Thank you, Madam Chair.
Once again, thank you, Minister, for being here with us today.
A response from Public Services and Procurement Canada revealed that 86% of employees at the Beijing visa office are employees of a Chinese police-owned company.
Minister, you said that the government vets every single person in the office, but Procurement Canada says employees working for this company are vetted by VFS. Most of the employees in the visa office, which is owned by a company with ties to the Chinese regime, are not vetted by our government.
Federal employees with access to protected A, B or C forms—something as basic as a paper application for permanent residence—would require, at minimum, a reliability status check conducted by the government, yet employees of the police-owned company handle visa information and don't go through our own checks.
If the Chinese Communist Party develops a fake identity, with the intent to infiltrate our overseas visa office via espionage, and collects visa applications with applicants' backgrounds and then runs them through the hiring process for the subcontractor, how would we even know about it?