Public Accounts Committee on May 28th, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Ms. MacDonald. Thank you, Mrs. Mendès.

Go ahead, Mr. Davidson, please. We're in the second round, which is a five-minute round.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Good morning.

Thanks to all the witnesses appearing here today. Thanks again to the interim Auditor General for being here.

This report is obviously very concerning to me as a member of Parliament, and I think to most Canadians. As my colleague said, there are more holes in this ship than.... It's almost.... Where do you start? Anyway, we'll cut right into it.

When I look at the Auditor General's report, and even the Auditor General's opening finding, I see we have a technology gap, and gaps and errors in the information that was shared. I think Canadians want to be assured that any asylum seekers here now have been processed in a way that ensures we don't have to worry about any criminals being in Canada at this point, due to the obvious technology gap, or worry about whether there was anything missed in that respect. Could you touch on that aspect? Does your organization keep track of how many asylum seekers have criminal records, and what those numbers are?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Go ahead, Mr. Ossowski.

[John Ossowski]

Thank you for the question.

As I said in my opening remarks, we looked at the sample the Auditor General pulled to assure ourselves that the criminality had been dealt with. It's clear to me that in every instance when someone was making their asylum claim, the officer was aware of the criminality at play at that point in time.

I should point out that criminality can occur before or after they arrive in Canada, but before they go to a hearing. When they came in, there may have been no criminality at play. While they were waiting for whatever period of time before the IRB hearing, they had a DUI or committed some other kind of criminal offence. That was always at the surface to us, because we do the screening process right up until the IRB hearing to assure ourselves that anything that happened while they were in Canada is accounted for when the decision-maker reviews the file.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

My next question would be for the Auditor General.

In your assessment, is there currently significant funding and oversight to ensure that asylum claims are processed and decided in a timely and appropriate manner? I'm looking at what's been budgeted. The number's around 50,000. I look in the report, on page 5, and see that in 2018 alone, there were 55,000 asylum claims, which is 5,000 over the budgeted amount. People are concerned that this is like the deficit, that we're never going to catch these numbers. Given the budgeted numbers, has the government put enough money aside?

[Sylvain Ricard]

As was mentioned earlier, it appears that the funding will not quite deal with the backlog. The backlog will, in fact, increase, so it depends on what angle you look at your question from. If you're talking about covering the inflow and dealing with the backlog, well, no, there's not enough funding from that perspective.

We also recommended, in our report, having a flexible system that would allow for quick and easy access to money when there's a fluctuation in the volume of claims. Having additional money today is all good and fine, but it will not deal with the backlog for the number of years it appears. It will be important that it becomes more than just adding money to the system at a point in time, but will allow the organization to quickly have access to funding whenever there are fluctuations.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have 30 seconds.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Maybe we'll just go on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Maybe we'll just go on, and we'll bring it back.

We'll now move to Ms. Yip, please.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you for coming.

Mr. Davidson just asked Mr. Ricard the question about the 50,000 claimants, and I would like to ask the same question to Ms. MacDonald.

How does your organization propose to manage with the increased migration globally? I expect our claimants will rise. We are just budgeting for 50,000, and then there's still managing the backlog.

[Lori MacDonald]

I would identify a number of important points here.

One of the things the government did in terms of investing money in their recent budget was to give us a two-year time frame in which to take a look at what's happening in our system.

I mentioned earlier, in my opening remarks and I think in responding to one of the earlier questions, that when we look at what's happening around the world with respect to migration and what we see coming into our country, we have an opportunity to kind of do a deep dive in terms of what that analysis tells us.

One thing that has really assisted us is our ASMB, as we've identified, so that we're all talking the same language in identifying the pressures we see for each other. That allows us to identify where we can find and address efficiencies and where we can reduce duplication, as well as identify the kinds of initiatives we can put in place to help us develop more robustness in the system.

That will help us over the next two years to work with the Treasury Board around finding the right funding model that has more finesse to it. We don't know if the number will stay at 50,000. We don't know if it will go to 45,000 and we don't know if it will go to 55,000. Therefore, having these two years to get some good intel, to take a look at what's happening with trends, to develop our own efficiencies, to reduce duplication and to get the technology on board will feed into what the number will really mean.

These are best guesses in terms of numbers, based on some history, but looking at these trends, I think, will help us get to that place in a better way.

I will give an example. Irregular migration has been consistently high over the past two years, but what we see right now, between January 1 and May, is a 46% decrease. When you see a big swing down like that, it impacts what happens to Richard at the IRB in terms of how many cases he has to look at. As removals move forward as a result of the work John does in his area, those removals impact what's happening at the end of the system.

What we're collectively doing together is like a puzzle. We're taking all those pieces and trying to get our best information to determine what numbers we will have, and at the same time we're learning from those processes. We're becoming more effective and efficient. We're looking at the pilot we're doing in Toronto, as an example, beginning in September, which will in and of itself increase efficiencies much more quickly.

I don't know that the number will be 50,000 or 70,000, but what we will know is that we're collectively working together and that each of these pieces will help us get to the end state in terms of what those numbers look like. All that work will help us make decisions at the end.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Can you expand on the pilot program called the Integrated Claim Analysis Centre? Can we learn anything from it? I think it was successful in Montreal. How does that apply to the Toronto model, and are there any differences that Toronto may have?

[Lori MacDonald]

There are a couple of really important things. I'll turn to my colleague Mr. Scoffield in a second, who is a really good expert in this area.

Montreal helped us in a really practical way to kind of see our blemishes. It really helped us to see where we had duplication. It forced us to come together and have real conversations about “Why we are doing it this way when you do it that way, and is that creating a negative impact in the system?” It also helped us learn some very good lessons on how we could quickly adapt and make things easier as we went down the road.

The project in Montreal is very paper-based. The project we're going to go to in Toronto is more electronically based, so we expect to see some more efficiencies. Those lessons learned from Montreal will help situate us for the much bigger project in Toronto, which I think—and Bruce will correct me here—deals with around 55% of the national cases.

I'll ask Bruce to comment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Go ahead, Mr. Scoffield, please, and quickly.

[Bruce Scoffield, Director General, International Network, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

As the deputy noted, Montreal was really a proof-of-concept operation. We looked at about 2,000 cases. It was largely a paper-based context in which we were working in Montreal. In Toronto—or more accurately, in the central region—about 55% of the national caseload is processed, so about 27,000 to 28,000 claims will be dealt with. We're going to build on the lessons of Montreal.

In Montreal, we were largely focused on the process leading up to when a case was hearing-ready at the IRB. We'll continue that work to continue to try to achieve enhanced efficiencies across the system, but we'll be adding additional components to the pilot in Toronto, including a post-decision case management process that we think will help CBSA manage its involvement with claimants leading up to removal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Scoffield.

We'll now move back to Mr. Kelly, please, for five minutes.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

Listening to the line of questioning from my colleague, Madam Mendès, and not having the benefit of her experience of being directly involved in the system over the years, I found it very troubling.

Ten years ago, another parliamentary committee had identified the problems that this report addresses. I want a better answer on why nothing has been done over the last 10 years to address problems that were clearly identified. Here we are again now with another Auditor General's report talking about the same things. On this committee we look backward and demand accountability from public servants for how public funds are expended.

[Lori MacDonald]

Thank you for the question.

I'll start off by saying that I think it's important to recognize that over the course of the past 10 years, things have been done. It's not that it has been silent or that work hasn't progressed in advancing some of the areas around technology; it's that, grosso modo, the entire system hasn't been connected together.

As an example, just referring back to the ICAC pilot, in Montreal it's all paper-based. Clearly the technology is not there. Their systems aren't talking to each other. In Toronto, however, they have the technology and they have already moved to a digital process. It's an example in which pieces of the system have been worked on, so CBSA has advanced some of its IT systems, and IRB has, and we have, but not systematically together. There are pieces that have been addressed, but now we're coming together to do the entire system.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

That's disappointing.

In your comments you said something that struck me as well. You talked about how the recent spike in refugee asylum claims has caused you to do what you call a “deep dive” into your information. You talked about what I thought you said was beginning to track country-of-origin data. I found that staggering. I couldn't believe that was not something that the department had kept track of since its inception.

The Auditor General has identified global trends of migration, and surely, as part of being able to have data for proper policy decision-making, you would keep track of something like that. Was it really 2017 when you started keeping track of where asylum claimants came from?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Go ahead, Ms. MacDonald.

[Lori MacDonald]

Thank you for the question.

Just for clarity, of course the system—the organization—has tracked migration and asylum refugee numbers for many years. When I speak about the deep dive in terms of intelligence, we started tracking more in depth what's been happening on the irregular side, and moving backwards in terms of how that was happening and where they were coming from. It's more detailed information on what's happening in other countries that would either convince people that maybe it's better to go to another country and cross the border irregularly or encourage them to come to a port of entry and ask for asylum.

It's really about looking at the detail over the past couple of years to help us identify some of those issues and trends that we may be seeing. A country may be experiencing some significant economic situations that then encourage people to look to another country like Canada for an opportunity. It's a matter of understanding what's happening there with their visa system. Do they have robust passport systems? Are we seeing fraudulent activities? That's what I mean about tracking and looking at information, but of course we have tracked information for many years.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Everyone, I assume, agrees that Canada must have a compassionate and rules-based system. You mentioned in your opening remarks that you wish to strive for fast, fair and final decision-making.

Do you consider an end goal of getting the wait times down to two years and holding at two years to be fast, fair and final?

[Lori MacDonald]

The entire system is working together to address a number of complex issues to be able to get to an effective processing time. The investments we receive today allow us to start chipping away at that. As Mr. Wex indicated, you have to start someplace in terms of your plan to address the issue. That's what we're working on right now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Ms. MacDonald.

Following up on Mr. Kelly's question, you talked about country of origin, or where they came from. How many came from the United States?