Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 28th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Good morning. This is the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, meeting number 50, Thursday, May 28, 2015. We're here to decide, to debate, and to discuss a number of clauses from Bill C-59, particularly clauses 168 to 176 of that bill, as requested by the finance committee.

The morning is divided into two sections. The first will be with the members of the department who are here this morning to help us. In the second hour we had originally scheduled for three witnesses; however, only one is able to appear.

We'll proceed with the first hour. We do have some representatives from the department. Chris Gregory is the director of identity management and information sharing. I gather, sir, you're going to be making a presentation to us. We have Brenna MacNeil, who's the senior director of strategic policy and planning. Good morning to you, Ms. MacNeil. Finally, we have Bruce Grundison, who's the executive director of the strategic projects office. Thank you, sir, for coming.

Mr. Gregory, you have the floor to make a presentation to the committee.

[Chris Gregory, Director, Identity Management and Information Sharing, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and honourable members of Parliament.

My name is Chris Gregory, and I am Director of Identity Management and Information Sharing at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, or CIC.

I'm here today to answer any technical questions that you may have on the amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act related to biometric screening under part 3, division 15, of Bill C-59.

Verifying a person's identity is vital to decisions made by Canadian visa officers abroad and by border service officers at Canadian ports of entry. An increase in application volumes and sophistication in identity fraud pose significant challenges to maintaining the integrity of Canada's immigration system. The use of biometrics in the immigration screening process helps us to address these challenges.

In 2013 Citizenship and Immigration Canada successfully implemented the temporary resident biometrics project, on time and on budget. Under this initiative we use fingerprints and a digital photograph to screen applicants from 29 countries and one territory who are applying to Canada for a temporary resident visa, work permit, or study permit. Privacy safeguards have been built into policies, procedures, and systems to ensure that client information is collected, transmitted, used, and stored securely.

Biometric immigration screening is now the standard worldwide, with more than 70 countries applying such methods. This new initiative brings Canada in line with key allies who are increasingly using biometric screening as part of their border security and immigration programs.

Biometric screening in Canada's temporary resident program is proving effective in protecting the safety and security of Canadians and the integrity of the immigration system, while facilitating travel for genuine travellers. It has made it easier to establish and confirm a person's identity, and to identify known criminals before they come to Canada. It has also facilitated the entry of applicants seeking to come to Canada for legitimate purposes, and made it more difficult for others to forge, steal, or use another person's identity to fraudulently gain access to our country.

In the 2014 economic action plan, the Government of Canada highlighted the importance of biometric screening in Canada's immigration program and committed to exploring new ways to improve the security and integrity of the immigration system.

To this end, the 2015 economic action plan announced the expansion of the biometric screening program. Through the proposed legislative amendments in front of you today, we are seeking to expand biometric screening to more foreign nationals applying to come to Canada, including foreign nationals applying to come temporarily to visit, work, or study as well as those applying for permanent residency. As Canadians are generally exempt from providing their biometrics when seeking temporary entry to the United States, U.S. citizens would also be exempt from providing their biometrics when they apply to study or work in Canada.

The fingerprints we collect would be checked against the RCMP's immigration and criminal fingerprint records, which would confirm if someone has previously applied to CIC using the same or a different identity, has previously been removed, or has a previous Canadian criminal conviction. Upon arrival in Canada, these individuals would have their fingerprints verified to ensure that the person who is issued a visa or permit is the same individual now seeking to enter Canada.

These legislative amendments would be supported by regulatory amendments that would come into effect in 2018-19. Safeguards would continue to be in place, including in the regulations, to ensure biometric screening is conducted in accordance with Canada's privacy laws and policies.

Expanding the use of biometrics in our immigration and border screening processes would help facilitate the entry of genuine travellers, and strengthen the safety and security of Canadians by reducing identity fraud and preventing inadmissible people, including known criminals, from entering the country.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Now I turn to Brenna for further remarks.

[Brenna MacNeil, Senior Director, Strategic Policy and Planning, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you for the invitation to speak today specifically about part 3, division 15 of the bill, related to legislative amendments that CIC is proposing to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or IRPA, concerning automated processing and decision making.

Mr. Chair, these provisions will allow the ministers of CIC and Public Safety to administer and enforce the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act by using electronic means, including to enable automated decisions.

Economic action plan 2013 announced investments to improve processing, allowing CIC to lay the groundwork for an electronic and automated business model. In January 2015, the department launched express entry, a new electronic system to manage applications for permanent residents under certain economic immigration programs. Also later in 2015, CIC will begin implementing the electronic travel authorization initiative, or eTA. Under this initiative, applicants will be able to apply online for their eTA, and an automated system will significantly facilitate the movement of legitimate travellers, due to robust pre-boarding screening.

Building on this foundation, CIC is proposing legislative amendments to allow the department to further leverage technology for greater efficiency. These legislative changes, together with subsequent regulatory amendments, would permit CIC to electronically administer certain processing activities related to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, such as handling straightforward decisions.

Through technology, routine and straightforward tasks could be performed by the system, freeing up officer time for more value-added, complex activities. This should significantly enhance the timelines and efficiency of decision making and processing, while ensuring appropriate program integrity measures are in place.

More specifically, the amendments would enable automated positive and negative decisions on applications and give CIC authority to mandate electronic submissions of applications with some exceptions, such as for persons with disabilities, which would be central to CIC's electronic global processing network. The amendments would provide regulation-making authority to govern the details of the technologies to be used and other key supports. Subject to regulations, the amendments would allow foreign nationals to make applications from within Canada, as long as they have maintained appropriate status in the country.

Given the general application of the above provisions, other sections of IRPA that already relate to electronic service delivery, such as Express Entry and eTA, will be amended to avoid repetition within the act. These amendments do not diminish or change the nature of the authorities already granted by IRPA.

To maximize efficiency across CIC's processing network, these legislative amendments would apply across the act, both to temporary and permanent resident streams. CIC already uses electronic applications in both streams and has introduced automated ranking of submissions in the express entry system. Expanded use of electronic processing in the temporary and resident streams will allow CIC to move work across its entire delivery network and make the best use of existing resources. Automating steps in processing will also free up officers from simple and repetitive work and allow CIC to focus resources where they matter most, on the higher risk and more complex applications that require close scrutiny and that automated systems are unable to fully process.

These amendments will help CIC improve client experience. Overall, clients will receive improved service through faster processing times and will benefit from a framework that allows leveraging of new technologies that are responsive to the expectations of modern service delivery.

As CIC increases the use of electronic processing, the department, working with Shared Services Canada, will continue to ensure that privacy protections and robust system security measures remain a cornerstone of the department's approach. These amendments will allow CIC to improve the way it does business without altering the nature of that business.

Making greater use of technology along the processing continuum is aligned with the direction of immigration receiving countries around the world including Australia, New Zealand and the United States, which have all, to some degree, incorporated electronic processing into their immigration systems.

In conclusion, Mr. Chair, these amendments will help CIC make better use of technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its processes, provide clients with faster and more efficient services, and improve the department's ability to focus its resources on those cases that need it most.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My colleagues and I look forward to any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you, Ms. MacNeil and Mr. Gregory, for your presentations.

What I propose is not to go through the bill section by section but to ask members if they have any debate or if they have any questions for the department officials. We're open for questions or comments.

Mr. Menegakis.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to take this opportunity to thank our officials as well for appearing before us today. Certainly the issue of biometrics is one that we have studied extensively in this committee. I was very pleased to be part of the team that studied Bill C-31, which was the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act, in which biometrics, of course, was a key component.

Our government is committed to protecting Canadians and making it safer to travel in and out of the country. It's an effective means to combat identity fraud and the abuse of Canada's immigration system, but it's also a very effective method of identifying those who are seeking to come to Canada who have illicit backgrounds in the countries in which they live.

Do you know how many countries we currently collect biometrics from?

[Chris Gregory]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Under the temporary resident biometrics project, which was introduced in late 2013, we are currently collecting biometrics from the nationals of 29 countries and one territory. It constitutes about 20% of those people who make a visa application to visit Canada temporarily.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

I understand that biometrics is rapidly becoming the norm worldwide. In fact, I believe there are over 70 countries using this method to screen travellers already. What are the standard practices right now? How do we collect the data of people applying to come to Canada?

[Chris Gregory]

Under the temporary resident biometrics project, those persons who are required to provide us a biometric go to a visa application centre somewhere in the world. There are over 180 such facilities for them to go to in, I think, 94 countries.

When submitting their application, they will also submit fingerprints and have a digital photograph taken. The photograph and the prints will accompany that application into our system. The prints will be verified against immigration prints that are being stored by our colleagues at the RCMP. They will also be compared against criminal prints that the RCMP has collected for many years now. Whether there's a match or not, that information will get back to the visa officer who will be assigned to that case, most often within minutes, certainly within the hour. Any information coming from that process will help inform an immigration decision.

The information can be that sometimes there's a match against a previous application using the same identity. We have confirmation that it's the same person making another application to come and visit. That gives the officer some confidence in the identity of the person. In other cases we might find out that this is someone who has previously committed a crime in the country and been deported and is now trying to return to the country. That's essentially the process in terms of how we use these prints.

The other part of it, I guess, would be on arrival. We can then verify that the person getting off the airplane is the same person who made the application.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Certainly you've jogged a memory here. Back in 1994 there was a very bright young police officer in Toronto, Todd Baylis. Members of the committee might recall him, and certainly the general public would as well, especially in the greater Toronto area. He was 25 years old and he was in pursuit of a drug dealer by the name of Clinton Junior Gayle, who had tried to come to Canada on several occasions and somehow got into the country.

Unfortunately, in that altercation he pulled out his fully loaded semi-automatic handgun and proceeded to shoot Constable Baylis in the head and took his life. This is a perfect example of how someone who has a record of crime in the country that they're from can be identified through a biometric process.

It's important that we expand as much as possible the biometric program to ensure that we catch as many of those cases as we can, in addition, of course, to the obvious cases of keeping not only our security but the integrity of our immigration system.

Can you inform us what the plan is to implement biometrics around the world? Are there certain countries from which biometrics will be collected first?

[Chris Gregory]

When we rolled out the temporary resident biometrics project in 2013, we weren't applying it to all countries, so only certain countries were chosen. This time it will be a more global application. It won't be certain countries on the list and others not on the list. We likely would not go live with every country on day one just for logistical reasons. Even with just the 30 countries, we started in our hemisphere first for a month and then moved east from there, just to make sure that everything was functioning properly.

There's a lot of equipment that will need to be put in place at visa application centres around the world. We expect a global rollout in 2018-19 for all remaining countries, not just some. While not all countries would go live on day one, we suspect that it would be a fairly quick implementation, perhaps region by region. It will depend on the logistics at the time and on what's easiest for the system to handle, and then we would slowly ramp up to full enrolment from all remaining countries soon thereafter.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

Thank you.

Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for being here.

I have a number of questions and I hope you can help me. I was informed that passport renewals are now being issued online. Is that correct? Can I get a renewal simply by going online?

[Bruce Grundison, Executive Director, Strategic Projects Office, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

No, not at this point, but it's expected that's a part of CIC's modernization for passports.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Is there any other country that does this, that currently is issuing passports online?

[Bruce Grundison]

I'm sorry, I don't have access to that information at the moment.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay, so you wouldn't, as a general rule, consult across communities to find out if this was in fact being done in other places?

[Bruce Grundison]

Sorry, Mr. Chair, this is a briefing on the Immigration and Refuge Protection Act proposed amendments. I'm not an expert on passport modernization programs.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I have a DFATD document here, and you talked about utilizing facial—

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

On a point of order, Mr. Shory....

[Devinder Shory, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As the witness mentioned, I believe that we are not here to talk about passports today. The witnesses are not briefed with the information, so maybe we should stay on the topic of the day.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Tilson]

I think Ms. Mathyssen has noted that.

Thank you.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

You talked a bit about facial recognition, about using photographs in terms of expediting the process. As I was saying, I have a DFATD document that addresses some of that. There were some concerns raised in the document in regard to how that is stored. Is it stored centrally? Is it dispersed? How should scanned data be retained?

[Chris Gregory]

Thank you for the question.

In regard to the use of facial recognition and immigration screening programs, we do take a digital photograph of the clients who are currently subject to the biometric requirement. That photograph is stored in our system. It is used by border services officers in airports on arrival. The photograph is compared to the photograph in the passport, and it is compared visually to the person who is presenting themselves for an examination.

We're not using a facial recognition algorithm to compare the traveller with the photograph taken at the application stage at this time. In regard to storage of the information, as I said earlier, the fingerprints that are collected at these application centres overseas are securely transmitted to the RCMP's fingerprint storage system. They're encrypted, transmitted to the RCMP, and they're stored next to criminal prints that the RCMP has had the mandate to store for many decades now. They're very expert at it. I would suggest they're world class at taking care of fingerprints that are collected.

No biometric information is stored overseas at these application centres. As soon as a fingerprint is taken from a client it's encrypted, transmitted securely, and deleted from the source so that biometric information is only stored here in Canada on Canadian servers under the close scrutiny and careful eye of the Mounties.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

One of the things that has come up from time to time is concern about data that goes awry. I wonder, how vulnerable is this data? This is again from the DFATD document. The concern is vulnerability of data. Is it possible that it could be abused in any way?

[Chris Gregory]

Of course, we share the concern about vulnerability and that's why we worked so hard in the years before 2013 to develop a robust system that would treat this information with great care. It's why we are not storing any of this information overseas. It's why it's deleted immediately after it's collected and given to the RCMP for storage.

The RCMP has been collecting and storing fingerprints for decades, and frankly, I think they do a world-class job of it. Rather than create a new fingerprint repository in our department, it was decided that we would turn to our expert colleagues down the street and have them do it for us.

We have followed all Treasury Board, Public Works, and Shared Services Canada guidelines when it comes to developing the system and developing the electronic protections that we use. That was a primary concern in our minds as we developed this system. A year and a half later, we're happy with how it has been working and how the information has been protected and will continue to be protected. We have a couple of years to further develop the system before implementing this larger expansion of the program. I'm confident that the measures in place by 2018-19 will be as robust, if not more.