Public Accounts Committee on June 2nd, 2016

[Robert Orr]

As the deputy outlined, we don't have authority under the Citizenship Act to seize a document, but we may well under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. If there is something we can link to immigration—and that's often the case—then we may be able to seize the document under that authority.

It may be done by one of our immigration officers, and within our department the immigration officers and citizenship generally are co-located. However, if it needs to go to CBSA, in some instances we're co-located, but more often than not, we're not.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

What percentage of offices in Canada are shared by the two organizations?

[Robert Orr]

Within our immigration and citizenship department—and I'm just guessing here—it's close to 100%. Within CBSA it's rather a different number, and I don't know what that number would be.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Does this sharing, the presence of Immigration Canada officials and the fact that they can seize potentially fraudulent documents held by other people reduce the fraud risk?

[Robert Orr]

I think we have to distinguish between the risk of fraud and seizing documents, which is just one small component—

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I'll give you the opportunity to provide more detail.

[Robert Orr]

The issue that the Auditor General quite rightly identified was not seizing documents on a consistent basis. Having that ability within the immigration office at present, yes, would reduce risk in that particular area. Whether or not they are separate in terms of identifying fraud, I don't think it has an impact, because there are so many different elements that we look at in detecting fraud, which we do on a regular basis, that having it in immigration does not have an impact there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We'll now move to Ms. Zahid.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Ms. Biguzs, you touched briefly on Bill C-6, which gives officials new powers to seize documents that they suspect may be fraudulent. It is unusual that this provision was more explicit before. Can you please discuss in a little bit more detail how these new powers will help combat fraud in the citizenship program?

[Anita Biguzs]

Mr. Chair, the provision in the legislation basically provides a new authority that was not there previously to allow a citizenship officer, if they suspect a document that has been presented in front of them, to validate or help to substantiate their application for citizenship to Canada. If they believe there are reasonable grounds to believe that the document has been improperly obtained, improperly used, or is fraudulent, it allows the officer, under the minister's authority, to seize the document. That can include a passport, if it's deemed to be suspect or problematic, an identity document, or documentation providing evidence of residence in Canada.

This will now provide the authority to an officer to be able to seize those documents for further investigation. It doesn't necessarily mean to say that the individual has committed fraud, but it allows the documents to be held and to be investigated further to determine indeed whether or not in fact a fraud has been committed.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Further to this inconsistent and not accurate data, you mentioned that you have asked the officers to adopt the Canada Post way of posting. Do you think this entails the implementation of a uniform method of data entry to prevent discrepancies in the address? If not, will you be taking any other specific measures to make sure that you have consistent and accurate data entered?

[Anita Biguzs]

Certainly in terms of the guidance and the instructions we've sent out to staff, we've been very clear that before entering a new address, number one, make sure there isn't already another address entered into the system. See if another address already exists so that we're not entering multiple addresses, and do verifications of that. The instructions are very clear in that regard.

As well, when they enter a new address, they have to use the Canada Post guidelines. We'll be following up on that to make sure the procedures are being followed so that it's consistent in terms of how we actually capture whether it's an apartment at the beginning or at the end. It will be standardized across the system.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

How will it be made sure that this is followed?

[Anita Biguzs]

As part of our quality assurance and quality control processes, those are the kinds of things we will be following up on, to make sure that we are addressing the problems that have been identified in terms of the way addresses are being entered into the system.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I'll share my time with Ms. Shanahan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Go ahead, Ms. Shanahan.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

I'm glad to continue on that because, when we're talking about a data entry problem, it just seems incredible in this day and age that we would be there.

You mentioned that the officers are trained, and that they're offered guidance, but where is the performance measurement to make sure that indeed the guidelines are being followed and this is being properly executed? We're talking about paper applications. We're talking about a very subjective manner of dealing with hard data.

[Anita Biguzs]

Mr. Chair, in addition to the enhanced or improved guidance and operational instructions that we've sent out to the field, we do have regular working group meetings with our citizenship staff, and we have monthly conference calls to try to reinforce the procedures. Again, I think the only way we can actually validate that these kinds of measures are in fact being followed is by quality assurance and quality control. It is incumbent upon us to ensure that. We have a separate program integrity division that will help us in doing that kind of quality control, to go into the system, to validate, and to do some random targeting. As I said, it will also help us in terms of specific regular exercises to make sure that these kinds of issues are being addressed.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you for referring to the quality assurance framework, because that's a finding of the Auditor General's in paragraphs 2.48 to 2.53 around the risk indicators and how they were originally defined. They were insufficiently defined. There wasn't enough evidence. Human error, I would think, would be a big one there. It's not deliberate, but it can lead to a fraudulent application ultimately being processed.

Please talk about how you have improved your risk indicators.

[Anita Biguzs]

We do have a process that will document the risk indicators. As I said, this involves using evidence based on assessing cases that have been refused, and looking at and going into the cases. As has been pointed out, we analyze the cases in terms of the kinds of issues that were identified through that process, as well through feedback from our own staff, in terms of where we know interviews have taken place, where issues have been identified, and input that we receive from CBSA and the RCMP.

We will actually substantiate our risk indicators based on that kind of evidence and document it. The intention is that we will be evaluating and re-evaluating the risk indicators on a much more regular basis, but also documenting them, and then establishing a baseline.

Another issue that was identified was that we don't actually have a baseline to compare how we're doing. In fact, part of the program integrity framework is to establish a baseline, and then monitor against that baseline in each and every subsequent period, to assess how we're doing and whether we have improved. Are the trends getting better or worse? Where have our own practices improved or where do there continue to be gaps?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you. We look forward to seeing the follow-up on those measures.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right, Mr. Arya, I'll let you in here. We're getting close. It's going to be about a minute.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I'll make it very quick.

This question is for the RCMP. You mentioned that the revisions in the management action plan, under the heading “Management Implementation Actions”, will reflect upon IRCC's information requirements for delivering its programs, as well as what is feasible and practical for the RCMP to provide. It appears that it is possible that the RCMP may not be able to provide all the information the IRCC needs all the time because you may think that is not feasible or practical. Could you kindly answer that question with a yes or no?

[Insp Jamie Solesme]

That's correct.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you. I think we're pretty well done.

I do have a couple of questions. First of all, Ms. Shanahan asked a question that dealt with data management, data entry, and problems. This is an area of concern that our entire committee had, not not just with regard to this department but to every department. I had better be careful here. In many departments, we have heard of data problems with the collection, maintenance, and sharing of data, and with compromised data or data that is just wrong. You did talk about quality control and a quality control framework. Thank you for doing that, because I have a feeling that when we have to draw up a report, we certainly will be talking about data control. You may expect us to ask that question about the quality control framework that you're going to put in place and the measures you have to make certain it is functioning properly.

I want to go back to a question that was asked fairly early on. The Auditor General, in exhibit 2.4, gives us a table that explains a problem with inconsistent identification of multiple applicants using the same address. In his report, he mentioned about 50 individuals who were using the same address. In response to the earlier question, you gave a reasonable answer in saying that when refugees come in, they typically use temporary housing and that many times the temporary housing is the same from one refugee to the next. We went back and looked at what the Auditor General said: “We found that officials working in local offices regularly identified problem addresses...”. In other words, they recognized those as problem addresses. It wouldn't be a problem address if they knew if was temporary housing for a refugee, but they recognized it as a problem address. The Auditor General continued, that “they forwarded them to the department headquarters. However, we also found examples where many applicants used the same address over several years although none of the citizenship officers who processed their application noticed.” They didn't notice it. They missed it. For example, one address was used by at least 50 different applicants during overlapping time periods between 2008 and 2015. Among these applicants, seven became Canadian citizens. The Auditor General then said, “This address was eventually discovered in 2015 during a residency fraud investigation...”.

Are you telling me that some of temporary residences we use for refugees coming in have been found to be used fraudulently? We keep using these addresses. We keep using these homes, and it's been discovered during a residency fraud investigation by the Canada Border Services Agency and added to the department's list of problem addresses. Can you give me a bit more information?

Mr. Ferguson, are you satisfied with the answer we got to the effect, well, you know, there are different reasons and one of the reasons is that it's a temporary address for refugees?

I'll then go back to Ms. Biguzs.