Evidence of meeting #26 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 report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London Centre, ON
I have two amendments. They won't be introduced at the same time, because they're different.
The first one relates to paragraph (e). We heard from Minister Diab yesterday that the matter of the Auditor General's report was taken up, I would say extensively, and we are seeing a new policy unfold. The relevance of having previous ministers come to the committee is questionable, to be charitable about it, and for that reason, I would suggest that paragraph e be struck.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
I'm going to ask a technical question.
Has the motion been distributed, Mr. Redekopp?
The Clerk of the Committee Rémi Bourgault
It has been. I just did that. I think there are delays for email today.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
No worries. We are just in time here. I want to make sure Monsieur Simard and others have a copy.
Do you have any comments on what has been suggested, Mr. Redekopp?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
You do not accept that change.
Mr. Simard, do you have a copy of the motion?
Bloc
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
We will wait a couple of seconds until everybody gets their copy of the motion. Ms. Kronis is correct that everybody should get a copy and see it.
Now we will proceed to the vote. We are voting on whether we should strike paragraph e from the motion proposed by Mr. Redekopp. It will be a recorded vote.
(Amendment negatived: nays 5; yeas 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Now we'll go back to the discussion on the motion as proposed by Mr. Redekopp.
Go ahead, Mr. Fragiskatos.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London Centre, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'll move that in paragraph a, the part that reads “by the 15th day of each month” be replaced with “on a quarterly basis”.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Thank you, Mr. Fragiskatos.
Shall I suspend for a couple of minutes so we can have that discussion? What do you think?
Monsieur Simard, do you have any comments on that? Do people need time to discuss it?
It seems that Ms. Rempel Garner has some agreement to that. Mr. Simard has given me a thumbs-up.
It looks like that amendment is being made. It would be changing “by the 15th day of each month” to “on a quarterly basis”. I'm assuming everybody agrees with that amendment.
(Amendment agreed to)
That's excellent.
Now we'll go back to the motion as amended in paragraph a. Is there any more discussion on the motion as amended?
Since I see none, shall we vote on it? I see a thumbs-up from everyone.
(Motion as amended agreed to)
We'll go back to our witnesses.
Next on my list is Mr. Fragiskatos.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London Centre, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I apologize to the witnesses, but that's committee business. It's part of the process. Those of you who have been to committees before have probably experienced it.
In any case, Mr. Hummel, thank you very much for being here today and for the work you're doing.
I want to ask you about your recommendations. We probably won't get past the first one, which I thought was very interesting.
Are you proposing, if I understood you correctly, sir, that IRCC collaborate with the CBSA and perhaps the IRB—I didn't get the full understanding, but correct me if I'm wrong—and that an effort be made to bring them together to assess applications and create greater efficiency? Can you go over that recommendation again?
Lawyer, Hummel Law PC, As an Individual
Thank you for the question. It's always interesting to see how the sausage is made.
The recommendation we made is not asking for the bodies themselves to integrate one into another, but for their intelligence collection or background checks to be done through a central repository.
What we have right now is a procedure. What I am advocating for is to have more of a framework or an actual system where all of the background checks, the intelligence and everything else get put into a central framework, the central intelligence system. Then these different bodies can both contribute to and use that information together so that it's not.... The analogy that I like to use is that it's like going down a highway and there are four different toll booths, one for each agency—IRCC, CBSA, CSIS and the RCMP—and that's creating the delay. What we'd be doing here is making, basically, one toll booth and seeing whether they can all sign off on one thing, rather than having to collect this disparate data and being unsure about when it actually gets applied.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London Centre, ON
That's very interesting, but give me a practical example of how this could work—in theory, of course—with a visitor visa, student permit or work permit application. Choose which one you want, but talk about how it could work under what you're envisioning, as opposed to the status quo.
Lawyer, Hummel Law PC, As an Individual
If I may be so bold, if you were to propose legislation along these lines, a way that it could work would be to have basically a checklist so that when someone is applying for, let's say, an asylum claim—100% of asylum claims get referred for security clearance or a background check—you'd have a system where you'd need each of the four agencies or three agencies to sign off on the security background check within a set, legislated period of time. Once that's all done, only then can a decision be made on that application. We're not then waiting for one hand to do something while the other hand is still out there collecting information.
To go further, after that is approved—let's say it's a temporary application, a visitor visa or something initial—we'd have ongoing monitoring that can be added into this framework. That would also be checked off every now and then to make sure we are meeting security requirements.
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London Centre, ON
I wish we had more time, but I'm glad to follow up with you, perhaps afterwards when we'll have a conversation.
Ms. Zhuang, you raised an interesting point about municipal infrastructure and immigration levels. Can you go over that point again and specifically address how this could be done? I take quite seriously the point you're making that—
Liberal
Peter Fragiskatos Liberal London Centre, ON
Okay. I'll stop talking. I think you understand the question.
Associate Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University, As an Individual
In this specific scenario, we can give municipalities a clearer and more formal role to play. We can imagine, for example, developing a few of the local community partners and a community readiness dashboard, portal or system that can track housing supplies, vacancy rates, transit services, health care services, any other settlement agencies and available services and their caseloads, and labour market demands. We have all kinds of local data, but they are fragmented; they are stored in a silo system. If we have a kind of ongoing and systematic mapping of local assets and understand the strengths in local infrastructure but also the gaps—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Julie Dzerowicz
Thank you, Professor Zhuang.
Thank you, Mr. Fragiskatos.
Mr. Simard, you have two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière, QC
Thank you.
Mr. Richard, I would like to come back to the earlier discussion. You know, immigration to Canada isn't currently geared towards integration into host communities. There are collective identities in Canada. Quebeckers have a collective identity that may be different from the identity of all Canadians, just as Acadians have a collective identity separate from the identity of Quebeckers and other Canadians. So, we have to think it over. I suggest that we think about integration in terms of the collective identities that apply in our case, meaning francophones like you and me. I currently have the impression that the Canadian immigration system completely overlooks this. In my opinion, the role that you can play is to provide this integration structure. I would like to hear your comments on how to ensure a smoother integration based on specific collective identities.
Administrator, Comité atlantique sur l'immigration francophone, Société nationale de l'Acadie
Thank you for the question, Mr. Simard.
Francophone minority communities in Atlantic Canada are currently extremely concerned about their future and their vitality. The government says that francophone service providers haven't been affected by the cuts announced in recent months. However, on the ground, we can see that this isn't the reality.
We would like Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to build capacity and invest more in communities in Atlantic Canada. IRCC has indeed invested over the past few years and met some fairly impressive targets in a short space of time. However, we need to think about how to strengthen these new structures implemented over the past few years. We're currently concerned about their sustainability. Thank you.
