Evidence of meeting #13 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was system.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:45 p.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
With due respect, Mr. Chair, I still disagree with the way it was presented, but I'll be glad to provide the information we have on the number of lookouts that would have been missed.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Thank you.
Coming back to this—so far—$780 million program to put 4,800 handguns at the disposal of border security officers, could you provide this committee with a breakdown of how we've ended up in a situation where guns that cost a couple of hundred dollars—I would assume—are in fact costing the taxpayer $162,500, to date, for what's projected, per revolver in this particular program that's a priority for the minister, Stockwell Day?
12:50 p.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
Mr. Chair, I'll be happy to provide a breakdown of the cost for the arming program. I would say that the cost is obviously not just the cost of buying the firearm itself, which is about $500. The cost involves hiring people, developing trainers, removing people from the front line, and training them for three weeks. You will get a full breakdown.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
I was quite encouraged also when you previously stated that you have ongoing and close consultations with the minister, especially on major decisions on policies, such as that involving the handguns.
A year ago there was something that was quite unprecedented in Toronto. Canadian Border Security officers went into classrooms in a number of grade schools and high schools and grabbed students, children of undocumented workers, and held them as a means to get information or to find their parents. This was found to be quite shocking.
Did you consult with the minister prior to this initiative being taken last year? If not, was it just rogue officers who decided to take the initiative on their own?
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
I'm going to rule that out of order. The communications between the accounting office and the minister really aren't part of the mandate of this committee. But I would like the accounting officer to elaborate on that particular incident that Mr. Wrzesnewskyj mentioned.
You are out of time as well, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.
12:50 p.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
I'll say that with the more than 100 million interactions with Canadians that our officers have every year, we don't speak to the minister before each of them. It would be impossible and unnecessary.
I think you are referring to two incidents that were in the paper everywhere during that period, I believe last year—two incidents in which our organization was blamed for going to schools.
You describe it as our officers going into classrooms, but that's not the case; it's not factual. We didn't go into classrooms.
In one of the incidents, where we were trying to locate an individual, indeed one of our officers went to the principal's office to check the record, to be able to identify the location of a person whose child was at that school.
In the other incident, the mother of the child involved asked us to take her there to get the child out of school so that he would be with her at the end of the day, as she had been arrested. Those are the two occasions.
Following that, we changed our procedure to ensure that our officers would not go to schools unless it was a matter of national security and with the approval of a senior manager at headquarters.
I think the right thing was done on those occasions after this.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.
Merci beaucoup, monsieur Jolicoeur.
Mr. Lake, the final questioning goes to you for four minutes.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Mr. McRoberts, it seems there may be a difference of interpretation of paragraph 5.84 between Mr. Wrzesnewskyj and Mr. Jolicoeur. Could you comment on what you're trying to communicate in it to see whether we can get some clarification?
12:50 p.m.
Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
What we were doing was reporting the result of an analysis that was done by the department's own National Risk Assessment Centre. It was looking over the period, and it divided the population into types of referrals.
One type were referrals for customs lookout. There was some reason to believe they were bringing in something of a commercial nature that they ought not to bring in. They found that 13% of those were not picked up for further examination.
Also, there were immigration referrals. There, they found that 21% during that period were not referred for further examination. Again, that's from the department's own analysis.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
So where's the miscommunication coming from? It does sound as though Borys has a point there. I just want to clarify with Mr. Jolicoeur, what's the difference in the interpretation?
12:55 p.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
We have to go into what lookouts are. There are different categories of lookouts. My colleague Mr. McRoberts, from the Auditor General's office, is referring to the FOSS system. The FOSS system is a database managed by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration that has information about people who at one point or another tried to become a permanent resident in Canada or came to Canada and obtained a visa from overseas. I shouldn't use a number, but it's probably 160,000 names, a huge database of people, with all kinds of information.
The lookout system that we have in place and that we want our officers to focus on is not an old database. It's something that is regularly updated. We regularly put in our system a list of people, a much smaller list of people who we as an organization want to stop. It's a lookout. Beware. This person is coming in, or we believe there is a reason for that to occur, so beware. And every morning, people on the front line have discussions and are made aware of that critical thing.
So that focus is important. When we say the system is telling us that we should stop someone, then we go to the broader universe. Yes, we have information in the database on very many people, but they may not be at the level of concern that we would have in our own lookout system.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
So we're talking, basically, about two different categories of lookouts.
12:55 p.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
One thing the Auditor General pointed out is that we need to, and actually have, redesigned our lookout system to be clearer about those things. For instance, there are other databases with the police, such as CPIC, that we want to integrate into our system. But we have different kinds of lookouts, different categories of things.
If somebody is in our system on the customs side because one day they had three bottles of wine rather than two, that's a different level of concern. It would be in our system, it would be flagged, but it wouldn't be a lookout. We won't call our officers one morning and tell them, “Worry about that person; if that person came with three bottles one day, be sure that you stop them.” It's a lower priority.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you, Mr. Lake. That concludes the questions.
I have one housekeeping matter, Mr. Jolicoeur. In your opening comments, you made reference that a comprehensive action plan has been developed to address all the recommendations, and action has already been taken, and in some cases completed. Could you file that with the committee, please?
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Now I'm going to ask whether Mr. McRoberts or Mr. Stock have any closing comments.
Mr. McRoberts.
12:55 p.m.
Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Again, to come back, I think the commitment from the Border Services Agency to deal with the recommendation is encouraging. The ones that we view as critical are, essentially, starting at the basics and developing a solid database of randomization, because that's really essential to both performance assessment and to refinement of the risk models; and secondly, a proper recording of the results. If those two things are done, the data will be there to enhance and refine the integrated risk framework. So we will be looking very carefully in the future, with the very real expectation that those are going to finally get done.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you, Mr. McRoberts.
Monsieur Jolicoeur, do you have any closing comments you want to make?
12:55 p.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
No, thank you. We agree with the essential points made here, and we will implement those.
Thank you.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
If there's nothing further, then, on behalf of all the committee members, I want to thank you very much for your appearance here today. It has been an excellent meeting.
Mr. Jolicoeur, I want to thank you and all the people who work for your agency for the very important job you do on behalf of all Canadians.
Colleagues, we are meeting again on Thursday. That meeting is in camera. We're dealing with reports. We're going to start off with the Barbara George report, then the EMS report, then the report on the correctional services ombudsman, and then the report arising from the work done by Jack Stilborn. We're also going to discuss and approve the minutes of the steering committee.
That's Thursday at 11 o'clock. I look forward to seeing you all then.
This meeting is adjourned.