Evidence of meeting #72 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 education.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Are you not going to continue checking into them, or are these 2,000 cases all related to the same consultants who committed this fraud against the students?
5:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
It's all related to the same consultant. We have about 6,000 active investigations under way at any one time. It's a going concern in terms of the integrity of the system.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Is it a standard practice? Once you identify these education consultants, or fraudulent, scam immigration consultants, is a notice sent out to CBSA officers so they're aware of it when they look at someone at the border and look at the documentation to try to identify if perhaps their name appears anywhere on the documents?
5:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
We do share information. We do have border watch-lists. I'm sure in this particular instance we did that.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Can I ask you, then, about school administrators? I have an email here between CBSA and a school administrator for international admissions. This one is with Seneca College.
How often does this type of exchange happen? This is three years after the fact in the particular case that I have on my tablet. How often do officers communicate with colleges to verify whether an admissions letter is real or not?
5:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
I wouldn't be able to hazard a guess in terms of how often it occurs. As part of normal investigative practices, one way of confirming the validity of a letter would be to confirm with the educational institution.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
When through IRCC, through the portal, a person provides an application, does CBSA at that point, when it's an international student getting a study permit, do a secondary review to validate whether the acceptance letter is a real letter or whether the students are being defrauded? Or do you only check after, once it's a permanent residency application? In each case that I have here, it's a permanent residency application.
5:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
Again, in terms of roles and responsibilities, the IRCC is responsible at the stage of the initial application to assess the validity of the documents. That's their role and responsibility. You've heard what they do to combat fraudulent documents.
The particular role we played in this case was doing the inland investigations. Post-arrival, we received the tips and information that led us down an investigative path. That led us to conclude that there were fraudulent documents being used.
That's why I speak about the layers of defence, because you can't rely on a single layer of defence. You have that initial requirement on the students to complete their applications completely and honestly. The second layer of defence is the IRCC reviewing the application itself, and then we come in and, based on the information, may do an investigation.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Has any college ever reached out to you proactively on cases where they find out that a student has come to them and said they're a student but it turns out they're not and they've been scammed? Has any college ever reached out to the CBSA at your level or other levels proactively to tell you there's something going on?
5:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
I'm not aware of any.
5:25 p.m.
Carl Desmarais Director General, Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
We receive tips and information from a variety of sources via the different mechanisms we have, including the border watch line.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
5:25 p.m.
Director General, Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
Specifically about that particular issue, I wouldn't be able to tell, but we frequently receive tips from a variety of different sources.
5:25 p.m.
Director General, Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
They would not necessarily preclude colleges.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Okay.
When you found out about these 2,000 cases, was an internal investigation done by CBSA about how some of these students were able to cross the border?
I have at least one study permit where the birthday on the visa doesn't match the birthday on the acceptance letter. I would have thought that at the border, that's something obvious a CBSA officer would catch. It's glaring that the two don't match.
Was there an internal investigation done into what went wrong?
5:25 p.m.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
I'm not familiar with the specific example you're talking about. You have to bear in mind that we have 33 million people arriving in Canada in any given year. Our frontline officers do their very best to confirm the validity of every document they see, but 33 million documents are a lot to review.
5:25 p.m.
Bloc
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Bloc Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I didn’t want to interrupt my colleague, since he was on a roll. However, there were several simultaneous exchanges, which made the interpreters’ job more difficult.
If we want the interpreters to do their job properly, we shouldn’t all be speaking at the same time. To be honest, I was able to follow the discussion quite well, since I’m in the room, but those listening to us may not be able to hear all the information in the language of their choice.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you, Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe.
We will now proceed to MP Ali. You have six minutes.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
Shafqat Ali Liberal Brampton Centre, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
First of all, thank you to the officials for appearing before the committee. Thank you for your service to Canada.
You explained how you received a tip. I understand that's how the investigation started on this. What sort of information was provided to CBSA that led it to uncover this issue of large-scale misrepresentation?
5:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
We received information indicating that an individual was possibly overstaying their time in Canada. That prompted us to look more deeply into their file, their circumstances and how they came into the country. I will not get into the specifics of the investigation, given that those are the techniques we use to find fraudulent behaviour.
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
Shafqat Ali Liberal Brampton Centre, ON
The media has reported that there are approximately 700 students in this situation. They are being accused of having studied in Canada using fraudulent documents. These students claim to be victims, but the investigation seems to suggest that some of the students knowingly took advantage of Canada's immigration system.
Is this 700 number accurate? What is the breakdown of the students who are deemed to be victims versus those who are not genuine? I know you mentioned it, but can you expand on that, please?