Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Oct. 24th, 2023

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Should the students, who did receive a TRP through the task force, get their passports back, or not?

[Aaron McCrorie]

We need to look into that. I'm newly aware of that issue, and we need to look into it.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

It's good to see the IRCC and CBSA working together on this task force. One of the biggest problems we have in my office is with immigration case work and security clearances. A permanent resident applicant waits months, and even years. IRCC blames CBSA. In fact, there even seems to be some frustration within IRCC for CBSA.

Are there internal procedures for dealing with CBSA delays? What specific steps, Ms. Kingsley, are you taking to eliminate the delay?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Ms. Kingsley.

[Michèle Kingsley]

I would say that IRCC and CBSA do work together on all of those fronts. We do have strategies in place and meetings and exchanges to address the backlogs in our systems. We work together on those.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Mr. Redekopp.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Often, when we talk to IRCC, there is a frustration that even comes back through the IRCC agents that's it's over in CBSA land. We don't have a clue what's going on, and they take forever to get it done. Have you never heard of this from your perspective in IRCC?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Ms. Kingsley.

[Michèle Kingsley]

I haven't heard of frustration directed at CBSA colleagues. No, I think we work collaboratively together on security screening and other issues such as this task force.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Mr. McCrorie, do you want to make a comment?

[Aaron McCrorie]

I would just echo that it is a very collaborative and strong working relationship. There are any number of reasons why it takes a while for security screening to get done. Those security screening results are a recommendation that feeds into a broader decision.

To Michèle's point, we work very closely, on a very regular basis, in addressing backlogs and delays.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Mr. Redekopp.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

The task force identified 15 or possibly more applicants who were, in fact, cheating the system and who needed to be removed from the country. How long will it take CBSA to get them out of the country?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Mr. McCrorie.

[Aaron McCrorie]

To date, we've identified 40 individuals who were deemed to be “non-genuine”, with 17 of them in the country. As we discussed previously, we are giving them an opportunity. We're going to follow up with those 17. If there's information we've missed or weren't aware of, we will seek that information from them. Then the committee would have an opportunity to reassess if we got new information.

Above and beyond that, as with any other individual subject to removal, they do benefit from all the other protections that are in place. For example, they can make appeals to the IRB. They can make appeals to the Federal Court. They can also apply to IRCC for pre-removal risk assessment. It's only after all that due process is completed, with that additional layer we've added with this task force, that we would then begin to contemplate actual removal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to Parliamentary Secretary, Mr. Chiang, for six minutes.

Please go ahead.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here.

In a previous meeting, Deputy Minister Fox explained that the CBSA had identified 1,485 suspicious cases of student permit applications. Of these cases, 976 had already been refused based on fraud, 150 have a link to criminality and 300 cases of concern remained. How are these applications reviewed and refused based on fraud, and how did these 300 cases slip through the cracks?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Ms. Kingsley.

[Michèle Kingsley]

I would start by highlighting the fact that two-thirds of the applications were, in fact, refused based on fraud. Also, I would point here to the multi-layered approach that IRCC and CBSA have in fraud prevention and detection. It starts abroad with media campaigns and information sessions for potential students so that they are made aware that they should be working with authorized agents, and they have information that would inform the decision-making in being able to spot potentially fraudulent, unscrupulous actors.

We do encourage newcomers to work with authorized, recognized agents. Once in the processing realm, officers are trained to spot fraud. We do have a tool that identifies potential fraud trends in our caseload, and we do have a letter of acceptance verification process, which the minister indicated in the previous part of the meeting, that we'll be enhancing soon.

Then, of course, once students are in the country, there's a compliance-reporting regime that kicks in.

There is a multi-layered approach to detecting and finding fraud, but it's an ever-changing sector that's always in evolution. The reality is that fraudsters are very sophisticated and are constantly changing their processes to stay ahead of and to try to game the Canadian system. That's why we are imposing a multi-layered approach to try to catch them and stay one step ahead all the time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Mr. McCrorie, did you want to add something?

[Aaron McCrorie]

I would just echo that with regard to the multi-stage approach, we contributed to it at the port of entry where our officials do review documents and are trained to detect fraud. We have documents specialists who can support them. As well, there is the work we do in inland enforcement, either through administrative reviews, which led to this particular investigation, as well as criminal investigations that resulted, for example, in the spring of this year in charges against an individual involved in this fraudulent behaviour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

Mr. Chiang.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

This committee also heard that if a student did not have knowledge of fraudulent documentation, they would be issued a three-year temporary resident permit.

To date, how many temporary resident permits have been issued this way? Could you please provide this committee with an update on this process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Ms. Kingsley.

[Michèle Kingsley]

Thank you, Chair.

The process we undertook was a very facilitative one that was based on determining whether a student really came here to study. A very basic test we used was to consider whether that student was in fact studying at an institution within three terms after they arrived. If they were, then we considered them to be genuine, and we did issue that three-year temporary resident permit.

So far, 30 temporary resident permits have been issued. Twenty-six are to "in-Canada genuine students" who were issued removal orders. Four were to people who had been removed prior to the striking of the task force. That's 30.