Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 20th, 2026

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

That makes sense. As long as there are are procedures left to follow by the applicant, it makes complete sense that they would not be removed from Canada until they've exhausted all of their possible avenues, including a pre-removal risk assessment, etc.

We hear so much about what's happening south of the border—for those who are listening and paying attention—with ICE, etc. At the same time, we do have to enforce the law and remove people who are not supposed to be on our soil.

How do you do that? For those who don't know much about this, because we're hearing so much about what's happening south of the border, what is our way of upholding the law while doing it respectfully?

[Erin O'Gorman]

As IRCC, we have procedural fairness. We want people to voluntarily leave the country. That's the law, and that's the law that people must be following. When they don't, the CBSA officers will invite them in for a pre-removal interview. We'll go through the processes. We'll discuss their personal circumstances, and then we'll facilitate that removal with them. People do abscond.

If I may go back to the question of our capacity in immigration holding facilities, I spoke about our people capacity, but our actual physical capacity has decreased. I want to make sure I was clear in answering that question.

We have investigators who find people who don't want to be found or who have absconded. If we feel they are a flight risk, we will hold them in detention and they will be removed. By and large, we seek to make the arrangements voluntarily with people, having regard for their circumstances.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Those circumstances in detention are well monitored, and we ensure that everyone is respected while in that process. Is that correct?

[Erin O'Gorman]

Yes, and after 48 hours, the decision to detain people is transferred to the Immigration and Refugee Board. If it believes the person is a threat to public safety or if we feel they are a flight risk, CBSA will make that representation to the Immigration and Refugee Board, but it's actually the board that determines whether the person will continue to be detained or not.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

What happens when somebody in detention makes an allegation they've been mistreated? How do you end up handling that?

[Erin O'Gorman]

There are several ways, depending on what that is.

We have the Red Cross that comes in and does regular reviews of our detention. It has access to whatever it wants access to. Depending on the nature of the investigation, we will do it ourselves or we will have another body come and do that.

We don't want to keep people in detention. If they have more processes that they can follow through on and they're not a risk to public safety, we don't want them in detention. By definition, they're not going to be a flight risk, because they might have an appeal to the Federal Court.

We want to remove from the country those who are on a removal order and are a risk to public safety. We don't actually want to have people detained for long periods of time, and the IRB oversees that quite rigorously.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Ms. O'Gorman.

Thank you, Mr. Zuberi.

Members, the white lights were flashing. It was just because the House was suspended. I think it's now back in session.

Welcome, Mr. Champoux. You have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First, I will pick up where my colleague left off earlier.

I would like to clarify something, Ms. Hogan. In your investigation, you identified 153,000 suspected cases—that is, cases likely to be non-compliant—between 2023 and 2024. Of that number, only 4,057 were investigated.

Can you confirm that this is indeed the case? Are these the correct figures?

[Karen Hogan]

Yes, those are the correct figures.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Is it common not to conduct more investigations? The sample they decided to examine was small. Ultimately, some 98% of cases were not investigated by the department. Is this common? Is this acceptable, in your opinion?

[Karen Hogan]

We asked this question, and the department told us it was due to budget constraints. I would have expected that at least the 4,000 investigations would have been pursued to completion, but we found that over 40% had been closed due to a lack of communication with the students. This does not answer the question of whether the individual is studying full-time and complying with the conditions of their permit.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

So, the department decided that, since these individuals were not responding or co-operating, it would drop the matter. Given that they didn't have the budget to continue, they decided to drop it.

Mr. Gallivan, can you confirm that you simply decided, due to a lack of communication, not to pursue obtaining information that I believe would be quite important to have in cases of claims that could be described as outright fraudulent?

[Ted Gallivan]

I would say that's where the weaknesses begin. The work was done after Ms. Hogan's report was submitted, and I can now confirm that, in 78% of cases, there is some explanation; the person has legal status. That still leaves 33,000 cases that we should have followed up on. As I explained before you arrived, it is the number of suspicious cases that should determine the level of our efforts, not budget constraints. Budgets are not unlimited, but if there is a case presenting a risk, we should address it. To my knowledge, yes, there are cases where we received no response. In my opinion, that indicates a high risk, and we should have been more proactive, but ultimately, as Ms. Hogan said, we closed the case, which I find unacceptable.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

What does it take to reopen the case? As you yourself say, this is unacceptable. There is a high risk, and we are leaving these people in irregular situations without doing anything, if I understand correctly.

[Ted Gallivan]

Exactly. Our department will take several steps to find a way to control the system. We need to address the issue of individuals who are not responding.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Mr. Champoux.

Thank you, Mr. Gallivan.

Next, we start the list again over on the Conservative side.

We have five minutes for Mr. Redekopp.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Hogan, in your report there are lots of mentions of fraud and a large volume of files to process. The department missed a lot of things. That's kind of the gist of a lot of it. Do you think that the large volume of applications that the department was faced with in the last few years took the focus away from things like fraud and being able to fully investigate things?

[Karen Hogan]

It's a difficult question to answer. I would tell you that every application that comes in they must treat. We did see them go through all of those files, but they need to do a better job of managing risk once individuals are in Canada. It did appear to be that the focus was on getting through the applications, but then more rigour is needed throughout the entire process, and then as well at the end. This is all information they have. It's just information that they need to compile and then act on.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

That is consistent with what you were talking about with the 4,000 cases. They didn't seem to, number one, investigate more than 4,000, and even out of those, they didn't finish. The reason was budgetary constraints, but as you point out, maybe that shouldn't have been the overall thing. I would say that they have a $6 billion budget with over 10,000 employees. It's a priority issue. Would you agree with that?

[Karen Hogan]

I agree that budget constraints rule every action that any department takes, but if you're going to investigate only a small portion, then you should do that effectively. I am hearing that the deputy is going to take steps to improve that going forward.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

On that then, the overall tone of the report was that there was fraud. The department missed a bunch of stuff, and as we're hearing today, it was kind of like, “Oops, we missed that, but we got this. We're going to fix it.”

Do you think they have this? How are you feeling about the path forward here?

[Karen Hogan]

I haven't seen a detailed action plan yet. Normally, we would see that when the department comes to a committee. I look forward to seeing the actions that will be taken. I'll have the opportunity to follow up on these recommendations.

My office is starting a new process this year where we're waiting three years after our audit report, and then we're going to go in and start following up on recommendations so that we can actually see if action is happening. Again, it's about managing risk, and I would expect that the higher-risk items are acted upon to the fullest extent, given that there are limited resources across all departments.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

One of the other things that we've heard a lot at this committee is something that we're hearing a little bit today, and I think you might have seen some of this in looking at the department. It's that the IRCC will say, “It's not our job to remove people from the country”, and the CBSA will say, “We can't remove people if we don't know that they need to leave”, and then we also have the IRB over here saying, “We are our own independent agency. You can't tell us what to do.” We have these three groups that struggle to work together, and you discovered some of that in your investigation.

Given that we have these different departments, should there be an overall systems approach to auditing the system that we have, from application to approval, removal or going into the asylum system? To get away from this finger pointing, would it make sense to have a look at it system-wide?

[Karen Hogan]

I think that's a luxury that our office enjoys, in that we can take a step back and look at a process from start to finish. As I said here, we set out to just look at the reforms, but we didn't ignore a gap when we saw it.

I think that if you look at what a Canadian will see when they look at their government, they see us all in one big box together and they don't see all of these silos into which we like to divide up work. I would have expected better collaboration, which is exactly why we issued a recommendation to do that—to share information among the federal family so that cases that need to be acted on can be acted on.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Gallivan, you said you need to know whether visas have expired and people are leaving, which I think is important, but it also implies that the IRCC didn't know if people were leaving. Is that a fair statement?