of it is simply a resource issue. Define the markets that have the biggest issue. In our view, Mexico and Brazil present less of a threat or risk. You will always require some sort of visa from countries like China and India. But you should be able to deploy resources in that market, and centrally as well to deal with the demand.

Part of our concern is the lack of reinvestment in the actual operation. Even with that important investment of $42 million in the last budget, when you see incremental increases of 20% a year from China, you realize you're never going to be able to keep up with that demand. Only some sort of sliding scale that allows you to deploy resources in that way will get you even with the demand.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

The visa application centres are independent and privately run centres around the world to help foreign nationals with the visa process. We will have gone from some 38 visa application centres in 19 countries in 2010 to 130 in 95 countries by March of next year.

In your opinion, have these visa application centres improved the visa system?

[David Goldstein]

The short answer is yes. You'll note that the report states that we are very pleased with that rollout, especially in markets like Brazil. There are still some operational concerns, but yes, of course, having more visa application centres in-market is very important.

We are constrained, for example, in China....

Oh, I'm sorry, you're short of time.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Go ahead.

[David Goldstein]

We have a concern in a market like China, where the Chinese government will actually limit the number of visa application centres you can deploy in that market.

So there's some work to do, but there has been great progress made.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Can you enlighten us with some improvements, perhaps, that you think we could make to the visa application centres?

[David Goldstein]

I believe you can centralize the processing model. If you have a secure document arrangement, either in the visa application centre or at the consulate, you can gather those materials from the consumer, give them back their materials, and go to a central operating location that could be anywhere—it could be in your riding, sir—where we're going through them and doing the risk assessment, and where we have a far more efficient system of generating those visas. The CIC is already doing some of that regionally, but I think we could be doing that nationally.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

You have 30 seconds.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much.

I noticed that in your recommendations you bring up the issue of the visas with Brazil and Mexico. There are issues, of course, and there are reasons why the visas were put in place, particularly with Mexico and the number of asylum claims we were getting. I think it's pretty well known that we have an issue of security concerns that we're trying to overcome, because obviously we deeply value our relationship with our partners.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Mr. Cash.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank our guests for taking the time to be here today.

I wanted to follow up on a couple of your comments, Professor Cappe. You said in your comments that evidence is not always used in policy development. This flows from an article in the Ottawa Citizen, where you said it's a concern to you that ministers put forward ready-made policies with little or no contribution from the experts in the public service who are adept and proficient in analyzing issues and proposing solutions.

For starters, can you elaborate on what you perceive to be, in general, the kind of expertise you're referring to, how it's best utilized, and whether the current government is exploiting the full potential of that knowledge in the public service?

[Prof. Mel Cappe]

Well, let's take the issue before the committee at the moment. There was an evaluation done of the temporary visa program. The department has responded to the evaluation. It's identified improvements that it can make. All of that is the kind of use of evidence that I'm speaking about.

There are counter-examples that some people can point to, like the injection site in Vancouver, which the government had defunded, where all the evidence, the analysis that was done globally by public health authorities around the world, showed that such an initiative would actually reduce crime and reduce dependence on drugs. I know that public servants can marshal that evidence and present it to ministers and that the decision is ultimately a political one.

When someone says to me, “That was a purely political decision”, I say bravo. The alternative to a political decision is what we observe in Syria. So I'm not suggesting that we abandon the discretion of politicians to make decisions like that. I want to make sure they're taking account of the information and evidence that's available on which to make a decision, and I think that's what the crucial element of this is.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

You parse the difference between a solely political decision and decisions that are made in a larger sense that include the political dimension, but I do want to see if we can get a little further into issues in regard to immigration policy in general right now.

You've spoken to one example. Could you give us other examples where, in your view, we could see better use of the wisdom, expertise, and knowledge of the public service in these decisions?

[Prof. Mel Cappe]

I'm going to give you a very general and non-specific answer. I've been out of Ottawa now for 11 years, so it would be presumptuous of me to try to lecture, as a professor might, the committee.

I would note that the quality of the professional public service, the professional non-partisan public service—and that's why I made my opening remarks as I did, pointing to the fact that I had served different party governments—is actually very highly professional indeed.

When I look at where my students now go, many of them go to the Ontario public service, many to the federal public service. Some of them even go to work in Toronto for that public service—we can come back to that, perhaps. Those highly trained, sophisticated students with great analytical capacity are going to work in government in a way that actually is gratifying. I worry that if their advice isn't heard, they will stop wanting to go work in government. It's not that their advice should be taken. I've already made that point. In fact it was about three or four weeks ago when I met with President Hamdullahpur in Waterloo, talking about exactly the public policy program Waterloo has, which is creating bright, young people who will go into politics and go into public service. I think we need more of that, but if we want to keep that up, that article pointed out there is an adequate supply of ideas now, and we have to make sure there's a demand for those ideas.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Stop the clock, please.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Stop the clock?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Yes. I want to remind you, Mr. Cash.... I know Professor Cappe can talk about pretty well everything, but the topic before us is visas, not the civil service, so I suggest you direct your questions on the matter we're studying.

Thank you.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Professor Cappe, you have said you have been concerned that the additional cut announced in the throne speech would further reduce operating budgets as well as program expenditures of various departments. I'm wondering, as we see delays observed in processing these applications, if you make the connection there between the cuts and the delays.

[Prof. Mel Cappe]

Actually, I don't. I don't know enough about it to make that judgment. If you had the officers from the department here, they might be able to respond.

The other point I would make is that Mr. Goldstein's point about process improvements is very important. I know when the officials were before the committee in June, they talked about the online application system and all of that. Those kinds of improvements will actually save money.

You have to be closer to it to do the analysis of whether there's any link between that or not. I don't know where the department took its budget cuts and I don't know what the savings have been.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

I wanted to get into a very quick question about the visa offices. Are you aware of the degree of guidance, for example, through feedback or guidelines, these visa officers receive from CIC about the use of their discretion? What we do hear is that there is a wide degree of discretion from office to office.

[Prof. Mel Cappe]

Indeed. I have just a modest window on that.

When I was in London, Mr. Orr, who appeared before the committee here, who now is assistant deputy minister responsible for operations, was at the time the head of the immigration section in London. So we had worked together. All I know or don't know may come from Mr. Orr.

I learned a lot about that discretion, and the kinds of training the visa officers get is actually quite good. They are given guidelines to follow. For some countries it's a medical assessment that's being made. For other countries they are looking for evidence of criminality in the background. In other countries they are looking for the family relationships that might induce people to stay over the time.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Professor Cappe.

Mr. McCallum.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

It seems to me that if a small country like Canada is to compete with a big country like the United States, then we ought to be more nimble or more agile by virtue of our smallness. It seems to me that in some cases regarding immigration it's the opposite. We heard in the press diplomats from Mexico or Brazil, I believe, complaining that they had to fill out huge questionnaires about coming to Canada, questions about where their mother was born, ridiculous things like that. I spoke to people from Ukraine and they said it was extremely arduous to come to Canada. For the U.S., they can get something in their passport that gives them multiple entries for 10 years, so they can just come and go. It's the United States that had 9/11, not us, so they should, if anything, be more concerned about security than we are. Of course, we are, but the image is that they are more so, yet we seem to be slow and stodgy and unresponsive compared with the United States, which is a massive country.

I don't know if we can eliminate visa requirements for certain countries, but I totally agree on streamlining. It seems we have a long, long way to go. I guess I'd ask either Mr. Cappe or Mr. Goldstein if you agree with what I just said.

[David Goldstein]

I'm going to reiterate something that Mr. Cappe said, which is that it comes down to risk assessment. You have to get through the 90% or the 95% of people who aren't the problem, so you keep them out of the system, and you can do it on a fairly expedited basis. It's moving to forms like electronic travel authorization, it's getting our airport infrastructure into mechanisms like transit without visa—that's how we leap ahead. That's how we end up making best practices instead of following best practices.