Citizenship and Immigration Committee on April 20th, 2026

[Erin O'Gorman, President, Canada Border Services Agency]

Certainly, we are partners. Everyone who enters Canada must go through our officers. So, if someone has a study permit and we detect something, we can take action. Ultimately, if that person is not supposed to be here, we can send them back.

As Mr. Gallivan has said, we are partners, but we're along a continuum. What IRCC is doing is putting more rigour into the system of student visas. Sometimes people who are on student visas also find themselves with serious inadmissibility, and I won't overstate those numbers. They're not significant, but we have seen people involved in extortion, so they do become a priority for removal by CBSA. Some of them will make an asylum claim and, if they are not successful, they will become a priority for the CBSA.

Also in terms of entry-exit data, we will work in partnership with IRCC in terms of determining who's here. We can do that on the bulk review of names of people who might be on expired visas and continue to be here. As Mr. Gallivan said, with the reforms they're putting in place, those numbers should get smaller as they put more things into the system to bring people into compliance or proactively identify people who are out of compliance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Ms. O'Gorman.

Thank you, Mrs. DeBellefeuille.

Now we have five minutes for Mr. Davies.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Auditor General, on the answer Ms. O'Gorman gave about that, do you have any comments or additions to make?

[Karen Hogan]

The only thing I would add is that the Canada Border Services Agency wasn't part of our original audit, because our intention was to look at the reforms that the immigration department was bringing to the student visas. We can't ignore when we find weaknesses. That's why we ended up going to Canada Border Services Agency to determine what was happening with individuals who hadn't left the country when their permits expired. We felt like we had a gap, and we were trying to fill it.

We can't issue a recommendation to an entity that's not in our audit, but I'm very happy to see CBSA here to help support a good study of this.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Would you suggest additional audit capacity?

[Karen Hogan]

If you mean for us to do an audit on this, I feel like we took this one right to the end. We identified a gap where there wasn't a sharing of information, information that was clearly in the possession of the immigration department. It's now for the two entities to establish a good process to decide when action is needed.

It's important to note that hundreds of thousands of students are here, and they are genuine students. However, when there is information that flags they should leave the country or are not here under genuine pretenses, then some action should be taken.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Gallivan, I want to follow up on that.

You said there's a five-year ban. You want to use a soft touch. Regarding the threat of a five-year ban, is there a threshold? If somebody exceeds their visa, do they automatically get the five-year ban?

[Ted Gallivan]

I'm not sure of the technical answer. I don't know if my colleagues do.

[Tara Lang]

They don't.

[Ted Gallivan]

They don't. It's not automatic.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Maybe Ms. Lang can answer this.

Is there a threshold? Is there an analysis that you would go through? If somebody overextends their stay, I'm sure if it's accidental.... I can't imagine how it could be accidental—if they're coming to the country, they know what the term limits are—but what are the areas that would exempt somebody from a five-year ban?

[Tara Lang]

A lot of it does have to do with those types of questions, such as a misunderstanding of the deadline for leaving, or other applications that could be in process to regularize their stay in other areas. The officer would be looking at those types of situations, but there is no sliding scale.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

It's somewhat subjective. Is that correct?

[Tara Lang]

Either it's five years, or you regularize your status.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Ms. O'Gorman, are you adequately resourced for the system in place now?

[Erin O'Gorman]

The thing about CBSA is that there are always more narcotics to catch, there are always more people to remove and there are always more organized crime members exploiting the border. This is a hard question to answer. We would put any additional officers to good use.

In terms of the study today, what Mr. Gallivan has outlined are the efforts they will make to bring people back into compliance and/or identify fraud, nudge people and have consequences for people. Those people for whom that doesn't work become our clients in our removal inventory, and we will remove them as we remove other individuals.

The fewer the people who come into our removals inventory because they're out of compliance, the better it is for the system. It's an expensive prospect to have a CBSA officer find somebody to remove them. We prioritize serious inadmissibility and failed claimants, but we also remove people who are out of compliance.

On some of the integrity measures that IRCC will be putting in place, I think we will see a big impact from that. Students seeing the consequence of not being able to come back for five years will view that as severe, and that will lead to some of the behaviours we would like to see.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

I have limited time, so I may follow up on this later.

On March 9, I asked Mr. Bush a question about holding detention capacity at the border crossings. I should have expanded the question to include immigration holding centres, because he committed to getting back to me, saying that capacity at the ports of entry had not changed.

Has capacity at immigration holding centres decreased or changed in the last year?

[Erin O'Gorman]

Not in the last year.... Well, it's increased in the last year. At one point three years ago, we had access to provincial facilities, and when we lost that, we lost a significant amount of our capacity. Since then, we've been building up capacity. We have now a footprint in a federal institution. We have added staff to our three immigration holding centres.

[The Chair, Liberal, Julie Dzerowicz]

Thank you, Mr. Davies.

Thank you, Ms. O'Gorman.

Next, we have five minutes for Ms. Zahid.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to all the witnesses for appearing before the committee.

Before I go to my questions, I would like to congratulate the deputy minister, Mr. Gallivan, for taking this position and this important file. We wish you all the best.

My first question is for IRCC.

Mr. Gallivan, what concrete steps has IRCC taken to understand the unexpected drop in study permit approval rates, and how is that analysis now improving the forecasting and the decision-making process?

[Ted Gallivan]

Thank you for the question, and I may turn to Alexis to add a bit. I would say that in the 2025 allocation in January 2024, for example, IRCC adjusted the provincial allocations to better reflect the feedback from the initial year.

I think our go-forward plan is to meet with them this spring to talk about ways to tweak the model. We've also begun to share more detailed, rich data packages with the jurisdictions themselves. As you may know, the provinces aren't using the full allocation that we're providing them, so we have a responsibility to get the provincial allocations right. Then the provinces need to further divide that within their jurisdictions. We will be providing them better data to enable them to do that more effectively and then a follow-up session in the fall to see if there's additional tweaking.

Alexis, is there anything you would add to that?

[Alexis Graham, Assistant Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

There's not too much more to add. The audit did find that IRCC's approval rates are aligned with regional and country-specific risk assessments. I think a lot of this has to do with transitioning from one highly facilitated regime to one where we have more controls and more discipline. It takes time for various actors to adjust to that.

As the deputy said, we have lots of engagement points with them and plan to enhance that in the future, so hopefully that will enable provinces to use more of those allocations and support their planning purposes as well.

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

How is IRCC improving clarity and consistency in the financial documentation requirements so applicants better understand what is expected of them?

[Ted Gallivan]

I'll maybe turn to colleagues on that, but I want to come back to a point raised about the five-year ban. In 2023, IRCC started to make more clear to students the consequence of an overstay. I can appreciate that the five-year ban is subjective and subject to judgment, but I think the table was set back in 2023 in terms of making the rules of the game pretty clear.

Alexis, is there anything more on this?

[Alexis Graham]

I'll note that the financial requirement has been now increased from $10,000 to $20,000 for students. That is intended to ensure that they meet the low-income cut-off so that they can support themselves here. Our officers do a verification to ensure that they have that amount of money to ensure that they're not falling through the cracks while they're in Canada.