Going back to the questions about the numbers, those were symptoms of the fact that IRCC didn't manage an entry/exit regime, full stop. In the action plan, we're building an indicator of “in the country” or “not in the country”. In fact, the initial system implementation is in May.
I think those numbers are symptomatic of the fact that IRCC didn't have a game plan or even an intention to manage the departure of people at the expiration of their visas. We've now taken responsibility for managing that, in collaboration with the CBSA. We're beginning pilots next month on what techniques work and when we should intervene with a student.
We've also taken responsibility to expand that to other visa streams, because the same thing can exist with visitor visas and work visas. This is a paradigm shift, I think, for IRCC, where we agree with the concern that Canadians have, which is that we're not sure who is in or out of the country. We're doing the work, from both an IT perspective and a management perspective, to manage that more effectively.
