Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman.
The first point I will make is that, as I think the member is alluding to, the Government of Canada has been in the business of issuing visas for a long time. This is an important function for the health, safety, and security of Canadians.
Frankly, at this point I would have expected that we would have better processes behind that than is currently the case, particularly in light of the fact that some of these matters have been raised in two previous audits, going back as far as 20 years, where the department indicated that it was going to undertake corrective measures.
Quite a number of areas of the system need strengthening. You've alluded to some of them and one in particular, which is the quality assurance process for decisions to issue visas in terms of a systematic process to do that. Are we making good decisions? Do we need to improve our processes? There is no quality assurance process in that systematic quality assurance process. I think that's an important matter that the department had previously indicated it would address and put in place.
On the issue of the diseases they focus on, we're focusing on the same two diseases we were focusing on 50 years ago. I think it's quite reasonable to expect the department to have considered the current context--where there are 56 reportable diseases in Canada--and what that might mean for the diseases where they focus their activities. That has yet to be done.
The Canada Border Services Agency staff who provide advice on security issues to the visa officers are not adequately trained. Their work is poorly documented. They don't always perform the mandatory checks. I think these are important matters that I would have expected to be addressed some time ago.