Public Accounts Committee on May 8th, 2008

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

All right, that was a year. I think it was in the last year.

[Sheila Fraser]

I think it was a year.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Yes, because they were part of the 12,000-plus illegal immigrants who were removed.

[Sheila Fraser]

That's right, it would have been within a year.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Was that the biggest number ever?

[Sheila Fraser]

Well, if I look at exhibit 7.5, in 2006-07 there were a total of, roughly, 12,600 removals, of which 15% were criminals. The number of removals was the highest it's been in five years—and I believe it was probably the highest ever. So, yes, I think it would have been the highest.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

So would that have been the highest specifically for criminals as well?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Do we know how these 41,000 people were lost? How is it that they go from being illegal immigrants whose whereabouts are known, to illegal immigrants whose whereabouts are no longer known? Is it that we no longer have a current address for them? What definition are you using in finding this list of 41,000?

[Sheila Fraser]

People don't know their whereabouts; they don't have a current address for them. Most of them would be failed refugee claimants, and that process can be quite long and they could have moved over that time. They were not detained because they were not viewed as a threat to the country, so we simply don't have an address for them.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

So after the refugee process failed, we lost track of them?

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes, that's right.

Now, the agency might be able to give you better information about that whole process and how that happens, but I would think, essentially, that's probably the major reason.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Did they offer you any statistics on the rate of commission of crime amongst this group of illegal immigrants?

[Sheila Fraser]

I know we made some mention in the report of them at times committing crime, but I don't believe we have any overall information on that. I don't believe that's information the agency itself would track.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Did they offer you any explanation as to why this number—which would appear to be quite large at 41,000—has been able to grow? I'm not asking you to speak for them, but in their presentations to you, did they suggest it's because these people were hiding or because they had just forgotten to report that they—

[Sheila Fraser]

I don't have that information.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

No explanation. Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Poilievre.

Mr. Christopherson, for seven minutes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you again, Madam Fraser. You and your team have done another great service for the Canadian people. We thank you for that.

I want to begin with Indian and Northern Affairs' first nations child and family services program.

Every time we deal with this, two things happen. One, it's complicated and very difficult to understand because it's so unique in terms of how it's operated within the Canadian federation. Second, it's always absolutely mind-boggling and distressing beyond belief what we as non-aboriginal people continue to allow to go on, on the reserves.

If anybody wants to get some idea of the core of why there's so much unrest and trouble in the country, just follow the trail of the Auditor General's reports alone. We've had reports on treaties and the nightmare there and how long and delayed they've been. It's unacceptable, as stated by every caucus here. The education reports are a nightmare again. They're only getting a fraction of the service we're getting elsewhere in Canada. Health services are abysmal, and now we have a report on social services.

At some point we have to start doing something more than what we're doing. Our normal goal is to get ahead of the curve on big problems, but we just don't seem to have long enough arms to get in front of this curve. I don't even know where it is.

I want to ask you two things.

One, are there other ways for us to assess the services, the quality of life, in a broader way that brings all this together and could help Canadians understand what's going on, how unacceptable it is, and how the rest of the world looks at it, so that we could start to have buy-in from the rest of Canada to actually get serious about things? I'll leave that one with you. Is there another way rather than just the piecemeal one?

Secondly, I ask your opinion--and, Chair, I leave this with the committee as an idea: maybe from now on we need to start holding joint meetings with the Indian and northern affairs committee to assist us in getting through it. We spend an awful lot of our time asking questions. I won't say it's deliberate, but we end up doing a lot of running around and a lot of learning of civics lessons about how all these things work, and then we run out of time. If we had the benefit of our colleagues who work with this every day, maybe we could pierce through here and get to the core issues a little more easily.

What are your thoughts?

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, I'm not sure where it's at, but there was an initiative that was under way a few years ago to try to get sort of broad performance information on quality of life, the overall health indicators and poverty indicators. There was a process that had been under way at that time. I honestly don't know where that's at, but we can certainly go back to look at it.

We refer in many of these reports as well to the royal commission report that came out several years ago. It had many of those broad indicators and many recommendations in it. That might be something as well, if the committee wanted to get into more of a study, to pick that up and see what's actually been done with some of those recommendations.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That would take us to the Kelowna accord.

[Sheila Fraser]

No, I mean the royal commission on aboriginal peoples.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

We need something, Chair, because doing this is piecemeal. We're not getting the job done. We're able to identify, and we all agree on these things, and it's infuriating, tragic, and horrible, but then 12 months later another report comes along and reinforces the same message. It's a blight on our nation, and we need to do something far more serious than we've done.

Let's move on to crown corporations. Again, this is just a structural question. We get these once a year. You do the audits constantly and report them back to the crown corporations themselves. You put them on your website, and once a year we get a summary.

Is that correct, or can you clarify that for me?

[Sheila Fraser]

That's not quite it. Every year we do a financial audit of the financial statements of the crown corporations. These are special examinations that are carried out once every five years under the Financial Administration Act. They are very extensive audits that are obviously much broader than simply the financial aspects of the crown corporations.

Up until recently--in fact this still continues--the reports have gone to the boards of directors. There is no requirement in legislation that these reports be made public or that they be tabled in Parliament. In Budget 2004, government indicated that they were going to put in a requirement, but that has not actually come to pass. Since then, all of the crown corporations have been posting their reports on their websites.

Due to the interest of this committee and other committees in some of these special examinations reports and parliamentarians' questioning why they weren't made aware of them, we have now decided to publish the summaries of the special examinations that we have conducted within the past year. In this case, we've done a little more--about a year and a half's worth. So you, parliamentarians, will be informed of the key findings of each one of the special examinations through our annual reports.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Does that leave us a little stale-dated? Do we run the risk that we're a little behind by the time we get around to it? You could have five or six crown corporations in a report that already has five or six or seven chapters.