As the chairperson has mentioned, the process doesn't start at the board. It actually starts overseas when people are applying for visas and electronic travel authorities to come to Canada. This is done by my colleagues, so I won't speak about those processes, although we also do security screening in those cases as well.
Once they arrive, we're validating people's identity, usually through biometric validation, because all the people who receive visas have their biometrics collected before they're issued a visa. Going back to one of the previous questions from your colleagues, at the port of entry, we assess their admissibility. We do interviews, collect data, search databases and do biometric confirmation searches to make sure we know as much as we can, right at the port of entry, about the person.
If they are inadmissible for a reason other than making a refugee claim, then we will do the full collection of their process. Otherwise, they go through a process, which I know you've already had conversations on, called one-touch, at CBSA. They are then funnelled into the processes for collecting their information for their claim. We initiate the security screening. We also introduce processes for evaluating, which are separate from security screening, to determine if we're going to intervene on the case. Once we've determined that, and the security screening is completed, it's then referred to the board.
At this point, I will reference Bill C-12, because I was about to say something erroneous. The intervention piece does not delay processing at the board; the security screening does. However, Bill C-12 will mean that all of those processes are completed before the board can make a decision—once the bill is in place, should it get passed by Parliament.
Once it passes over to the board, the security screening takes into account a variety of things, including partners at Public Safety and CSIS.
