Public Accounts Committee on June 5th, 2018

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good afternoon, colleagues.

This is meeting number 102 of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts for Tuesday, June 5, 2018.

We are here today in consideration of “Report 7, Consular Service to Canadians Abroad—Global Affairs Canada”, of the 2018 spring reports of the Auditor General of Canada.

We have with us this afternoon, from the Office of the Auditor General, Mr. Michael Ferguson, Auditor General of Canada; and Ms. Carol McCalla, principal. From the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, we have Mr. Ian Shugart, deputy minister of foreign affairs; and Ms. Heather Jeffrey, assistant deputy minister, consular, emergency management, and security.

We'll turn the time over to our Auditor General first, then we'll hear from the department, and then we'll go into the first rounds of questioning.

Welcome, Mr. Ferguson.

[Michael Ferguson, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our report on consular services to Canadians abroad.

This audit examined how Global Affairs Canada responded to requests for consular assistance from Canadians travelling or living abroad. Canadians requested things like help during an international crisis such as a natural disaster, new travel documents to replace lost or stolen passports, or even assistance because they had been arrested or detained abroad.

We found that Global Affairs Canada was able to deploy staff quickly to help Canadians during a crisis in a foreign country and that it updated its online travel advisories as crises evolved. We also found that the department was able to issue urgent travel documents quickly through its missions abroad.

However, we found that in about two-thirds of the cases we examined involving a Canadian arrested or detained abroad, consular officers hadn't contacted the detained Canadian within 24 hours of being notified, as required. Consular officers were able to contact most of these individuals within a month, but some were never contacted. When a consular officer did contact a Canadian arrested or detained abroad, it was usually by email or telephone and not in person. In-person contact is important for assessing the well-being of individuals and determining how much help they need.

Significantly, we found that Global Affairs Canada took too long to assess allegations of the possible mistreatment or torture of Canadians detained abroad.

ln 2004, Justice Dennis O'Connor investigated the actions of Canadian officials in relation to the arrest and detention of Maher Arar. In his report, Justice O'Connor recommended that Global Affairs Canada train its staff to identify signs of torture and mistreatment, and inform the minister quickly of those cases.

We found that, more than a decade later, Global Affairs Canada's approach to cases of arrest and detention was still not sufficient. The department provided its consular officers with only general training on how to conduct prison visits and how to identify signs that torture or mistreatment had occurred. Also, we found that, in one case, the department took seven months to inform the minister about the likely torture of a detained Canadian.

These gaps are critical for Canadians in distress. Global Affairs Canada must ensure that its consular officers are properly prepared and supported to help Canadians arrested or detained abroad.

When we looked at the level of service provided by missions abroad, we found inconsistent performance. For example, four of the 10 highest volume missions didn't meet their performance targets for the timely delivery of regular passports. Also, Global Affairs Canada didn't allocate its resources to adjust to varying workloads at its missions to ensure an effective and consistent level of service.

Finally, we found that Global Affairs Canada didn't track the performance of most of its consular services because of poor data quality. This lack of tracking made it difficult for the department to know whether it was deploying its staff in a way that best delivered the services that the government had promised to Canadians travelling or living abroad.

We made seven recommendations and Global Affairs Canada agreed with all of them.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ferguson.

We'll now move to Mr. Shugart, please.

[Ian Shugart, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In a strange sort of way, it's always a pleasure for me to come to public accounts.

I want to thank the Office of the Auditor General for this important audit, which, as always, will enable us to improve our consular services to Canadians.

As deputy minister, I also want to convey my profound respect and gratitude to consular officers at headquarters and in missions around the world for the dedication, the compassion, and the competence that they exercise on behalf of Canadians.

Let me give you, to begin, some contextual data that will shed light on how Global Affairs Canada provides consular services to Canadians abroad.

Travelling has become easier and more affordable, and communication almost instantaneous. As a result, Canadians are vacationing, working, studying, retiring and simply living abroad in ever greater numbers. An estimated 2.8 million Canadians currently live outside Canada, and Canadians made almost 52 million trips abroad in 2016—an increase of approximately 4% from 10 years ago.

Global Affairs Canada manages a network of 260 points of service around the world, and there are more than 800 officials either wholly or partially responsible for providing consular service. For Global Affairs Canada, serving Canadians abroad is a major function of the department.

Consular work has a wide variety of functions. It includes issues as varied as providing travel information about foreign countries to help Canadians make safer and smarter travel decisions, visiting Canadians detained abroad, assisting with the identification and repatriation of deceased Canadians, and seeking clemency for the death penalty of Canadians detained abroad and under that prospect. We also provide services on behalf of other government departments, such as processing of applications for passports or for citizenship certificates, which are proof of citizenship.

We have seen an increase in requests for consular assistance by Canadians abroad. Consular officers opened over 277,000 new consular cases in 2017, an increase of 4% over the number of cases in 2016.

The majority, about 98%, of cases are of a routine or administrative nature and are typically resolved quickly and directly at the diplomatic mission. The remaining 2%—that's roughly 6,000 cases every year—require complex interactions involving intensive engagement with local authorities and host governments.

At the heart of every consular case is a personal situation involving a Canadian citizen abroad and a network of consular officials who are ready and proud to help. I can assure you, members of the committee and Mr. Chair, that we make every effort to contact our citizens who are arrested or detained abroad as soon as we are informed.

Frequently, challenges with access and difficult local contexts must be overcome. We are always looking for ways to improve. To ensure this, we will be putting additional training in place and introducing new tools to improve monitoring and service delivery.

We recognize the need for targeted training for consular officers to allow them to calibrate their response in light of the different operating environments in which they work, sometimes with multiple police forces, immigration officials, prison authorities, and regional and provincial governments, as well as the specific context of each case.

These responses can put consular officers in difficult situations, and we are committed to ensuring their safety and that of the Canadians they are assisting. We have already piloted enhanced training in regard to the safe conduct of prison visits, and we will extend this to all consular officers.

We have also begun the process of modernizing our case management information systems, which will further enhance the quality control and monitoring capabilities, improve our data quality, and reinforce the application of consistent service standards and the documentation of these efforts—all issues to which the Auditor General has just referred.

Global Affairs Canada takes allegations of mistreatment or torture of Canadians detained abroad very seriously, and we consistently take immediate steps to address such allegations. We are pleased that the report found that in all cases of such allegations consular officials at missions abroad took immediate and direct action on the ground to respond to these situations and advocate for the safety and well-being of Canadians.

We can do better. In line with the findings, we are taking additional steps to ensure that ministers are promptly notified in writing at the onset, when allegations of mistreatment or torture are first made, as well as when sufficient information is available to ascertain if they are founded.

Global Affairs Canada is always looking for ways to improve Canada's consular services with the objective to best serve the needs of Canadians abroad. This is a constant process of improvement, based notably on the experience of our consular officers, the feedback of clients, and our analysis of trends.

Passport services are another example of this trend.

For example, in the year following the implementation of the Electronic Travel Authorization, the eTA, requirements, many Canadians resident abroad needed to acquire Canadian passports. As a result, affected missions abroad experienced a 23% increase in all passport application volumes, a 47% increase in proof of citizenship application volumes, and a 70% increase in new passport applications.

In 2017, Global Affairs Canada opened over 200,000 new cases for passport services.

While the majority, almost 90%, met service standards, some missions could not respond to the significant surge. Additional resourcing has now been put in place to ensure that demand can be met to address the backlog, and we have improved the agility of our resourcing system.

We recognize the importance of ensuring appropriate oversight and monitoring of passport delivery services, and we strive to deliver high-quality, efficient passport services to continue to meet the needs of Canadians abroad. We're constantly re-evaluating and improving the way we work. With a view to improving consular service standards overall, we have begun reviewing the resource allocation methodology to ensure that the distribution of resources responds to trends and is optimized across the mission network to continue to ensure an effective, consistent level of service abroad.

We're pleased that the Auditor General recognized the department for its successful consular assistance during international crises, including promptly updating our online travel advisories so that Canadians have access to the information they need to make smart travel choices. Expert staff is ready to assist Canadians who require assistance abroad. This includes the support of the emergency watch and response centre, which deals with calls on a 24-7 basis from around the world, and a standard rapid deployment team made up of specially trained experienced officials ready to deploy on hours' notice to anywhere they are needed.

This team helped Canadians during the serious earthquake in Nepal in 2015 and were on the ground in the fall of 2017 across the Caribbean during hurricanes Irma and Maria, where they were instrumental in supplementing our local responses.

We already recognize the important role of lessons-learned reports in continually improving emergency response for Canadians following a significant emergency event requiring activation of our emergency response team. This is why we're currently developing a standardized department-wide approach to ensure lessons learned are more consistently captured, assessed, and implemented across different types of emergencies.

Global Affairs Canada has already started to provide targeted advice to Canadians, with its external communications plan, in order to extend its reach through additional targeted briefings and outreach.

We have conducted public opinion research with Canadian travellers to better understand their preparations for travel, the information they need and their expectations of consular services, as well as the channels they use to access such information. We know that Canada's efforts to strengthen ties with the world—through study and international business linkages, for example—mean that demand will continue to increase for consular services.

We are committed to providing professional, agile, timely, and dedicated consular services to meet this growing demand and modernize the consular program. Over the coming months, we plan to improve communications to equip Canadians to better prepare for travel and help keep them safer abroad; to provide timely, appropriate, and professional assistance to Canadians when they most need our help, in line with our service standards; to continue to modernize the consular digital platform; to strengthen support to our network of consular officials to ensure they have the necessary tools and training for modern consular service delivery; and to leverage bilateral engagements and seek partnerships to serve Canadians better.

I can assure you that we remain firmly committed to supporting Canadians abroad—we know there are few issues more important to parliamentarians than this—and to providing timely and appropriate consular services.

I would like to thank the honourable members of the committee for their attention.

My colleague Heather Jeffrey and I are available to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Shugart and Mr. Ferguson. I think today's subject is of a lot of interest to a lot of our members of Parliament because most members of Parliament have received that call either from a parent or from someone in another country. I'm sure you're going to face some good questions today.

The first person we're going to turn to is our vice-chair, Ms. Mendès.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here, all of you.

It is always a very interesting subject as all of us have constituents who, one way or another, need consular services abroad. I join Mr. Shugart in congratulating our consular services for their exemplary performance of duties. I think we have perhaps one of the best consular services in the world. I thank Mr. Ferguson and his team for pointing out what's lacking. Our Prime Minister is so fond of saying that we can always do better.

One thing that struck me in your report, Mr. Ferguson—and honest to God it was a surprise for me—is that in 7.4 of the report you state, “The level of consular assistance that Canada provides at its missions abroad is discretionary—that is, it's not mandated by legislation.” I wonder if either you, Mr. Shugart, or you, Mr. Ferguson, find this to be a weakness of our consular responsibilities, or if this is something we should address.

[Michael Ferguson]

I can't comment on it. How the government wants to approaches these types of services is government policy. Whether a government decides to put it in legislation or to deal with it in another way is up to the government to decide. It's not something I have a position on one way or the other.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Shugart.

[Ian Shugart]

As a public servant, of course, I would echo that. Other countries, comparable countries like the U.K., are in the same tradition of providing consular support to their citizens under what is called the royal prerogative, the ability of the crown to act in the interests of its citizens.

I do point out that it is long-standing policy of all governments to support this. I think this is truly a non-partisan expectation of parliamentarians. With regard to the service that we provide, as with everything in the department, we're accountable for it. That's why we're here today and in considerable detail, and we should be.

My last comment would be that I can think of no other situation where the individuality of circumstances is as pronounced as it is in consular services. That gives us a degree of flexibility that legislation and regulation can lack from time to time, as you know. We have mounted this consular service, which I agree with you is very effective by global standards, through the role of prerogative. Our intention is to make it as effective on that ground as we possibly can. That commitment would apply, whatever the legal ground for the service.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

I appreciate the answer because for me it was a surprise. I do appreciate understanding why, and why the tradition has been maintained.

There is always, it seems, when Mr. Ferguson comes to us with his audits, the issue of data: how we capture it, how we use it, how we then put find a very effective way towards improving whatever has been found to be lacking. You gave a certain amount of numbers and percentages, but do you have any idea of how many Canadian travellers and expats actually register with missions when they are abroad?

[Ian Shugart]

That's a very good question and—before Heather answers—it varies widely. The reasons why Canadians do not register also vary widely.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Is one of the them that they don't know that there's a reasonably easy way online to register?

[Ian Shugart]

Undoubtedly, and we could do more. If the committee permits me to take advantage of this hearing to make the case to Canadians travelling and, in some cases, to the parents of students and others travelling, I will say that this service is available in all of our missions. We believe that it is very important, particularly in places that are somewhat more dangerous to visit and in situations where they may become ill, or where there's an accident, a natural disaster, or a local crisis. It can make an enormous difference in our consular officers' ability to help them proactively, as well as responsibly.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Before going into the details of the question, would this be something that IATA—I think IATA is the one that regulates airlines—could add to at least airplane tickets so that we would have a note saying, “Please register with your mission”, or whatever it may be? It just seems so fundamental when you go abroad to put yourself under the cover of your own government and the protection of your own government.

[Ian Shugart]

We certainly strongly urge Canadians to do that, and I thank you for that question.

Heather, you might want to add numbers.

[Heather Jeffrey, Assistant Deputy Minister, Consular, Emergency Management and Security, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Yes. Currently, we have about 220,000 Canadians who are registered with the registry of Canadians abroad. This is a small number relative to the millions who we know travel and reside abroad. One of the reasons that were given—and this has been part of some of the surveys that we have done to look at why Canadians would not register—is awareness. We are redoubling our efforts to have a targeted communications campaign with those travellers, including working with travel agents and other travel industry representatives to promote awareness.

Another one of them is that there are a lot of misperceptions about how that kind of data might be used by the government, that it might move, which is not the case. It's held according to the Privacy Act strictly for consular purposes.

The other reason, I would say, is that Canadians lack a full awareness of the kinds of services that this kind of registration could bring them. We send about 650 emergency advisories a year to those registrants. When there are local security incidents that we need to respond to, we use that contact information to reach out and alert Canadians of situations that might present a threat to their safety. We feel it's important, and it's part of our communication strategy to find more ways of reaching people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to the opposition side, Ms. Kusie.

Welcome to our committee.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

I am very proud to have been a management consular officer for over a decade at Global Affairs Canada, having served as our consul in both El Salvador as well as Dallas, Texas. I was in El Salvador under Madam Allard-Gomez at Dallas, Texas under Paula Caldwell St-Onge, and also on temporary duty in Argentina under Jamie Bell and Yves Gagnon. I am very proud to have a proud history with Global Affairs Canada.

I notice the audit report concluded that your department did not have the performance information necessary to ensure it adequately responded to requests for consular assistance from Canadians travelling or living abroad, as you indicated in your overview, Mr. Shugart. “Global Affairs Canada could not ensure that services were effective or appropriate”—that is a direct quote from the report.

Monsieur Shugart, I would be interested to know, how could this government not mandate these performance standards, leaving both your department, and more importantly, Canadians, vulnerable?

[Ian Shugart]

I think that, as the Auditor General said, we accept that finding, and in our management plan, we are putting in place measures to correct that.

I think the issue of performance data is one that is fairly widespread across government. I think it's a general problem that we have of focusing on doing the task and neglecting the data systems that will allow us to track and know with precision how well we are doing. It frequently takes the Auditor General and his team to bring this to our attention in precise areas.

That, Chair and members of the committee, is not an excuse. I think it is an explanation of a tendency across government departments. Resources typically go to addressing increases in volumes.

One of the concerns that was expressed was that we have not, more recently, reviewed the service standards so that they are in line with reasonable measures of performance, and we have committed to adjusting that as well.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Shugart.

I am also very proud to have designed the critical paths for consular activity for Canadians on both the travel.gc.ca website and application. Canadians rely on these tools for safe travel abroad; however, the audit report also indicated that mandatory cyclical reviews of its online travel advice and advisories were not always completed on schedule.

Mr. Shugart, how could the government not mandate this critical task, leaving Canadians with incomplete information prior to making critical travel decisions, please?

[Heather Jeffrey]

We were pleased that the audit report did find that, in response to crises or changes in a local context, the travel advice was updated. We maintain a 24-7 capacity here in Ottawa that is connected to situations on the ground. In the middle of the night or on the weekends, whenever events happen on the ground, the advice is updated and it is continually maintained in the local context.

Where we have fallen behind, and where the Auditor General pointed out we need to do better, is in the 18-month cyclical reviews, looking at each country in its holistic stage with all of the different pieces of advice to make sure there are no inconsistencies. We have, as a result, put in place additional capacity to ensure that we achieve that and reduce the backlog.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Madam Jeffrey.

On several occasions abroad I recall sitting with incarcerated Canadians in El Salvador, Paraguay, and Montevideo to ensure their basic needs were being met, and in some cases, a fair judicial process in court, yet the audit report indicates that Global Affairs Canada officers were not always able to contact Canadians who had been arrested or detained abroad within its service standards, and furthermore, case files often provided no explanation as to why no contact was made.

I do recognize, Monsieur Shugart, that it takes much time to enter the data after the fact of having performed the act, but it was also found that the level of consular assistance varied from one case to another and was not consistent.

Mr. Shugart, can Canadians feel safe abroad under this government, knowing the uncertainty that exists for timely assistance should they become incarcerated?

[Ian Shugart]

I think Canadians should feel reassured as a result of this audit, the department's response to it, and the facts we have tabled about our response to Canadians in detention, which represent the highest commitment—I would say—by not only this government but any Canadian government to meet their needs and respond to their situation.

You are quite right that there are gaps in the case files, sometimes because of the burdens consular officers face. The completion of the case file can be put aside while the management of the file is pursued with local authorities, and so on. It shouldn't be the case, in a perfect world, that the data would not be included in the file. I think it is a situation that naturally arises on the ground in the press of these situations.

We have responded to that by improving the training of consular officers. In a network as broad as ours and with the huge variety of circumstances Canadians will face, this is a significant undertaking to ensure that the discipline is consistent right across the network. That is our objective, though, and that is what we will be setting out to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Ms. Kusie and Mr. Shugart.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.