Citizenship and Immigration Committee on June 14th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

You can quickly answer the question.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Look, we work across portfolios and directly with our counterparts in immigration in other countries as well, to foster a culture of integrity when it comes to our mutual immigration systems. However, this is an area where I think Canada and the rest of the world can continue to improve. If there are solutions that you or other members of the committee, or the committee collectively, wish to put forward, I would welcome your suggestions with open arms.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.

We will now go to Ms. Kwan for six minutes.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the minister and the officials for coming to our committee today.

I also want to extend a thank you to the minister for taking time to meet with me specifically on this issue. I know there are lots of issues on the minister's plate, but I appreciate his taking the time to meet with me particularly to try to find ways to ensure that the students who are victims of fraud are not going to be penalized and punished and to look for further actions to make them whole, so to speak.

With respect to the announcement that the minister made, I'd like to get a clarification on the issue around the inadmissibility based on misrepresentation. The minister said just now that the students who are victims would not be subjected to the five-year ban. Could the minister clarify whether that would mean the record of inadmissibility based on misrepresentation will be erased from their file?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

The best mechanism we've been able to identify to overcome the five-year inadmissibility ban is to give, in the interim period while a person is currently on a study permit or an existing work permit, a temporary resident permit that aligns with the remaining time on that document. At the next stage in their immigration journey, whether it's applying for a post-graduate work permit, applying for permanent residence or whatever the next steps in that process may be, we would intend to apply humanitarian and compassionate grounds to overcome the inadmissibility barrier so that it doesn't jeopardize that student's or that graduate's opportunity to continue along their immigration journey.

The reason we've chosen that is a function of the legislative requirements that are in place today. We can use existing tools rather than reforming the legislation to avoid a person's immigration journey being interrupted as a result of the fraud that they were not a part of.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

That means it will stay on their record. It would not be erased, but there will be a note to say this will not be prejudice for their future applications. Am I understanding that correctly?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

More specifically, it's humanitarian and compassionate reasons, which is an existing exemption under the legislation, but you've more or less identified the correct process.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Okay. I hope that when it comes to that, it would actually work that way for those students. What I'm worried about is that when you have that bad record, so to speak, that dark mark next to your name, sometimes an official who's processing the application will still say that there's misrepresentation on the record. I want to flag that as a concern, because we obviously would not want to have a second chapter to this issue down the road.

Now, there are students who are in a situation where they have been issued a removal order and they have filed to the Federal Court but, for example, have not yet had the hearing. They are waiting. There are those who have filed and who have been rejected, for example. There are those who have made an application to have their work permit extended, let's say, and they're now out of status but waiting to see what's going to happen to them.

Is the minister saying that with this new task force, those individuals should not worry about all of those outcomes and that their case will be assessed under the new task force?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Look, my background in law before politics is telling me to be very careful, because the facts of individual cases may vary and I don't want to describe in a blanket way that may not capture nuance, but the new process we've shared today, the task force, will be triggered immediately upon an inadmissibility finding at the IRB. You don't need to go through the existing Federal Court challenge to an IRB decision in order to benefit from the process we've laid out before the task force.

I want to be careful not to provide legal advice to people who might be in the middle of a Federal Court hearing. There may be very good reasons why a person chooses to proceed down that path in any event, but for an individual who is not yet at that stage and is going through the IRB process, if they receive a negative decision at the end of that process, they will immediately have access to the steps outlined as part of the task force we've described today.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

If they have not yet received a negative decision.... I'm asking because I've met with the students. I went to Brampton and I met with the students. I've been on Zoom with them. They've called me. Many of them have sent me piles and piles of documentation regarding their cases. I'm putting them all together to submit to the minister's office and the public safety minister's office for consideration.

Some of them are caught up in the situation. In the face of this, they're waiting for CBSA appointments. Because they've been told that they've received their removal order, they're waiting for a CBSA appointment. Should they proceed with that process? I assume that when they get a date, they should show up and present their documents accordingly.

There are others who have filed for Federal Court but have not yet received a date for Federal Court. What should they do? The reason I ask is that it's really important, because it's really expensive for people to go through that process. I know that you, Minister, from your comments, recognize that as well. The question that students are asking is this: Should we not proceed with this and save some legal fees and then go through this other task force process that the minister has set out?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

One of the challenges we run into when we're dealing with the existing legislative framework is that simply dealing with this process—when the legislation would still have them go through the IRB process and it could result in inadmissibility—would put us in a situation where we might extend temporarily the status of a person who would subsequently be found inadmissible and would still need to go through a similar process to have access to the humanitarian and compassionate grounds to avoid the five-year inadmissibility.

The individual circumstances.... I want to be very careful not to provide legal advice, but the person who is going through the process should always show up when they're asked by CBSA to show up. They should go through with the IRB process and make their case. It is only the cohort of people who complete that process and are deemed inadmissible at the end of that process who will then require the benefit of the new process we've created today.

I understand that these are many layers of process, but we want to make sure that every individual who is caught up and who doesn't have the compassion given to them that I think the facts deserve still has that last shot through the task force that we announced earlier today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

Your time is up, Ms. Kwan.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Madam Chair, if I may, also, of course, for anybody who wishes clarity on the process, we would be pleased to meet after this meeting, whether it's with officials to describe technically the process.... We want to be as clear as we possibly can, to the extent that there are unanswered questions at the end of today's meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you, Minister.

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

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Minister, today you said that you found out about the deportations in early spring. That's about the same time that the CBC article came out. Also, you tweeted out at the end of May, after visiting the students, along with our leader and many of my colleagues. The first question that comes to mind for them and for us is, what took you so long? What happened between March and May?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

As I explained to Mr. Uppal during his questioning, we needed to verify the accuracy of the reports. In fact, I did interviews with certain community media outlets in the days after becoming aware, because we had no indication, for example, that over 700 people—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

What was the department doing during that time, though? What were the steps that the department was taking in between those times? It's not about what you did with the media.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Certainly.

One, we connected with CBSA after we became aware of the media reports—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Was that in March?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

This process would have started probably in the second half of March. Look, after I give a description, I'm happy to go to the officials for a more technical answer.

We sought to identify how many people were impacted. We had no indication that there were 700 people, and we wanted to dig in to figure out why there was a discrepancy. I still don't know where the 700 figure came from.

After we started looking at the number of scenarios, we came to understand that there was a significant number of applications that were tied to a very similar pattern. Nearly a thousand, in fact, had been refused entry on the basis of fraudulent letters of acceptance. There were a few hundred others who were actually admitted, some of whom were genuine students who intended to study. Of that cohort, CBSA has so far referred 82 to the IRB, and 57 of those have actually gone through that process.

It's largely been about understanding the situation that these students are dealing with and the pattern underlying the issuance of fraudulent acceptance letters that led to their being admitted to Canada, and then developing the process to allow them to come—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

It was a two-month process that led to that, before you tweeted out. Is that what you're saying?

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I don't know the exact date. It would have taken a couple of months to understand the facts and the pattern and develop the—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

The reason why I say it's important is that today you said eight people have been deported, but in your press conference today, you mentioned that many had left voluntarily.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It's not many. It's 10 people.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Ten people have left voluntarily. It's still 10 people whose families are affected by this, on top of the other eight who have—