Evidence of meeting #13 for Citizenship and Immigration in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was use.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director General, Integrity Policy and Programs, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
The checks and balances are present there. The transparency through the publication of the Gazette, the conversations we'll have with—
Conservative
Director General, Integrity Policy and Programs, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It would be any potential options around the public interest to suspend, cancel—
Director General, Integrity Policy and Programs, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It would be very detailed. It would have to be down to the type of application and the type of person. It would depend on the situation. It could involve, like I was saying before, a health care situation. If we needed to mass-extend health care workers because of a crisis in Canada, it would have to specifically say that these applications of people who are already in Canada would be extended. The level of detail is there. Going back to the legislation that was tabled in 2012.... That is not nimble. It doesn't allow us, as Canada, to respond.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
I have a problem as a legislator giving you these powers. It's a big devolution of powers, and I feel that the department and the minister haven't done an adequate job. I would encourage you, in the short time we have left, to explain this in more detail because you guys were roasted by the legal community. In ethnic media, there's a lot of fear over this right now. I don't think you've adequately communicated what this means, and that's a problem for me as a legislator.
I have another set of questions, with the time I have left. We heard, this week, that your department, as part of the bill review, had really devolved the screening of asylum claimants through the use of this one-touch system. It was reported to the committee by the head of the union, and it's very concerning.
We also had stories from Global News that Hamas terrorists have been granted asylum claims. Your department couldn't answer an Order Paper question on how many citizens...criminals you gave citizenship to.
What's going on with this one-touch system? Let's start there.
Aaron McCrorie Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
Perhaps I could answer that, Madam Chair, and I'll try to be quick.
I'll touch on why we introduced one-touch, how we went about developing one-touch and what one-touch is. In fact, if you cast your mind back a few years ago, we were facing fairly significant volumes—overwhelming volumes—at the border and what—
Conservative
Liberal
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
At that time, the practice was to adjourn a lot of these claims, and that pushed the risk inland and pushed the volumes inland. This committee itself observed the delays in getting eligibility decisions with that practice. It was in fact our frontline staff who looked at how we could do this better, do this differently, and who worked to develop a new process, which is what—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Ms. Rempel Garner, your time is up. I was just allowing our witness to complete his answer.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
Fundamental to one-touch is that it's not a self-declaration. In fact, the front end of it involves an in-depth review by face-to-face interview. There is the collection of biometric information and an assessment by a highly trained and experienced border services officer, who will make a determination based on the level of risk.
Based on that level of risk, if the risk is low, we will then allow the administration portion of the assessment—
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Thank you, Ms. Rempel Garner.
Thank you, Mr. McCrorie.
Next, we have Mr. Zuberi for six minutes.
November 20th, 2025 / 3:40 p.m.
Liberal
Sameer Zuberi Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I'll pick up on the line of questioning we just heard about the one-touch system, just to better understand the situation.
Is the one-touch system the only check around security issues for someone who is going through that process of the one-touch system?
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
Perhaps if I could continue, in fact, there's that initial face-to-face risk assessment, and the biometric information is collected. It's run against our databases and run against CPIC police databases. There's an assessment of risk that is done by one of our experienced and trained border services officers. They will make a decision at that point.
If the claimant is low risk, we will move the file inland and allow the administration portion of the assessment to be done inland, in part by the claimant rather than having a BSO do a lot of data entry. If they are deemed to be high risk, we complete the full process right there at the port of entry. A minister's delegate, a more senior official, a more experienced official, will review that work prior to the decision being made.
To your point, to your question, that is not the end of the review. Then, 100% of in-Canada asylum claimants go to our Centre for Immigration National Security Screening for an in-depth security review of each and every one of them. There is a fairly significant inventory there, but we go through each and every one of them, and we do a risk assessment on them.
Further, both IRCC and CBSA hearings officers will review cases to decide which ones we should send to IRB to challenge their application for asylum, based on a variety of factors. In fact, there are multiple layers of defence. The first and foremost is our BSOs at the front line, who meet each and every claimant.
Liberal
Sameer Zuberi Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I appreciate that answer. It gives a lot more clarity to this question we've been looking at today and especially at our last meeting. This level of detail is really helpful.
I'll go back to the question around the public interest. This, as it's written currently, is quite broad. It leaves a lot of room for discretion, depending upon the cabinet of the day.
Do you think you could fashion this in a way that's still broad but also narrows the scope a bit, for example, with terms like “in exceptional circumstances”? It would be something that clearly narrows the usage, because you did just testify that it would be in very exceptional circumstances, such as a menace to public safety. Mr. Hollmann mentioned public health. COVID-19 is an example. It would be for very exceptional situations.
The way it's written right now doesn't narrowly focus the mind to very exceptional situations. Do you think we could do something to fix that? If you just want to plead the fifth, you can.
Director General, Integrity Policy and Programs, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
No. I mean, I suppose it would be possible to define public interest to mean safety, security, emerging threat, crisis....
Liberal
Sameer Zuberi Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
You could put in a non-exhaustive list: “includes X, Y and Z”. That's done regularly in law. Those who have studied law know this. Our lawyers know this and jurists—
Director General, Integrity Policy and Programs, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Yes, I would have to defer to Department of Justice colleagues about the limitations around that, because it is purposely undefined to account for the unknowns.
Liberal
Sameer Zuberi Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Which is normal. Law should be written in a way that it does pass the test of time, but it should also be written in a way that directs the civil service to apply it as the legislator intended, as you are intending, which is very narrow at this point in time. I'm happy that we got that on the record.
Now, we did hear from a number of groups about the PRRA process. In particular, we heard from the UNHCR and CARL, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, and from other groups.
The way the PRRA process functions right now is that it is a process of last resort after other processes have been exhausted, but in this legislation, the way it will be used will be as a process of first resort. In terms of what we've heard in this committee testimony, international pacts and covenants, which we have ratified and which effectively are our laws now—domestic law—require, from my understanding, that there be a hearing, an in-person type of hearing.
As it's written right now, there seems to be a bit of a void in that regard between conformity with our laws and this current piece of legislation. What can we do to close that gap?
Director General, Asylum Policy, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Thank you for the question. Maybe I can start and then ask my justice colleagues to comment on the last piece.
Just to be clear, there are other groups who are directed towards the pre-removal risk assessment stream who are ineligible claimants today, who are effectively under that mechanism as their first determination. It's not—
Liberal
Sameer Zuberi Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I understand your position. I'll get in one last question.
We've heard about two points. One was that there was a salient point about the first entry into this country versus the latest entry. That's a salient point.
On this one point, I'd like you to respond. There were some classes of people—minors, moratorium countries, survivors of gender-based violence, LGBT people—in a number of categories where the one year doesn't work well for them. Do you have a comment on that?