Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 20th, 2019

[Bill Blair]

In my discussions with our senior officials at CBSA and the RCMP, I remain confident that they have adequately deployed sufficient resources to maintain the safety and security and integrity of our borders. There will also be an opportunity at the upcoming SECU meeting where the budgets and allocations for CBSA and other departments will be discussed, perhaps more fulsomely.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

You mentioned in answer to one of the questions from the opposition that the situation is being managed safely. As soon as an individual comes to our borders and claims asylum, what type of resources are CBSA...? What procedures are they going through to ensure that those who are claiming asylum are who they say they are?

[Bill Blair]

Again briefly, I've gone to Lacolle and stood at the end of Roxham Road and I've watched our officers and officials deal with individuals coming across. In every case, the individual is detained as they cross. There is a determination of why they have come across. They are arrested and detained. If they make a claim of asylum, at that point investigations and security background checks are begun by both the RCMP and the CBSA. A number of international, national and local police databases are checked as well as their documents.

If they are coming from the United States and have in their possession other travel documents, visas or other means by which they've come into the United States, inquiries and information are also available to our officers with respect to the background screening they took to enter the United States. Inquiries and investigations are made of those individuals to determine the veracity of their identity, and to ensure there is no risk of criminality or national security threats. Biometrics are taken. The individuals are fingerprinted and photographed at the border so we may have reliable, permanent and usable records to identify those individuals. That background check is done and it's quite thorough and I think quite appropriate to ensure that there is no risk to Canadian public safety as these people enter the process of determining their eligibility to stay.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

Minister Hussen, the previous immigration minister visited the K-W region early in 2016 and met with a lot of stakeholders in the high-tech sector. The number one challenge they mentioned to the minister at the time was to fill these high-tech sector jobs. We get a lot of individuals graduating from the University of Waterloo. We employ locally, but they were still not matching the job vacancies.

Can you speak a little to the global skills strategy? You mention in your notes that it's filled 30,000 vacancies across Canada.

[Ahmed Hussen, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

The global skills strategy was a successful attempt by our government to streamline the attraction of highly skilled, talented temporary workers to Canada because businesses were saying seven months was too long. Now it's down to two weeks. As a result of the global skills strategy, many businesses have been able to get that talent and investment for all those talents. It's a plan for that highly mobile global talent to come to Canada, and as a result of listening to business and introducing the global skills strategy and making other changes to the express entry system, which I can go into detail about if there is time, we are leading the world in talent attraction, and one of the main reasons they point to is our immigration system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you, Minister.

We could carry on, but I'm getting concerned about time.

Do I have unanimous consent to continue?

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I think we need to call it now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Okay. Just before we go, I want to do three things.

First, we mentioned the University of Waterloo. I want to mention Wilfrid Laurier University, since as I understand, we have some students here from Wilfrid Laurier.

Welcome and thank you for joining us. We're always happy to meet with students.

Second, I want to thank the ministers and officials. The officials will be called back, but I'm not exactly sure when. Thank you to both ministers for joining us today.

The last thing I want to note is with regard to our meetings next week. We will have three meetings next week to meet our agenda. We're going to have meetings on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week. Those meetings will complete the migration study, with one meeting on Latin America, one meeting on labour demand and one meeting on temporary foreign workers and labour supply. That meeting is Thursday, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.

The meeting is adjourned.