Evidence of meeting #16 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was global.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
I'm sorry; I'm just going to interrupt for a second here. Can you table the information of how many of your employees are CCP members for the committee?
Regional Group Chief Operating Officer, Australasia, China, Africa and Europe & CIS, VFS Global
Definitely we can look in to this, but just to clarify, Madam Chair, this is something that we will have to get back to you on.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you.
Are you aware that, if there are three or more CCP members working for the company, it triggers a series of Chinese regulations?
Regional Group Chief Operating Officer, Australasia, China, Africa and Europe & CIS, VFS Global
We are aware of the regulatory as well as the label law requirements in China. The short answer to that is yes.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Then you will be aware that the Chinese regulations are such that they require that any state-owned company must include recognition of the Communist Party in its articles of association, and a party organ must be created in any state firm that employs more than three Communist Party members. Are you aware of that?
Regional Group Chief Operating Officer, Australasia, China, Africa and Europe & CIS, VFS Global
It is one of the requirements exactly as you described.
Regional Group Chief Operating Officer, Australasia, China, Africa and Europe & CIS, VFS Global
However, VFS Global policies are very robust right from the recruitment process approval of client governments.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Thank you.
According to those regulations, it further states that all major business and management decisions must be discussed by the Communist Party organ before being presented to the board of directors or management for decision. It further states that the party secretary and chairman of the board of a state firm should be “the same person” and that the general manager position within the state company must be filled by a deputy party committee secretary. It doesn't stop there. For those enterprises under the direct control of the central government, the board of directors must include a special deputy party secretary who takes no management role and is exclusively responsible for party building. The first role of the directors or executive who are party members is to—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, Ms. Kwan. Your time is up. We will have to—
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Sorry, can I just finish my sentence?
—to execute the will of the party in performing their duties.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you, Ms. Kwan. We will have to now move on to our next member.
Mr. Chiu, you have five minutes for your round of questioning.
Conservative
Kenny Chiu Conservative Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I appreciate the witnesses coming to the committee and providing us direct and short answers, understanding the time pressure that we are under.
I want to continue with Madam Kwan's questioning here. If you could actually provide a response to her last question, using my time, that would be much appreciated.
Regional Group Chief Operating Officer, Australasia, China, Africa and Europe & CIS, VFS Global
Just to reiterate once again in response to what the member who was on earlier said in reference to the Chinese law and the membership of CCP, at VFS we want to clarify that no facility management owners have any role whatsoever in the visa application process that my colleague, Chris Dix, and I, have just described.
Also, I want to highlight that VFS Global has its own operational management structure within China. We have a chief operating officer with a very robust organization structure in China, comprising 172 employees of VFS who oversee our operations, in conformance with our client government contracts.
Conservative
Kenny Chiu Conservative Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you.
Just like the African Union, they were not expecting that the gift from China would have included surveillance and espionage equipment in the African Union building.
I would like to ask what steps the VFS security department implemented to safeguard data from being inadvertently obtained by third party countries?
Head of Business Development, VFS Global
Mr. Chiu, I'll take that information and that question.
As my colleague, Jiten, has mentioned—and I have mentioned also already—no facility management company has access to our data.
All our visa application data is fully encrypted at the entry point and transferred securely and directly to servers located in jurisdictions defined by the client government.
For instance, in the case of a European country, that would be in the Schengen area. In the case of Canada, it's in Canada and then only government officials authorized to have access to that information have access to it. I repeat, it's fully encrypted. All of our operations are certified ISO 27001 for information security management, and that certification—
Conservative
Kenny Chiu Conservative Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you, Mr. Dix. I appreciate that.
Can I ask what type of computer equipment...? Have you used equipment by any Chinese state firm, such as Huawei, in your VFS network in China?
Regional Group Chief Operating Officer, Australasia, China, Africa and Europe & CIS, VFS Global
Madam Chair, this is something, if the members permit, we should be able to come back to you on, however—
Conservative
Regional Group Chief Operating Officer, Australasia, China, Africa and Europe & CIS, VFS Global
We can certainly do that.
Regional Group Chief Operating Officer, Australasia, China, Africa and Europe & CIS, VFS Global
There is just one point to highlight, Madam Chair.
All the IT hardware and the equipment is absolutely hardened within the visa application centres. What we mean is, there is no access to emails, there is no USB drive, no pen drive that can copy any data whatsoever. Access is driven through role-based, which is only to VFS Global personnel.
As Chris Dix, my colleague, described, the servers are hosted in Canada and encrypted.
Thank you.
Conservative
Kenny Chiu Conservative Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Thank you, Mr. Vyas.
I'm sure the African Union would actually appreciate data security as well, and somehow nightly there have been downloads of data to China from Africa, so please understand that we are not conspiracy theorists here. Also, there have been media reports, specifically Global News in Canada has reported that there has been a leak of data pertaining to Italy. There was a leak.
My first question is: has that actually happened? My second question is: has it been updated to the Canadian authority, such as IRCC?
Head of Business Development, VFS Global
We all know there's a global army of aggressive hackers out there and we're constantly making sure that our systems are up to date.
On the very rare occasion...and the incident that you referred to, Mr. Chiu, did happen—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, Mr. Dix.
The time is up.
We will have to now move to our next member.
Mr. Regan is next.