Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 20th, 2026

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Gallivan, I'm going to follow up on a series of questions from previous meetings about housing for refugees. For whatever reason, there are a number of students who try to follow the asylum process if they don't want to leave the country. If they do that, what kind of housing funding do they get?

I'm in the Niagara region, so I'm in both a border community and a tourism community. A number of hotels were taken over in Niagara Falls and used for about 18 months. The minister assured me that there are no more hotels being paid for for asylum claimants.

I have been talking to people in my community. There have been other motels and hotels that have been converted to apartments, technically. I'm just wondering if there's a housing allowance given to those people.

[Ted Gallivan]

I'll start an answer. I'm happy to go off-line to make sure we get a precise answer because it's an important question.

There had been an ask. The federal government funds other orders of government. There was a soft ask to cease the hotel program. I understand that was upgraded to a hard and fast rule—no more hotels. That process should be working its way to where the funding, even if it's passed from another order of government, doesn't end up in a hotel.

The conversion is a new issue to me. Unless my officials happen to know, I'm going to have to follow up off-line to give you a clear answer.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

I know I don't have a whole lot of time, but the federal government just dedicated $40 million to buying a hotel here in Ottawa for asylum claimants. Is that going to be a regular occurrence across the country?

[Ted Gallivan]

Again, my understanding of the progression of the decisions was an ask of those people in receipt of federal funds to cease the use of hotels, followed up by a hard condition and the terms and conditions through which the money flows. I had understood there was a tightening and a moving away from hotels.

You're talking about a conversion and now a second instance, a hotel in Ottawa. That seems to be inconsistent with the brief I've received. I don't think I have the right officials here to answer your question. I'm happy to provide a written answer.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Mr. Harris had testified to that previously at committee.

Can I follow up with Ms. O'Gorman, please? Again, because I'm in a border community, I spend a lot of time in the Fort Erie area. I see some of the issues that are affecting CBSA. When we get into a non-compliance situation, the CBSA inherits that because you are the enforcement arm when people need to be removed. I asked the question earlier, but are you funded sufficiently? Is your capacity...?

The Minister of Public Safety said he was hiring 1,000 new agents across the country and that the first cohort had graduated recently. Do you know how many people actually graduated from that first cohort?

[Erin O'Gorman]

We have 42 people who have graduated. By June, we'll have had 100, and in June, we will have 180 at our college in Rigaud. We do them in three class chunks. At any one time, there are three classes. There are people who have just started, those midway through and those graduating.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Is that a normal yearly cohort?

[Erin O'Gorman]

Those are people we are hiring as a result of the commitment and the funding to hire 1,000 officers.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Over the last five years, let's say, would that be the equivalent number that you would have hired on a yearly basis ?

[Erin O'Gorman]

No.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

With your turnover rate and retirements, how many of that first cohort are just filling lost capacity?

[Erin O'Gorman]

None. We are tagging people as people who are replacing attrition, either people who are retiring or people who are leaving their position for an inland job or a promotion. Our attrition overall has been down a little bit over the last three years. We will know in the coming months who we are putting through the college for attrition and who we are putting and tagging as the 1,000 officers.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Ms. O'Gorman, you may not have the numbers with you, but I'm looking for a net number. The minister made it sound like hiring 1,000 officers is going to solve the problem. I don't think it's going to come anywhere near solving the problem or giving you the capacity you need to deal with the ever-evolving situation of people who are required to leave the country.

If you're now investigating and being responsible for removing people, I think you need more agents. You need more investigative agents. You need more capacity. Would you agree with that?

[Erin O'Gorman]

As I said, the work of the CBSA never ends. There is no magic number.

We will put those 1,000 officers to good use. They will be net new officers. We will have the capacity in our college and we're hiring people directly, hiring trade officers who won't go through the college, so not every one of those 1,000 officers will need to be trained at Rigaud. I'd say about 80% of them will. It's just that we're hiring trade officers for different skill sets.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Mr. Davies. You are way over.

Thank you, Ms. O'Gorman.

Next, we have five minutes for Ms. Zahid.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre—Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you.

My next question is for Ms. O'Gorman.

What progress has been made in working with IRCC to make sure that you track whether students leave Canada after their permits have expired?

[Erin O'Gorman]

I think Mr. Gallivan has nicely enumerated the work that IRCC will be doing.

To the question, we don't need the CBSA to be involved too early on, because then we will be spending our resources on people who may not have realized that their student visa has just expired or who may have another application. We need IRCC to determine who is now out of compliance and is not being brought into compliance.

As Mr. Gallivan said, there's regular communication among us, and we will be providing data and information to IRCC in terms of people who have left the country. I think it is important that we divide up our work so that we're not overlapping and bringing enforcement officers to a case that IRCC can ably either bring back to compliance or determine has left the country.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre—Don Valley East, ON]

My next question is for Mr. Gallivan.

What lessons has IRCC learned from the issues that were identified with the student direct stream, and how are those lessons shaping your current policies?

[Ted Gallivan]

First, to clarify something about the student direct stream, Iran wasn't an eligible country. I think there were legitimate concerns about representatives of the regime in the country. The “light touch”, as it was described under the student direct stream, couldn't have been a source, because that program wasn't open to Iran.

To go back to the idea of control and managing risk, merely skipping steps for everybody creates a vacuum that attracts fraudsters and people who want to take advantage. The automation and digitization taking place in IRCC are going to allow us to ingest information and do data analytics to set up our officers to make better decisions from cleaner data. Rather than limiting everybody a 30-minute review, I think the facts of somebody's circumstances and the facts of the country should dictate that.

In your report that I read last week, one of your recommendations is a cap on countries where a large percentage or a large number of the student visa seekers turn around and claim asylum. That's a really important point. Going forward, IRCC should be managing the countries that, on a per capita ratio basis, generate the most asylum claims. Then, what are the attributes of those claims, and how can we find them?

Again, I think the vision we're trying to convey and the commitments we're making for 2026 are that instead of just waving a bunch of things through with a lighter touch, we're actually going to use data and analytics to understand what the threat is. If people from certain countries have a propensity to claim asylum, what are the attributes of those claims? What are the facts we should be looking for? Then we can use the machine and our agents to find those files and deny the visas in the first instance.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre—Don Valley East, ON]

That's a good segue to my next question. How is IRCC developing goals and measurable indicators to track progress on diversifying the international student population rather than them being from just a few countries?

[Ted Gallivan]

I'll start, and then my colleagues can continue.

Personally, I think Africa is a rich source of French speakers. Since we have new thresholds for attracting French-speaking immigrants, this is an interesting avenue for us. We really need to focus on French-speaking Africa, because it is a rich source of people who can come and settle here.

Would you like to add anything, Ms. Graham?

[Alexis Graham]

The francophone minority student pilot was launched in 2024. Pilot participants essentially arrive as study permit holders and then become eligible for permanent residence upon graduation, along with their dependents. That is one of the main things we're trying to do to remove some of the barriers that we've seen for francophone minority source countries in this particular program. It is a pilot, so we do need to assess the results. It's still in the early days, but I think it's a rather promising track.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Ms. Zahid.

Next, we have five minutes for Mr. Ho.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll go back to you, Ms. Hogan.

Your report mentions 52 cases where people linked to fraudulent documentation or misrepresentation later received international study permit extensions. In your professional view, does that point to an immigration system that was too permissive after these fraud indicators were known?

[Karen Hogan]

This points to one of my key findings. IRCC had a lot of information at their disposal, and they didn't effectively follow up when their own processes identified fraud indicators. We would expect that those kinds of things would not be ignored.