Public Accounts Committee on Dec. 9th, 2013

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

I call this 11th meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to order.

Colleagues, you'll note today that by decision of this committee we are holding a hearing on chapter 5, “Preventing Illegal Entry Into Canada”, of the fall 2013 report of the Auditor General of Canada.

To start, let me first welcome Mr. Van Kesteren who is here replacing Mr. Shipley. Welcome, sir, I hope you enjoy your time here.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

We have opening statements from three entities today. Of course the Office of the Auditor General is present. So are the Canada Border Services Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Before I introduce them and give them the floor, I will remind colleagues that the day after tomorrow, Wednesday, we will be having a hearing on chapter 2, “Access to Online Services”, from the fall report of the Auditor General.

Unless there are interventions from any colleagues, and I am seeing none, I will turn the floor over to the assistant Auditor General, and then I will move to each of the representatives. I'll ask you to introduce your delegation. However, to begin we will have Ms. Wendy Loschiuk who is the assistant Auditor General of Canada.

Welcome, ma'am. You now have the floor.

[Wendy Loschiuk, Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity today to appear before the committee to discuss our 2013 Fall Report, Chapter 5- Preventing Illegal Entry into Canada.

With me today is Nicholas Swales, Principal for this audit.

The Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP share responsibility for preventing people from entering Canada illegally. The agency manages our ports of entry, where people are supposed to cross into Canada. But when they don't use those ports of entry, it is up to the RCMP to know about it and apprehend them.

Managing who crosses Canada's vast border is certainly a challenge. About 270,000 people cross into Canada every day. But it's an essential task that helps protect the safety and security of Canadians and the integrity of our immigration program. It is, therefore, very important that border controls work as they are supposed to. We raised concerns in our audit about how well these controls are working.

Mr. Chair, let me first talk about controls at the ports of entry and highlight three main challenges: getting information in advance in order to assess risks and identify high-risk travellers; taking appropriate action on lookouts and targets to identify high-risk individuals when they show up; having good performance measures to know how well efforts are working and where to focus attention.

We found that the Canada Border Services Agency often does not get all the advance information it needs to identify and target high-risk travellers en route to Canada by air. In our sample, we found that the agency was missing some data for about 95% of air passengers. This is concerning, because without good air passenger data, targeting controls cannot operate as effectively as intended.

Nevertheless, we found that the agency has made significant progress in some of its efforts to detect high-risk travellers. The new national targeting program has good practices, but some targets are still missed. Our review showed that 8% of targets were not examined as required. These are people whom the agency had identified as high risk from the advance information it did have. These findings are important because targets are intended to intercept individuals who may pose a threat to the security and safety of Canadians.

The agency has also made little progress since 2007 in monitoring the results of lookouts. Lookouts are notices designed to intercept known high-risk individuals connected to organized crime, terrorism, or regular migration who may attempt to enter Canada. We found that 15% of lookouts were missed, which means people who should have been further examined were not examined before they entered Canada. We found that the agency still does not monitor information about all missed lookouts, nor does it record information on examination results for all people who have been intercepted as a result of lookouts.

Border Services Officers rely on the agency's information systems to tell them which travellers must be sent to secondary inspection. However, these systems go down from time to time. Although the agency reviews the impact of system outages, it could not tell us what availability level it needs before operations are affected.

Between the ports of entry, we found that the RCMP does not have information on its success in intercepting people trying to enter the country illegally. This finding is important because without systematic performance information, the RCMP does not know whether resources are placed where they can be most effective.

We reviewed data in the information systems of both the RCMP and the agency and found that the RCMP's Integrated Border Enforcement Teams intercepted just over half of known illegal entries. The Marine Security Enforcement Teams intercepted known illegal entries more often. However, without consistent measurement, it is not possible to determine what rate of interception is acceptable, or whether the RCMP's ability to prevent illegal entry is improving or declining.

The RCMP needs a framework to measure and monitor how well its border enforcement activities are doing.

The Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP have agreed with our recommendations and they have made several commitments in their responses. The agency was to have completed some of its commitments by the end of this past November 2013.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be happy to answer any questions the committee may have.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Very good. Thank you very much.

We now go over to the Canada Border Services Agency, Mr. Martin Bolduc, vice-president of operations branch.

You have the floor, sir.

[Martin Bolduc, Vice-President, Operations Branch, Canada Border Services Agency]

Good afternoon.

I would like to thank the chair and members of the committee for giving me the opportunity to appear today on behalf of the Canada Border Services Agency. I am pleased to be here with my colleague Maurice Chénier, Vice-President of the Information, Science, and Technology Branch, and Ms. Lesley Soper, Executive Director of the Enforcement and Intelligence Programs.

I would like to begin by saying that the CBSA agrees with the recommendations from the 2013 Fall Report of the Auditor General, which highlighted areas for improvement in preventing illegal entry into Canada. On behalf of the CBSA, we take the report seriously, and we are determined to move forward to address these issues. In fact, we are already taking action to tighten the procedures to keep foreign nationals who pose a risk to Canada from entering the country.

In 2007, the Report of the Auditor General, entitled Keeping the Border Open and Secure, identified vulnerabilities related to lookouts, risk management practices and targeting. Since that time, the CBSA has made considerable progress in addressing the issues raised by the 2007 audit. In addition, the agency has also strengthened its capacity for "pushing the border out", and is continuing to build on this capacity through Border Modernization and Beyond the Border initiatives such as Entry/Exit, the Integrated Advance Passenger Information Initiative, and our 100% data capture of travellers' information. l will be pleased to speak to you about what we're doing in this regard, but l would like to open by describing the role and mandate of the CBSA, and providing you with some context for the work we do to protect and serve Canadians.

The CBSA was created 10 years ago, almost to the day, on December 12, 2003, in the aftermath of 9-11. The protection of national security, therefore, was bred into the bones of our agency, and it is a responsibility we undertake with the utmost seriousness.

We were created to provide integrated border services across the functions of customs; immigration enforcement; and food, plant, and animal inspection at the border. In doing so, we administer and enforce over 90 federal statutes with a mandate that contains parallel obligations to Canadians: secure the border and facilitate the flow of legitimate travel and trade.

Let me share with you how the mandate translates into numbers. On the facilitation side, last year we processed approximately 100 million travellers to Canada. We also cleared 5.4 million trucks and 14 million commercial releases, virtually all of which constitute the very material for Canada's international trade. Those numbers have been growing steadily over the last several years, placing increasing demand on border services.

On the enforcement side, last year the CBSA seized almost 400 restricted and prohibited weapons and over 300 million dollars' worth of illegal drugs, made 93 seizures of child pornography, and removed 18,762 persons who were inadmissible to Canada. These figures, both for facilitation and enforcement, speak to how the mandate at CBSA supports the government's priorities regarding the safety and security of Canadians and our economic prosperity.

For 10 years, the CBSA has delivered on this responsibly, carrying out both sides of our mandate with equal results. We know how important it is to get our business right, and the report from the Auditor General helps us to do just that.

Let me turn to the report itself, and more specifically our enforcement role. The 2013 report examined particular elements of a multi-layered system that we use to protect the border. It found that some people who pose a risk had been able to slip through and evade detection. We recognize that however small the number, we need to ensure that the system designed to identify those individuals is functioning in an optimal way. I'd like to spend a moment on this.

Preventing illegal entry does not take place at a single point, nor is it dependent on a single process. In fact, it is carried out along a continuum that begins away from our shores and ends with the removal of an inadmissible person from Canada. Along this continuum, we work with trusted partners, both at home and abroad, to target and assess for risk well before arrival to Canada.

At the border, we have highly trained officers who provide front-line border services, such as inspection, database searches, and biometric screening, to identify persons of high or unknown risk. In addition, the CBSA has a very vigorous inland enforcement system, which, as I mentioned, removed well over 18,000 people last year, and over 115,000 since 2006. In fact, last year we were able to remove more persons who were inadmissible to Canada than ever before in our 10-year history.

Those are the various elements that work together to help protect the border.

That said, the report did underscore areas where we need to improve. One of these is the quality of Advance Passenger Information and Passenger Name Record data we receive at the front end of the process. In this respect, we know that we are not alone, and that border administrations in other countries have faced similar challenges. Even though this is a shared concern, we are currently implementing a comprehensive action plan to improve the quality of the API-PNR data provided by airlines that fly into Canada. The plan will be fully implemented by June 30, 2014.

Even as we work to strengthen Advance Passenger Information, the system itself is being revised and improved under the Beyond the Border Action Plan. Currently, airlines provide passenger information after the plane has taken flight. Under the Beyond the Border Action Plan, an Interactive Advance Passenger Information system will provide that data before the wheels are up, allowing for board or no-board decisions to be made prior to arriving in Canada.

In addition, also as part of Beyond the Border, we have implemented, together with our partners in the United States, the first two phases of an Entry/Exit system at the land border, so that the record of entry into one country can be considered as a record of exit from the other. As an example, Entry-Exit information will help us determine whether a person who is the subject of an investigation has left the country.

It is a key component of modern border management and strengthens our ability to keep us all safe from threats. To support that initiative, the CBSA now scans and records travellers' identity information, including that of commercial operators, at all entry points into Canada. Moreover, all officers working in secondary inspection at automated ports of entry have access to the Canadian Police Information Centre database. This enhances our enforcement capacity and further strengthens our ability to prevent illegal entry.

With respect to the Lookouts Program, we had already put into action an internal follow-up audit on our lookouts program when the OAG returned to undertake this audit. We have nearly completed implementation of a comprehensive action plan which puts in place stronger controls, and provides for greater oversight by senior management.

In conclusion, even with its challenges the lookouts program has helped us identify and deny entry to over 51,000 people who are inadmissible to Canada. It's not perfect, but it remains an important tool in helping to protect our security.

I would also like to note the report's acknowledgement of the progress we have made in collecting, monitoring, and assessing information through the development of our national targeting program as well as the improvement we've made in resource management.

In these few minutes I've tried to provide some insight into the work of the CBSA and what we do, both on the front line and abroad, to help protect the border while making sure that we also serve as an efficient and welcoming gateway for returning Canadians, permanent residents, and legitimate visitors to our country. While our process has evolved, our commitment to protect Canadians has not.

I am pleased to take your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you very much for your presentation.

I have to say I've noted that an important document that should be here is not, and that is the action plan that is to accompany your visit here.

The rules are very clear. We send them out. You are to have an action plan here when you are called for a hearing, or within six months if you're not called for a hearing. There may be extenuating circumstances, but I'm not aware that anybody contacted the clerk's office to advise of that and ask if there could be an extension, or to at least provide some reason.

The same applies to the RCMP. There is nothing here.

Unless you have a very good explanation for why there isn't one, the next thing I'd like to hear is when we're going to get it.

[Martin Bolduc]

I'll make sure, sir, that you get a copy of the action plan as soon as we can.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Not good enough: the date, please.

[Martin Bolduc]

By tomorrow.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you.

For the RCMP, I'd like you to comment on it, too, when I give you the floor, which I am just about to do.

Chief Superintendent Eric Slinn, who is the director general for support services for federal policing, welcome, sir. You now have the floor.

[C/Supt Eric Slinn, Director General, Support Services for Federal Policing, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You will have the RCMP action plan tomorrow as well.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Could I, through you, send a message that these action plans are important. If it can be here tomorrow, it could have been here today.

Please continue.

[C/Supt Eric Slinn]

Okay, thank you.

Joining me today is my colleague Staff Sergeant Jamie Solesme. She is in our border integrity program and a subject matter expert in that regard.

Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me here today to speak on the RCMP's action plan in response to the “Preventing Illegal Entry into Canada” chapter of the Auditor General's report.

I am the director general of federal and international special services within the RCMP's federal policing program, which includes responsibility for overseeing the RCMP's border law enforcement activities, including the integrated border enforcement teams and marine security enforcement teams.

The RCMP is committed to safe communities and that includes preventing and investigating criminal activity along our borders. We work closely with our partners, including the CBSA, to help ensure that criminals do not enter Canada illegally.

In his report, the Auditor General recommended that the RCMP develop and fully implement a framework to measure and monitor the performance of its border law enforcement activities. The RCMP's management response agreed with this recommendation and committed to implement it.

The RCMP's Management Action Plan will include: A new Program Alignment Architecture (PAA) and Performance Measurement Framework (PMF); a new approach to managing operational information; and a new Service Delivery Model and dictionary.

The RCMP will establish a working group with a mandate to review and propose changes to the existing PAA and PMF, with a full implementation deadline of the 2015-16 fiscal year. The revised PAA and PMF will reflect the federal policing senior management team's resource allocation decisions, which are to be based on program requirements, resource availability, financial constraints, performance metrics, threat assessments, operational priorities, and risks.

The RCMP's federal policing program has re-engineered the way it does business in order to streamline how we set operational priorities. This should improve how we manage our border enforcement activities. The changes will allow federal policing to better account for its enforcement activities.

Federal Policing's new approach to operational information management will allow us to better capture the border enforcement activities we are engaged in and will result in more accurate reporting.

Our new service delivery model will better capture the activities federal policing is engaged in, and coupled with a dictionary that defines these activities, inform our performance reporting.

The RCMP is committed to implementing the Auditor General's recommendation and to providing better reporting of our activities related to border enforcement

I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I'd be more than happy to answer your questions.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Very good. Thank you.

We'll now begin our questions and comments in the usual rotation. We will begin with Mr. Albas.

You have the floor, sir.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the Office of the Auditor General for being here today. Certainly, we do appreciate your diligence in working with both the RCMP and CBSA, because we always know that improvements can be made.

I'd like to take a moment, Mr. Chair, and thank both the RCMP and CBSA for their work in trying to keep our country as safe as possible. Every day 90,000 people come across our borders and it's a tremendous undertaking to keep Canadians safe. I sincerely want to say I appreciate what your organizations do to keep us safe.

Moving into the actual guts of the report, Mr. Chair, I'd like to start with the comments on page 7 of the brief, which Mr. Bolduc mentioned:

I would also like to note the Report's acknowledgement of the progress we have made in collecting, monitoring and assessing information through the development of our National Targeting Program, as well as the improvements we've made in Resource Management.

Mr. Bolduc, it's my understanding that many of the changes were reflected after the Auditor General's office did its 2007 report, with a series of recommendations from “Keeping the Border Open and Secure”. Specifically, could you please highlight some of the areas we've seen that have increased? For example, they said:

We found significant improvements in the program, including the development of formal standard operating procedures and training, and a framework to systematically measure and monitor program performance.

Could you walk us through what the 2007 report did and what the reaction of CBSA was, and what Canadians know we have working to protect us today?

[Martin Bolduc]

Before 2012, targeting was being conducted in every region in the country. We have seven regions and we also had a small team that was located in Ottawa that was mainly doing targeting for national security reasons.

The 2007 report of the Auditor General highlighted the fact that the program needed to be more robust and needed to take into account an evolving environment around the world. We took advantage of the strategic review exercise that was launched to essentially move away from targeting that was done in all regions and centralize it in Ottawa, building a robust IT system that enables us to automatically risk assess every passenger on board aircraft and at the same time risk assess goods that are en route to Canada via the marine mode.

That brought rigour to our process and it brought uniformity into how we risk assess. We were pleased that the 2013 report of the Auditor General reflected there was a lot of improvement on that front.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Through your work on that, you would say that today the system is greatly improved from the—

[Martin Bolduc]

Yes, that's right.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Also, in your opening statement, and I'll go to page 2, you say, “the Agency has also strengthened its capacity for 'pushing the border out'”. Could you please explain that?

[Martin Bolduc]

Pushing the border out is essentially trying to address threats before they show up along our borders. We've got a fairly significant liaison officer network abroad, over 60 officers in 40 countries, who are assisting airlines in providing training and also being available as a reference. It is the responsibility of airlines to determine if people who are getting on board aircraft bound for Canada have the proper documentation.

We are also, as I said, risk assessing goods and people before they show up at the border. That helps guide our officers to focus on what we feel are high or unknown risks and facilitate the movement of legitimate goods and people.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you, Mr. Albas. Time has expired.

Now over to Mr. Allen. You have the floor, sir.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our guests.

Mr. Bolduc, I will start with you. I am looking at your opening comments, at Ms. Loschiuk's opening comments, and at some of the questions that my colleague Mr. Albas has asked you about this 2007 audit.

Let me just read your statement. “Since that time, the CBSA has made considerable”—the emphasis is mine—“progress in addressing the issues raised by the 2007 audit.”

Let me go to Ms. Loschiuk's comments at point seven in her opening remarks. “The Agency has also made little”—my emphasis—”progress since 2007...”.

Not to parse words, sir, but “considerable” and “little” aren't quite the same. Can you help me understand why it is you believe you have made considerable progress and the Auditor General's report says you've made little?

[Martin Bolduc]

We feel that we've made considerable progress because we've put in place solid procedures, a solid system. I think what the Auditor General's report highlighted is that we were lacking management oversight in assessing those tools and those systems.

From an operational front, it is our assessment that those improvements were significant, but we do recognize that management oversight is an important piece of that. I think the report highlights that there were deficiencies there.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Ms. Loschiuk, I would ask you to comment on the real disparity between the two opening comments.