Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Feb. 7th, 2024

[Daniel Anson]

Sure. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

To begin with, the simplest way to distinguish between the two is that, in one case, someone is willing, and in the other case, someone is unwilling. In the case of the less severe, which is human smuggling, that pertains to the organized movement or irregular illicit migration of individuals across international boundaries or borders. In many cases, if somebody is being smuggled, they are doing so willingly and have secured the support of somebody to allow for their facilitation across the border.

In the instance of human trafficking, there is an exploitative nature to it and in those circumstances, people are being coerced and quite often are being robbed of their dignity, their freedom and in many cases, their humanity. Trafficking is a much more severe and serious crime. That is something we work significantly with partners on for both leads and recommendations and for information, guidance and patterns. We work with IRCC but also in concert with the RCMP to ensure that we have a joint investigative mandate at the border. That's human trafficking in general.

Specific to what we are doing in the employment of our mandate, just being cognizant of the time, I'll maybe focus on a couple of layers. There is what we do extraterritorially in identifying threats abroad and what we do in terms of applying border security measures to ensure that threats are identified, leads are provided and referrals are made where there are instances of potential or suspected human trafficking or smuggling. Then domestically we have a variety of different inland enforcement officers and criminal investigations partners who do their work by surfacing evidence of human smuggling, where we go after the traffickers—the people who are smuggling, the organized criminality—and then also the traffickers' where—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe for six minutes.

Please, go ahead.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Anson, listening to you makes me realize that human misery is exploited when it comes to human trafficking. I used to work in the film industry. I worked on the documentary series Human Trafficking. I don't know whether you saw it, but it was quite moving.

You spoke about investigations. Can you say how many investigations into smugglers are under way on this side of the border? If not, perhaps Mr. Burchill could?

[Daniel Anson]

Thank you for the question.

For human trafficking, we have 27 current active cases. What's important to mention as well is that cases can last for multiple years due to witness availability and the ability to compel testimony. Again, for the complexity and sophistication that augment that figure, I would refer to the RCMP in supporting what is likely the larger number of investigations.

Specifically on human smuggling, we currently have 171 active cases. Again, that's going back approximately three years. In those circumstances, what we also try to do is ensure that not only are we going after the organizers and the organized criminality, or the more facilitative role behind that—the people who are organizing large numbers of people who are being exploited, typically after the border—but we're also working in concert with our partners. In some circumstances, we might be the lead, or there might be a joint investigative lead. We might also defer to the RCMP, based on what we would perceive to be their ability to focus with greater sophistication on more complex cases.

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

Is it easier for American police authorities, with the laws at their disposal, to investigate human trafficking and lay charges against smugglers?

We consulted many people. A number of experts said that American authorities could lay charges more easily than the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for example, or the Canada Border Services Agency.

[Daniel Anson]

Thank you for the question.

I'm not qualified to make a comparison between the two criminal justice systems, but I would say that our own legislation and Criminal Code do afford the right types of tools, which we employ to the greatest extent possible. Again, I wouldn't be qualified to make a direct comparison. I apologize.

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

Mr. Burchill, I'm sure that you're familiar with the investigation that I referred to. It aired on Radio‑Canada on November 16, 2023. The investigation showed that border officers often witness human trafficking, but that Canadian legislation doesn't let them search a vehicle.

We heard from RCMP officer François Paquet. He found himself in front of a rental car from the Toronto area filled with people who spoke neither English nor French. They had arrived in Canada through the Vancouver airport a few hours earlier, and they ended up at the border between Quebec and the United States. The driver and front passenger were Canadians, with no apparent connection to the other passengers. All signs pointed to smugglers heading for the United States. However, the police had to let the vehicle go without searching it, since no illegal act had been committed at that time.

Sadly, these migrants were arrested the next day while trying to cross the border on foot. The smugglers had vanished with—I'm guessing—a fairly substantial amount of money.

Are many officers witnessing human trafficking these days, and yet, despite their good intentions, as Mr. Paquet said in this investigation, they can't do anything about it because of Canadian legislation?

[C/Supt Richard Burchill]

Thank you very much for the question.

What I would say is that it's very difficult for me to comment on exactly what the circumstances were of the investigation at that time in that particular instance. However, I know our officers....

When we get integrated intelligence from our U.S. partners, particularly at the border in these sorts of cases, we obviously don't catch all the trafficking and smuggling that comes across, but from time to time, we get intelligence that we can act on. These investigations are complex because of the nature of them, and sometimes there isn't evidence available that affords us.... At the end of the day, within Canada, we have to work within the statutory and legislative frameworks that we have. Sometimes there's not the ability for them to pursue an investigation, but we have instances when we do and we are able to arrest that driver.

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

Let's face it. We're talking about an officer who wanted to do his job and who knew what was happening. Unfortunately, he couldn't intervene when two individuals were financially exploiting poor people who just arrived in the country. To take the time to speak to a journalist, a rare occurrence, this officer had to be fed up and sick of the whole thing.

There are rumours that C Division, which patrols the border between Quebec and the United States, has recently seen staff cuts, or will see them in the near future. Can you confirm or deny this information?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Give a brief answer, please.

[C/Supt Richard Burchill]

Yes, I'll give a brief answer. Thank you for the question.

I have no information that suggests to me that we're cutting any positions at the border.

On the border program, as I said before, because we had a more critical mass of officers, whom we had reallocated from other units, at Roxham Road, that does not mean that we're taking any resources away from the federal policing border program. I'm not aware of any cuts to our program or that we would be removing resources, looking at border security.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

We will go to Ms. Kwan.

Ms. Kwan, you have six minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you again to the officials for being here today.

I think this is where we're talking about data. It would be really good to have data that compares apples to apples in this sense, and over a longer period. We've just heard allegations, for example, about certain periods of time and that certain things have escalated and so on.

For my first question, what I would be interested in getting for the committee is a breakdown of the staffing level, both for the RCMP and for CBSA officers, over different periods. That would be for the period of the previous administration, that 10-year period under the Harper administration. Separated out from that period, how many staff—RCMP officers—were there, as well as CBSA officers, during that period, breaking it down year by year, along with the budget?

I think budgetary constraints have implications as well. I fully understand that sometimes within the departments certain urgent things come up and you redeploy, but if you've lost budgets as well as staffing, you're just sort of plugging a hole over here with something else.

Getting that data would be really useful, that data for that period, as well as the period from 2015 to now. Is it possible that this is something you can table with the committee, breaking it down year by year, both on the staffing level and on the budget level, for both the RCMP and the CBSA?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

I will go first to you, Assistant Commissioner, and then to the director general.

[C/Supt Richard Burchill]

Thank you for that, Mr. Chair.

I will endeavour to go back to the RCMP and ask about that data. I know we have data. I know there's data that we can track. I'll see what we can do about how we break that budget down in federal policing as it pertains to positions looking at border integrity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Thank you.

[C/Supt Richard Burchill]

I'll commit to go back with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Mr. Director General, go ahead, please.

[Daniel Anson]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'm confident that we'll either have the information, or we'll do our best to surface as much information fidelity as possible on the number of employees and certainly the budget year over year for that 10-year period.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

It's for that 10-year period as well as the current period from 2015 on.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I appreciate that it's a lot of work, but I think it's important to get the data on the table.

Related to the data, we talked about cases and how many active cases you have and so on. It would be really important as well, over those two segments of time, to see how many cases were under investigation over those different periods, and then when the investigation actually started. As you've indicated, some of those investigations started three or four years ago or whatever, and then it's not an accurate presentation, because if you started three or four years ago versus what it is today, there's a differential in terms of those numbers.

Would we be able to get that breakdown as well?

[C/Supt Richard Burchill]

Again, I'll certainly commit to go back and endeavour to get that breakdown for you.

Are you talking specifically human trafficking cases, or human trafficking and human smuggling?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

It's both.

[C/Supt Richard Burchill]

It's both.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sukh Dhaliwal]

Mr. Anson, go ahead, please.

[Daniel Anson]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Of course, the CBSA will do its best to get any and all information related to the number of investigations, prosecutions, etc., over that time period. What I would just suggest to the committee, for awareness, is that it's very complex and particularly manually intensive. Due to changing circumstances with a case or criminal investigation or an immigration or IRPA-related investigation, not all of the cases will go through to the end. The statistics aren't going to be as finite as I'm sure the committee would want, Mr. Chair. In many cases, perhaps the person that is the victim or the smuggler might leave or there might be extraterritorial charges that were not brought before the Crown because there was no probability of successful prosecution.

What I would say is that, given the multi-year and the manual and complex nature of aggregating data of that nature, there will be a certain amount of, I would say, reduced fidelity to the information. Again, we'll do our best, but again, similar to victims as opposed to offenders in crimes, a lot of these are information and data that we may not be able to actually pull from the systems that are used to accurately track all these important features and events.