Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 8th, 2023

[Christiane Fox]

I don't know the specifics of that case, but I think, as I indicated, we did a full evaluation of who was on those flights, and they were clients through the SIM program.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

The same article says, with regard to.... She doesn't name a particular senator, but she goes on to talk about how a senator was.... This is her quote. “People she”—the senator—“didn’t know were writing to her and saying ‘You gave a letter to these people, can you give a letter to me?’ And she would just issue a letter to anyone who would ask.”

How many instances of letters issued by Senator McPhedran has your department come across?

[Christiane Fox]

What we were able to determine is that we know exactly how many letters the department issued, but—and this is why we did the internal review—we then referred the matter to law enforcement, which is looking at the next steps in this process. Given the fact that we did not issue the inauthentic letter, it would be impossible for me to determine exactly the numbers that are circulating, but we are aware of cases that are circulating.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Can you table a copy of the results of your internal review with the committee?

[Christiane Fox]

Yes, we can do that.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you.

Also, can you table a copy with the committee of what an authentic facilitation letter looked like during this?

[Christiane Fox]

Yes, absolutely.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you.

I'll cede the floor to Mr. Redekopp.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

For what it's worth, I think it would go with the obvious caveat of not revealing the personal information of someone taking part in the process.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Of course.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

On the issue of numbers, I have many people in my riding who are trying to sponsor people to come to Canada from Afghanistan. There's an organization called Nest that's tried to sponsor four different families. Everybody is waiting longer than what's there. Nest, for example, got a letter saying that the allocations are full, yet we are not anywhere near 40,000. You, even today, said “at least 40,000”.

I'm curious. Are the allocations full? Why aren't we continuing to process people so that we can get to that 40,000 number?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Thank you.

I think what's important to understand is that even though.... There's a significant majority of people who have now arrived. There are close to 28,000 of at least 40,000 who we will be seeking to bring to Canada, but of the remaining spaces, we can talk about approximately 8,000 people who are deep into the approval process who are still in Afghanistan.

We can look at some of the allocations that have been given to sponsorship agreement holders. From the federal government's point of view, the spaces may be allocated to the organization that will be helping to facilitate the travel of someone here, but it may not be the case that the organizations have allocated each of their spaces to every individual who may be coming.

I appreciate that it's a bit of a nuanced explanation, but it's important to understand that we know most of these spaces have been allocated to organizations that will help refer people into the program, even though not all of the people have arrived yet in Canada.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

I want to go back into the investigation for a minute.

You said earlier that you didn't have the resources to investigate parliamentarians. Do you have reason to believe that there should be some additional investigations done into parliamentarians, or others, to look more widely for some of these false documents?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

When this issue first came about, I wanted to make sure....

Madam Chair, can I take 20 seconds?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Yes, please.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We wanted to make sure we dealt with this in a responsible way. The department conducted the internal investigation, which was the appropriate first step. When it ran its course and got to the end of what the department is capable of, sharing the information with law enforcement was an appropriate step, so that they can determine whether a further investigation is warranted and, if so, how it should look.

I don't think it's appropriate for the government to necessarily be doing it in a way that is not independent. To provide documents to an organization that has that independent status is, I think, important so that it can determine the next appropriate steps.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Minister.

We will now proceed to Mr. El-Khoury. We will end this panel with you.

You have five minutes. Please go ahead.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for always being so generous with your time on behalf of our committee.

Could you take a few moments to finish answering the question that Ms. Kwan asked about biometrics?

Honestly, I'm interested in the two-step process you mentioned before.

Thank you.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

When I was first appointed to this position, Afghanistan quickly became the initiative on which I spent the vast majority of my time. One of the biggest bottlenecks to having people move was the lack of ability to conduct biometric assessments to understand and assure that the people who were coming to Canada passed the ordinary security screening process. The lack of a presence on the ground made that exceptionally difficult.

We came up with an alternative plan that gathers whatever information we can find about a person—we call it an “enhanced biographic screening”—to allow them to move to the next step in the process. That will get us to a position where we can allow a person to move outside of Afghanistan, should they have the ability to do so. We can then complete the biometric screening process there, so we don't compromise on the security screening. It also doesn't delay the ability of a person to come through the process and to exit Afghanistan, which they're so desperate to do under extraordinary circumstances.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you, Minister.

We know that the issue of third countries is a very thorny one for our western allies, who tend to close ranks on the Taliban and help refugees who are still in Afghanistan. The report mentions that the operational context remains complex and dangerous.

Could you give us further details to explain the problematic situation?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Yes, and just to put it into perspective, I deal with not only the partners we seek to assist us in our resettlement efforts but also the partners who are conducting similar efforts so we can share best practices and understand common challenges.

The challenges for the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and others who were participating in it around safe passage reflect precisely the same challenges Canada is experiencing: the difficulties we're encountering around safe passage, around the lack of access to travel documents for people seeking to flee, and around the challenges for people who made their way into the third countries, whether through ordinary or irregular ways. These are common for all countries that have resettlement efforts.

We're working together as an international community to share these understandings so we can improve the quality of our resettlement process. However, it's not easy. We're dealing with a territory in which the Taliban, a terrorist organization as per our laws in Canada, is in control. There are no easy strategies here, but we're going to continue to co-operate with partners to overcome these barriers.

I want to save time, because I don't know if the committee would allow it, but our colleague, Ms. May, has shown up, and if time allows after Mr. El-Khoury finishes, I would be happy to extend my stay by a moment or two should committee members allow it.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Minister, recommendation 22, on the hiring of additional staff, states that IRCC was working to hire 1,250 new employees by the end of the fall 2022. We are now in 2023.

Have you reached that number?

If you haven't, do your targets remain the same? Are you getting close to meeting them? If there are problems in doing so, could you tell us about them?

Thank you.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

We have now hired more than 1,250 staff and are continuing to add more staff. We've seen the expected increase in productivity, with a reduction in wait times across various immigration streams. This was a big part of the strategy to overcome some of the challenges that the pandemic and our humanitarian responses placed on our system.

We have planning to do in the years ahead to develop that surge capacity that Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe raised in one of his questions. To answer your question directly, yes, we've completed that hiring initiative and continue to add more staff now.

[Fayçal El-Khoury, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Did you see some positive results that improved the service provided by our embassies around the world by hiring those people? To what degree would you say that was the case?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It depends on which immigration stream you're talking about, but the progress we've seen has allowed us to return to ordinary service standards across most immigration streams, whether family reunification, express entry.... Work permits are shortly going to be back to the service standard we enjoyed before the pandemic. Study permits are more or less there now. We have a bit of work left to do on visitor visas.

Now the bottleneck to having people arrive in a timely way is really impacting the programs for which the bottleneck is the number of spaces available annually, given the extraordinary demand in certain programs, rather than the processing capacity of IRCC, with the exception of visitors' visas, which we expect this year will be back on track.