Evidence of meeting #17 for Public Accounts in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fraud.
A video is available from Parliament.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
Our commitment on the management action plan, both from my department and the agencies, is that we will have it in place by December. Work has already been taking place, but we will have finalized that in terms of the clarity by December.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
I'm sure you are clear that it will be done by December, but in their commitment they're saying, “subject to the necessity of protecting the integrity of ongoing investigations”, and things like that. They're not clearly committing that they will be able provide all of the information you need.
Liberal
Denis Vinette Acting Associate Vice-President, Operations Branch, Canada Border Services Agency
Certainly, we can give you our commitment at the agency that we do want to respond, and we have accepted the Auditor General's Report, his observations, and his recommendations.
We are committed to working with IRCC to bring about some clarity and some national consistency in terms of the information that is required and the processes that must be utilized. Much like my colleagues have answered previously, we have to do so within the construct of the legislation and the regulations under which we work.
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
I only have one and a half minutes. If I can stop there, maybe Mr. Chair it would be good if the RCMP and CBSA could highlight or inform the committee through the clerk about the statutory limitations they have in sharing the information. Then we can look at what best can be done to work on those limitations.
I don't know if the the AG's office could maybe conduct an audit of the people who have become new Canadian citizens during the last two or three years and find out whether some of them became citizens because of lack information sharing.
Insp Jamie Solesme
I can provide a response for you there.
In regards to the different legislation, perhaps the word “limitation” is not the best. It should be the word “guide”. They guide the agencies in how we .as agencies are compelled to protect the information we have within our inventories, databases, and what have you.
When that information is shared, there are parameters that are there. Those parameters that are in legislation, such as the Privacy Act—
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
None of those should stop IRCC from getting the information and preventing some undesirables from obtaining Canadian citizenship. That is the primary thing I'm—
Insp Jamie Solesme
What I will say about the Privacy Act is that there are provisions in there to share information when there is a case that's going affect national security.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
I know that the chair usually interjects at the end of the time, but I think, in relation to what Mr. Arya is saying, that we understand there is always a risk when we share information. We get that. We also know that it can hurt an ongoing investigation. Are there real cases or evidence where, by sharing information, an ongoing investigation has been hampered, hindered, or not even taken place?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
No, but is there an example, is there a case where information sharing has hurt an ongoing investigation? It's always, “Well, we don't share information because there's a high risk of hurting the criminal investigation”. Has that happened?
Insp Jamie Solesme
In an organized crime file, it likely does happen. For those complex investigations where you have a number of different people who are being investigated, if you share in one forum you're going to compromise investigations in another.
The job of any enforcement agency is to ensure that they're fulfilling their obligated duties within the legislation that guides us, or that we're compelled by. If there are issues, there is deconfliction that can result in that to decide what the best course of action is for the best result at the end, which would be to protect the security and safety of Canada.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I enjoyed that line of questioning. It was very good. Thank you.
I want to start by throwing something positive out just so it's not all bad, even though it seems to be mostly that way. We'll go through the action plan in detail. I was particularly pleased with Mr. Arya's, analysis of one of the commitments, which wasn't nearly as strong as he and I believe it should be.
The action plan, which unfortunately the public doesn't have before it, states the recommendation, the response from the department, the nature of the plan, the responsible office, and then the target dates. I must say that I was pleased to see that quite a bit of this work was done. None of these deadlines, at least at first blush, seems way off in the future—you don't get the sense that somebody is running you around the block here. Most of them are in September of this year, and a good number are for March of next year. I was trying to find something positive and that's what I could come up with. If that's as good as it gets, take it.
Now, back to the part where this is the public court of accountability. I am not going to let go on trying to find out how some of this stuff happened. It's dealing with information, maybe not data per se, but certainly information.
The Auditor General pointed out:
the Department...changed some of the risk indicators for residency fraud without conducting any analysis to determine whether these changes would compromise program integrity, or whether the applications that presented a higher fraud risk would still be targeted.
The OAG contends that because of these changes “significantly fewer applications were flagged as higher risk and given more in-depth assessment” .
So from a practical point of view, you made changes to the process about potential fraud and risk, but you didn't do any analysis to determine whether or not those changes would actually do any good. Help me understand how we can get to that point in a department where you make changes based on risk. Risk doesn't always turn on the big questions. Sometimes little details are just as important to keeping Canadians safe as multi-billion-dollar arms packages. I'd like to know how it is that you make changes to risk assessments with no evaluation. How can that be?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
In terms of any of the changes that have been made, I think the Auditor General has pointed out the extent to which the documentation on the files has perhaps not described all of this. But any of the changes that have taken place, in terms of risk indicators and risk criteria, are based on the input by and the work done by our own officers, together with input we received from CBSA, the RCMP, and also from our judges, who are on the front lines and who do residence hearings, based on what they have observed and identified, in terms of the kinds of issues that have arisen.
The changes that have been made to the system were based on that kind process where there has been input from those closest to these matters. Whether or not we have document that, clearly is a gap that has not yet been filled. That is the work we doing in updating our risk indicators. We're evaluating them and putting in place a more rigorously documented process.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
That was incredibly defensive and didn't answer my question.
Thank you, Chair.
Liberal
TJ Harvey Liberal Tobique—Mactaquac, NB
First of all, I'd like to thank you all for coming. I do have the utmost respect for what each and every one of you do. I thank you very much for sharing your time with us here today.
I want to touch a little bit on Mr. Arya's comments and Mr. Poilievre's comments, and I guess Mr. Christopherson's comments too, in terms of information sharing. My comments are going to be brief.
I also look at paragraphs 7 and 8 of the text of the Auditor General's comments, which Mr. Poilievre referenced, which indicate that in 38 cases, information was only shared in two of them, and on a subject on which it should have been possible to share information on some level. From an outside perspective, it should have been possible to share that information.
I think sometimes when we talk about the sharing of information, it can be as simple as the not sharing of information. It's about identifying among departments and organizations the information there that's pertinent to a case, but it can't be released at any one time; and it's about making sure that each department is aware that this information is there, and that the department in question would like to release it cannot do so. There needs to be some collaboration among departments in recognition of what each department's trying to do to facilitate the common goal, which is to keep Canadians safe, and to ensure that the people who want to become citizens of this country have the ability to become citizens, while at the same time protecting the citizens who are already here.
I think it's the same in paragraph 8,. The agency only shared information with the department in 11 of 38 cases. Well, it's as simple as indicating that there is pertinent information that cannot be released at any one given time, but that when it's pertinent, when it's able to be released, it will be released; that there is relevant information there that will affect a case and definitely change the direction of somebody's citizenship case.
I was wondering if you would comment on that, Jamie, as to whether you think that's relevant. Do you think that's something that's possible? Do you think that departments do a better job of collaboratively working together? When I look at the five points that were brought up in the opening comments of Ms. Biguzs, I noticed that it's not something that was identified. There's not a clear definition of how we're going to move forward with information sharing among not only departments, but government agencies as well.
Then I have a brief question for Mr. Orr after.
Insp Jamie Solesme
Mr. Chair, again on the information sharing, can we do it better? Absolutely.
I think it's important to understand, too, with investigations at what point somebody is charged. You have to understand the way the processes work within those cases. Somebody has had a criminal records check and they're negative. Then the person engages in criminal activity and is charged, whether by the RCMP or another police force within Canada. There's an ongoing investigation, which may or may not be complete by the time the person goes to citizenship. The person can stay in a charged stage for a while, until they go to court obviously, or are convicted or dismissed, or whatever the results may be. Within this we are still compelled by the various legislation.
Now, I know there's concern about when information is shared. I bring you back to my comment with respect to there being two issues: whether we know and we haven't shared information, or we don't know so that we can't share. It's unfair to expect that law enforcement is going to target anybody of a different nationality. It goes against our policy framework on unbiased policing. It goes against the human charter of rights if we ask everybody what their status is. So you have to understand that as well. If we were doing that, we'd be audited for doing what we shouldn't be doing. You have to look at that perspective. Yes, we are trying to ensure the safety of Canadians, but we have to do it within the parameters that we're given.
If we are aware that a person is an applicant, whether they've told us or because we know through another means, or there's a discussion with IRCC, and we know we have information that we need to share, there is a process in place to do that. Even if we can't share, there's a conversation that can take place.
I think the issue, and what the committee, with all due respect, is looking for, is assurances that every effort will be made to share that information. We accept the recommendation within the action plan, and work is ongoing within that memorandum of understanding with IRCC. Those concerns, I think, you will find addressed when that MOU is clarified and specifically states what's required, when it's required, and how it will happen.
At present the MOU doesn't reflect that. It reflects that sharing will take place, but it leaves it open-ended and probably the misconception that it's just a free flow of information. I think all things have to be taken into consideration with regard to that.