Evidence of meeting #25 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 cases.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Thank you.
Mr. Harris, your department made big noise about getting out of the hotel business. The government had been spending hundreds of millions of dollars—I think close to $1 billion—paying for hotels for asylum seekers. You got out of that business with great fanfare.
Recently you provided funding for the City of Ottawa, $40 million, to buy a hotel and continue the funding. Isn't this just shuffling money around?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I wouldn't describe it as shuffling money around. We've been working with municipalities to ensure they have the infrastructure they need to support the population. We've moved out of the business of housing, which was a direct provision of service and did not build capacity. It basically solved the problem for a day. Our work with the cities is designed to help them build capacity in their systems for the long term.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
Essentially, you are fooling Canadians, though, because you're saying that we're not spending money on this, yet you're spending millions of dollars buying infrastructure. You're not renting hotels, but you're buying infrastructure. I get it. It's really the same thing.
I want to switch over to the—
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
[Inaudible—Editor] disingenuous, to be clear.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
I'm sorry; I want to switch over to the Auditor General's report from this morning.
There was a mention of 150,000-plus cases of potential fraud. That gets back to what the minister just told us: that the department can investigate only 2,000 cases. Can you confirm that? Is that correct?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I wouldn't want to put up an approximation. We have to prioritize our resources. Obviously, we can't follow up on every signal there is. I will say that the 150,000 number is a very large number that does not reflect necessarily equal degrees of seriousness and can reflect some misreporting from institutions.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
That's fair. I'm not really concerned so much about.... I mean, I'm concerned about that number, but the one that really struck me was the 2,000. Your department has had, I think, close to six billion dollars' worth of resources in the last year and the year before. I believe it was somewhere around that magnitude.
Basically, you're saying that however many thousands of potentially fraudulent cases there are, we're capped at 2,000 because of all these other billions of dollars we're spending on all these other priorities. That's essentially what you're saying. It doesn't matter if there's more fraud. You're not going to allocate resources to that because 2,000 is the cap.
Is that a fair assessment of what's happened in the department?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
No, I wouldn't describe it as fair.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I would say that, first of all, in the division of responsibilities, CBSA is responsible for inland enforcement. Our integrity measures supplement the work they do. That's an important distinction. They have the enforcement officer capacity in Canada.
The 2,000 number is a best guess in terms of the current investigation processes. We have unrolled a whole suite of new risk tools that will allow us to take advantage of new technologies, to identify trends and to intervene more quickly in cases going forward. That number is not written in stone. It's about capacity.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
From what you're telling me, more resources could have been allocated to investigate more because of the thousands of potential fraud cases, but there weren't. That's the reality of what's happened in the last couple of years. That's what's been reported and what's been said by the minister.
On Bill C-3, the minister was confused again, as she always is. I think what you whispered in her ear was that 1,501 people have received Canadian citizenship since December 15. Am I correct on that?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It's 1,301.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
It's 1,301. Thank you.
What I was trying to get at, which she didn't understand, was the requests for proof of citizenship, which is a different thing. Do you have any records? Do you know how many people have applied for proof of citizenship since December 15?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I don't have them with me today. We can provide those. I haven't seen a rise. We haven't seen a trend line that has been identified as a significant change in that number.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
If you could provide that to the committee, that would be helpful.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I will follow up.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
My next question is on the IRB.
Given the war that's going on in Iran right now, have there been discussions between your department and the IRB about finding ways of being more careful in the screening of Iranian claims for asylum?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
The IRB isn't involved, necessarily, in screening. If you're talking about security screening, that's between the CBSA, CSIS and IRCC.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
I'm not necessarily talking about screening, but about carefully looking at these cases in terms of whether they should be approved or not, particularly given that we know that IRGC officials are in Canada, have gotten through our system and are, I'm sure, working very hard to try to get into Canada right now, given the war that's going on.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Since the regimes were designated in 2022 and the IRGC was listed as an entity for terrorism, we've had significant conversations with the IRB, the CBSA and others to ensure that we're addressing the cases of those seeking to come to Canada—and we are preventing cases from coming to Canada—and also addressing any cases of those who may be in Canada and may have become inadmissible as a result of those changes.
Conservative
Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK
So since the war, you haven't increased that. It's going on at the same level of discussion.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Obviously, the current war elevates the number of conversations that are happening at various levels.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Thank you, Mr. Harris.
Thank you, Mr. Redekopp.
Next we have five minutes for Ms. Zahid.