Evidence of meeting #71 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was students.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Yes. We have many conversations with them on fraud and other issues.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Can I ask you, then, about that 2,000 estimate number? How did you arrive at that number?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I think the 2,000 was essentially from when CBSA conducted their review based on various tips. They can speak to this in more detail, but they probably looked at who could fall within that sort of area of risk, vulnerability and fraud activity. Then they started narrowing: How many cases are actually directly linked to the fraudulent activity, how many of those actually came into the country, how many of those are linked to criminal activity and then how many of those are perhaps genuine students? I think that's kind of the process by which we work through the various cases.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Are you confident that you've identified all the potential cases where a fake acceptance letter was given to an international student? I wouldn't want to come back here in six months and be told that there are another 2,000 and another 2,000. Are you confident that you've caught all of them now?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Thank you for the question.
We always undergo activities around fraud, and I think it would not be appropriate for me to say, “This is it. It's contained here.” There are actors in the system that are continuously looking at fraudulent activity and at unscrupulous actors. Therefore, this is the information, this is how we've narrowed it down, this is where we're at with the investigation at this point, and we will continue to be vigilant.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Are you saying there is a potential that there could be other international students out there in Canada who could also be victims of these unscrupulous malicious consultants?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
What I'm saying is that we always need to be vigilant against fraud—always—in all of our lines of business.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I'll take that as a yes, that there is a potential, then.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Always vigilant....
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Okay. You're good at this.
Again, to go back to that 2,000 number, was that process of identifying them going on between the time when the minister found out in March and then his tweet in May, or was that going on at different timelines?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It was different timelines. It occurred prior to that.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
That's the 2018 that I referred to earlier.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Since 2018, has there been an accumulation of cases that have been identified and sent down to this program officers group to deal with, or is it just, in general, 2,000 at IRCC? Are these all international students as well?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I'm sorry. Just to be clear, I think, the 2,000 is part of the CBSA investigation.
The letter of offer verification process and the fraudulent activity we monitor within the department is at IRCC, and that is an ongoing process. It is a system that exists for any officer around the world who is suspicious about an application and who may be seeing a pattern. Whatever that may be, they would have a central place to go to and say, “I'm worried about this. Something's off. Can you work with me?” Then that team does that support, and that's very separate from the 2,000.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
The time is up for Mr. Kmiec.
We will now proceed to Mr. Dhaliwal.
Mr. Dhaliwal, you will have five minutes. You can begin, please.
Liberal
Sukh Dhaliwal Liberal Surrey—Newton, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the deputy minister, as well as to the assistant deputy minister, for being here.
Deputy Minister, I'm going to carry on with Mr. Kmiec's question because that is a very important question from an integrity perspective.
These unscrupulous agents claim they have inside connections. That is the reason I will ask you this question.
Was this one officer who processed all those cases, or are you certain these were processed by different immigration officers?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
What I would say is that there are cases of fraud within the department that have gotten through the screens they have gone through. We constantly look at what tools and measures were in place to prevent it, where the fraud is coming from and where we see patterns. Of course, if ever there were an indication that the pattern is within a particular office or with a particular individual, then we would definitely look into that. This is part of the due diligence within the department.
However, I think it is important that we share that there are different levels of prevention activities that occur. There are communication and advertising campaigns that happen in countries that have a lot of international students who come to Canada to study, and these say, “This is what you need to look out for. These are the things you should expect.” We encourage all international students to actually liaise with the designated learning institutions directly.
There are prevention activities and tools. If we have cases of fraud, then there are various things that we do, depending on the nature, the scope and the extent. What we are hoping is to leverage technology to be able to detect that sooner, to have the ability to see patterns and trends from a bit more of a global processing network standpoint. However, I would say that fraud occurs, and it's not particularly one officer or one location.
Liberal
Sukh Dhaliwal Liberal Surrey—Newton, BC
Thank you.
What can be done in the long term to better use modernization and technology to detect fraud in a more efficient way and avoid it?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
In terms of a modernized platform, I talked about data information sharing. If there are systems in place where particular ID numbers are given by an institution that we can then match, within our systems, to a student to make sure that the connection occurs, that would be one example.
If you can have tools that are part of the same platform that allow you to see if there's a fraudulent activity linked to a similar email address, the name of a consulting firm or a particular college or institution.... These are some of the platform modernization pieces that can help detect fraud. The introduction of some of these technologies will allow us to be able to not only detect it but communicate it in real time across the world.
There are systems in place now, but they can be emphasized and more effective with the better use of technology and, I would say, with better collaboration, including with provinces and territories, which manage and regulate some of the DLIs around the country.
Liberal
Sukh Dhaliwal Liberal Surrey—Newton, BC
Thank you.
As a general rule, what should people do if they suspect they have been victims of a fraudulent consultant? Is there a way for them to report this and try to get the situation rectified?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
If a student or anyone thinks that they have been victimized or if they have knowledge of fraud, they should report it. If they have been working with a consultant, then reporting that, making a complaint to the college of consultants or making a complaint to the bar association would be appropriate. IRCC has, on its website, emails and web forms to submit that information to us. The CBSA has a toll-free number.
We encourage people to report to us any knowledge of fraud. If a newcomer has an application with us and would like to change that application to remove a consultant, that can also be done.
Liberal
Sukh Dhaliwal Liberal Surrey—Newton, BC
Deputy Minister, you mentioned bringing awareness to foreign students who want to come here, particularly when it comes to India. What more can be done to help those individuals who want to come here so that they are not the victims of fraud in the future?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I think another thing that could be done is to have a simplified system so there isn't an overreliance on consultants. I think that's step one.
I think step two would be around clear communication with respect to the process and how we articulate that. I think the letter of verification we've talked about is a really important piece, and I think that protects not only the Canadian system and the institution, but also the student to make sure they know at the front end. I think we have to continue the anti-fraud prevention—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting, but time is up for Mr. Dhaliwal.
You can quickly finish the sentence.