Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 14th, 2023

[Christiane Fox]

I would also say that part of the work of the trusted institutions model is about the outcomes the students have after their experience at a college or university and making that public so that, when a student makes their choice about which institution they go to in this country, they will go to a legitimate institution from which they will see outcomes with postgraduate work programs or employment outcomes or PR outcomes. I think those are some of the indications we can use to push people towards designated, trusted institutions versus, perhaps, some of the bad actors that have been created.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, you have two and a half minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to ask two questions in these two and a half minutes.

Ms. Fox, does the department currently have enough resources to handle this case and the investigation without delaying other cases? From what the minister told us, people are treating this as a priority. Does that mean other cases will be delayed because you don't necessarily have the resources you need as a result of that priority?

[Christiane Fox]

Thank you for that question.

Yes, I think we've been able to assign the necessary resources without that having an impact on the department's other areas of activity. We've had various increases in our human resources, which have enabled us to establish the task force, work as a team and at the same time continue making enormous progress in processing files. We're seeing a lot of improvement.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

So you're confirming that there'll be no impact on waiting times.

[Christiane Fox]

That's correct. I can also confirm that processing time for foreign student applications is now approximately 40 days. Processing time for regular services is 60 days.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

All right. Thank you very much. That's interesting.

Now what is the timeframe for students who have been victims of fraud? When will those students know their actual status? When will we know that for certain?

[Christiane Fox]

That's a very good question. I think that processing time will also depend on the cases and the review of those cases. Some cases may be more complex than others. As I said, I think it's in our interest to give priority to the eight students who have already left the country.

Right now, we think there will be approximately 300 cases of interest in the context of this work. We've just started the work and could provide the committee with an answer to give an idea of when it will be done.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

It's actually not for me. Students are watching you right now; they want to know what's happening, and how much time this will take.

Is it possible at least to give them a certain timeframe, without being too precise? Will it take months? I'm only asking so the people who are listening to us and are concerned can have some idea.

[Christiane Fox]

Thank you.

I think we could say, for the students who're watching now, that we obviously want to do this on a priority basis. It's a matter of weeks; the process won't necessarily be very long. Our work begins once the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada has made a decision.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I'm talking about the timeframe.

All right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, but your time is up.

We will now proceed to Ms. Kwan for two and a half minutes.

Ms. Kwan, go ahead.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thanks very much.

I think the timeline is really important. What the students want, of course, is the quickest process they can go through and then an outcome from that, because their lives were already turned upside down when they learned about this situation, and people are stressed to the max. The quicker we can turn it around, the better. I'm glad to hear that it might be a matter of only weeks before this can all be finalized. I hope that's the case.

I am interested in looking at how to prevent this from happening, particularly in terms of the ghost consultants. The truth of the matter is that ghost consultants cannot be regulated under Canadian rules because they are from other countries, but we know the students are being preyed upon. There was a study done in 2017, and it seems as though there's nothing much we can do.

I am curious as to whether there is an opportunity for us to work with our counterparts from those different countries to establish a clear set of guidelines, if you will, or expectations regarding how these consultants engage and what they need to provide to the students by way of verifications so it will become a requirement, at a minimum, that those consultants who practise there have to provide that information to the students so they can take it upon themselves to ensure that verification is done at the front end.

[Christiane Fox]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would start by saying that I completely agree with you on the timeliness of this work. People's lives and mental health have been hugely impacted, so I completely agree with you. That's why we will work through this expeditiously.

To your second point, we definitely share, through our bilateral relations, our missions and our dialogue with other countries, our expectations in Canada and the process by which we want the international student program to work. Your idea of specific guidance is important. We have a lot of documents, but I will undertake to take a look at them and see how they can be improved or how we can look at this situation and then apply the lessons to future communications, because I think we continuously need to provide that guidance.

I would also note that it's important in bilateral conversations, but it's also important from us directly to students.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I have one last question. For students who—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry, Ms. Kwan. Your time is up, so you won't have the opportunity.

We will now proceed to Mr. Redekopp for five minutes.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being here.

Ms. Fox, you just mentioned 300 cases of interest. Could you expand on what exactly that meant? Is that the mysterious 700 number that we're talking about?

[Christiane Fox]

This is how I would break it down. The 700 is not something that we have validated, but what I was saying is.... I mentioned a 1,485 number. Of those, 976 were refused and some of them had applications in progress that were abandoned, so we've removed those from the equation.

It looked like about 448 applications were approved. Out of those, some of them have a link to criminality that would not be coming through this process that we've established. The 300 are those that we feel warrant coming through the task force.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Okay. That makes sense.

If I'm an immigration officer abroad and I suspect fraud, what do I do? Do I call the DLI? Do I talk with the consultant? What happens?

[Christiane Fox]

As an immigration officer abroad, you would probably first consult your network of colleagues around you on whether or not whatever has sparked your suspicion is something they've seen within the team they work with. We've described a process whereby there's a centralized team that looks at it from a global perspective. That's another avenue that we would go to.

We have direct relationships and conversations with colleges and universities, and that could definitely be part of the verification process that an officer takes. There would be multiple ways in which somebody could flag, detect and ask questions about something they see that they don't feel is accurate or that seems off.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

The minister said, and you repeated this as well, that you work with foreign governments in order to manage immigration consultants, and you have bilateral talks all the time. You said there were three countries involved in this original group of 2,000 files that you talked about.

What are those three countries?

[Christiane Fox]

The three countries are India—foreign nationals from India—Vietnam and the People's Republic of China, but it's predominantly Indian nationals. We think about 85% are Indian nationals.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Have you then had deeper discussions with the Government of India about this problem in terms of your bilateral discussions? Are there any results to report from them?

[Christiane Fox]

We've had general conversations with the government, but specific to this case, we wanted to get to the heart of where things stood. It will be part of the conversations that we have going forward. We have an ongoing conversation with them around fraud.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

I heard that this particular consultant—I believe his name is Rahul Bhargava—was arrested in India. I'm assuming that's true.

Did Canada have anything to do with that, or was that completely unrelated to what we're talking about today?